4 Ideas to Explore

1. David Petraeus argues that “we have not remotely learned all the lessons we should have from the war in Ukraine,” calling it “the future of war right now.” He said that in Ukraine, just one side “is using 10,000 drones a day,” and estimated that “90% of the casualties on the Russian side are caused by drones.” Looking ahead, Petraeus said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that “within a year or two, we’re going to see… autonomous systems, truly autonomous, that do not require a pilot,” leading to “drone swarms… for which we really don’t have a solution.” He also predicted that at some point, Russia will need “a cessation of hostilities as much as does Ukraine.” Petraeus is not the only U.S. commentator discerning lessons of the war in Ukraine over the past week. Walter Russell Mead writes in his WSJ column that in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, “the fundamentals of drone warfare favor the defense over the offense,” while “rifles, mortars and tanks appear to be going the way of sword fights and cavalry charges.”
2. In his latest commentary for Ukraine’s NV outlet, former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi offered his vision of what could be viewed as a victory for Ukraine in the ongoing war. “This is a war of attrition, where survival means victory,” Zaluzhnyi explains in the May 22 commentary for NV.¹ We should note that this is not the first time Zaluzhnyi dwells on what could constitute a victory. In a Q&A in early May, the general said, “For both Russia and Ukraine, [the war] is increasingly a question of how to sell the outcome as victory. Someone will gain territory and people and call that ‘victory’; someone will lose almost everything yet still try to sell it as ‘victory’ to their people. That’s the current problem.” On the Russian side, somewhat similar approaches have been formulated. Investigative Dossier Center reported in early May that a recent internal Russian presidential administration presentation declared that one has “to know when to stop.” “Overreach means defeat; continuing the Special Military Operation would be a Pyrrhic victory,” according to the presentation as cited by Dossier, which then lays out plans for how to “sell” the peace with Ukraine to the Russian public. Since the revelation of that presentation, Kremlin-connected Russian commentator Aleksey Chadaev² and pro-Kremlin ex-Ukrainian MP Oleg Tsarev³ have made statements that appeared to play down the need for a military triumph over Ukraine, offering their own versions of what could constitute such a victory, including preventing the disintegration of Russia.
3. Commenting on the latest Putin-Xi summit in China, Harvard professor and former director of the Belfer Center Graham Allison told BBC: “Sometimes people call it a marriage of convenience, but I'd say it's becoming increasingly convenient for each of them,” adding that “Russia needs China much more than China needs Russia, given its size, its economy, its vigor.” Meanwhile, Russians increasingly “discover China as a country of the future… with ultra‑modern infrastructure, safe and at the cutting edge of development,” Carnegie Endowment’s Alexander Gabuev writes. He warns that “the group that will choose the country’s path after Putin” is a cohort of officers who “received their general’s stars in the war against Ukraine and are increasingly cooperating with their Chinese comrades.”
4. “No, Russia’s economy is not about to collapse,” Columbia University’s Adam Tooze told FP’s Cameron Abadi. “There’s certainly a slowdown. In 2023, 2024, the Russian economy grew by 4%. I mean, it’s a $3 trillion economy. So those are substantial numbers. And yes, after contracting mildly in the first quarter of 2026, Russia’s growth is now expected to be as little as 0.4% over the whole year, which is kind of in the same ballpark as Germany, for instance. So this is not an economy that’s collapsing, but this is an economy which is no longer growing at the clip that it was earlier in the war,” Tooze said. He then added, “But the important point to emphasize is that this is no kind of collapse. This is a slowdown, a shift in gear, and continuing pressure on every front within the economy as the demands of the war take their toll.” On Russia’s ability to sustain the war, Tooze said “Russia isn’t fighting the war for economic reasons, and the war won’t end for economic reasons, either,” and argued that economic exhaustion is likelier on the Ukrainian side.

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 Fault Lines in the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea Alignment,” Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine, The National Interest, 05.22.26.

• Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine warn that “treating America’s various adversaries as monolithic in their geopolitical outlook—and ignoring their internal frustrations with one another—would be a vast strategic mistake.” They argue that, even as China strengthens ties with Russia, Iran, and North Korea, “beneath this growing alignment lies a more complicated story—one defined not by trust or ideological unity, but by persistent fault lines, historical grievances, and mutual suspicion,” according to the authors. 
• Historically, relations among these states “have been shaped as much by suspicion as cooperation,” the authors write, recalling that Russia and China “nearly went to war in 1969,” while Iran’s strategic culture is marked by “territorial losses to the Russian Empire” and memories of “national humiliation.” Iranian officials warn that “Russia has never had a strategic view of Iran” and has used Tehran “as a bargaining tool with the West,” and polling shows “roughly 70 percent of Iranians” opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the authors note. 
• Lemon and Jardine conclude that the emerging alignment “is real and dangerous. But it is also fragile, transactional, and filled with internal fault lines.” Rather than treating China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as “a unified authoritarian camp,” they argue, the United States should “selectively disrupt the connective tissue that enables their cooperation while widening the mistrust that already exists between them,” exploiting fears of “dependency and betrayal” that “continue to shape their calculations.” 

“A Check-In On North Korea and Russia’s Wartime Partnership,” Choong‑Koo Lee, War on the Rocks, 05.21.26.

• Lee revisits his 2025 argument that Washington and Seoul must “put the screws on” the Russia–North Korea partnership, noting that under Trump’s second term “Seoul and Washington had to first readjust their trade and defense-related relations” before focusing on Pyongyang–Moscow ties. To resolve a tariff dispute, “South Korea would invest $350 billion in the United States, while Washington would lower the tariff rate to 15 percent,” a deal he says could “further enhance the strategic value of the alliance” because it supports shipbuilding cooperation.
•  He highlights that at the 2025 U.S.–South Korean summit Trump “stated that he had approved South Korea’s nuclear-powered submarine construction project,” which Lee calls a potential “military option against a future scenario” involving deepening Russian–North Korean cooperation. In his earlier piece he argued that, because that cooperation could advance “despite U.S.–South Korean efforts to restrain it,” the allies needed to strengthen undersea warfare and missile defense; the new U.S. support for nuclear‑powered subs, he suggests, “could provide” exactly that kind of capability.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“Iran as Vietnam, Ukraine as Korea: Similar Wars End in Similar Ways,” Gideon Rose, Foreign Affairs, 05.20.26.

• Rose argues that Trump’s wars in Iran and Ukraine “rhyme” with earlier U.S. conflicts. “The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is likely to conclude like the Vietnam War did in 1973,” he writes, “with an unstable compromise settlement that addresses some issues but leaves other important ones unresolved,” so that “the ultimate fate of the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program will be left for another day.” By contrast, “the war in Ukraine, like the Korean War, will probably end with a settlement that solidifies something like the current line of conflict, with frozen borders patrolled indefinitely in an armistice that proves more stable and durable than most observers expect.”
• On Ukraine’s structure, he notes that, as in Korea, Russia’s 2022 surprise attack sought to “reconquer what they considered lost national territory,” was met by U.S. and European commitment to help the victim, and after initial swings has “several years of a high-intensity stalemate along relatively fixed battle lines.” Once both sides are exhausted, Rose contends, a settlement “ratifying the stalemate” will become likelier, with a demarcation line guarded “with vigilance” and unlikely to be challenged for a long time.
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Trump’s Iran exit ramp is a long shot. He doesn’t have a better option,” David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 05.24.26.
  • "Trump’s Ceasefires Have Little Ceasing and Much Firing," Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg, 05.21.26.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Living under fire in Ukraine, year after year,” Yana Bilash, Washington Post, 05.22.26.

• Bilash describes how Russia’s 2022 invasion felt: “Imagine you are asleep… And then the world ends.” Missiles and troops arrived “while mothers lay beside their children,” and for 40 days she searched war‑torn Kyiv for medicine for her dying grandmother “amid constant explosions.” Later, her godchildren spent three months in a Chernihiv basement, emerging with “chronic lung problems,” and friends who volunteered for the army “one by one” did not come back: “This is what freedom costs.”
•  Now in 2026, a “normal night” means being jolted awake at 2 a.m. by an explosion “near my windows” as rockets and drones strike power stations: “If that rocket had been aimed at my building, I would have died in my bed.” She describes losing power, water, and heat, hearing drones “almost like lawn mowers,” debris falling, fires starting two streets away—and then going to work ordering helmets and body armor for frontline units.
•  Bilash argues Russia has shifted to trying to “break people at home,” systematically striking “power stations, water systems and heating infrastructure—in winter, in cities full of civilians.” Her grandmother’s lesson—“Guard peace. It is very fragile”—now feels painfully clear: “I used to hear those words as something old people say. Now I understand exactly what she meant.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • Ukraine’s Kostyantynivka: “A City in the Kill Zone,” Tyler Hicks and Gaëlle Girbes, The New York Times, 05.25.26.
  • “‘A Total Nightmare’: Voices From a Moscow Hit by Ukrainian Drones,” Valerie Hopkins and Nanna Heitmann, The New York Times, 05.23.26.

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

“Gen. David Petraeus on Iran, Ukraine, and the Future of War,” Bloomberg This Weekend, YouTube, 05.23.26.⁴ Machine-transcribed.

• Petraeus argued that “we have not remotely learned all the lessons we should have from the war in Ukraine,” calling it “the future of war right now.” He said that in Ukraine “one side alone… is using 10,000 drones a day,” and claimed that “90% of the casualties on the Russian side are caused by drones.” “Tanks can’t maneuver anymore. They can’t survive… you can’t even drive vehicles in the death zone, which is 35km on either side of the front lines,” he warned, adding that drones “can fly into trenches and kill people,” turning even dug‑in positions into targets.
• Looking ahead, Petraeus said that “within a year or two, we’re going to see… autonomous systems, truly autonomous, that do not require a pilot,” leading to “drone swarms… for which we really don’t have a solution.” He argued this should “drive home the absolute imperative of true institutional change in the United States,” including “overhauling the entire concepts of war and operation,” creating “unmanned systems forces equal in the Army, Navy, Air Force,” and changing “what you buy and even how you buy it,” with software updated “every week or two.”
• On Russia’s war in Ukraine, Petraeus also said he could envision a situation where Ukraine inflicts “such casualties on Russia that it’s maybe the same as what they’re recruiting on a monthly basis,” noting that Russia has “now taken almost 1.4 million killed and wounded.” He pointed out that “last month, the Ukrainians took back more territory than the Russians actually took from them,” predicting that at some point Russi will need “a cessation of hostilities as much as does Ukraine.”

“Ukraine Offers a Glimpse at the Future of War,” Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, 05.18.26.

• Upon visiting Ukraine Meades writes: “A week isn’t enough to understand a war, but as your Global View columnist absorbs an avalanche of impressions and information, three things seem clear.”
• The author writes, “First, the nature of war has changed and is changing much faster and more radically than most observers—and most of the world’s militaries—yet understand. Rifles, mortars and tanks appear to be going the way of sword fights and cavalry charges. Evacuating the wounded from the ever-expanding drone-infested “gray zone” that separates opposing armies can take weeks, in some cases up to two months.”
• The author writes, “Second, the changing technological balance of war has tilted, for now, in favor of Ukraine. The fundamentals of drone warfare favor the defense over the offense, meaning that Ukraine’s smaller armed forces can hold off larger numbers of Russian attackers while extorting a high price for every acre of ground gained.”
• “Finally, the white-hot fire of war has allowed or perhaps forced Ukraine to forge something it previously lacked: a powerful and competent state,” according to Mead.
• The author writes, “Russian power, and the authority and integrity of the Putinist state, is being ground down. Ukraine, by contrast, appears to be gaining coherence, capacity and energy—even as it fights for its life.”

