Russia Analytical Report, Sept. 22-29, 2025
3 Ideas to Explore
- Donald Trump is washing his hands of the war in Ukraine with his unexpected about face on Ukraine, according to analysts and officials. “The reversal is one of analysis and not policy,” David E. Sanger quotes Richard Fontaine as saying in The New York Times. “Trump is oscillating between extreme views of the situation—previously, Ukraine couldn’t win because Kyiv didn’t have cards to play, and now it can win all of its territory back because Russia is merely ‘a paper tiger’… Either view seems to minimize America’s role in the war,” according to Fontaine. Meanwhile, European officials told Financial Times that they fear “Trump’s latest rhetoric on Ukraine aims to set them an impossible mission that will allow the U.S. president to shift blame away from Washington if Kyiv falters in the war or runs short of cash.” Christian Caryl, writing for Foreign Policy, notes that in his social media post, “Trump refers to NATO as if it were an unrelated third party—a customer that you supply with products, rather than a military alliance in which the United States is supposed to take an active and leading role. And the closing sentence can be read as a farewell: Take care and have a nice war.”
- Russia’s slow going has had major consequences for East Asian security, as Russia has traded technological and training support for help from North Korea and China. As Dasl Yoon reports in The Wall Street Journal, North Korea plans to undertake a major revision in its conventional war fighting capability with direct support from Russia. Additionally, China’s lack of capability in airborne forces—a capability its leaders have determined would be critical in any effective invasion of Taiwan—are also due for a boost from Russia, according to reporting from Catherine Belton and Christian Shepherd in The Washington Post. Citing Lyle Goldstein at Brown University, the two argue that “For China, Russia’s airdrop expertise and weaponry is most valuable as part of preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan, analysts said. Chinese planners consider small, well-equipped units delivered by helicopter or aircraft ‘absolutely essential’ in their plans to deliver thousands of troops to Taiwan in the early hours of a conflict,” said Goldstein. Meanwhile, the WSJ editorial board notes that recent incursions of drones and jets into European airspace “are a reminder that Mr. Putin’s ambitions don’t stop at Ukraine’s border… Ukraine is fighting against an anti-Western axis, including North Korean troops and Iranian equipment.”
- Europe is moving closer to deploying Russia’s frozen assets in support of Ukraine’s defense. In an article published by Financial Times, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz argues that “every night-time strike on a hospital in Kharkiv or on a government building in Kyiv disproves the myth that Russia is willing to make peace. Europe must draw the necessary conclusions from this, ideally together with its partners on both sides of the Atlantic. We must systematically and massively raise the costs of Russia’s aggression.” Merz writes that Europe “can make available to Ukraine an interest-free loan of almost €140 billion in total. That loan would only be repaid once Russia has compensated Ukraine for the damage it has caused during this war.” According to Keith Johnson, writing in Foreign Policy, “The newfound European consensus on moving more aggressively comes after U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week seemed to wash his hands of further involvement in the Ukraine war.”
I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
Nuclear security and safety:
- No significant developments.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
- “Kim Jong Un, seizing on his closer ties with Russia, has recently begun signaling a major policy shift: beefing up North Korea’s outdated conventional arms alongside its nuclear arsenal.”
- “The strategic pivot faces tall odds for the impoverished country, whose massive conventional military largely relies on Soviet-era equipment. But Kim sees a rare opportunity—and need—to upgrade his battle tanks, rifles, air-defense systems, battleships and more with Russian assistance.”
- “The shift in priorities, South Korean officials said last week, may be influenced by the lessons Kim took from dispatching roughly 15,000 North Korean troops to Russia’s Kursk region to fight Ukraine. There, soldiers needed the sort of military hardware that North Korea has largely neglected over the decades as it has gone all-in on nuclear technology.”
- “On one hand, the move demonstrates North Korea’s confidence that the country’s nuclear advances can’t be reversed—and the cash-strapped nation can focus on other things. On the other, Kim’s nuclear program has deterred a foreign attack, though should a conflict emerge, his nation’s conventional forces would be greatly outmatched against the U.S. and South Korea.”
- “‘North Korea’s conventional capabilities could transform dramatically depending on Russian assistance,’ Jeon said. ‘The U.S. and South Korea could face an increasingly difficult and long fight in a war scenario.’”
- “A major push to improve tanks, rifles and air defenses is likely to be codified by early next year. During a prior party gathering in 2021, Kim outlined a five-year weapons plan that contained strikingly different priorities: intercontinental ballistic missiles that fly farther, miniaturized nuclear warheads and a nuclear-powered submarine, among other large-scale weaponry.”
- “Experts warn that Russian technology will accelerate North Korea’s ability to deploy longer-range, stealthier submarines capable of carrying nuclear missiles, potentially placing more global targets within reach and complicating regional deterrence. This may violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), triggering fresh sanctions. But essentially every sanction that can be applied to either capital has already been applied, and neither is likely to care.”
- “The Russo-North Korean ties have proven to be a significant geopolitical event brought about explicitly because of the ongoing Ukraine War. It is unlikely that the kind of a lá carte partnership that today exists between Moscow and Pyongyang would have ever been possible without the Ukraine War having taken place—and continued on far longer than it should have been allowed to continue.”
- “This newfound alliance impacts the frontline of the Ukraine War, but it also has the potential to upend the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula. It could lead to North Korean military supremacy there—particularly as the new South Korean government continues to distance itself from Washington.”
Iran and its nuclear program:
- No significant developments.
Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:
"Russia’s War on Ukrainian Children," Ilan Berman, The National Interest, 09.25.25.
- “Embedded in Putin’s [July 2021] article, and evident throughout the current war, is the belief that Ukrainian national identity itself is an aberration that must be eliminated. That’s why, over the past three-plus years, the Kremlin has made Ukraine’s children a key target of its aggression. According to European estimates, approximately 20,000 Ukrainian minors have been ‘forcibly deported to the Russian Federation and Belarus or detained in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories’ since February 2022.”
- “The US Congress has noted that some estimates put the true number of abducted Ukrainian children an order of magnitude higher: as much as 200,000. Russian officials, meanwhile, have boasted that nearly three-quarters of a million Ukrainian children have been taken to Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion.”
- “A new report from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab details that, since February 2022, Russia has transferred Ukrainian children from territories under its control into a vast network of facilities where those minors are systematically reeducated and militarized. The scope of the effort is massive.”
- “Russia’s efforts follow a perverse logic. Not only do they help Russia to achieve Putin’s objective of eroding Ukrainian identity, they also serve a practical purpose by augmenting the ranks of the Russian military, which has struggled with chronic manpower shortages throughout the course of the current war.”
For military strikes on civilian targets see the next section.
Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:
- “After a month of fighting, [a Ukrainian infantry] unit liberated the village [of Kindrativka], which is no bigger than a few streets, in the northeastern region of Sumy, according to independent groups monitoring the battlefield… Kindrativka is one of two that Ukraine has retaken in the region this summer, and its forces are now pushing close to other Russian-held villages—modest gains that matter deeply to Kyiv.”
- “The successful Ukrainian counterattack in Sumy, which borders Russia, is a rare twist on a battlefield dominated by Moscow’s forces. Since May, Russia has captured between 170 and 215 square miles of territory each month, according to DeepState, a group mapping battlefield changes. Ukrainian commanders emphasize in interviews that they are constantly outmanned and outgunned by Russia.”
- “But reclaiming small areas of Sumy helps Ukraine counter Moscow’s narrative that Russian advances are unstoppable and that Kyiv should settle for a peace deal now, even if it means giving up territory. Moscow’s progress has stalled in Sumy to the point that it is moving troops from that area to other fronts, analysts say, including the eastern region of Donetsk, where it is trying to encircle several key cities.”
- “Ukraine’s step forward in Sumy draws on familiar tactics like relentless drone strikes and small-group infantry assaults. But their execution by some of Kyiv’s elite units, including airborne troops, helped explain the advance.”
