Russia Analytical Report, Jan. 5–12, 2026
6 Ideas to Explore
- Russia’s full-fledged war against Ukraine has already lasted longer1 than the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany in World War II—as discussed in Steve Gutterman’s RFE/RL. “None of the conditions for a final resolution of the conflict are in place,” Ruth Deyermond of King’s College London told Gutterman for his analysis entitled "Will Russia's War Against Ukraine End In 2026?" Deyermond believes neither Ukraine nor Russia are “in a position to achieve a conclusive victory on the battlefield” or to collapse under pressure. According to Deyermond, the main obstacle to peace is Moscow’s stance: “Russia… seems to have no interest in an end to the fighting, let alone the war,” she says, while CSIS analyst Mark Cancian argues the Russians’ “stated goals are totally unacceptable” and their intransigence “stems from their belief that they are winning.” At best, a cease-fire or “temporarily frozen conflict” is possible so long as Putin’s presidency remains tied to the war, according to Crisis Group’s Olga Oliker.
- In an interview with Financial Times, ex-director of the CIA William Burns says U.S. intelligence correctly predicted Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2022, but overestimated the likelihood of Russia’s success. In addition, he believes Putin is not serious about peace at this point. “We expected them to be much more effective,” Burns says of Putin’s army, noting that any Western military would have moved to take out the country’s air defenses as well as its command structures. He argues the Russian armed forces failed at basic war-fighting tasks because the Kremlin was overconfident and assumed Ukraine would collapse quickly. Burns repeatedly characterizes Putin as “cocky.” Burns, who traveled to Ukraine 14 times during the war, also notes that the war’s unexpectedly high costs—an estimated 1.1 million casualties and economic strain—have generated internal disaffection inside Russia, which Western intelligence has been able to exploit. “The CIA was the only U.S. government agency that remained on the ground during the Russian invasion, playing a quiet but pivotal role in aiding Ukraine,” Burns says. As for the war’s end, Putin isn’t serious about peace right now as the Russian leader “is too convinced time is on his side,” Burns says. “The way in which the war is brought to a close is likely to have ramifications far beyond Ukraine’s borders as the world enters a new yet unnamed era,” according to Burns. Beyond Russia, Burns says China studied Moscow’s poor performance closely. Beijing had expected a rapid Russian victory and instead drew lessons that likely increased Xi Jinping’s caution about Taiwan.
- Hopes that sanctions and lower oil prices will collapse Putin’s war effort “underestimate how far the Kremlin has rewired its economy,” with oil’s share of state revenue already down from about 50% to 25% and the gap filled by higher taxes on households and firms, according to Phillip Inman, senior economics writer for The Guardian. In his column for this U.K. newspaper, Inman argues that despite near-zero growth, almost 20% interest rates and new tax hikes, Russia’s macro position looks resilient, with public debt just under 20% of GDP and a budget deficit of about 3.5%. Inman quotes Richard Connolly of RUSI as saying that “we are not near the economy being a decisive factor” in the Kremlin’s war decisions, and stresses that Russia can still fund the war “this year and perhaps next.” In addition to low levels of public debt, other recent good news for the Russian economy (or at least for its imports) is that Russia’s ruble outpaced every major currency against the dollar in 2025, according to Bloomberg. The ruble has strengthened 45% since the start of 2025 and is trading near 78 per dollar, within touching distance of levels seen before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago. Over the past 12 months, the appreciation has been the strongest since at least 1994, data shows, according to Bloomberg. A stronger ruble makes critical imports cheaper in local currency terms, easing some of the wartime constraints. The Central Bank of Russia’s ability to sustain a tight monetary policy while supporting a strong currency contrasts with warnings that Russia is “running out of money.”*