“End of the Doctrine: Why even a new mobilization will not enable Russia to achieve victory,” Kirill Rogov, Re: Russia, 05.25.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Kirill Rogov argues that the “war of attrition” doctrine has collapsed: after Russia’s failure near Kyiv was treated as a “tactical miscalculation,” both Moscow and many in the West believed “even a limited mobilization” would make victory “slower and less triumphant, but nonetheless inevitable.” By early 2026, however, Ukrainian drones are “hitting economic and military infrastructure across much of Russian territory,” and it “now appears increasingly likely that Ukraine’s ‘drone wall’ will be capable of grinding down almost any number of enemy troops,” so “numerical superiority in manpower is no longer a critical factor for the success of an offensive operation,” the author writes.
• Rogov contends that “even if Putin were to announce another ‘partial’ mobilization and recruit a further 200,000 men,” it would at best bring “some tactical advances” but “would probably not result in a breakthrough,” instead raising Russian losses from “30,000 personnel per month to 45,000–50,000,” with the new troops “ground down by a drone barrage within a matter of months.” Under conditions of visible war‑weariness, sending forcibly mobilized conscripts into such assaults would be “a significant political risk,” especially now that “the perception is widespread” that mid‑level commanders are “racketeers and ruthless plunderers of their own soldiers,” he argues.
• Drawing a historical parallel, Rogov warns that a new Donbas offensive “may become a historical echo of the Brusilov Offensive” of 1916, whose “colossal losses” helped “undermine the legitimacy of the Tsarist regime” and trigger military breakdown. In his view, Russia’s failure to turn manpower advantage into victory “will not be confined to the conflict with Ukraine,” but may mark “the beginning of a new era” in which the image of the ‘Russian bear’ and its “indisputable military superiority in conventional warfare” fade, and containing Moscow becomes “a matter of a renewable drone capability rather than an irreplaceable human resource.”

“Ukraine Has a New War Strategy—and It’s Working,” Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy, 05.18.26.

• “In April and thus this month, the Ukrainian armed forces have hit 20 oil refineries and export terminals,” according to the author. “The strikes, some hitting as far as 1,750 km from Ukraine—that’s 2.5 times farther than the range possible four years ago—have rendered Russia unable to fully capitalize on the high petroleum prices caused by the Iran war,” the author claims.
•  “In March, Russia’s seaborne oil shipments dropped by roughly 300,000 barrels per day, partly as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries. According to Bloomberg, average output at Russian oil refineries fell to 4.69 million barrels per day in April, a record low since December 2009,” the author writes.
• “Russia’s forward momentum on the battlefield in Ukraine has ground to a virtual halt. Its armed forces even suffered a net loss of territory in April, for the first time since August 2024, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank. Russia’s anticipated spring offensive is thus far a washout,” the author writes.
• “This strategy is all about the battlefield in Ukraine. It’s about stopping Russia from taking the Donbas and forcing it into negotiations that Ukraine can control,” ISW analyst George Barros is quoted by the author as saying. “That should be the basis for a settlement.”
• “According to the Moscow Times, an independent Russian media outlet, the Kremlin is rethinking its war goals and the narrative that it tells Russians about the “special military operation,” as it calls the war, downplaying its significance,” the author writes.
• German historian Brunnbauer “doubted that Ukraine believes that it can push the Russians back, at least in the short or medium term. “But what they are showing to the world, to themselves, and to the Russians who care to know” he said, “is that time is not necessarily on Russia’s side—and that they can survive without much American help,” according to the author.

“Report on Operation Atlantic Resolve Including U.S. Government Activities Related to Ukraine, January 1–March 31, 2026,” DoD OIG/Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve, 05.18.26.

• The report concludes that “Ukraine continued to reject Russian territorial demands and Russia refused to pursue a comprehensive ceasefire prior to a negotiated settlement,” while “Russian forces maintained their strategic and operational advantages over the UAF through superiorities in numbers of equipment and manpower.” DIA assessed that as of March “the Russian military maintained an overall advantage over the UAF across most warfighting functions,” and that “shortages in ammunition, equipment, and personnel constrained overall UAF capability to sustain large-scale offensive operations and retake territory seized by Russia.”
• At the same time, Ukraine scored limited gains and markedly improved air defense. The UAF “retook 400 square kilometers of territory in a limited counteroffensive—the first net territorial gains since 2023—after the deactivation of Russian-used Starlink terminals temporarily degraded Russian operations.” Over the quarter, “Russia launched approximately 19,044 unmanned aircraft and missiles against Ukraine,” including a March 23–24 strike with “1,066 unmanned aircraft and 34 missiles,” described as Russia’s “largest attack ever,” yet Ukraine “intercepted or otherwise suppressed approximately 88.1 percent of these strikes,” up from roughly 81.2 percent the previous quarter.
• The report highlights severe Ukrainian manpower strains, quoting Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that “approximately 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers were absent without leave” and “approximately 2 million Ukrainian men were dodging draft notices,” even as Ukraine struck targets as far as “roughly 1,087 miles inside Russia” in the Komi region. Financially, since February 2022, Congress has “appropriated or otherwise made available $195.03 billion” for the Ukraine response, of which $177.76 billion has been obligated and $116.02 billion disbursed, while “U.S. allies and partners have committed approximately $130 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.”

“Ukraine’s Experience for Europe’s Future Security. Illusions and Brutal Reality,” Valerii Zaluzhnyi, NV.UA, 05.22.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views. Machine-translated.

• “When we speak about security not declaratively but through the prism of our experience, several important points should be emphasized.
  •  First, modern war has a hybrid character, manifested in military, economic, political, informational, cognitive and other spheres, including international relations.
  • Second, such a modern hybrid war begins with a covert phase, followed by a phase of struggle for local interests, influence and resources, and then a phase of full-scale invasion and transition to an existential war.
  • Third, in a war whose price is the life of an entire nation, there is probably no compromise in the search for ways to end it
  •  A fourth important point in forming an honest understanding of security: there must be no gray zones in the future world order.”
• “The ... attempts to recast the war in Ukraine as a subject for negotiations among powerful leaders—during which Ukraine’s territory, security guarantees and even natural resources were supposed to become bargaining chips—ended in failure, once again proving that the world already lives by different rules.”
• New weapons have changed the very concept of how war is fought—from destroying the enemy’s military potential to destroying the state itself, regardless of whether a given target or group of people belongs to the military sphere.
  • I am also absolutely convinced that it is precisely our experience that constitutes the capital enabling us to occupy a worthy place in the international security architecture through exchanging this experience for political support, investments and technologies. So now, to the experience itself. Without pathos or maneuvering:
    • First, in the conditions of an existential war for survival, our experience, societal resilience, international support, and future technologies and doctrines still indicate that Ukraine remains within reach of achieving full-fledged agency within existing and new geopolitical frameworks.
    • Second, such a war for survival on one side, and the imposition of achieving the goal of this war of destruction at the cost of enormous losses on the other, poses a threat to the existence of both Ukraine and Russia.... This is a war of attrition, where survival means victory.
    • Third, under current conditions, although the war continues between Ukraine and Russia, it affects the interests of nearly all geopolitical players in the modern world and will inevitably affect them through its global consequences.
    • Fourth. ... It is important to prevent the deformation of democracy during wartime—it must be systematically supported while countering the enemy’s imposed strategy both in military operations and in politics and the economy.
    • Fifth. ... Replacing the extremely expensive precision-guided weapons that were the true game changers of the 20th century is now a weapon of attrition.
    • Sixth. The question of society’s resilience to war is perhaps the most important factor in state security.
    • Seventh. The economy, together with public readiness, becomes the lifeblood of war.
    • Eighth. International support and the reliability of coalitions determine not only the resilience of the wartime economy, but also remain the most effective mechanism for limiting the enemy’s economic capabilities through sanctions and other restrictions.
    • Ninth. Appropriate military decisions, avoiding the imposition of a mode of warfare by a more resource-rich adversary, and the ability to adapt more quickly and seize the initiative in a high-tech war remain the only principle for preventing Russia from achieving its political goals through military action.
    • Tenth. ... This entire system requires not only balanced planning, but also continuous management, transparent and honest communication with society, as the principal component of war.
• Therefore, Ukraine’s experience lies not only in waging technological war and surviving on the battlefield—it concerns a much broader context. It is about how, under today’s complex conditions, to change the very approaches to security and effectively strengthen the existing security framework, above all in Europe. The time for change has come; it awaits decisions. Decisions that will enter history.”

“Ukraine, Allies Grow Confident Russia Invasion Losing Steam,” Volodymyr Verbianyi, Bloomberg, 05.22.26.

• Verbianyi writes that “Ukraine and its allies are increasingly confident that Russia’s invasion is running out of steam as Kyiv stabilizes the front line and stalls a spring offensive by Moscow.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said “Ukraine is putting up a strong defense” and that “if you look at the front line at the moment, it is stabilizing,” even adding that Ukraine is “regaining territory ‘in net terms’.” A nervous mood grips Russia’s elite, with “some senior Kremlin officials believing the conflict has reached a dead end with no clear way to resolve it,” while “deepening war fatigue” among ordinary Russians is driven by heavy losses, economic slowdown, and internet restrictions.
• Drones are described as a “game changer”: Ukraine’s growing effectiveness “at deploying drones to inflict heavy Russian troop losses is being matched by strikes behind the front lines and deep inside Russia,” including one of its “heaviest attacks on Moscow and the surrounding region” over the weekend. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Ukraine has “significantly ‘slowed the enemy’s advance and is gradually regaining the initiative,’” estimating that “about 35,203 Russian soldiers were killed or severely wounded in April” and setting a goal “to inflict at least 200 enemy losses for every square kilometer of advance.”
• Yet Ukraine’s gains are constrained: it has “failed to achieve its strategic goals,” neither reclaiming most occupied territory nor moving closer to a peace deal as U.S.‑led talks stall. At home, “the war‑weary population is increasingly unwilling to join the army,” making broader conscription “deeply unpopular”; Fedorov promises reforms to “increase pay for soldiers… and attract fresh recruits” and to “expand drone use.” Meanwhile, air defenses “continue to struggle against ballistic missiles that decimated its energy infrastructure,” and Ukraine faces “growing difficulties in securing ammunition for US-made Patriot missile systems.”

“Ukraine has made itself indispensable to the West,” Oleksii Reznikov and Dalibor Rohac, Washington Post, 05.21.26.