- “The gains carry extra weight because they could weaken Russia’s negotiating hand. Moscow has floated trading land captured in Sumy for territory it seeks in Donetsk as part of a peace deal. President Trump has backed the idea of such a “land swap,” though the Kremlin’s proposal is heavily unequal.”
“Why Ukraine is winning the war,” Yuval Noah Harari, Financial Times, 09.29.25.
- “The Russians are trying to create the impression that they are relentlessly advancing, but the fact is that, since the spring of 2022, they have failed to conquer any target of major strategic importance such as the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv or Kherson.”
- “In 2025, at a cost of around 200,000 to 300,000 soldiers killed and injured, the Russian army has so far managed to capture just a thin sliver of frontier zone amounting, according to the most reliable sources, to around 0.6 per cent of Ukraine’s total territory. At the rate they have been going in 2025, it would theoretically take the Russians around 100 years and tens of millions of casualties to conquer the rest of Ukraine. In fact, in August 2025, Russia controlled less of Ukraine’s territory than it did in August 2022.” According to DeepState’s map, on Aug. 31, 2022, Russian forces controlled 125,117 square kilometers or 21% of Ukraine’s territory, while on Aug. 31, 2025, Russian forces controlled 114,690 square kilometers of 19% of Ukraine’s territory.*
- “It is impossible to tell how the war will develop, since it depends on future decisions. But in one crucial respect, the Ukrainian victory is already decisive and irreversible. War is the continuation of politics by other means. War is not won by the side that conquers more land, destroys more cities, or kills more people. War is won by the side that achieves its political aims. And in Ukraine, it is already clear that Putin has failed to achieve his chief war aim — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- “How Russia Is Escalating the Drone Arms Race,” Yasir Atalan, Foreign Policy, 09.23.25.
- “Drones, Denmark and Dark Magic,” Ross Douthat, The New York Times, 09.27.25.
Military aid to Ukraine:
"A new financial impetus for peace in Ukraine," Friedrich Merz, Financial Times, 09.25.25.
- “Vladimir Putin continues his brutal war of conquest against Ukraine with unrelenting ferocity. Every residential block destroyed in Odesa, every night-time strike on a hospital in Kharkiv or on a government building in Kyiv disproves the myth that Russia is willing to make peace. Europe must draw the necessary conclusions from this, ideally together with its partners on both sides of the Atlantic. We must systematically and massively raise the costs of Russia’s aggression,” the German Chancellor writes.
- “We do this not to prolong the war, but to end it. Moscow will only come to the table to discuss a ceasefire when it realizes that Ukraine has greater staying power. We have that staying power. Europe is more tested now than perhaps at any time in our lifetimes. Germany must—and will—assume a particular share of responsibility.”
- “Germany has been, and remains, cautious on the issue of confiscating the Russian central bank’s assets that are frozen in Europe, and with good reason. There are not only questions of international law to consider, but also fundamental issues concerning the euro’s role as a global reserve currency. But this must not hold us back: we must consider how, by circumventing these problems, we can make these funds available for the defense of Ukraine.”
- “In my view a viable solution should now be developed whereby — without intervening in property rights — we can make available to Ukraine an interest-free loan of almost €140 billion in total. That loan would only be repaid once Russia has compensated Ukraine for the damage it has caused during this war. Until then, the Russian assets will remain frozen, as decided by the European Council.”
- “For Germany, it will be important that these additional funds are solely used to finance Ukraine’s military equipment, not for general budgetary purposes. Payments should be disbursed in tranches. Member states and Ukraine would jointly determine which materiel is procured. In my view, such a comprehensive program must also help to strengthen and expand the European defense industry. That would serve both our collective security and European sovereignty.”
“Europe’s Going After Russia’s Frozen Assets After All,” Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy, 09.26.25.
- “On Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for the large-scale mobilization of frozen Russian Central Bank assets to underwrite Ukraine to the tune of about 140 billion euros ($164 billion), with the money to be used solely to equip Kyiv with new weapons to ensure that it can survive on the battlefield.”
- “It marks a major shift from the previous German government, which—alongside Belgium and France—was deeply skeptical of touching Russian assets, which have been frozen in Western countries since the first days of the war on Ukraine. Belgium and France have long been leery about the legal implications of outright confiscating the nearly 200 billion euros ($234 billion) in Russian assets currently in European Union hands, fearing both judicial liability and a broader loss in confidence in the euro.”
- “‘This signals to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, we are going to fund Ukraine to fight on, and with European weapons at that, and that we are going to take your savings, and I think that part is a bit more questionable’ if the underlying assets aren’t actually seized, said Sander Tordoir, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank.”
- “The newfound European consensus on moving more aggressively comes after U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week seemed to wash his hands of further involvement in the Ukraine war.”
- “What’s less clear is just how many EU member states will support the new measures, and exactly how the financing would work in practice. The two issues are linked: Just a few days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his opposition to confiscating frozen Russian assets, though he appeared to be more open to a novel financing solution after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations this week.”
- “Brussels has won a powerful backer in its controversial push to send billions of euros of Russian frozen state assets to Ukraine. A top official from Germany, the EU's biggest country, told POLITICO that Berlin is open to "new, legally sound" plans to use up to €172 billion of frozen Russian cash to help Ukraine's war effort—a reference to the European Commission's latest idea. The idea, first reported by POLITICO, is to take billions of euros of Russian state cash currently held in a Belgian depository, send it to Ukraine, and replace the withdrawn cash with EU-backed bonds.”
- “By replacing the frozen cash with IOUs, the Commission hopes to avoid accusations of illegally confiscating property of the Russian state—an idea one diplomat described as ‘legally creative.’ ‘We are open to look at new, legally sound options on the table to make use of the Russian frozen assets,’ Michael Clauss, the adviser for European affairs to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said in written remarks to POLITICO.”
- “Supporters of the Commission’s plan claim that it would be legally secure as it wouldn't technically expropriate the Russian assets themselves.”
- “The bulk of the Russian assets are held by the Brussels-based financial firm Euroclear and are invested in Western government bonds that have matured into cash. The U.S.’s disengagement from Ukraine under President Donald Trump has added pressure on the EU to step up.”
Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:
- “The United States is trying to prevent Donald Trump's decision to lift sanctions on Belarusian flag carrier Belavia from opening the floodgate for crucial aviation spare parts to reach Russia's airlines. Although it will allow parts to be sold to Belavia, Washington is trying to block the carrier from flying to Russia—although such a limit may not be effective. The U.S.-Belarus deal was finalized Sept. 11 following the release of 52 political prisoners who had been detained by Minsk.”
- “The day after the announcement, however, the U.S. Department of Commerce wrote to Igor Nikolaevich Cherginets, the general director of Belavia, spelling out the conditions for regaining access to spare parts for its fleet of 16 aircraft, nine of which are Boeings.”
- “‘This authorization does not permit flights to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, the Temporarily Occupied Crimea Region of Ukraine or the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic or Luhansk People’s Republic regions of Ukraine,’ said the document, referring to the export of spare parts.”
- “However, on Sept. 15 Belavia announced a 50 percent discount on flights to St. Petersburg.”
- “The U.S. prohibition ‘is a pro forma note. There is no way to check what happens in [the] Russia+ customs union of which Belarus is a part,’ said Elina Ribakova, leader of the international program at the Kyiv School of Economics and a fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.”
For sanctions on the energy sector, please see section “Energy exports from CIS” below.
Ukraine-related negotiations:
- “President Trump reversed himself on one of the key foreign policy issues of his presidency on Tuesday, abandoning his insistence that Ukraine give up land to strike a peace deal with Russia and instead declaring that Ukraine, with the support of Europe, was “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
- “Mr. Trump provided no rationale for his stunning turnaround, though several European officials suspected that by distancing himself from the war, the president was washing his hands of a conflict that he once promised to solve in days or weeks. In his eight months in office, Mr. Trump has ricocheted from one position to another on Ukraine.”
- “It may be months before it is clear whether Mr. Trump’s declaration amounts to a game-changer, and for which side in the brutal conflict. And there are scenarios in which the United States could still be drawn into the conflict.”