- In a wide-ranging assertive interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump declared that he is not constrained by international law, norms or checks and balances, asserting that only his “own morality” limits the use of U.S. military power. In the interview, Trump—who has recently proposed boosting U.S. military spending for 2027 from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion—openly entertained acquiring Greenland and acknowledged he may have to choose between ownership of this island and the preservation of NATO.2 When commenting on the present state of NATO, Trump claimed that the alliance is effectively useless without the United States, arguing that Russia fears only the U.S. and that without him, “Russia would have all of Ukraine right now.” Trump said he believes Putin wants a peace deal on Ukraine and that U.S. contribution to Ukraine’s defense after a ceasefire would be based on his belief that Russia would not re-invade. Trump stated that Europe should carry the primary responsibility for enforcing Ukraine’s postwar security, with the U.S. in a secondary role. Trump also made it clear that he is not unnerved by the expiration of the U.S.-Russian New START treaty on Feb. 5, 2026, implying that not only the U.S. and Russia, but also China as well as “a couple of other players” should sign a “better agreement.”3
- The U.S. seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro represents a geopolitical shock that Moscow interprets as a demonstration of unrestrained U.S. power against regimes even if they are allied with Russia. Russian diplomats framed the U.S. operation against Maduro as an armed aggression and called for his release. However, Vladimir Putin has so far (as of the morning of Jan. 12) remained mum on the issue, even though U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil exports not only threatens billions in Russian investments (at least $17 billion in loans and credit as of 2019), but also has direct implications for Russia’s sanctions-evasion efforts.4 Despite loud condemnation, Moscow was unable to prevent the operation, which many interpreted as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine by the U.S. In his interview to CNBC, Harvard Professor Graham Allison argued that reviving a Monroe Doctrine–style posture may sound rhetorically attractive, but it is strategically fraught in today’s environment. In the interview, Allison, former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center, highlighted the chilling effect on America’s allies as well as rivals, pointing to Denmark and citing Germany’s chancellor warning that the two major threats are “Putin’s Russia and Trump’s America.” The Belfer Center’s present director Meghan O’Sullivan believes that more “U.S.-aligned” Venezuelan oil barrels would “dilute the influence of OPEC and U.S. adversaries.” When commenting on the U.S. seizure of a Russian-flagged tanker with links to Venezuela, O’Sullivan told Newsweek that such measures directly undermine Moscow’s strategy of evading Western sanctions and signals that Washington is now prepared to enforce sanctions with coercive measures at sea. For other Belfer Center experts’ takes on the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, see this link.
- “The Iranian regime is facing one of the most powerful protest waves in its history,” with demonstrators “storming government buildings and sweeping entire cities” and, despite hundreds of deaths, showing “no sign of stopping anytime soon,” according to Nikita Smagin, an expert on Iranian foreign and domestic policies. In his commentary for Carnegie Politika, Smagin notes that Moscow—one of Tehran’s closest allies—is supplying Mi‑28 attack helicopters and Spartak armored vehicles suited to an armed insurgency, yet he argues that Moscow has repeatedly abandoned embattled partners and is highly unlikely to commit troops to defend the Islamic Republic. Ivan Lutiev, contributor to the Russian outlet Republic, traces the revolt in Iran to a systemic breakdown: he notes the rial lost 56% of its value in six months, the dollar hit 1.42 million rials (28 times worse than 2018), inflation runs “40–72%,” about “70%” of Iranians live at or below the poverty line, reservoirs near Tehran are “less than 5%” full, and repression has killed “over 500” and detained more than 10,000. Last, but not least, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius argues that the Iranian regime is on a “one-way street to disaster,” citing Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment’s description of a “zombie regime” whose “brutality can delay the regime’s funeral” but cannot restore its “pulse,” and comparing today’s demoralized security apparatus to late‑Soviet structures.
NB: Next week’s Russia Analytical Report will appear on Tuesday, Jan. 20, instead of Monday, Jan. 19, because of the U.S. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday.
I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
Nuclear security and safety:
- No significant developments.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
- “Russian Sources Discuss the Evolving Relationship Between Russia and North Korea,” Maxim Starchak, Russia.Post, 01.06.25.
- “China’s Quiet Retreat From North Korean Denuclearization,” Jinwan Park, Foreign Policy, 01.09.26.
Iran and its nuclear program:
- “The Iranian regime is facing one of the most powerful protest waves in its history,” Nikita Smagin writes. He emphasizes that demonstrators are “storming government buildings and sweeping entire cities” and—despite hundreds of fatalities—show “no sign of stopping anytime soon.”