• Reznikov and Rohac contend that “Ukraine is more sovereign, more capable and more independent than at any point since it declared statehood in 1991,” and has made itself “both unconquerable by Moscow and indispensable to Washington, Berlin and others.” Once a supplicant, Ukraine is now a defense exporter: “the world’s most capable militaries are coming to Ukraine to buy weapons,” and Kyiv and the Pentagon are close to a deal to send “Ukrainian-made drones to the United States for testing,” while Berlin’s “Brave Germany” will co‑develop AI‑enabled drones.
• They argue Ukraine has “buried” the old doctrine that “bigger nations win wars.” Despite Russia devoting “10 percent of gross domestic product” to defense and expanding its active force to 1.5 million, “the pace of Russian advances has been in steady decline,” with Moscow now losing “around 35,000 troops per month,” outpacing recruitment. In a 745‑mile front where a $500 FPV drone can destroy a multimillion‑dollar tank, “whoever can manufacture cheaper, faster and at scale wins. Currently, Ukraine is winning that race.” Ukraine, they insist, is “no longer merely a recipient of Western aid but a co-creator of Western defense capability,” and “investing in Ukraine is an investment in European security”: “It turns out that Ukraine is not the West’s problem. It is, in fact, a solution.”

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

• Kramer profiles Ukraine’s 35‑year‑old defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, a tech evangelist who “believes that warfare is ripe for disruption.” Strolling a drone expo in jeans and a fleece, he eyes a massive cargo drone substituting for a 155mm howitzer and asks, “Can you make it bigger?” His core belief is stark: “The world needs security, and only autonomous weapons can ensure it,” he says; “Autonomous weapons are the new nuclear weapons. Countries that possess them will be protected.”
• Fedorov’s Air, Land, Economy strategy, endorsed by Zelensky, aims to use drones and advanced weapons “to intercept at least 95 percent of incoming Russian drones and missiles; to kill or seriously injure more soldiers than Moscow can recruit; and to weaken the Russian economy by blowing up oil export terminals.” He calls the current phase “targeted destruction,” with a goal of raising Russian casualties from about 35,000 a month to “more than 50,000,” and an aide says he “believes in the mathematics of war.” Frontline brigades largely embrace the tech edge—“we have a young minister who is into technology… we don’t have to explain anything,” says K‑2 brigade commander Kyrylo Veres—even as some generals warn his vision is disconnected from “muddy trenches and broken bodies.”
• Fedorov also sees Ukraine’s war as a data gold mine: he is opening a library of “more than five million annotated videos” of battlefield footage via Avenger Labs so allied firms can train AI models. Human rights groups oppose lethal A.I., but he insists “the risks are not as high as you think,” and calls the data‑for‑models swap “a win-win approach.”

“The Economics of Victory in Ukraine and Defeat in Iran,” Tom Tugendhat, Wall Street Journal, 05.20.26.

• Tugendhat contrasts “exquisite” Western systems with cheap Iranian and Ukrainian drones, warning that “that is the economics of defeat, and our adversaries understand it.” Since February, the U.S. has fired “more than 1,300 Patriot interceptors” at Iranian missiles and drones, each costing “around $4 million” to destroy weapons priced at “$20,000 to $50,000,” and at current production “it will take two years… to replace what has been fired in the past 2 1/2 months.” Supply chains “we don’t fully control” and raw‑material shortages deepen the problem.
•  Ukraine, by contrast, shows “the economics of victory”: “more than 1,000 interceptor drones roll off Ukrainian production lines every day, at $1,000 to $3,000 apiece,” with airframes and software redesigned “within months… and… days.” Kyiv produced “four million drones last year and plans to produce seven million this year,” enabling operations like “Spider’s Web” that caused an estimated $7 billion in damage. The cure, he argues, is “an industrial base that can take an idea and turn it into a million in a year,” not “another exquisite platform.”

“How Ukraine Found the Cards To Win, Without Help From the U.S.,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, William B. Taylor, Cedric Leighton and Steven Tian, Time, 05.23.26.

• The authors recall Trump telling Zelensky “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards,” but argue that “Ukraine has found some winning cards” on its own, “through its ingenuity in drone technology and through Russian President Vladimir Putin’s faltering economy.” Ukrainian‑designed drones now “systematically strik[e] high‑value military and industrial targets located over 1,000 kilometers inside the Russian Federation,” from air bases to the VNIIR‑Progress plant, and are “physically dismantling the energy infrastructure that funds the Kremlin’s war effort.”
• Militarily, they say drones are “severing crucial logistics chains” while sparing Ukrainian troops, helping Ukraine “liberate over 400 square kilometers in the southern theater,” with independent assessments showing Russia suffering “a net loss of occupied territory for the first time since 2024.” They cite Ukrainian figures that “total Russian casualties have now eclipsed 1.35 million personnel,” with “upwards of 1,000 soldiers daily” lost and “over 141,000 casualties” in the first five months of 2026 alone.
• Politically and socially, deep‑strike drones are “shattering the illusion of domestic security,” forcing Putin to strip Victory Day of its tank parade and crack down on the internet. “Something is clearly happening with respect to the Russian authorities and security services,” former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told them; “They’re feeling the pressure, which is leading them to crack down on the internet and popular messaging apps.” Economically, despite higher oil prices and eased sanctions, the authors argue that “Putin’s house of cards is still more vulnerable than many realize,” as more than 1,200 global firms that exited Russia have not returned and Russian data are increasingly opaque.

“How the War in Iran Helped Ukraine Go From Problem to Solution,” Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal, 05.22.26.

• Yaroslav Trofimov writes that “just last fall, Russia was inexorably advancing on the battlefield, money was running out and President Trump was pressing a peace deal on terms that favored Moscow.” After Trump’s war against Iran, “drone warfare… went global,” and “instead of being seen as a problem to be solved, Ukraine became a sought-after solution,” as “our technological game-changers have transformed the war” and shifted Ukraine from “a consumer of security” to “a contributor to security,” Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Mariana Betsa said.
• According to the author, it is “thanks to an edge in using drones, thousands of which are manufactured daily,” that Ukraine has “offset Russia’s manpower advantage” and is “bringing the war home to Russia, including the recent attacks on the heavily protected capital, Moscow.”
• Trofimov recalls that Trump told Zelensky “you don’t have the cards,” yet “more than eight months after Anchorage, Russia still hasn’t gotten much closer” to the cities he urged Kyiv to surrender, and a “beaming Zelensky quipped that he had the cards all along.” U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll called Ukraine’s Delta system “absolutely incredible,” and Adm. Brad Cooper testified: “We’ve adopted a large number of tactics, techniques and procedures that the Ukrainians have passed to us… Are they more effective as a result? Yes.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “The Ground Drones Rescuing Ukraine’s Wounded From the Front Lines,” Conor Finnegan and Matthew Luxmoore, Wall Street Journal, 05.20.26.
  • “The Contract System Has Broken Down: The decline in the influx of contract soldiers for the war in Ukraine reflects a systemic failure of the commercial recruitment model,” Re: Russia, 05.2026.
  • “Inside Ukraine’s Battlefield Innovation Loop,” Catarina Buchatskiy and Viktoriia Honcharuk, War on the Rocks, 05.22.26.
  • “Ukraine's president says Russia used a powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile in a mass attack on Kyiv,” Fox 21, 05.24.26.
  • “Karaganov says the ‘collective West’ must be punished,” Vesti.ru, 05.22.26.

Military aid to Ukraine:

“The cracks in the Putin edifice,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 05.18.26.

• The editorial argues that while the US‑Israeli war on Iran has given Russia a “temporary fillip,” recent weeks “have provided glimpses of weakness.” Kremlin hopes of taking the rest of Donbas by autumn contrast with forces “scratching out meagre territorial gains at a devastating human cost,” and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggesting Russia is “losing 15‑20,000 soldiers a month dead. Not injured, dead.” Economically, Russia has cut its 2026 growth forecast from 1.3% to 0.4%, with “labor shortages, excessive government spending and western sanctions” fueling inflation and “spiraling bad loans.”
• The board cautions that “this does not mean the war has suddenly turned in Ukraine’s favor”: Russia still mounts massive air attacks and Ukraine has “serious military manpower problems.” Yet it concludes that the European strategy of “ending the war by gradually raising the cost to the point where Russia is forced to compromise along the current front lines is bearing some fruit,” especially after the long‑stalled €90bn EU loan for Ukraine was approved. “Putin’s conviction that he can outlast the west is being tested,” they argue, and European partners should “double down on supporting Ukraine with the weapons, intelligence and cash needed to see it through.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Ukraine Is Doing Better, Now It’s Europe’s Turn," Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 05.19.26.

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

• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Why the EU Should Sanction Russia’s Patriarch," Ivana Stradner, and Samuel Ben-Ur, The National Interest, 05.20.26.

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

“The US suggests it might dump talks as Russia escalates war,” Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 05.26.26.

• Anatol Lieven writes that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s warning to evacuate Western diplomats from Kyiv before “systematic strikes” marks “a drastic escalation in the Ukraine conflict — with a serious risk of drawing Washington and NATO into direct conflict with Russia.” He argues that Moscow “intends to use Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missiles to strike the underground headquarters in Kyiv where U.S. and European officers have been helping the Ukrainian armed forces to target Russia,” noting that until now Russia “has refrained from targeting Ukrainian headquarters in Kyiv precisely because of the likelihood that U.S. and other NATO soldiers and intelligence officers would be killed,” the author observes.
• Lieven contends that Marco Rubio’s statement that “there are no such [US-mediated Russian-Ukrainian] talks occurring at this time” effectively “threw responsibility for moving the process forward back to the Russians and Ukrainians,” just as Russia’s army “has proven unable to advance on the ground in the Donbas” and “Russian public discontent with the war is growing.” 
• Lieven warns that hardliners, “for years now… urging Putin both to intensify attacks on Ukraine and to threaten the West with radical escalation,” now seem to be “the ones he is listening to,” the author writes.
• In Lieven’s view, Moscow may calculate it “has less to fear than in the past from U.S. and NATO escalation,” given U.S. stockpile depletion in the Iran war and European ammunition shortfalls. He argues that “far from abandoning the peace process, the Trump administration needs urgently to re-engage,” pressing European allies for “sanctions relief, energy purchases, and normalization of relations” that could induce Russia to end the war, and insisting it is “absurd that two non-professionals” such as Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are handling both Ukraine and Iran. Otherwise, he warns, within weeks Washington may face “a choice between a humiliating retreat and a much deeper and more dangerous military commitment to Ukraine, with the serious possibility of direct war with Russia.”

“Ukraine: the Beginning of the End?”, Tatyana Stanovaya, Bulletin No. 10–18, R.Politik, 05.25.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• In “Ukraine: the Beginning of the End?”, Stanovaya claims that “the picture for Russia is darkening. Ukraine is finding more, and larger, ways to strike back — not enough to reverse the course of the war, but enough to make the war effort harder to sustain.” She argues that Putin “is under growing domestic pressure,” watches his ratings “closely and takes them seriously,” and now faces a “domestic discourse… increasingly public in arguing that the war must end on tolerable terms,” which she calls “serious signs of a fracturing consensus” and of “a growing recognition that the current situation cannot hold indefinitely.”
• At the same time, “ordinary Russians are showing rising discontent in the face of economic pain, internet restrictions and a growing list of bans on social networks,” and “approval ratings have turned downward,” as “a number of very different loyalist voices have begun… to argue that the war must end,” the author writes.
• Stanovaya notes that Vasily Kashin, a prominent China specialist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, who “openly call[s] for the war to end on terms based on the ‘Anchorage principles’, arguing that Russia simply cannot afford to win militarily.” Kashin contends that “the goal of making Ukraine friendly is unattainable,” that “there is no point in seizing and holding more territory populated by people of an anti‑Russian disposition,” and that Russia has “no means of building a decisive military advantage” under conditions of “battlefield transparency and the mass use of FPV drones, against which there is still no effective counter.”
• By contrast, she cites foreign‑policy commentator Sergei Poletaev, co‑founder of the Vatfor project, who insists that “there is no magic button for non‑nuclear escalation in Ukraine… We are already fighting in Ukraine at full capacity; beyond this lies only total devastation,” yet still argues that “Russia can and must defeat Ukraine militarily, however long it takes.” As Stanovaya summarizes, “those who think the answer is no call for stopping now and sealing a deal,” while those who believe “the military instrument can deliver considerably more prefer to play for time,” with Putin, Lavrov and Gerasimov in the latter camp. She concludes that mounting speculation about “games” around Putin “lays bare Putin’s deteriorating image as a leader stuck in a war… steering the country onto dangerous ground,” and that “the real question is whether this debate will reach Putin’s ear.”