- “For example, Mr. Trump on Tuesday said that NATO countries had the right to shoot down Russian military aircraft that enter their airspace. In Estonia last week, Russian fighter jets spent 12 minutes over the tiny country. Days before, Russian drones flew deep into Poland, an event Mr. Trump quickly suggested may have been a “mistake,” only to be contradicted by President Emmanuel Macron of France.”
- “But when Mr. Trump was pressed by reporters on whether he would back up his allies if they found themselves in an air war over NATO territory, he said it “depends on the circumstances.”
- “President Donald Trump’s stunning claim this week that Ukraine could win back all its land with support from the European Union and NATO is far-fetched barring a dramatic shift in the alliance’s response to Russia’s invasion, according to military experts, officials and diplomats working in the region.”
- “Still, future major Ukrainian gains cannot be entirely ruled out, many said, especially if the Russian war economy chokes and Ukraine significantly strengthens its military and weapons arsenal with support from its partners, including the United States—an outcome that appears unlikely as Trump punts support for Kyiv to Europe.”
- “‘President Trump stated that Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, could reclaim its entire territory,’ Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on X on Thursday. ‘Behind this surprising optimism lies a promise of reduced U.S. involvement and a shift of responsibility for ending the war to Europe. Better truth than illusions.’”
- “NATO officials and diplomats have in recent months given a bleak assessment of Kyiv’s ability to retake sizable amounts of territory. While Ukraine’s massive drone industry and the recent arrangement for Kyiv to get U.S. weapons funded by the Europeans have bought its forces more time than expected on the front, a major offensive would be fraught. Without a big shift in diplomacy or weaponry, most officials instead predict the grinding war will continue.”
- “‘It may be slow,’ said a NATO official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive security assessments, like others in this article. But ‘if you look at the amount of force Russia brings to this fight, the air and drone attacks, the momentum is on Russia’s side.’”
- “Even so, Ukraine’s allies don’t expect a major collapse of its defense lines, the official said, and ‘the level of aid can certainly change the dynamics.’”
- “President Trump has made a declaration about Ukraine that sounded vaguely like the ones his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., used to make. With the right mix of courage, ingenuity and weapons from NATO, he asserted on Tuesday, Ukraine could force Russia to retreat from the territory it has seized in three and a half years of brutal war.”
- “‘The reversal is one of analysis and not policy,’ said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for New American Security and a former aide to Senator John McCain. ‘Trump is oscillating between extreme views of the situation — previously, Ukraine couldn’t win because Kyiv didn’t have cards to play, and now it can win all of its territory back because Russia is merely ‘a paper tiger.’”
- “‘Either view seems to minimize America’s role in the war,’ concluded Mr. Fontaine, who has written extensively about strategies to help Ukraine. ‘He suggests no change in U.S. policy. There is no new call for a cease-fire or peace agreement, no new sanctions, no new deadlines and no new military support for Ukraine, beyond the weapons NATO buys from the United States.’”
- “In his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky told the representatives of the member nations that he had learned a few things. The conflict with Russia was worsened by the ‘collapse of international law and the weakness of international institutions,’ a seeming reference to the world body itself. Security, he said, comes not from laws and resolutions, but ‘friends and weapons.’”
- “Mr. Zelensky has always known that his most powerful argument is that, if successful in Ukraine, Mr. Putin will not halt there. ‘Stopping Russia now is cheaper than wondering who will be the first to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear weapon,’ he said.”
- “European officials fear Donald Trump’s latest rhetoric on Ukraine aims to set them an impossible mission that will allow the US president to shift blame away from Washington if Kyiv falters in the war or runs short of cash.”
- “After months of pressing Ukraine to settle with Moscow and give up Russian-occupied territory, the US president stunned European capitals on Tuesday by declaring on social media that Kyiv could ‘fight and win’ all its land ‘with the help of the EU.’”
- “While Trump’s new stance was welcomed in some quarters, several European officials concluded he was handing them responsibility for Ukraine’s defense with expectations that Europe would find hard to meet.”
- “Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday warned publicly that Trump’s ‘surprising optimism’ disguised ‘a promise of reduced US involvement and a shift of responsibility for ending the war to Europe.’ He added on X: ‘Better truth than illusions.’”
- “‘This is the start of a blame game,’ one official said of Trump’s abrupt change of heart. ‘The US knew that the China and India tariffs would be impossible’ for the EU to accept.”
- “Trump ‘is building the off ramp’ so he can blame Europe when and if he needs to, a European government aide said. The shift was ‘spectacular’ and ‘generally good,’ but Trump was ‘setting a very high bar,’ a German official noted.”
- “Carlo Masala, international affairs professor at Bundeswehr University Munich, said ‘Trump wants to avoid that, after nine months in power, this war becomes his war too’ and no longer just ‘Biden’s war.’”
- “One European official noted Trump’s ‘Good luck to all!’ sign-off on his Truth Social post as tantamount to a handover note.”
"A New Start for Trump on Ukraine?" Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 09.24.25.
- “President Trump has the world’s attention with his social-media post on Tuesday that Ukraine could “fight and WIN” back all of its territory. His remarks this week are his best and toughest to date on the war. But is this another stall tactic—or is the President at last ready to raise the military and economic pressure on Vladimir Putin to end his conquest?”
- “‘With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option,’ Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. He called Russia a ‘paper tiger’ in ‘BIG Economic trouble.’”
- “Asked if European allies should shoot down Russian planes that violate NATO airspace, the President offered a clear ‘Yes.’”
- “For the first time, Mr. Trump is articulating that a Ukrainian victory is in the West’s interests and refuting those in his circle who say Ukraine’s capitulation is inevitable. He’s right that Mr. Putin is economically vulnerable. Mr. Trump is also issuing a warning amid Mr. Putin’s drone and fighter jet incursions into Poland and Estonia—which have so far gone unanswered.”
- “Mr. Trump’s remark this week that Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky is a ‘brave man’ who is ‘putting up one hell of a fight’ is a reminder that the President doesn’t share the animus for Ukraine that some of his advisers hold. First lady Melania Trump’s concern for Mr. Putin’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children has also affected the President.”
- “Mr. Trump doesn’t want to be dragged into a European war, and understandably so. But that danger is far less likely if Ukraine survives as a sovereign state allied with the West. After hardening his rhetoric, Mr. Trump will now have to harden his policy.”
“Europe Is on Its Own With Russia Now,” Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy, 09.24.25.
- “In a post on his Truth Social network on Sept. 23, [Trump] wrote: ‘I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.’ He mocked Russia, which he called a ‘paper tiger.’ The same day, reporters in New York City asked him if NATO should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter its airspace. ‘Yes, I do,’ he answered.”
- “Perhaps Trump really has had a change of heart. But as always, it’s worth taking a look at the fine print. His Truth Social post, for example, ended with this passage: ‘We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!’ The language here is quite striking: Trump refers to NATO as if it were an unrelated third party—a customer that you supply with products, rather than a military alliance in which the United States is supposed to take an active and leading role. And the closing sentence can be read as a farewell: Take care and have a nice war.”
- “At the press conference in New York, the reporter who had made the query about shooting down Russian planes followed up by asking how Washington would support the allies who did the shooting: ‘Would you back them up? Would the United States help them out in some way?’ Trump’s response: ‘Depends on the circumstance.’”
- “Consider, for a moment, that word: ‘depends.’ NATO is a military alliance founded on the notion that its 32 members will defend one another if one of their number is attacked. That assumption doesn’t work if one of those members—especially the most powerful one—declares in advance that its participation is conditional. But this is how Trump still sees it.”
“Putin made a big mistake with Trump,” Marc A. Thiessen, The Washington Post, 09.25.25.
- “Many are expressing surprise at President Donald Trump’s ‘stunning’ and ‘extraordinary’ pivot on Ukraine… But for those watching Trump closely, there is nothing extraordinary about it. Trump’s decision to back Kyiv against Russia was inevitable.”