- “The Kremlin, which has become one of Iran’s closest allies in recent years, appears to be prepared to support the Islamic regime in its time of need, and is supplying Tehran with weapons that could prove useful if the protests escalate into an armed uprising,” the author wrote. Smagin notes that recent deliveries of Mi-28 attack helicopters and Spartak armored vehicles are tailored less for crowd control than for a potential armed insurgency.
- “Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with strikes if the government continues to suppress the protests,” Smagin observes, “saying on Monday that ‘we’re looking at some very strong options.’” He argues that the precedent of U.S. action in Venezuela and prior planning for strikes on Iran’s nuclear program makes these threats particularly credible in Tehran’s eyes.
- “The Kremlin has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to abandon its allies if things take a truly serious turn for the worse,” the author believes. He points to Russia’s behavior in Venezuela, in Syria after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024, and during Iran’s own twelve-day war as evidence that Moscow’s backing has clear limits.
- “It’s one thing to export Russian helicopters to Iran to fight the insurgency, and it’s easy to imagine Moscow becoming a haven for fleeing Iranian leaders. But it’s very difficult to imagine Russian troops defending the Iranian regime on the ground,” Smagin wrote. In his view, Russia’s more realistic priority is to study Iran’s handling of protests—and especially its “national internet” model—as a template for tightening its own domestic controls.
- “The immediate trigger for the protests that began on December 28, 2025, was the collapse of the rial, which lost 56% of its value in six months,” Ivan Lutiev writes, noting that the dollar “reached 1.42 million rials on the open market, 28 times worse than in 2018,” and plunging a 90‑million‑strong country into acute crisis.
- The author argues that the regime’s old social contract has unraveled: inflation is “estimated at 40–72% a year,” about “70% of the population lives at or below the poverty line,” and basic food prices rose “70–110%” in a year, while government food coupons of roughly $7 a month per person cover only a fraction of the roughly $200 experts say a family needs.
- Lutiev describes an infrastructure near collapse: major reservoirs supplying Iran’s cities are “less than 10% full, and around Tehran less than 5%,” authorities are seriously discussing evacuating the capital’s “10‑million” population, electricity losses in transmission reach “15–20%,” and rolling blackouts have become routine.
- Repression is escalating nationwide: by early January, rights groups recorded protests “in 512 locations across 180 cities in all 31 provinces,” with at least “over 500 people killed and more than 10,000 detained” as security forces increasingly use live fire, turning a price revolt into a crisis of regime legitimacy.
- The article warns that Iran’s territorial integrity is now in question: Kurds, Baluch, and other minorities are suffering “the highest number of casualties” in some provinces; Azerbaijanis may shift from cultural to political demands; and economic collapse could turn long‑standing ethnic grievances into separatist movements, pushing the Islamic Republic into a drawn‑out “agony” in which “the old system no longer works, and the new one has not yet been born.”
“The Iranian regime is caught in a death spiral,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 01.09.26.
- “The Iranian regime is on a one-way street to disaster,” the author writes, arguing that each new crackdown only “spawns future protest” that the state is ever less able to contain.
- “The Islamic Republic is today a zombie regime,” Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment contends, saying its “legitimacy, ideology, economy and leader are dead or dying” and that “brutality can delay the regime’s funeral, but it can’t restore the pulse.”
- “Despite this violent obliteration of the rebellion, a new uprising is back three years later,” the author notes, describing a movement that is “leaderless, and perhaps rudderless, but…potent.”
- “This year’s revolt is driven more by anger over Iran’s economic failures than the mullah’s repressive Islamic rules,” the columnist argues, pointing to 42 percent inflation and a currency that “lost more than half its value last year.”
- “As the council members look south across the Gulf to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, they see their neighbors racing to embrace artificial intelligence and a dynamic economic future,” the author observes, while Iran’s rulers “cling to a repressive, retrograde regime that can barely feed its people.”