“Transcript: The EU wants a Putin whisperer,” FT News Briefing, Financial Times, 05.20.26.

• Host Marc Filippino says that “US-led talks on ending the war in Ukraine have stalled out,” prompting European leaders to consider “creating their own special envoy to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Henry Foy explains the motive is twofold: the Iran war is “distracting US diplomats,” while a front‑line stalemate and hardened positions mean “there’s no real movement on that track.” At the same time, Europeans “are becoming increasingly nervous that if they’re not involved in this conversation, they’re gonna be forced to accept some kind of a deal that they don’t have any say in and may well not like.”
• Foy notes that both Kyiv and Moscow have “signaled openness” to a European track, with Putin’s spokesman saying “they think it’s great if somebody wants to pick up the phone,” and that Washington has “signaled to Europe that it is OK” with a parallel effort. EU foreign ministers will discuss a shortlist of potential envoys—Mario Draghi, Angela Merkel, and Finnish presidents Alexander Stubb and Sauli Niinistö—but Foy cautions that “it may well not matter who the personality is,” since “Putin has been very clear on his red lines” and Europeans are “just keen for a seat at the table.”

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

“Russia’s Long Descent,” Thomas Graham, Council on Foreign Relations, 05.20.26.

• Thomas Graham argues that Putin’s 2022 invasion has become “a grueling war of attrition… slowly eroding the foundations of Russia’s power.” Russia’s economy, “less than a tenth of the U.S. economy in nominal terms,” grew by under 10% in the decade before the war while the U.S. grew by more than 25%; after wartime spurts above 4% in 2023–24, growth dropped below 1% in 2025 and is forecast similar this year. With natural population growth around zero and “more than 1.2 million” war casualties, plus low investment in cutting‑edge technology (60th in the 2025 Global Innovation Index, outside the top 10 in AI), Russia’s material base is weakening.
• Yet Graham stresses Russia will not “vanish as a major global actor,” citing its one‑ninth share of the world’s landmass, vast resources and “massive nuclear arsenal,” and a historical pattern of rebound after defeats. He concludes the U.S. “can neither dominate nor vanquish” Russia and has “negligible” ability to transform it.
• He therefore proposes “competitive coexistence:” continue supporting Ukraine with European allies while engaging Moscow to end the war and “stabilize the Russia‑West frontier,” renew strategic‑stability talks and new arms‑control arrangements “to fortify deterrence and reduce the risk of nuclear war,” and manage regional balances in the Middle East, Northeast Asia and the Arctic without conceding core U.S. interests.

“Putin and Trump don’t have the cards,” Edward Luce, Financial Times, 05.26.26.

• Luce writes, “When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Donald Trump hailed the move as “genius”. In practice, Vladimir Putin’s war was our age’s costliest great power error until Trump launched Operation Epic Fury three months ago.”
• “Neither man can escape [the] self-created traps.”
  • “In Putin’s case, the failure of his “special operation” is existential. 
  • “No amount of AI slop can distract from his [Trump’s] humiliation of reaching terms with a regime he has repeatedly claimed to have obliterated. In so doing, he will be cementing its grip.”
• According to Luce, “Some of the cards have fallen into Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s lap. Ukraine has turned the battlefront into a charnel house. Russia’s casualty rate is 35,000 a month. Ukraine can strike oil, factory and infrastructure nodes at will 1,000km inside Russia. Putin had to get Trump’s help to convince Zelenskyy to leave Red Square unmolested by Ukrainian drones in this month’s Victory Day parade.” Luce adds that “Ukraine also has an increasingly strong hand to play with Trump. Before the Pentagon started to gallop through its stocks of missiles and battery defenses in the Gulf, Ukraine had reinvented warfare.”
• Luce concludes, “America’s sway over the Middle East is broken. Iran will probably emerge as a regional force with which others must come to terms. Ukraine will at minimum be a key partner of any post-U.S. NATO. In very different ways, Kyiv and Tehran are showing the world how to bring a colossus low. Taiwan is not the only country that is studying these lessons closely.” 

“This is how to defeat Vladimir Putin,” Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian/ECFR, 05.23–26.26.

• Timothy Garton Ash argues that Putin can only be “defeated” externally by blocking his core aims: “to subjugate Ukraine, restore as much as possible of the Russian empire, destroy the credibility of NATO, undermine the EU and re-establish a Russian sphere of influence over eastern Europe.” That means “staying the course with Ukraine” not just until the shooting stops, but until the four‑fifths of Ukraine outside Russian occupation becomes “a reasonably prosperous, secure, stable and democratic member state of the EU”; anything less, including a frozen, depopulated, dysfunctional rump, would be “a victory for Putin’s plan B.”
• He calls for “increasing economic pressure on Russia,” reversing the perverse effect of the Iran war by tightening sanctions, backing Ukrainian long‑range strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and “crack[ing] down harder on Russia’s shadow fleet,” through which nearly half of Russian oil exports move. At the same time, he urges Europe to “deter another Russian attack” by rapidly building the capacity to defend NATO’s eastern flank even if a Trump White House fails to honor Article 5, using European forces already in NATO commands and regional groupings so that even a limited Russian land grab in the Baltics would be credibly suicidal.
• Beyond hard power, Garton Ash says democracies must “not only play defense on the hybrid front” but also disrupt Russian information operations; “see off our own nationalists,” whose electoral success would give Putin new veto players inside the EU; and “speak to all the Russians” (elites, wider society and the diaspora) with the consistent message that “another relationship with Russia is possible, if …”. Above all, he insists on “strategic patience”: making Western societies “secure, strong, prosperous and attractive” and then “standing there,” so that over years the combination of Ukrainian success, a resilient NATO/EU, and a stronger West steadily erodes Putin’s project.

“Europe’s secret Plan B to replace NATO,” The Economist, 05.19.26.

• The article reports that Trump’s sudden cuts to U.S. forces in Europe and doubts over Article 5 have pushed some allies to quietly plan for war “not just without America’s help, but without much of NATO’s command-and-control infrastructure.” One Swedish official says “the Greenland crisis was a wake-up call… We realized we need a Plan B,” while an insider notes NATO chief Mark Rutte “has literally banned talking about it because he believes it can add fuel to the fire.”
• With Russia still seen as the primary threat, officials fear America might one day “sit out a war with Russia, [or] actively thwart other members’ responses.” Analysts expect that perhaps “one-third of NATO members would ‘fight on day one’ irrespective of whether Article 5 is triggered,” led by a coalition of Baltic, Nordic states and Poland. The most developed fallback is the British‑led Joint Expeditionary Force, which “can react to situations on a non-consensus basis” and already has its own intelligence, planning, logistics, and secure communications.

“Europe’s Dangerous Hunger Games for American Troops,” Vytautas Leškevičius, War on the Rocks, 05.21.26.

• Leškevičius argues that reports of U.S. force reductions in Europe expose a “deeply unhealthy European tendency: a kind of European ‘hunger games’—a scramble in which countries compete against one another to secure a scarce U.S. military force presence.” He stresses that the 2014 Wales pledge “was never just about cash” but about “capabilities, readiness, and Europe’s ability to generate meaningful military contributions,” and that Washington has been signaling for over a decade that “conventional defense in Europe must become far more European.”
• He warns that some allies now portray themselves as “model allies” to win U.S. basing at others’ expense, echoing “a familiar Rumsfeld-era distinction,” and that this zero‑sum competition “risks reproducing precisely the kind of intra-European fragmentation Moscow has long sought to encourage.” “U.S. forces should be stationed where they generate the greatest deterrent effect,” he insists, “not distributed as rewards to the loudest or most politically accommodating allies.” The real task, he says, is a NATO in which “Europe acts as an engine of power, not a dependent,” because “the transatlantic bond is strongest not when Europe begs for protection, but when it stands as a capable partner on its own continent.”

“I’m the Foreign Minister of Sweden. Don’t Overestimate Russia,” Maria Malmer Stenergard, New York Times, 05.20.26.

• Stenergard argues that while “Russia’s war against Ukraine has not abated,” the Kremlin’s claim that its economy is strong is misleading: Swedish‑commissioned studies show it “is more fragile than it appears.” Russia says GDP grew “around 13% between 2020 and 2024,” but using nighttime luminosity Sweden estimates the economy “actually contracted by around 8%.” She adds that inflation is “substantially understated”: when Moscow reported about 10% in 2024, the central bank hiked rates to 21%, and Swedish military intelligence thinks it is higher than the current 5% forecast, implying that “Russia is overstating its purchasing power.”
• A British study she cites estimates sanctions have cost Russia “at least $450 billion,” with energy revenues in January 2026 “down by 50%” year‑on‑year before the Iran war. Even with waivers and high oil, Swedish intelligence judges Russia would need Urals “above $100 a barrel for the rest of the year” to matter, and Ukrainian strikes on refineries further limit gains. She urges a ban on “providing maritime services—insurance, access to ports, financing and so on—to any ships leaving Russian ports carrying oil, gas or coal,” arguing that “further pressure is the best way to force Mr. Putin to engage in serious peace negotiations:” “We can’t change Mr. Putin’s wish to control Ukraine, but we can change how much it will cost him.”

“America surrendered in the information war,” Jim Geraghty, The Washington Post, 05.26.26.

• Jim Geraghty writes that Russia officially budgeted $1.77 billion for propaganda in 2026, China is estimated to spend around $10 billion a year on “foreign information manipulation efforts,” and even Iran devotes some $600 million annually to state media and influence campaigns, with additional off‑the‑books operations. He cites virulently antisemitic pro‑Iranian Lego videos mocking Donald Trump—whose creator told the BBC the Iranian government is a “customer”—as emblematic of how aggressively U.S. adversaries invest in shaping perceptions worldwide because “they’re convinced it’s worth it,” according to the author.
• By contrast, Geraghty argues, “the answer is, not much” when asking what the United States is doing in response. He notes that the Trump administration shut down the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, leaving America “out of the business of monitoring and rebutting foreign propaganda and disinformation,” while Voice of America has been “gutted.” In Europe, Polish cybersecurity officials describe Russian campaigns as “a systematic effort to change how people perceive things,” but say platforms such as Telegram—whose infrastructure he links to Russian security services—often do nothing. Geraghty concludes that while adversaries spend billions on information warfare, the Trump administration “doesn’t think it’s worth the cost,” even as it finds $200 million for a domestic ad campaign featuring then–Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on horseback.

Joint press conference with Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Adm. Pierre Vandier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation , NATO, 05.19.26.

• Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone said NATO’s chiefs met “to face an increasingly complex security landscape, and to adapt our Alliance,” stressing that “we are not at war, but we are not at peace either.” He called for “dramatic increases and improvement” in the “rate of delivery and fielding of all the capabilities necessary for our deterrence and defense,” urged industry to “accelerate production and adapt business models,” and reaffirmed “our continued support to Ukraine”
• SACEUR Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said the U.S. redeployment of 5,000 troops “does not impact the executability of our regional plans,” noting that “Baltic Allies and the Poles… have really built up their ground combat power,” and that Canada’s brigade in Latvia and Germany’s brigade in Lithuania mean “substantially more capability.” He stressed that “by investing in Ukraine, we are not only protecting their population… This is also an investment in European security,” and linked Iran’s attacks in the Strait of Hormuz to Allied security, warning that disrupted energy flows “affects our military industrial capacity over the long term.”
• ACT’s Admiral Pierre Vandier said Allies’ move to 3.5% of GDP for defense raises the question of “buck for the bang: how we turn this effort into real capability, real interoperability, and real deterrence,” arguing that “more of the same will not be enough.” Citing lessons from Ukraine, he said war is now shaped by “speed, mass, software, drones, electronic warfare, space, and data,” and insisted that “NATO 3.0 doesn’t exist without defense industry 3.0,” with AI, data‑centric architectures and harder, more realistic training needed to “increase lethality and better protect our soldiers.”

“World in a Time of War,” Dmitri Trenin, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), 05.26.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• Dmitri Trenin argues that “the dilemma—war or peace—is false,” because if war is understood only as armed combat, it will likely end soon, but “a full-fledged peace… will not come even after this.” Instead, “confrontation with the West will continue—in various spheres and in very different forms” and “will be long,” requiring what Russia has lacked: “long‑term goal‑setting and a well‑thought‑out strategy.” He writes that the main goal must be building a “Russian state‑civilization” and a society based on “solidarity” and shared values of “faith, freedom, family, justice,” implying “deep renewal of the economic and political system.”
• Such a project “cannot be the domain of elites alone,” he insists; the elites themselves need renewal and “ideological and value content” and a “focus on service” as much as competence, so that the project becomes an idea able to “take hold of the masses.” Only a truly “national idea,” he says, can transform Russia, so that the special military operation (SVO), with its “heaviest trials, colossal tension and irrecoverable losses and sacrifices,” becomes “a prologue to the acquisition by the country and the people of a new quality.”
• Trenin contends that the stakes in the struggle with the West are “maximal,” claiming that Russia’s opponent, the “globalist elites of the West… strive not for an agreement, but for the crushing of Russia… not ‘regime change’, but the destruction of our country as a major independent force in the world.” After three post‑1945 generations raised under “strategic stability based on mutual nuclear deterrence with the United States” and then partnership, he argues that “the very paradigm of security has become obsolete”: Russia now faces “war in conditions of peace or peace in conditions of war,” and must “accept it, endure a long, hard struggle and, in the end, having transformed itself, win,” since “there is no way back; instead of it, there is only the way down.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • Video: “How to handle America’s adversaries,” Bill Burns interviewed by Shashank Joshi, The Economist, 05.25.26. An official transcript was yet to be posted as of 3:45 p.m. U.S. East Coast time on May 26, 2026.
  • “The G-2 Reality: America and China Cannot Dominate or Exclude Each Other,” Zheng Wang, Foreign Affairs, 05.26.26.
  • “Trump Bugs Out on Poland,” The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 05.18.26.
  • “Orban’s Fall and Europe’s Rise: The Dawn of a Strange New European Consensus,” Ivan Krastev, Foreign Affairs, 05.18.26.
  • “Measures Against the ‘Russian Shadow Fleet’,” Julian Pawlak, SWP Berlin, 05.20.26.
  • “The Crumbling Pillars of Global Peace: War, Empire, and the Forgotten Power of the United Nations,” Thant Myint‑U, Foreign Affairs, 05.21.26.
  • “Keir Starmer isn’t serious about getting tough on Putin,” Owen Matthews, The Spectator, 05.20.26.
  • “UK wargames AI-driven NATO conflict with Russia,” Mason Boycott-Owen, Politico, 05.22.26.
  • "NATO Must Die," Yanis Varoufakis, Project Syndicate, 05.22.26.
  • “The Democratic Party’s Worldview, with Jake Sullivan,” Aaron Maclean, The Free Press, 05.26.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

Video: “Putin Makes China Visit Just a Week After Trump,” interview with Graham Allison, BBC, 05.21.26.

• [When asked: “What is the nature of the relationship then between China and Russia at the moment? I mean, would you say that Russia needs China more than China needs Russia?”] “Yes, but it's interesting and complicated. So sometimes people call it a marriage of convenience, but I'd say it's becoming increasingly convenient for each of them. On the one hand, Russia needs China much more than China needs Russia, given its size, its economy, its vigor. China needs Russia as the back side of its war in Ukraine, where China has been a major supporter, both economically and technically, for the effort. On the other hand, Russia appreciates having China as a great power that provides a challenge for the U.S. and in which the U.S. has to pay some considerable attention to.”
• “Xi has very deliberately, over the period of the last decade or more, the whole time since he's been the president, nurtured a relationship with Putin, which is a difficult thing to do. But he's done it, I would say diplomatically and brilliantly, to help a person who's insecure about his status to begin with to decide to live with a relationship in which whereas the Soviet Union was the senior partner, now Russia is to China the junior partner.”
• [“Well, in terms of specifics, what do you think might be agreed between the two men?”] “Well, I think the main thing is just the pomp and ceremony in which President Xi gets to play emperor, receiving first the Americans and then the other great power, Russia. But I suspect that they'll be talking about the Russia-Ukraine war, where President Trump has repeatedly said China could help bring this to a conclusion.”
• “What China will be prepared to do unclear. Similarly, Iran is a topic about which both Putin and Xi have a lot of views and a lot of influence. And so that will be another topic for active conversation. And then the Americans, where when Putin and Xi get together, I'm sure in their private conversations, they talk about the fact that the U.S. actually doesn't respect or doesn't accept, in effect, the legitimacy of either of us.”
• “And therefore, we have to stick together to try to maintain our position. [Zbigniew] Brzezinski actually wrote brilliantly about this back just the year before he died in 2017. But this is kind of to be called even like the ‘alliance of the aggrieved,’ because the U.S. has basically positioned itself towards each of them as a competitor or adversary, and in geopolitics the enemy of my enemy is a friend.”

“Russia and China’s ‘No-Limits’ Trade Partnership Is Losing Steam,” The Moscow Times, 05.22.26.

• The piece notes that while Putin in Beijing touted “ ‘no-limits’ cooperation with Beijing,” analysts say the two countries “may be approaching the limits of what the relationship can deliver economically.” China has “largely replaced Europe as a supplier of manufactured goods and a buyer of Russian energy,” helping bilateral trade soar “55% between 2021 and 2025,” surpassing their $200 billion target, but “bilateral trade fell 7% to $227.6 billion in 2025,” the first drop since 2020. Russian exports to China fell “3.9%” and Chinese shipments “declining 10.4%,” with Russian oil exports down “20%,” petroleum products “33%,” coal “27%,” and Chinese passenger car exports plunging “44%.”
• The rebound in early 2026 is real but fragile: total trade in January–April rose “20% year-on-year to $85.24 billion,” driven by disruption in the Strait of Hormuz that “boosted demand for Russian crude.” Russian oil exports to China “surged by 22%,” oil products “increased 9%,” and Chinese car exports “nearly doubled.” But compared with 2024, trade grew only “10%,” about half the rate implied by the weak 2025 base, and economist Andrei Gnidchenko estimates total 2026 trade will end just “5% to 10% above 2025 levels.”
• Structural limits loom: energy makes up “nearly all Russian exports to China,” pipeline gas is already at “maximum” capacity, Power of Siberia 2 is “years away,” and the Russian market is nearing “ ‘saturation’ for Chinese industrial goods.” As Alexander Gabuev notes, “Russia is not a very rich country… It is definitely not the size of the European Union, ASEAN or the United States for Chinese producers,” while Chinese firms focus on “niche projects, cooperation or localization” because “China’s high-tech and consumer markets are already occupied by domestic manufacturers.”

“No Limits, No Good Options,” Dimitar Bechev, Foreign Policy, 05.22.26.

• Dimitar Bechev writes that although the “no limits partnership” announced by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in 2022 appears to be thriving, Putin’s Beijing trip showed “how asymmetric the Beijing-Moscow relationship has grown,” with “Xi, not Putin, driving the proverbial bus,” according to the author.
• Since 2022, “Beijing has thrown a lifeline to the Russian economy,” buying hydrocarbons and supplying machinery and dual‑use components, so that Russia’s defense industries “would not survive without China,” Bechev argues. Yet Putin “came back empty‑handed” from Beijing, with no deal on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline as China drives a “hard bargain on price,” the author notes.
• “At the end of the day, Russia, having largely lost the European markets, needs China more than the other way around,” Bechev writes, as China secures discounted oil and dominates trade in higher‑value goods. Once the Ukraine war ends, Russian worries over being a “junior partner” will grow, but Putin’s “obsession with grand geopolitics” means that for the Kremlin “there’s no limit to the relationship in sight,” the author argues.

“Xi Sets the Terms for Everyone Now,” Hal Brands, Bloomberg Opinion, 05.20.26.

• Brands writes that back‑to‑back Beijing summits with Trump and Putin offer “a snapshot of a world in transition.” Xi has become “a commanding world statesman,” he argues, having “out-coerced Trump in a high-stakes trade war,” issued “stern warnings” on Taiwan, and hosted “a parade of global leaders” seeking to stabilize ties “with his empire.” The Putin visit, he says, shows Xi as “the senior partner,” with “a war-exhausted Russia plunging deeper into dependence on China”; Xi can “drive a hard bargain” on pipelines and trade because “the balance within the autocratic entente increasingly favors Xi.”
  • He stresses that “Xi’s core alliance is with Putin, that other massive autocracy that seeks to destroy the U.S. order,” citing Xi’s remark that “there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Xi’s diplomacy with Trump is “a tactical ploy,” Brands contends, buying time to build a “fortress economy” and weaken U.S. competitive impulses, while Beijing and Moscow “pull the globe into deep disarray.” If Washington forgets that it “built a flourishing world… by working with democratic allies,” he warns, then “determined tyrants” like Xi and Putin, who believe constraints on their power are crumbling, “may, this time, be proven right.”

“Beijing’s unlikely bet on Russia may yet pay off,” Alexander Gabuev, Financial Times, 05.21.26.

• Gabuev argues that while the 2001 Treaty of Friendship was “Putin’s most positive foreign policy achievement,” Russia has since “squandered its unique window of opportunity to modernize,” ending up with “an ugly unwinnable war against Ukraine, and isolation from the west.” This “self‑diminishing course has forced Russia to lock itself into a relationship with Beijing that is increasingly one‑sided.” Putin hoped the Iran‑driven closure of Hormuz would push Xi to greenlight the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, but “Xi rebuffed his ‘best friend’: the price offered by Putin was not sweet enough,” underscoring that “China can afford to cherry‑pick from the menu of co‑operation projects that Russia is pitching.”
• Trade is booming—up 20% to $85bn in the first four months of 2026, likely to surpass a $245bn record—driven by “discounted Russian oil” and Chinese “dual‑use goods that feed the Russian war machine.” As asymmetry grows, Gabuev warns, Beijing may wield leverage beyond “hefty discounts,” for example expanding in the Russian Arctic or vetoing Russian arms sales to India or Vietnam. He notes that dozens of new educational and cultural agreements, visa‑free travel, and scholarships aim to make China “the symbol of progress for generations of younger Russians” and “replace Europe in its traditional role”—so that, combined with the EU’s severing of people‑to‑people ties, “Beijing’s unlikely bet may pay off.”