- “Trump gave Vladimir Putin every chance to prove he was interested in peace. But instead of seizing the opportunity to end the war, the Russian dictator dragged Trump along for months… A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that Putin regularly intensified military attacks after his conversations with Trump.”
- “Putin’s big mistake was accepting Trump’s invitation to attend the summit in Alaska last month. Trump rolled out the red carpet, treating Putin as a legitimate world leader rather than the global pariah he really is. The implicit understanding was that Alaska would be followed by a bilateral meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to be followed by a tripartite meeting of the three leaders. Putin basked in the pomp and circumstance, pocketed the prestige Trump conferred on him and reneged on his end of the bargain.”
- “In fact, he dramatically escalated the bombing of civilians. In Alaska, Trump personally handed Putin a moving letter from his wife urging him to make peace for the sake of children affected by the war. Putin responded by bombing a kindergarten—a slap in the face to the first lady.”
- “You don’t do that to Donald Trump. Trump gave Putin the chance to make peace, and Putin responded with insult and escalation. Now the Russian leader will regret treating Trump with such contempt.”
- “President Donald Trump’s abrupt change in rhetoric on Ukraine, in which he declared it could retake all its territory with help from NATO, was warmly welcomed by Kyiv and quickly dismissed Wednesday by Moscow, particularly his calling the Russian military ‘a paper tiger’ that had been ‘fighting aimlessly for three and a half years.’”
- “At a later briefing with reporters, Peskov pushed back on Trump’s comments that the war is ‘aimless,’ while still thanking Trump for his willingness to promote peace—and warning that Ukraine was in a dire position.”
- “European leaders, however, seized on Trump’s about-face, which matches their long-stated support for Ukraine’s struggle against the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion. Trump’s statements Wednesday acknowledged Russia’s inability to make significant ground advances. He praised Ukraine’s military for holding off the much larger Russian army for so long.”
- “Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said… even if Ukraine collapsed on its own, the ensuing chaos would be unlikely to enable Putin to achieve his goals. ‘That’s Putin’s big strategic blunder — he truly believes Ukraine will end up in his pocket eventually,’ she said. ‘What’s scary here is the risk of a sharp escalation in fighting. Ukraine isn’t cracking, Trump’s no longer an ally… So what’s left? Double down on the war machine.’”
- “Mr. Zelenskyy has always known that his most powerful argument is that, if successful in Ukraine, Mr. Putin will not halt there. ‘Stopping Russia now is cheaper than wondering who will be the first to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear weapon,’ he said.”
- “A half-year ago in the Oval Office, President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that ‘you don’t have the cards’ in the war with Russia. On Tuesday at the United Nations, Trump lauded the performance of Ukraine’s army and poured scorn on Russia’s military efforts.”
- “The sharp verbal shift from Trump came amid Russia’s continued failure to make significant gains on the battlefield, a slowdown in the Russian economy and a concerted effort by Zelenskyy to woo the U.S. president.”
- “Trump has spent recent days with U.S. officials who have long pushed for a stronger stance toward Ukraine as he prepared for the meeting with Zelenskyy, including Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg and new ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz. They updated Trump on current battlefield conditions, according to two people familiar with the situation, noting that Russia has made little progress in recent years.”
- “Zelenskyy showed on Tuesday that he has learned from the disastrous meeting with Trump in February. He has smartened up his attire after criticism from Trump supporters and, seated next to the U.S. president ahead of the Tuesday meeting, repeatedly thanked him for his support, praising his efforts to end the war while talking up the performance of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield. Trump, Zelenskyy said later, ‘clearly understands the situation and is well-informed about all aspects of this war.’”
- “By Tuesday, Trump had adopted some of Zelenskyy’s talking points. He mocked Russia’s army for its slow progress against a much smaller nation and praised Ukrainian troops. ‘We have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty amazing, actually.’”
- “Experts remain divided on whether or not the about-face signals a genuine policy shift toward giving Ukraine what it needs to win and away from Trump’s efforts to act as a mediator.”
- “‘It is a massive rhetorical shift,’ Samuel Greene, professor at King’s College London, told the BBC. ‘That said, he’s shifted before… I think it would be unwise to assume that this is now going to be the permanent position.’”
- “Zelenskyy welcomed Trump’s support, noting that the two leaders have improved their relationship since their Oval Office falling-out in February.”
- “Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote that Trump’s shifting thinking on the war indeed reflects ‘new realities.’ ‘This spring and summer, doubts grew in the West that Ukraine could hold out,’ Stanovaya wrote on social media.”
- “But despite incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, the Russian military failed to achieve a strategic breakthrough this summer, and it is difficult to imagine the Ukrainians ever accepting Putin’s conditions for ending hostilities. Moreover, Russia’s economy is on increasingly unsteady footing, something that could guide Putin’s efforts to eventually seek an end to the war.”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:
- “I’ve also been working relentlessly, stopping the killing in Ukraine. I thought that would be—of the seven wars that I stopped, I thought that would be the easiest because of my relationship with [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin, which had always been a good one. I thought that was going to be the easiest one… Everyone thought Russia would win this war in three days. But it didn’t work out that way. It was supposed to be just a quick little skirmish. It’s not making Russia look good. It’s making them look bad.”
- “No matter what happens from here on out, this was something that should have taken a matter of days, certainly less than a week.”
- “China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil, but inexcusably, even NATO countries have not cut off much Russian energy and Russian energy products, which as you know I found out about two weeks ago and I wasn’t happy. Think of it. They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?”
"Where's the tough-guy Trump when Putin challenges?" Editorial Board, Boston Globe, 09.23.25.
- “If only President Trump would be half as tough on Vladimir Putin as he has been on late-night talk show hosts, the world might be a better, safer place.”
- “What Trump can’t seem to process is that Putin is intentionally challenging him, ridiculing his leadership — or lack thereof — and testing his willingness to stand with NATO allies. And thus far Trump has failed at every challenge.”
- “At least 19 Russian drones invaded Polish airspace on Sept. 10, and NATO jets were scrambled to shoot them down. Trump cut the Russians some slack, saying the next day, ‘It could have been a mistake.’”
- “Article 4 of the NATO treaty states that: ‘The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.’ … [S]ince the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked only nine times, including twice this month and before that by a collection of former Soviet republics in February 2022 at the start of Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine.”
- “[W]hile Trump dawdles, the recent Russian incursions in Poland and Estonia and direct threats to Finland by Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev have awakened some Republican sanctions hawks in the Senate. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana took his plea to the floor of the Senate last week, saying, ‘Now, for eight months, President Trump has tried to talk to President Putin in Russia — eight months. And for eight months, President Putin has made all kinds of promises, a lot of pretty words, a lot of play acting. And he’s done none of what he said he would do.’”
"Trump’s Red Line to Vladimir Putin," Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 09.26.25.
- “Asked this week if he thinks NATO should shoot down Russian aircraft and drones that violate allied airspace, Mr. Trump left no ambiguity: “Yes I do.” Some 19 drones entered Poland this month, and more recently three MiG-31 fighter jets crossed into Estonia’s airspace.”
- “NATO intercepted the Russian fighters, but Mr. Putin has paid no price. Mr. Trump doesn’t want to be dragged into a direct fight with Russia, and neither does anyone else in America. But U.S. failure to respond invites more escalation from Mr. Putin.”
- “At a minimum Mr. Trump in response would ratchet up sanctions, seize Mr. Putin’s frozen assets, and sell more weapons to Ukraine. … Remember that Mr. Putin’s abiding goal is to break NATO, if not formally then in practice if it fails to respond to an attack on a member nation. These incursions are deliberate violations of sovereignty meant to be tests of Western resolve.”
- “Mr. Putin needs to believe that NATO will shoot down his MiGs the next time they try something in a NATO country. Let’s hope that the Europeans delivered that message to Mr. Putin this week.”