- “Like the Soviet Union during its last years, the security agencies may have lost their ideological commitment and discipline,” the columnist writes, drawing a comparison to late-stage Moscow and suggesting Iran’s hard-liners “appear more fragile than in the past.”
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:
- Varenikova reports that in Russian‑occupied areas, schools require children to stand for the Russian anthem, watch “documentaries” depicting Russia as Ukraine’s savior, and attend “Lessons of Courage” and “Important Conversations” that glorify Russian soldiers and present the war as a continuation of the Soviet fight against fascism; one 19‑year‑old from Luhansk says students were told that in Ukraine “there was a Nazi regime just like Hitler’s,” while another student recalls homework to watch Putin’s press conferences and upload selfies with his face visible on their laptop screens.
- Parents who try to keep their children in Ukrainian online programs or home‑schooling face threats of having their parental rights stripped, several interviewees say; one mother, Tetiana, describes police coming to her home and warning that if her daughters did not attend Russian schools they would be taken away, while another fled with her 8‑year‑old and 18‑year‑old after local authorities called to say “they would take her children” and she also feared her son would be drafted into the Russian army.
- The article notes that indoctrination begins as early as first grade, with children signed up for the pro‑military Young Army club and made to “draw tanks instead of the usual things” and march in the schoolyard; a Yale Humanitarian Research Lab study cited by Varenikova has documented “at least 210 sites in Russia and in occupied areas” where Ukrainian children are put through Russian nationalist curricula or military training, leading one Ukrainian legal expert to warn that such “Russification is so pervasive and toxic that children believe in it,” blurring the line between coercion and genuine conviction.
Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:
- Bennetts notes that Putin’s full-scale invasion has now lasted 1,419 days, longer than the Soviet Union’s 1,418‑day war against Nazi Germany, yet Russian forces remain bogged down in Donetsk “about 30 miles” from their 2022 start lines.
- In all that time, “Putin’s army has failed to capture and retain a single regional capital” in the Ukrainian territories Moscow claims as its own, despite portraying the war domestically as an existential struggle against NATO‑backed, “satanic” Western forces.
- Citing research by BBC Russian and Mediazona, the article says “almost 160,000 Russian troops are known to have died in Ukraine,” with an upper estimate of 352,000 killed, and “at least 19 Russian generals” reported dead, highlighting the scale of Russia’s losses.
- While state media avoids the awkward WWII comparison, Putin continues to double down ideologically, telling children on Orthodox Christmas that Russian troops are on a “holy mission,” as pro‑Kremlin figures like Konstantin Malofeyev describe the conflict as a battle against “the entire western occult and anti‑Christian Sodom.”
“Ukraine now has the fortress belt it wishes it had in 2022”, The Economist, 01.07.26.
- The article describes a massive new “fortress belt” in Donbas: around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk the defensive lines are roughly 200m deep, with successive belts of razor wire, multiple 2m‑deep, 3m‑wide anti‑tank ditches and berms, “dragon’s teeth” and mines, all “constantly patrolled by drones”; Major Viacheslav Shutenko says that if such lines had existed in 2022, “the situation on the ground would be the complete opposite of what it is now.”
- Despite these fortifications, Ukraine has been “losing ground in the past few months”: most of Pokrovsk has fallen, Kostiantynivka is being fortified street‑by‑street as the next target, Kupiansk had to be retaken at “high cost,” and Russian positions are now only about 17 km from Kramatorsk, leaving the city vulnerable to short‑ and long‑range drone and rocket strikes.
- The piece warns that American‑led peace proposals could hand these defenses to Moscow: one December plan reportedly agreed to give Russia the roughly 30% of Donetsk it has yet to conquer, turning it into a “neutral demilitarized buffer zone” and “free economic zone,” which many Ukrainians see as a ruse that would let Vladimir Putin “circumvent Ukraine’s defenses and continue his invasion,” leaving residents like Olena in Kramatorsk feeling “stuck” with “no better alternative.”
- Mylovanov argues that postwar reconstruction should copy what worked in wartime: “We will need to harness the same approaches that have enabled the Ukrainian armed forces to resist a full-scale invasion,” starting with spreading a start‑up culture from units like Khartiia and the 3rd Assault Brigade by creating “small and agile teams with the authority to bypass bureaucracy and deliver quick but effective fixes to problems.”