“A Pipe Dream: What Vladimir Putin Brought Back From China,” Alexander Gabuev, Carnegie Endowment, 05.22.26.

• Alexander Gabuev writes that on Putin’s 25th visit to China, Moscow and Beijing “reverted to their old habit of marathon signing ceremonies,” approving 42 documents, mostly “low‑stakes cooperation deals,” while “the real substance of the partnership continues to flow through closed‑door talks.” Yet “the most important document, which Russia hoped until the last moment to sign, was never agreed”: the Power of Siberia‑2 gas pipeline deal “was not only not signed, it was not even mentioned in the joint statement or in the speeches of the leaders,” the author notes.
  • “The conclusion from this situation is simple,” Gabuev argues: “the more documents are signed at Putin–Xi summits, the clearer it is that no significant breakthroughs have been achieved.” 
• Gabuev observes that bilateral trade “already for two years in a row exceeds $200 billion” and in 2026 “may set a new record,” driven by a crude formula of “Russian natural resources in exchange for Chinese machines.” With Russia spending “almost 40% of the budget on security and defense” and cutting non‑military investment, “the purchase of components and machine tools in China fits this picture,” he writes.
• Gabuev cautions that even the “formal and for‑show agreements” reflect a “very real expansion” of scientific, educational, media and people‑to‑people ties as Russia’s traditional links with the West rupture. He notes that Russians increasingly “discover China as a country of the future… with ultra‑modern infrastructure, safe and at the cutting edge of development,” while many under‑sanction elites now teach their children Chinese, a trend he calls “a telling contrast” with earlier generations oriented to Paris or Sardinia and with “the group that will choose the country’s path after Putin”—a cohort of officers who “received their general’s stars in the war against Ukraine and are increasingly cooperating with their Chinese comrades.”

“Putin in China,” Tatyana Stanovaya, Bulletin No. 10–18, R.Politik, 05.25.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Stanovaya writes that Putin arrived in Beijing “in a more precarious position than during his previous visit,” hoping to “advance the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline,” which the Kremlin had touted as a near‑done deal; Putin said on 9 May that “virtually all the key issues” had been agreed and that if they were finalized during the visit “I would be very pleased.” Instead, she notes, “the Russian delegation… came away with nothing,” as supply contracts remained “still being ‘finalized’” and “no start date had been fixed,” with Beijing reportedly insisting on prices “around 12–13 cents per cubic meter” and only a partial off‑take, terms that would leave Gazprom “laying 2,600 kilometers of pipe to sell gas at or below cost.”
• According to Stanovaya, the “outward fanfare about friendship” and 42 signed documents “is somewhat misleading,” since most were “cooperation agreements between universities (14) and pro‑government media outlets (11)” and “a broad package, but for the most part a framework one.” She stresses that “the years [Moscow] spent waiting for leverage were years in which China steadily reduced its need for Russian gas,” so “the Iran shock has given Moscow a talking point, not a real lever,” and markets immediately “reacted… to the lack of a deal,” with Gazprom and TMK shares falling.
• On Ukraine, she argues that “China has chosen not to help Russia in the war directly but does not block the sale of products that could indirectly aid the war effort,” so that “dual‑use goods and components began flowing into Russia in large quantities just after Russia invaded, enabling Moscow to expand weapons production.” Yet, she writes, “there is not much evidence to suggest that things have changed over the last few years”: Beijing “is keeping open its room for maneuver,” acknowledging Russia’s “sovereign prerogative” and sharing a critical stance toward U.S. hegemony, while “taking on no direct allied commitments” and ensuring that cooperation, including on security, “has a built‑in ceiling.”

“From bitter coffee to all-terrain vehicles: China-Russia trade ties flourish,” Eleanor Olcott and Haohsiang Ko, Financial Times, 05.20.26.

• The article notes that since Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, China‑Russia trade has “surged to record levels.” Putin boasted after meeting Xi that bilateral trade hit “$240bn” last year, and the FT says that in the first four months of 2026 alone trade “grew 20% to $85bn,” likely to surpass the 2024 record of $245bn. Energy dominates: “oil, gas, coal and petroleum products” account for “about 63% of imports by value.”
• On the Chinese side, companies report sharply rising Russia business. Zhejiang Xibeihu, an amphibious all‑terrain vehicle producer, says “in the past two years the sales have become even more frequent… partly because the [Ukraine] war has created greater demand.” A corn importer notes that as “China’s imports of American corn declined,” its Russian corn purchases have jumped from “2,000 tons” a month five years ago to “90,000 tons a month” today.
• Merchants say a “growing share” of transactions now settle in renminbi and rubles rather than dollars, and that while big lenders like Bank of China are cautious, “smaller regional banks” still handle Russia‑linked payments as both sides adapt to Western sanctions.

“How China quietly helps Russia in Ukraine,” The Economist, 05.20.26.

• The Economist writes that “Russia’s dependence on China to sustain its war against Ukraine has steadily increased as Western sanctions have intensified.” Beijing “maintains that it is neutral” and denies supplying finished weapons, but by shipping “huge volumes of ‘dual-use’ components and materials, it provides vital support for Russia’s military-industrial base,” so that during his May state visit to Beijing “Vladimir Putin was a supplicant.”
  • Chinese microelectronics and semiconductors are described as “critical to Russia’s ability to churn out the precision-guided missiles and drones that pound Ukrainian cities.” Around “90% of Russian machine-tool imports are now from China,” the Jamestown Foundation estimates, making Russian weapons and ammunition factories “almost entirely reliant” on Chinese CNC tools. Beijing also supplies “most of the commercial first-person-view (FPV) drones and supporting technologies Russia needs,” while selling many of the same components to Ukraine—though “Russia, Ukraine knows, will always be first in the queue.”
  • Western officials cited in the piece say Russia “depends heavily on China for nitrocellulose,” the propellant for shells and missiles, and that state-owned Norinco “is ramping up its sales… through a pair of subsidiaries,” hiding them behind “shell companies and foreign intermediaries.” With Chinese firms earning “handsome profits” and receiving cheap Russian oil and gas, the article concludes there is “little likelihood” Beijing will reduce support; the “polite fiction of ‘dual use’ has been artfully maintained,” and postwar Russia will likely remain “a needy junior partner, dependent on China.”

Atlas Baitse on the “Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the PRC on the Establishment of a Multipolar World and a New Type of International Relations,” Telegram, 05.21.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• The editors of this telegram channel note that what “immediately caught the eye” in the declaration is the frequent use of the term “civilization,” both for Russia and China and for “the equality of civilizations worldwide.” He highlights the line that “civilizations are not divided into more and less developed, strong and weak. The spiritual and moral system of no civilization can be considered exceptional or superior to others,” which he calls an obvious rhetorical “hello” to the West. The preamble, he writes, stresses that Russia and China are “civilizations with ancient history” and U.N. founders with veto power, and that there has been a “rise of the countries of Asia, Latin America, Africa” and an “unprecedented” level of interdependence.
• At the same time, the text says attempts by “a number of states” (read: “the collective West”) to “impose their interests on the whole world and limit the possibilities of sovereign development of other countries in colonial style have failed,” and that most states now seek a “more cohesive international community” based on “equality, justice, mutually beneficial cooperation and respect for core interests.” Yet it also warns of “crisis tendencies”: “unilateral force approaches,” “hegemonism and bloc confrontation,” and a “real threat of sliding into a world of ‘jungles’ where everyone is against everyone.”
• Editors of this channel emphasize, the declaration sets out four principles Russia and China will follow and urge others to adopt: an “open world for inclusive and mutually beneficial cooperation” with “no ‘first-class’ countries and peoples”; “indivisible and equal security,” rejecting bloc confrontation, alliance expansion, “hybrid wars” and “wars by proxy”; “democratization of international relations,” where “hegemony in the world is unacceptable and must be prohibited” and no state may “monopolize opportunities for development”; and “world civilizational and value diversity,” where “all human civilizations are self‑valuable and equal” and the use of human rights as a pretext for interference must be “resolutely opposed.”

“Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on the Establishment of a Multipolar World and a New Type of International Relations,” Kremlin.ru, 05.20.26. 

• The declaration opens by describing Russia and China as “civilizations with an ancient history” that “declare the following.” Since WWII, they say, the “wave of decolonization and the end of the Cold War” has led to “a significant increase in the number of sovereign states,” and the world has become “more diverse and complex,” with rising “development and international influence of states of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean.” Attempts by “a number of states” to “unilaterally manage world affairs… in the spirit of the colonial era have failed,” they assert, and the system is “evolutionarily” moving toward “a long‑term state of polycentricity and the formation of international relations of a new type.”
  • At the same time, they warn of “negative neo‑colonial tendencies,” including “unilateral power approaches, hegemonism and bloc confrontation,” regular violations of “basic generally recognized norms of international law,” and a danger of “fragmentation of the international community and a return to the ‘law of the jungle’.” In response, they call for a “harmonious process of establishing an equal and orderly multipolar world,” based on four “basic principles”: an “open world” with “no countries and peoples of the ‘first sort’”; “indivisible and equal security,” rejecting “expansion of military alliances,” “hybrid wars” and “wars by proxy”; “democratization of international relations,” where “hegemony in the world is unacceptable and must be prohibited”; and “world civilizational and value diversity,” in which “all human civilizations are self‑valuable and equal,” and using human rights as a pretext for interference must be “resolutely opposed.”
  • On global governance, they insist “rules developed in a narrow circle of states should not replace generally recognized international law,” that the UN Charter’s principles “must be observed in their entirety and interconnection,” and that major powers “must take on special responsibility and mission… and not abuse their advantages.” They conclude that Russia and China “will continue to develop a joint vision of the formation of a multipolar world and more just international relations of a new type.”

“Xinhua Commentary: Xi-Putin meeting charts new strategic course for China-Russia ties,” Xinhua, 05.21.26.