- “The Russian incursions are a reminder that Mr. Putin’s ambitions don’t stop at Ukraine’s border. He’s building a military to challenge NATO and reclaim as much of the former Soviet Union as he can. A Reuters report this week about Chinese drone experts helping Russia is another illustration. Ukraine is fighting against an anti-Western axis, including North Korean troops and Iranian equipment.”
“Russia Needs to Pay for Flying Into NATO Airspace,” James Stavridis, Bloomberg, 09.23.25.
- “In the James Bond novel Goldfinger, Ian Fleming wrote this about being shot at: “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.” Russia has now sent military drones or manned aircraft across North Atlantic Treaty Organization boundaries three times this month, into Polish, Romanian and Estonian airspace. This is enemy action, no denying it.”
- “The alliance has already held Article IV consultations—triggered when a member-state feels its territorial integrity or political independence is threatened. Next could come a full-blown Article V crisis, demanding a military response under the NATO founding principle of “an attack on one is an attack on all.”
- “During my four years as supreme allied commander at NATO, we constantly wrestled with planning for an air war with Russia. While the alliance has far larger air forces overall, they are spread across the Atlantic, with much of the firepower based in the continental U.S.”
- “The baseline posture for responding to any Russian air incursion already exists: NATO Air Policing operations, which monitor more than 30,000 “air movements” daily throughout the alliance’s area of operations. Radar installations along NATO’s borders can detect aircraft that are not using commercial transponders or in contact with civilian air controllers. This includes, of course, Russian drones and manned military aircraft.”
- “[T]he alliance should put Russia on notice that its rules of engagement are tightening and that further intrusions will be met with more forceful replies—reserving the right to shoot down both drones and manned aircraft. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has already warned Putin that Poland will shoot down any aircraft crossing its borders.”
- “Simply escorting Russian fighters home time after time is not going to get the Kremlin’s attention. NATO’s long-term plan should be a full no-fly zone over Ukraine, but for now it should begin a full-on military response to Russian air intrusions—both unmanned and piloted.”
- “Experts viewed the spate of [recent] Russian moves as provocations to probe for potential weaknesses and assess Europe’s responses. ‘There does seem to be a feeling that something has shifted,’ said Eric Rubin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington and former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria. ‘I would suspect that this is a testing phase.’”
- “While the Russian fighters were in Estonia’s airspace — about five miles deep, at one point — the Italian pilots assessed what weapons the Russian jets were carrying, Colonel Farina said. He said they were air-to-air missiles, not bombs, a distinction that Estonian officials have said led them to conclude that an attack on the country’s population was highly unlikely.”
- “The nervousness in Europe stems in part from questions about whether the United States, the guarantor of Western Europe’s security since World War II, would respond to a Russian attack under Mr. Trump, a longtime skeptic of NATO.”
- In Moldova, “Russia sees the elections as an opportunity to damage one of the most pro-Western leaders in what the Kremlin views as its rightful sphere of influence, analysts said. The small nation has become the latest, most active front in Russia’s yearslong effort to denigrate Western democracy and promote Moscow-friendly leaders.”
“Ukraine Is Now The Strongest Ally Europe Can Rely On,” Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 09.25.25.
- “‘U.S. Out!’ may be the simplest way to understand Donald Trump’s volte face on Ukraine this week… Trump’s decision should be read as nothing more than an attempt to ensure that whatever happens as a result of his abandonment of Kyiv, it won't rebound on him. After all, if as he says Ukraine and Europe are strong enough to defeat Russia on their own, how can it be his fault if they fail?”
- “And yet, there is something positive that Kyiv can take from Trump’s UN performance, because his wooing of Putin—which has been disastrous for both Europe and Ukraine—is now over. Both can at least hope there will be no further betrayals and can begin to build a strategy that relies only on their own resources.”
- “There are several conclusions to draw or double down on. The first is that it is imperative that Europe find a way to make use of the full amount of Russia’s frozen assets.”
- “Still more important is that Trump’s decision to walk away should drive home the fact that the U.S. is no longer the strongest military ally Europe can rely on for help with its defense against Putin’s Russia. That partner is now Ukraine.”
- “Ukraine has the cost-effective arms production capacity that Europe lacks. It has the willingness to fight that is also missing from much of Europe, after decades of belief that laws, not guns, should now settle disputes between nations.”
- “For Trump’s UN performance has crystallized two truths: The first is that Putin has no intention of stopping this war on any terms but the capitulation of both Ukraine and Europe… The second is that Europe cannot count on this U.S. president to care.”
“Canada is NATO’s Soft Underbelly,” Matthew J. Bondy, Foreign Policy, 09.25.25.
- “[W]hen Russian drones violated Polish airspace on Sept. 10—just ahead of Zapad 2025 exercises—NATO allies rushed to the skies. Dutch and Polish fighter jets took out the drones that had crossed the border—momentarily bracing for war. Last week, Russia again broached NATO’s borders: Romanian officials detected a Russian drone in their skies on Sept. 14, and a few days later, Russian fighter jets briefly entered Estonian airspace before NATO mobilized to intercept them.”
- “Although the alliance reacted effectively to Russia’s latest provocations, the episodes should give NATO pause. It may not be as well positioned to address such Russian actions if they occurred near its soft underbelly: Canada.”
- “If Russia probed the alliance’s western flank—which is to say, Canada’s boundary waters with Russia—the inverse would be true. The vastness of the Arctic region, which Russia is working daily to militarize and leverage for both security and economic reasons, combined with Canada’s weak security readiness, represents an enormous NATO vulnerability.”
- “These concerns are not hypothetical. Last year, there were 12 instances when Royal Canadian Air Force and U.S. Air Force jets had to scramble planes to address and occasionally escort Russian aircraft flying provocatively and needlessly close to North American airspace, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). And these are the probes that North American surveillance systems can easily see.”
- “Russian bombers could launch cruise missiles, Cantwell said at an event presenting the paper, and “return to base without detection by the existing radar system,” called the North Warning System. Russia maintains a nuclear-powered submarine fleet, destroyer-class combatant ships, strategic bombers, hypersonic missiles, and a world-leading collection of icebreakers right next door to Canada.”
- “The so-called CRINK (China-Russia-Iran-North Korea) countries are strengthening bilateral diplomatic ties in important ways. Yet multilateral engagement among all four countries remains a rarity and underscores that CRINK still falls short of an ‘axis.’”
- “The relationship between China and Russia—on full display during the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit and subsequent military parade—has transformed significantly and holds the greatest potential to adversely affect U.S. interests.”
- “Quieter diplomatic engagements between Russia and North Korea have also exhibited notable growth since 2022, as demonstrated by both UN voting behavior and high-level meetings.”
- “By contrast, Russia’s relationship with Iran appears to have cooled after an initial deepening at the outset of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. More broadly, Iran’s valence within CRINK has diminished, as it has less to offer in its weakened state following its 12-day war with Israel and the United States.”
- “The looming renewal of sanctions against Iran will put the real power of CRINK diplomatic alignment to the test. Moscow and Beijing have limited ability to shape a coherent and effective response, but CRINK will seize the opportunity to portray the U.S.-led international order as inherently biased against the Global South.”
- “This year, while reporting in Geneva, I heard about a revealing meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council… The meeting… was held against the backdrop of President Trump’s threats to slash American funding for the U.N. According to two diplomats who attended, as the group discussed how to save money, the ambassadors of China and Cuba had a suggestion: What if the council limited inquiries into, say, government-sanctioned abuses like torture, war crimes and the jailing of dissidents?”
- “I’ve spent the past three months talking to diplomats and U.N. officials and reviewing documents, trying to understand the consequences of this pullback. What I’ve found: The Trump administration’s retreat is emboldening authoritarian nations to reshape the U.N. to their advantage.”
- “One former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva told me about a time he helped defeat a Chinese candidate in the 2020 election for the head of the U.N. organization responsible for protecting intellectual property, an area where the U.S. and China have long clashed.”
- “In another instance, the U.S. helped secure the election in 2022 of an American as head of an obscure but influential U.N. agency that sets standards for satellite communication and internet cables. China had led the agency for eight years and used its position to push 5G equipment developed by the Chinese company Huawei.”