• Xinhua says the Beijing summit “set the course for the next stage of bilateral relations and underscored the two major countries’ commitment to advancing global governance reform in the right direction.” Xi and Putin’s “in-depth, friendly and fruitful talks, lasting more than three hours,” are portrayed as reinforcing a “shared commitment to advancing the long-term, sound, steady and high-quality development of China-Russia ties,” called “a strategic choice grounded in the fundamental interests of both countries and in line with broader global trends.” Marking 30 years of the strategic partnership and 25 of the Treaty of Good‑Neighborliness, they agreed to “further extend the treaty,” and Xinhua declares the relationship now “stands at the highest level in history.”
• The commentary stresses that “pragmatic cooperation is a key driver,” expecting upgraded collaboration in “economy and trade, investment, energy and resources, transportation, and scientific and technological innovation,” plus stronger exchanges in “education, culture, film, tourism, sports and other fields.” Beyond bilateral gains, it frames the partnership as a response to “threats from unilateralism and hegemonism,” pledging to “strengthen coordination and collaboration within multilateral frameworks, including the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and APEC, unite the Global South, and steer global governance reform in the right direction.” Whatever the international landscape, Xinhua concludes, “China and Russia will for sure move forward with composure under the strategic guidance of their leaders.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “What Does Putin Want From Xi?,” Alexandra Sharp, Foreign Policy World Brief, 05.19.26.
  • "Xi Sets the Terms for Everyone Now," Hal Brands, Bloomberg, 05.20.26.
  • "India Confronts the U.S.-China-Russia Triangle," Jianli Yang, The National Interest, 05.18.26.
  • "A Jubilee Visit and Horizons of Partnership: On the 30th Anniversary of Russian-Chinese Strategic Cooperation," Sergey Sanakoev, Russian International Affairs Council, 05.19.26. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“Russia‑Belarus non-strategic nuclear exercise,” Pavel Podvig, RussianForces.org, 05.21.26.

•  Podvig notes that on May 18 Belarus announced an exercise of “military units involved in the combat use of nuclear weapons and nuclear support,” aimed at testing “delivery of nuclear weapons and their preparation for use,” coordinated with Russia. The next day Moscow unveiled its own large exercise “to prepare and use nuclear forces in the face of the threat of aggression,” with Belarusian participation. Belarusian Iskander crews on May 20 “carried out a set of measures to prepare for the receipt of special munitions and their mating with missiles,” and Su‑25s conducted “imitation bombing with special munitions.”
• He details the standard procedure: missiles and warheads meet at “field storage points”; missiles are handled by Belarusian units, but “warheads, however, are always handled by the 12th GUMO personnel,” who mate them and, only at the highest readiness, transfer custody to missile crews. Although one might assume training models, Podvig cites the chief of the Russian General Staff saying that from May 19–20 “delivery and transfer of nuclear munitions to Russian and Belarusian units that can use nuclear weapons in combat was carried out.” This “seems to suggest” the exercise “went as far as to actually get to the point of mating actual warheads with missiles,” which he calls worrying: “moving live nuclear weapons around during exercises is not a good idea,” and suggests Russia “maybe not anymore” on the side of caution. He ends by asking what became of “all those nuclear warheads that have been ‘delivered and transferred’” and what exactly are the “conditions of a threat of aggression.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Exercise of strategic forces held in May,” Pavel Podvig, RussianForces.org, 05.21.26.
  • Podcast: “Moscow Tests World’s Largest Nuclear Missile,” Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday, The National Interest, 05.22.26. 
  • “Putin’s nuclear escalation is a sign of desperation,” Svitlana Morenets, The Spectator, 05.22.26.
  • “Paradoxically Fear is the Foundation of Stability: Deterrence Works,” Alastair Crooke, The Rand Paul Institute, 05.26.26.
  • “Why the NPT and TPNW must work together to prevent nuclear insecurity,” Simabatu Mayele Sims Nono, European Leadership Network, 05.18.26.
  • “Statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the Conclusion of the NPT Review Conference,” Russian Foreign Ministry, 05.23.26. (In Russian.)
  • “Strategic stability and nuclear risks in the Asia-Pacific,” Daniel Salisbury, IISS, 05.20.26.

Counterterrorism:

• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Global Terrorism Threat Assessment 2026," CSIS Scholars, CSIS, 05.26.26.

Conflict in Syria:

• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "The West and Terrorists Against Russia: The Syrian Matrix for Mali," Kirill Semenov, Russian International Affairs Council, 05.21.26. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Cyber security/AI: 

• No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • Russia’s "Oil production down," Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 05.20.26.

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• No significant developments.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Will the Ukraine war force Putin’s exit?,” Adam O’Neal with David Ignatius, Washington Post Opinions, 05.22.26.

• AO: What does winning look like for the Ukrainians?
  • DI: I've come to define winning for Ukraine as surviving, surviving this assault by a much bigger, richer, potentially more overwhelming adversary. That's part of my feeling when I was there in April. I was like, man, it's warm, the sun is shining, the heat's on, and they made it through that terrible winter. And I think that gave people some new confidence. One thing we've learned through history is that attempts to demoralize civilians by bombing their cities, by destroying their infrastructure, their power grid tend not to work. People just get angry, and they dig in, they fight harder. And that's another thing I've seen year by year in Ukraine.”
• AO: The number I keep seeing is about 35,000 Russian casualties a month… So there is a question we all have, how long can Putin keep throwing that many bodies into this conflict?”
  • DI: He hasn't mobilized the Russian people as a whole. There's nothing like a draft, still trying to buy support from these poorer Russians. But at some point, the most interesting thing about the number you cited, the 35,000 who were killed or seriously wounded in March, is that that is above the replacement rate. In other words, Russia suffered a net loss in the ability and the number of people it had at the front.
• AO: “How do you think Ukrainians think about the end game…?
  • DI: “I haven't met a Ukrainian, certainly in the Kyiv area, who trusts Russian promises or suggestions that they're prepared to end the war. As long as Putin is alive, [Russia] will still have the ambition to get back, take Kiev, dominate the government.
  • “I mean, Ukraine's crime in Russia's eyes was wanting to be part of Europe. Russia saw this as the ultimate insult.”
  • “‘How dare you, a Slavic people, leave our sphere of influence?’ So, you know, back in 2014, that aspiration from Ukrainians was strong. It's just gotten stronger and stronger in the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, where people used to have some sympathy for Moscow. I think that's disappeared. I think Russian behavior has made them deeply unpopular, even with the people they imagine are their friends.”
• AO: What would the fall of Putin look like? How does someone like that, who spent 25 years lodging himself in power, get removed from power? 
  • DI: “I think some of the most interesting analysis is what happens when… all the veterans who have been in this meat grinder, who have been suffering such terrible privation at the front, come home angry, defeated, sullen, seeking revenge, seeking, a lot of these guys are coming out of prisons. It's a criminal underground that's now had military training. So what happens is they filter back into Russian society?”
  • “I think this war has been harsher for Russia than it appears. It's done more damage to Russian society than we think. Putin holds on, but he's less and less popular.

“No, Russia’s Economy Is Not About to Collapse,” Cameron Abadi and Adam Tooze, Foreign Policy, 05.21.26.

• “There’s certainly a slowdown. In 2023, 2024, the Russian economy grew by 4%. I mean, it’s a $3 trillion economy. So those are substantial numbers. And yes, after contracting mildly in the first quarter of 2026, Russia’s growth is now expected to be as little as 0.4% over the whole year, which is kind of in the same ballpark as Germany, for instance. So this is not an economy that’s collapsing, but this is an economy which is no longer growing at the clip that it was earlier in the war,” Tooze said.
• “You have to say that Russia’s fiscal position remains really quite conservative. The Russian deficit is 2.5% of GDP in the first four months of this year, which is less than half what America is running as a deficit,” Tooze said. “So it’s a really mixed picture, is what one would say. It’s just not growing at the rate that it was. It’s disappointing. It’s apparently causing political stress… But the important point to emphasize is that this is no kind of collapse. This is a slowdown, a shift in gear, and continuing pressure on every front within the economy as the demands of the war take their toll.”
• On war sustainability, Tooze says “Russia isn’t fighting the war for economic reasons, and the war won’t end for economic reasons, either,” arguing that economic exhaustion is likelier on the Ukrainian side. Russia’s deficit is “less than half what America is running,” and he cautions against assuming demobilization shocks will block peace: “We shouldn’t put the cart before the horse.” A postwar peace, he suggests, could even see Russia “return to the overreliance on fossil fuels that characterized the prewar period,” which is “exactly” what Trump’s push to “reconnect Russia to the global energy economy” implies.

“The Coming Crisis in Russia’s Political Economy,” Nigel Gould-Davies, IISS, 05.18.26.

• Nigel Gould-Davies contends that “on its present course, Russia’s war on Ukraine is likely to prove economically unsustainable,” forcing the Kremlin either to “radically escalate its demands on Russia’s economy and society or to scale back its war aims,” according to the author. With the economy “close to its total productive capacity,” it faces “diminishing returns” from pouring resources into arms production, he writes. The report notes that the trebling of defense spending after the 2022 invasion initially drove GDP growth “up to 4%,” but by early 2025 “Russia’s economy is now barely growing,” while major defense enterprises are operating “three shifts around the clock at full capacity.” 
• Labor is an even “more severe constraint,” Gould-Davies argues: demand for troops and defense-factory workers has “exploded” while war deaths and emigration have “shrunk the workforce.” The report cites Russian-source estimates that “over 352,000 Russians have died in the war,” while total casualties may have reached “up to 1.3 million.” Unlike past wars, “the state has not compelled its civilians to fight” but instead “is paying them well to do so,” a policy that “may no longer be working effectively,” the author writes. He adds that “the grim arithmetic of ‘deathonomics’ shows that an average soldier who fights even for a few months before dying in battle can earn more money than his lifetime earnings prior to joining up.” 
• The author argues that Russia’s recruitment system is increasingly strained. In 2025, Russia reportedly suffered “416,000 casualties” while gaining “less than 1% of Ukrainian territory,” and battlefield losses have “begun to exceed new recruits.” Russia has also resorted to extraordinary measures to sustain manpower, including persuading North Korea to send “over 12,000 troops” in late 2024. This creates a “dual economy of overheated military output and civilian stagnation,” Gould-Davies notes. Russia now faces “the most severe labor shortage on record,” while high military spending has contributed to some of the “highest real interest rates in the world.” The report notes that Russia’s 2025 debt servicing costs reached approximately “€44 billion,” exceeding Germany’s “€30.4 billion,” despite Russia’s lower debt burden overall. 
• To sustain the war, Russia will have to impose “significant new command-like measures” that curtail remaining market freedoms and “freedom of movement,” steps that are “highly disruptive and unpopular.” 

“In Russia, an anti-war opposition is brewing,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post, 05.26.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Vladimir Kara-Murza writes that even in a climate where “no reliable surveys are possible” and people are jailed for giving the “wrong” answer, it is “nothing short of remarkable that last month’s polling by the independent Levada Center has shown that 62% of Russians favor peace talks with Ukraine, with only 27% wishing to continue the war.” As the September parliamentary elections approach, he argues, “the main challenge for the Kremlin… is to make sure that this overwhelming—and increasingly evident—war fatigue… does not affect the cohesion of Vladimir Putin’s system.”
• Kara-Murza notes that “up until now, the regime has been approaching this task in the simplest way possible—by keeping anti-war voices out of the political space,” recalling how Boris Nadezhdin’s 2024 anti-war presidential bid was blocked after “hundreds of thousands of Russians lined up” to support him. He says Russia’s only anti-war party, Yabloko, now faces a “barrage of administrative and criminal cases” because “a State Duma with an anti-war faction in it would be a real nightmare for Putinism.”
• He details how leading Yabloko figures have been fined for “promoting extremism” by merely mentioning Alexei Navalny, designated “foreign agents,” or hit with “bogus drug offenses and purported tax evasion,” while six members, including deputy leaders Lev Shlosberg and Maxim Kruglov, are imprisoned on charges that could bring “up to 10 years.” Kara-Murza concludes that although the Kremlin can still “eliminate the sole anti-war voice from the September ballot,” it is “becoming increasingly difficult… to maintain.”

“From General to Governor: Putin Pushes a ‘New Elite’ of War Veterans,” Nataliya Vasilyeva, New York Times, 05.22.26.

•  Vasilyeva writes that for years Putin has vowed to create a “new elite” of veterans from his war in Ukraine, both to ensure loyalty and to “deepen his militarization of society.” The biggest step so far came when he dismissed popular Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Alexander Shuvayev, who commanded a unit in the battle for Avdiivka, “one of the bloodiest of the war.” Ukrainian investigators have accused his unit of war crimes, including “executions of prisoners of war,” and it had “a reputation for using soldiers as cannon fodder.”
• Shuvayev is a graduate of “Time of Heroes,” a Kremlin‑funded program launched in 2024 to train veterans for government jobs; only 85 of some 22,000 applicants were accepted last year. In the past two months, “at least nine” veterans have been appointed as deputy governors or regional ministers. Putin keeps pressing ministers to hire them: “The guys are fighting, performing well—we need to support them,” he said.
• Even pro‑Kremlin voices are wary. Spin doctor Pavel Slatinov warned that importing someone from a “totally different environment” is risky and noted post‑Soviet Russia has “no successful examples of regional governors who previously served as generals.” A 22‑year‑old Belgorod resident said, “We feel a lot of tension… because of the hostilities and the military as it is, and now they are dropping on us a military man as a governor.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Pay for everything: tax officials and security forces are terrorizing businesses," Tatyana Rybakova, The Moscow Times, 05.19.26. (In Russian.)
  • "Wartime economy squeezes small businesses," Denis Kasyanchuk, The Bell, 05.25.26.
  • "Negative growth rates: Russian citizens face difficult times," Tatyana Rybakova, The Moscow Times, 05.26.26. (In Russian.)
  • "A strong center as the missing element of a democratic alternative," Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov, The Moscow Times, 05.25.26. (In Russian.)
  • "The winning coalition: the weak point of post-Putin normalization," Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov, The Moscow Times, 05.19.26. (In Russian.)
  • "Russia’s 2027 succession problem," Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 05.23.26.
  • "Putin Can No Longer Hide His Catastrophe," Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic, 05.23.26.
  • "On Putin's Role in History, or Why Leaderism Prevails in Russian Politics," Boris Bondarev, The Moscow Times, 05.22.26. (In Russian.)
  • “Meeting With Graduates of the First Intake of the ‘Time of Heroes’ Program,” Vladimir Putin, Kremlin, 05.23.26. (In Russian.)
  • "The Magician of the Kremlin: Kirill Dmitriev will do anything to stay close to power," Robert F. Worth, The Atlantic, 05.25.26.

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:

“Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 34th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Moscow,” 05.23.26.⁵ Clues from Russian Views.

• Sergey Lavrov told the Council that its ideas have often “served as a foundation for major initiatives or advised against certain actions,” and praised a new report raising the question “whether what we are experiencing today amounts to a new world war.” He noted arguments that “the nature of military action has changed to an extent that… we must describe the ongoing developments as a war of a radically new kind,” and said it is already “in full swing in Eurasia,” with “the West stag[ing] an aggression in Ukraine against Russia” and then “launching the operation in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz.”
• Lavrov argued that these crises together indicate “we are dealing with a global and universal scale,” though “future historians” will decide if they amount to a world war. He said the West’s “single goal consists of hurting Russia as much as possible… mak[ing] it harder for Russia to retain and reinforce its standing as a truly great power and civilization,” citing Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and attempts “to place Armenia on the same erroneous path.”
• For Russia’s diplomacy, Lavrov said the “only goal capable of strengthening our influence is to achieve the objectives of the special military operation,” because “friends, neighbors and our adversaries and enemies are all keeping a close eye” on its outcome. “The primary task for our diplomacy,” he stated, is “to create the necessary conditions for ensuring that the actions by our troops… are effective, victorious and yield tangible results,” even joking that the Council might be renamed the “Special Military Operation of Political Scientists,” playing on the acronyms SVO and SVOP.

“Speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Second International Socio-Political Hearings in Support of President Putin’s Initiative on a Eurasian Security Architecture, Perm,” 05.22.26. Machine-translated. Clues from Russian Views.

• Sergey Lavrov said that “the key long-term trend in the development of international relations is the emergence of a multipolar world order,” and rejected the view that multipolarity “necessarily means confrontation, inevitable conflicts and even global chaos.” He argued that the current “expansion of the conflict space” is driven by “attempts by the ‘globalist elites’ of Western countries” not to lose “their dominant positions,” after having long extracted “disproportionate benefit and advantages… at the expense of the rest of humanity.”
  • Lavrov claimed that “the destructive actions of our Western colleagues pose an obvious threat to international peace and security,” saying that in Eurasia “the West has designated Russia, China, Iran, Belarus, the DPRK” and other independent states as opponents. He condemned the “U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran,” insisting it has “nothing to do with ensuring regional stability and the interests of nonproliferation” and declaring that Russia is “categorically against recurrences of armed aggression” and for the “immediate cessation of the use of force” against Iran, Lebanon and nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards.
  • He argued that the conflict in Ukraine “led to the complete and final collapse” of the Euro-Atlantic security model and that “the North Atlantic Alliance has turned into a pan‑continental destabilizing factor.” 

Ukraine:

“What the world gets wrong about Ukraine,” Riya Misra interviewing Olga Stefanishyna, POLITICO Forecast, 05.22.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

• Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Olga Stefanishyna says Ukraine’s relationship with Washington is “a totally different type of relation… It’s about now, but it’s also about the future,” stressing that beyond aid “we have the mineral deal. We are working on a drone deal,” and that Ukraine has “already contributed to Gulf countries and the U.S. government with our defense capabilities.” She adds that Kyiv has proposed security guarantees with “mutual commitment… Ukraine is ready to declare its intention to commit to the support of the national security of the United States.”
• On Trump’s mixed signals, she argues he “is a very demanding person, and he really always demands that the level of our ambition should match the level of our effort,” and says Ukraine was open to his Anchorage process because “we tried every other existing format on this planet… Name me one thing we did not try before this moment.” She insists that “yes, absolutely” he is following through, but notes he is “operating with so many elements on the agenda,” from Iran to Venezuela to China.
• Stefanishyna emphasizes that Ukraine’s drone expertise makes it “actually contributing significantly to U.S. security,” pointing to the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program in which “three Ukrainian major drone producers have become part of it,” and warns that “it would be a huge mistake… not to prioritize this area of cooperation with Ukraine,” especially since “Russians provide their expertise to China.” The biggest misconception, she says, is that Ukraine is weak or corrupt: “Ukraine is such a reliable player and Ukraine is such an asset… We stick to our words. We stick to our freedoms. We stick to our values.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • “In Ukraine, a Divisive 20th-Century Hero Comes Home,” Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 05.24.26.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Washington must act to defuse the Baltic powder keg,” Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 05.20.26.

• Lieven warns that the Baltic states and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave are “widely regarded as the most dangerous potential flashpoint for a direct war between NATO and Russia,” and that tensions have “spiraled upwards” as Ukrainian drones cross Latvian and Estonian airspace en route to targets in western Russia. He argues it is “at least as likely” that Ukraine has been “using safe Latvian and Estonian airspace to get its drones as close as possible to St. Petersburg” as that they are merely misdirected by Russian jamming. Russia’s SVR has issued a “harsh warning,” claiming Baltic governments provided “air corridors” and threatening that “the coordinates of the decision-making centers in Latvia are well known… [NATO] will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from a just retribution.”
• Lieven notes a Romanian jet shot down a Ukrainian drone over Estonia, calling it “high time” NATO acted against Ukrainian drones in its airspace to avoid giving Moscow a pretext to strike Latvia. He highlights Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys’s boast that NATO could “raze Russian air defenses and missile bases” in Kaliningrad, and calls it “paranoia” when officials allege Russia plans to invade the Baltics despite Kaliningrad’s vulnerability and Russia’s forces being tied down in Ukraine. The real danger, he argues, is “escalation to war stemming from a spiral of retaliation,” and he urges Washington both to “warn the Russians against such an attack on NATO members” and to tell Ukraine “clearly and categorically” that using NATO airspace to attack Russia would mean “the end of U.S. assistance to Kyiv.”

“Russia Is Turning the Screws on Armenia Over Its Tilt to Europe,” Ani Avetisyan, Bloomberg, 05.23.26.

• Armenia’s “pivot toward the West is coming under increasing pressure” from Russia as it prepares for elections, Ani Avetisyan reports, with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s bid for “the most significant realignment since the collapse of the Soviet Union” worsening already “strained ties,” according to the author. Moscow reacted to a European summit in Yerevan attended by Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a flower-import ban and accusations of “unfriendly” acts, Avetisyan wrote.
• “The Kremlin’s now threatening to raise Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union” at a May 29 summit, Avetisyan notes, while Putin spoke of an “intelligent and mutually beneficial divorce” if Armenians choose a European path. Yet Pashinyan has “effectively frozen participation in the CSTO” and is skipping the EEU summit to campaign, the author wrote, even as pro‑Russia opposition blocs push a different course.
• At the same time, “Armenia’s attempt to distance itself from Moscow remains constrained by deep economic and structural dependence,” Avetisyan argues: Russia dominates “key sectors” from nuclear energy to transport, and remittances from workers in Russia are “a critical source of income” for many households, the author wrote.
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Baltics in crossfire of Ukrainian drones, Russia targets,” PBS News Hour, 05.21.26.
  • “How Poland keeps Russia’s ‘weaponized migrants’ out,” Jim Geraghty, Washington Post, 05.20.26.
  • “Instead of Central Asia: Will Organized Recruitment of Migrants From Distant Countries Help Russia?” Salavat Abylkalykov, Carnegie Endowment, 05.13,2026.
  • “Geo-Connectivity and the Death of Eurasia,” Eldaniz Gusseinov and Vlad Paddack, The National Interest, 05.22.26.
  •  “Why Georgians Need to Take Hungarian Lessons,” Stephen F. Jones, PONARS Eurasia, 05.18.26.
  • “Can Armenia’s Democracy Prevail?,” Kenneth Roth, Foreign Policy, 05.19.26.
  • “Listen to What Vladimir Putin Is Saying About Armenia,” Joseph Epstein, The National Interest, 2026.
  • "How the Kremlin is Playing the Armenian Parliamentary Election, Yana Zarechnaya, Republic/Russia:Post, 05.19.26

Endnotes

1. Zaluzhnyi—who is currently serving as Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K.—has also been echoed by WaPo columnist David Ignatius, who told his newspaper in an interview that he has “come to define winning for Ukraine as surviving, surviving this assault by a much bigger, richer, potentially more overwhelming adversary.”
2. Chadaev wrote in his Telegram channel recently: “If the war in Ukraine ended tomorrow, I would only be glad. I don’t have this attitude of ‘until victory and our flag over the Reichstag.’”
3. Tsarev wrote in his Telegram channel recently: ““Isn’t the liberation of a significant part of Novorossiya, a land corridor to Crimea, Russia having stood firm against the whole world and preserved and organized peaceful life in the returned territories — isn’t that a victory?”
4. For a Ukrainian summary of this interview, follow this link
5. Other speeches made at this event are expected to be posted on the council’s site.

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: A Ukrainian soldier prepares an interceptor drone during a Russia's aerial attack at an undisclosed location near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)