- “Over the course of my reporting, I learned about another incident that helps illustrate how U.S. power at the U.N. is slipping.”
- “In June, American diplomats tried to block Shanghai from hosting a 2027 conference to discuss satellite regulations. A win for China would have presented security concerns for American companies, and the U.S. offered Washington as a last-minute alternative venue. Influencing votes of this sort was the kind of soft power move that the U.S. once excelled in.”
- “This time, the Americans lost.”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- “NATO Needs a Realistic Path to 5 Percent Defense Spending by 2035,” Brian Chow, The National Interest, 09.27.25.
- “Shifting U.S. Approaches to Eurasia,” Shairee Malhotra, Aleksei Zakharov, Ayjaz Wani and Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash, Observer Research Foundation, 09.29.25.
China-Russia: Allied or aligned?
- “Russia has agreed to equip and train a Chinese airborne battalion and share its expertise in airdropping armored vehicles that analysts say could boost Beijing’s capacity to seize Taiwan, according to newly obtained documents that show the two nations’ deepening military cooperation.”
- “The agreements allow Beijing to access training and technology in one of the few areas where Russian capabilities still surpass those of the Chinese military: Russia’s more experienced airborne troops, military analysts said.”
- “The accords are an example of the two militaries moving… to develop interoperable systems and shared combat experience in areas that China considers critical for winning a battle over Taiwan, the self-governing island of 23 million that Beijing claims as its territory.”
- “Although the Chinese military is widely viewed as superior to Russia’s, it lags behind Moscow in airborne combat experience and capabilities for air maneuver, which Russia has deployed in Ukraine and Syria.”
- “For China, Russia’s airdrop expertise and weaponry is most valuable as part of preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan, analysts said. Chinese planners consider small, well-equipped units delivered by helicopter or aircraft ‘absolutely essential’ in their plans to deliver thousands of troops to Taiwan in the early hours of a conflict, said Lyle Goldstein, an expert on the Chinese and Russian militaries at Brown University.”
- “‘They have studied D-Day backward, forward and upside down [and] realized that it would have failed without an airborne component,’ said Goldstein. … That makes Russian experience in Ukraine even more valuable for Beijing, and right now, ‘Russia will do more or less anything to keep China happy and cooperative,’ he said.”
- “Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, has repeatedly said that bringing Taiwan under Chinese Communist Party rule is an essential step in the country’s journey to ‘national rejuvenation.’”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Missile defense:
- No significant developments.
Nuclear arms:
- [After the Peoples Republic of China exploded its first nuclear weapon in 1964,] “U.S. President Lyndon Johnson convened a committee of seasoned foreign policy leaders to advise him on what Washington should do to prevent proliferation. Led by the former U.S. deputy secretary of defense Roswell Gilpatric, the group asked what an increase in nuclear-armed states would mean for U.S. security,” write the authors, including director of the Belfer Center Meghan O’Sullivan.
- “The Gilpatric committee’s conclusion was unanimous: averting the spread of nuclear weapons to any state, friend or foe, should be a top national security priority… Acting on the group’s advice, U.S. officials began negotiating multilateral nonproliferation treaties and agreements, including, controversially, accords with the Soviet Union… Thanks in large part to such initiatives… Only nine states possess nuclear weapons, and only North Korea has acquired them in the twenty-first century.”
- “But the nuclear landscape is changing in ways that are bringing proliferation back to the fore. An increasingly powerful China is scaling up its nuclear arsenal. Russia has backstopped its war in Ukraine with threats of nuclear use. Iran’s nuclear program was set back by recent U.S. and Israeli attacks, but it was not destroyed. U.S. allies, worried about their security and unsure about Washington’s commitment to their defense, are also mulling going nuclear. And evolving technologies such as artificial intelligence are making it easier than ever for states to build the bomb. Against this backdrop, the Cold War–era tools and tactics that Washington has long relied on to manage proliferation challenges are eroding… Great-power cooperation on nuclear dangers has stalled.”
- “Averting proliferation in this geopolitical moment may seem difficult, and it will indeed require strong, bipartisan support to update U.S. strategy. But consensus is within reach when it comes to halting the spread of nuclear weapons, if only because the alternative would be far more costly for the United States and the world.”
- “Somewhat surprisingly, Russian president Vladimir Putin has recently indicated that Russia would support extending the New START strategic nuclear arms control agreement, set to expire in February 2026, for another year. … Putin’s sudden interest in nailing down commitments to New START could be motivated by a number of factors.”
- “First, US President Donald Trump’s about-face on the Ukraine War may have prompted Putin’s announcement. At the UN this week, President Trump declared that Ukraine’s victory was possible. Over the last month, Trump has sent new tranches of advanced conventional weapons to Kyiv—many paid for by NATO allies.”
- “Second, Russia might want additional time to review its own plans for strategic nuclear modernization in view of emerging technologies for hypersonic weapons, drones, artificial intelligence, cyberwar, lasers, and long-range conventional weapons.”
- “Third, Russia may anticipate a financial squeeze on its available resources for future nuclear modernization, given Western threats of additional economic sanctions.”
- “A fourth possibility is one that Putin alluded to in his announcement: the United States’ interest in a missile defense system. … President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome doubtless renews Russian concerns about US missile defense, as the technology has improved considerably since the 1980s.”
- “Amid these political and technological challenges, the United States and Russia can and should agree on the sensible expedient of extending New START for another year. … If Putin is serious about his commitment to a one-year extension of New START, the rebooting of a monitoring and verification regime should also be on the table. Whether developments in the war in Ukraine will overshadow cooperation on nuclear arms control is unpredictable at this time. Still, there is inherent value in maintaining ongoing channels for nuclear consultations, even in the face of setbacks elsewhere. US-Soviet arms control proceeded during the worst years of the Cold War and under both Republican and Democratic presidents, not to mention a cascade of Soviet leaders.”
- “President Vladimir Putin on Monday offered to extend Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty, the last surviving arms treaty between the world's two largest nuclear powers.”
- “While experts and analysts hailed Putin’s announcement as a concrete step toward limiting nuclear stockpiles, especially if it leads to further talks, they also noted that Russia is likely hoping to bolster its negotiating position with Washington on Ukraine.”
- “‘Pretty much everything that comes out of Putin’s mouth these days is related to Ukraine’ and his efforts are geared toward ‘finding a way to bring the Ukraine war to a successful conclusion,’ said John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. ‘I think it’s a way to signal a willingness to cooperate with the West on something that is important, without seeming to compromise on Ukraine.’”
- “New START’s provisions cap deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 and nuclear weapon delivery systems—such as ballistic missiles and nuclear-weapon-fitted bombers—at 800. While not limiting stocks of non-deployed intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the treaty does allow for each side to monitor stockpiles.”
- “In 2023, Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the treaty but did not withdraw, a nuanced difference that has allowed the Kremlin to keep arms control a hot-button issue in negotiations with the West.”
- “While it is not yet clear how Trump will respond, his prior statements suggest he takes a friendly view of arms reduction efforts and would likely accept Putin’s offer. In July, Trump said he would like to maintain New START’s nuclear stockpile limits.”
- “U.S. reciprocation would be a positive development, he continued, ‘but it won’t change anything dramatically because these are just political pledges, and there is no kind of verification mechanism attached.’”
Counterterrorism:
- No significant developments.
Conflict in Syria:
- No significant developments.
Cyber security/AI:
“In the global AI boom, Russia is conspicuously absent,” Chris Miller, Financial Times, 09.29.25.
- “Where is Russia in the AI race? … Russia boasts an enviable history of engineering talent. It has a native ecosystem of internet-era tech companies, from search engine Yandex to social media site VKontakte. … In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that whoever leads in AI will ‘rule the world.’ Yet three years into a global AI boom, Russia is conspicuously absent.”
- “Just across the border in Finland, an alternative history of Russian tech is operating in a large data center campus that aims to house 60,000 GPUs, including some of Nvidia’s most advanced chips. The data center was originally owned by Yandex. It’s now run by Nebius, a company that just signed a $17.4bn deal to operate data centers for Microsoft in the US. … Nebius’s background is different: it is a refugee of the Russia-Ukraine war.”
- “Like all tech companies in Russia [after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine], Yandex intensified censorship. … Yandex responded by chopping itself in two. A Dutch-listed firm, Yandex was ostensibly European. In early 2024 it announced a sale of its Russian assets — which constituted a majority of its business — to Kremlin-linked investors at a steep discount. The remaining non-Russian assets were rebranded as Nebius.”
- “[R]ather than cutting deals with the world’s biggest tech firms, Yandex is navigating a militarized economy bereft of its smartest tech entrepreneurs. Now that foreign firms are gone, it’s easier to monopolies the Russian market. But hopes that a Russian tech firm would play a significant global role have been extinguished.”
- “Russia has a long history of exporting tech talent, from aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. With AI promising a major technological shift, Putin has chosen to continue this tradition at the worst possible time.”
Energy exports from CIS:
“The Paper Tiger Still Has Its Shadow Fleet,” Petras Katinas, Foreign Policy, 09.24.25.
- “U.S. President Donald Trump recently declared that he was ready to impose sweeping sanctions on Russia—if NATO countries stopped buying Russian oil. Bold as it sounds, the reality is more complicated. Only three of NATO’s 32 members—Hungary, Slovakia, and Turkey—still import Russian oil, while the European Union has committed to phasing out Russian fossil fuels by the end of 2027. Turkey, one of Russia’s largest customers, shows no inclination to align with the West, making a full NATO embargo unrealistic. So if buyers cannot be persuaded to walk away from Moscow, where can Washington, Brussels, and the G-7 still act to choke Russia’s war economy in ways that are both practical and effective? The answer lies not in waiting for 2027 or hoping Ankara changes course but in a more immediate target: the shadow fleet, whose operations reveal how Russia continues to fund its war while evading the West’s most powerful economic tools.”
- “Before sanctions were imposed in 2022, nearly 90 percent of Russia’s fossil fuel exports were transported through the regular Western market. The Russian shadow fleet, which Moscow began assembling before the EU embargo, is not simply redirecting Russian oil to new Asian markets, however. It was deliberately assembled to circumvent the G-7+ oil price cap, which permits trade in Russian crude only if sold at a price below $60 a barrel. The cap relies on Western insurers to verify compliance, but Moscow built a closed system where every link—shipowner, manager, insurer, and flag registry—operates outside G-7 jurisdiction. Since 2021, shadow tankers’ share of Russian oil shipments has risen from 13 to 47 percent, as of this August. By the third year of the war, the fleet accounted for roughly a third of Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues, while fossil fuels overall continue to sustain 30-50 percent of the federal budget—and fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine.”
- “Beyond the financial toll, the shadow fleet undermines the credibility of sanctions as a foreign-policy instrument. The reason Russia’s economy remains resilient is because sanctions are weakly enforced and export controls are leaky, particularly as U.S. goods flow through nonsanctioning countries. Washington relies on them more heavily than any other tool, and their deterrent value erodes if they can be easily circumvented.”
- “The European Union appears to be listening to U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that it cut off purchases of Russian oil in return for tough U.S. sanctions on Moscow—and experts say the bloc holds some key carrots and sticks that it can wield to get its more reluctant members on board.”
- “Hungary’s and Slovakia’s purchases have helped fuel Russia’s government with as much as 5.4 billion euros (about $6.3 billion) in tax revenues since 2022, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a European think tank. The think tank also found that Hungary and Slovakia, rather than reduce imports of Russian oil, had actually increased imports by 2 percent in 2024 compared to levels prior to the invasion.”
- “Under pressure to change, Hungary and Slovakia have said they have concerns over the price of oil from Croatia’s Adria pipeline, the primary alternative to Russia’s Druzhba pipeline… Hungary has, at times, received as much as a 77% discount on Russian oil versus non-Russian oil.”
- “As an incentive, the EU could help upgrade infrastructure and provide financial subsidies to support Hungary and Slovakia, said Charles Lichfield, an expert at the Atlantic Council think tank. In addition to carrots, Lichfield noted that the EU also has powerful sticks in the form of subsidies that it can withhold until it gets what it wants. The EU has provided billions in funding to both countries. ‘That’s very significant leverage,’ Lichfield said.”
- “But Hungary and Slovakia also have cards to play. For one, the renewal of sanctions on Russia requires a unanimous vote from EU members every six months, giving Hungary and Slovakia powerful vetoes. Orban has threatened to block renewal of the sanctions as recently as January.”
- “Russia has powered its war in Ukraine by keeping its oil flowing. Now, after more than 3½ years of conflict, the gusher is slowly starting to peter out.”
- “The toll of the war and Western sanctions have made extracting oil out of Russia’s already shrinking reservoirs harder. Some projections point to at least around a 10% drop in output by the end of the decade, putting the Kremlin’s economy—and the petrodollars it is built on—in peril.”
- “Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Moscow has kept oil production and exports relatively stable by focusing on the maintenance of existing fields rather than the exploration of new ones. But the longer-term outlook is bleak. Up to one-third of Russia’s budget revenue comes from the profits of the energy sector and that proportion is likely to shrink as production slows.”
- “Even before the war, many of Russia’s Soviet-era fields, mainly in Western Siberia and the Volga-Urals region, were starting to run low, leaving oil companies to turn to the harder-to-recover crude in its Arctic and Siberian fields.”
- “To improve their odds, Russian majors planned to tap shale formations in Siberia using techniques developed in Texas and North Dakota but the war prevented them. Sanctions prohibited access to the necessary extraction technology and the government raised taxes on oil companies to shore up its war effort. Workers were enticed to the front by lucrative packages for soldiers, while others of fighting age have died in battle or left the country, all factors creating shortages of skilled specialists in the industry.”
“As Russia’s crude reserves diminish, the price of extracting each barrel goes up. That is because what is left in the reservoirs becomes physically harder and therefore more expensive to reach.”
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:
- “Russia’s economy is in deep peril, Donald Trump assured the world this week… The reality, economists say, is more complicated. While Moscow is enduring its toughest period since the chaotic first days of the invasion, few analysts believe its economy is on the brink of a total collapse, and fewer still expect Vladimir Putin to adjust his war plans in the short term.”
- “By every metric, the economy is under strain. The finance ministry projects GDP growth in 2024–25 at less than 1%, compared with earlier forecasts of 2.3–2.5%. To bolster state coffers, Moscow announced this week it would increase VAT from 20% to 22%, reversing one of Putin’s earlier promises. Russians will now finance the war more directly, with defense spending—outstripping the combined defense budgets of Europe—accounting for about 40% of the Kremlin’s total outlay this year.”
- “But the wartime boom now appears to have run its course. ‘Russia can’t keep increasing military spending by 30% every year,’ said the Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev. ‘Once the money stops flowing, the growth slows down too. It was never sustainable—that’s why the boom is over.’”
- “Ukraine has sought to counter western hesitation with a huge wave of drone strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure in recent months. Open-source data suggests that 16 of the country’s 38 refineries have been hit since August, sending diesel exports to their lowest levels since 2020 and causing widespread fuel shortages… More troubling for Moscow is that shortages are being reported in diesel, the fuel that underpins the Russian economy and its war machine. ‘It will be truly crazy if, by the fourth year of the war, we still haven’t destroyed Ukraine’s energy sector, and they end up destroying ours,’ one Russian pro-war blogger wrote this week.”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- “Why the Ukraine War Is About Vladimir Putin’s Survival,” David Kirichenko and Alexander J. Motyl, The National Interest, 09.24.25.
- “Russia’s budget: Paper tiger or invincible bear?” Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 09.26.25.
- “Russia’s Ban on I.B. Schools Deepens Its Rupture With the West,” Valerie Hopkins and Nataliya Vasilyeva, The New York Times, 09.22.25.
Defense and aerospace:
- “Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov outlined 10 priority objectives for the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) during the Russian MoD Collegium on August 29.[1] These objectives indicate that the Kremlin is committed to its war in Ukraine and may be preparing for a larger confrontation with NATO in the medium term.”
- “Belousov stated that the Russian MoD will modernize the Russian officer training protocols within the framework of the “Military Education – in the Service of the Fatherland” project, likely in an effort to address the Russian military command’s challenges with integrating new technologies.”
- “Belousov stated that the Russian MoD plans to increasingly staff Russian combat medical units with civilian doctors and medical professionals, likely to mitigate acute shortages of medical personnel and casualties in the Russian military.”
- “Belousov implied that the Russian MoD would continue to increasingly regulate the distribution of Russian state benefits to servicemen, veterans, and their families as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to minimize the economic burden of unregulated social benefits on the Russian federal budget.”
- “Belousov indicated that the Russian MoD is establishing a new system to silence Russian forces’ public appeals in the Russian information space.”
- “The Russian MoD remains committed to improving the Russian military’s administrative capacity by digitizing the Russian military registration system, which may allow the Kremlin to significantly expand the rate at which Russia can call up a larger volume of conscripts and reservists.”
- 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:
- “Russia, not long ago a rising military force in Africa, is now struggling to maintain its footprint on the continent. The Kremlin’s new official guns-for-hire military force, the Africa Corps, has failed to replicate the financial success and political sway once held by Russia’s private Wagner Group mercenary outfit.”
- “Military juntas in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, according to a senior U.S. military official, are now experiencing ‘buyer’s remorse’ after ousting U.S. and French troops over the past three years and, to varying degrees, accepting Moscow’s help fighting al Qaeda and Islamic State insurgents.”
- “Security experts and Western defense officials now say Moscow’s involvement might instead have contributed to a worsening security outlook in the region, so much so that the Sahel is perhaps the hottest battlefield in the global contest between Islamist militants and the West and its allies.”
- “Moscow’s struggles in Africa show the limits of its power, especially when its best military units are fighting in Ukraine, according to European security officials.”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Ukraine:
- “When you look at today’s America from Kyiv or Jerusalem, you notice the degree to which democracy-loving Ukrainians and Israelis have been willing to take to the streets — in the middle of hot wars — to push back on their would-be autocrats trying to gut their democratic institutions.”
- “Earlier in the summer, Zelensky’s ruling party in Ukraine, Servant of the People, had pushed through a law stripping the authority of two independent anticorruption bodies … average Ukrainians, led mostly by young people, pushed against it. And they didn’t just post emojis against it on their Facebook pages. Instead, they defied the almost daily and deadly drone attacks by Putin and took to the streets in mass protests to demand that Zelensky and Yermak take their hands off these vital anticorruption institutions. They forced Zelensky to call a new vote and overturn the law a few days after he signed it.”
- “Marc Santora, one of The Times’s longest-serving reporters in Ukraine, described to me ‘a remarkable day’ that started with ‘swarms of drones and missiles” in a Russian attack and ended with thousands celebrating their successful push to get Zelensky to change course.’”
- “My fellow Americans: These are the democracy-loving people whom Trump has been stiffing — in our name — in favor of his pal Putin. This is what I mean when I say Trump is ‘shunning’ Ukrainian democracy to life. By favoring Putin and retreating from aiding Ukraine’s cause, he is forcing Ukrainians to double down on both creating and strengthening their own democratic advances.”
“What happens when Ukraine stops fighting?,” The Economist, 09.24.25.
- “As Russia battles to complete its conquest of Ukraine’s south-eastern Donbas region, both countries are approaching the limits of what is achievable by military means. The public mood in each country shows little enthusiasm for carrying on the fighting. Desertion rates are high in both. Some 58% of Russians would accept a ceasefire without preconditions, according to a poll by Russian Field. A similar 59% of Ukrainians, says the Ukraine Rating Group, would accept a compromise on a de facto loss of territory, if that brought about a ceasefire.”
- “Two years on, the prospect of Ukraine being anchored in Western security and economic structures seems far less certain. Membership of NATO has been all but ruled out. President Donald Trump has offloaded the responsibility for Ukraine on to Europe. Niall Ferguson, a historian at the Hoover Institution, says that ‘people are still struggling to absorb it, but Trump has written the United States out of the script. It is Europe’s war.’”
- “And although Europe’s economies are ten times the size of Russia’s, ‘you don’t win wars with GDP, you win it by turning GDP into [military] stuff, and we are only at the beginning of this process,’ says Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister.”
- “As Yaroslav Hrytsak, a Lviv-based historian, explains, Ukraine has long been a democracy more by default than by institutional design. Its liberties were grounded not in independent courts or in parliament, but in the pragmatism of power groups, the diversity of regions, the weakness of the central state, and perhaps above all the ability of its people to come together at moments of crisis. The tradition of Ukraine’s militarized democracy has served it well during times of war but leaves it vulnerable in times of peace.”
“Ukraine faces deepening military, political and economic problems,” The Economist, 09.23.25.
- “Two years ago this newspaper outlined a vision of a ‘Ukraine 2.0,’ led by reformers in government and citizens outside. We acknowledged that it had little hope of recovering its lost territory, at least as long as Vladimir Putin remains in the Kremlin. But if Ukraine could emerge secure, democratic and prosperous even within a shrunken frontier, that would be a form of victory. Today, the country is struggling on all of those counts.”
- “Ukraine stands because its people insisted on it. Much of the country’s security backbone grew independently of a weak state, and often despite it. Parallel networks of society, business and soldiers patched gaps left by a defense ministry insiders call ‘the chaos ministry.’ World-leading drone companies began in spare rooms and garages. ‘When the bureaucracy stalls, small structures create what the country needs,’ says an intelligence officer.”
- “The problem, however, is that Russia often copies and then mass-produces Ukraine’s innovations quicker than Ukraine can. Conscription meanwhile is getting harder, and more violent. The infantry is critically understaffed.”
- “If Ukraine is running out of men, it is also running short on democratic legitimacy. ‘Trust has broken down between government and society,’ says the senior official. Discontent came to a head in July, when the government clumsily tried to rein in two independent anti-corruption agencies because their investigations were getting too close to people at the top.”
- “Thirdly, war has eroded Ukrainians’ faith in the future, with worrying consequences for the economy… Business, already crippled by blackouts and Russian missiles, is suffering from a labor shortage. Many men are fighting or hiding from conscription. Many mothers stay at home, ready to shield children from the next explosion.”
Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:
"Russia’s War on Elections in Moldova Is No Hoax," Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 09.25.25.
- “This is not a drill or a hoax. Your next election will take place mainly on social media, and Russia will not be the only player seeking advantage.”
- “Polls routinely say a large majority of Moldovans want to join the EU, but they also suggest Sunday’s vote is too close to call. On Monday, President Maia Sandu sounded the alarm in an address to the nation, warning of the consequences should pro-Russia leaders (some of whom have tactically repositioned themselves as pro-European) come to power.”
- “The country would become a ‘launchpad’ for Moscow’s destabilization efforts, especially in Ukraine, she said. It takes no imagination to see planeloads of ‘tourists’ transiting Chisinau airport on their way to infiltrate Odesa, a hour across the border and behind Ukrainian lines. All it would take is a government that doesn’t want to stop them.”
- “Last week, TikTok said it had taken down 100,000 fake accounts operating in Moldova since July, as well as 1.3 million fake likes and 1.6 million fake followers. That sounds like a lot, but for each account removed, more are created. It’s almost impossible to keep up.”
- “Both Europe and Russia are pumping money into Moldova to achieve geopolitical goals, but there should be no false equivalence or whataboutism here. Only one is building, helping to keep the lights on and trying to prevent the spread of war. The other is corrupting and destroying.”
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.
*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute a RM editorial policy.
Slider photo by AP Photo/Evan Vucci.
Russia Analytical Report