- He urges importing the army’s metrics‑driven ethos into civilian governance: commanders are assessed on “the value of enemy equipment destroyed per mission and the efficiency of strikes,” and after the war the state should adopt clear deliverables (from “energy resilience” to “anti-corruption enforcement”), publish regular progress reports, and ensure “ministers and officials should be promoted and rewarded based on the outcomes they deliver,” with budgets and procurement “open and subject to independent audit.”
- Ukraine’s edge, he writes, is “people and innovation”: “We didn’t hold off the invaders because we had bigger tanks or more artillery. We did so by being cleverer and more creative,” designing new drones and exploiting AI and big data, so Kyiv must boost per‑student spending on maths, science, and engineering and invest in labs and research infrastructure to make the country “a center for the rapid application of AI to civilian purposes too” and “build a fortress of freedom and prosperity out of the rubble of war.”
- “The Flamingo is at the center of Ukraine’s quest to build missiles domestically that can strike deep inside Russian territory,” according to the author, Matthew Luxmoore.
- “Fire Point already has developed Ukraine’s FP-1 drone… the workhorse of Kyiv’s campaign to hobble Russia’s oil industry,” the author wrote.
- “To cause real damage, Ukraine needs something that packs a much bigger punch. Fire Point believes the Flamingo… is the solution,” the author believes.
- “The large fuel tank of the Flamingo… allows it to travel more than 1,800 miles,” Matthew Luxmoore wrote.
- “Because Flamingo was designed on a budget, it lacks many of the sophisticated stealth elements or complex visual guidance systems installed on Western missiles,” according to the author.
- “Our strategy is to economize on the less important stuff but never save money on the stuff that really matters,” the author wrote, quoting Iryna Terekh.
- “Fire Point… now has more than 2,000 people working at more than 40 facilities across Ukraine, and is valued at more than $1 billion,” the author believes.
- “Each of Fire Point’s factories has at least one exact copy… on standby in case a key link in the production chain is destroyed,” Matthew Luxmoore wrote.
- “It’s like repairing a car that is traveling at 130 miles per hour, while being shot at. Ukrainians are developing the ability to do that,” according to the author.
- “A powerful long-range missile that is difficult to intercept would reduce a key Russian advantage in the war: its vast territory,” the author wrote, summarizing expert Fabian Hoffmann.
- Hopkins reports that Russia’s second use of the nuclear‑capable Oreshnik IRBM was aimed less at Ukraine than at NATO: the missile, traveling “8,000 miles per hour,” struck a site about 40 miles from Poland just days after Britain and France vowed to deploy “military hubs” and Germany pledged troops to NATO states bordering Ukraine, prompting pro‑Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov to call the Oreshnik “not a weapon of war against Ukraine; it is a weapon of war against Europe.”
- She notes that the strike used non‑explosive “kinetic” submunitions, with Ukrainian colonel Roman Kostenko saying the warheads “held no explosives,” and nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis arguing that equipping such an expensive, scarce system with dummy payloads shows “the military effect of the launch was secondary to the ‘political benefit’ of trying to intimidate Europe,” part of Putin’s effort “to manipulate a sense of nuclear risk to restrain or discourage the West from aiding Ukraine.”
- The article emphasizes the broader strategic message: Moscow insists any NATO troops on Ukrainian soil would be “legitimate military targets,” the Oreshnik’s range “covers almost all of Europe,” and Russia can fire similar missiles from multiple locations—including Belarus, which has hosted Russian tactical nukes since 2023—leading Dmitry Stefanovich to say the launch was a reminder that Russia retains “an option of strategic strike against any target with little warning, short flight time and likely no reliable interception capability.”
Military aid to Ukraine:
- No significant developments.
Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:
“EU Sanctions Target Free Speech,” Roger Koppl, The Wall Street Journal, 01.06.26.
- Koppl argues that EU Russia‑related sanctions are being used against domestic dissent rather than Moscow, noting that retired Swiss colonel Jacques Baud was blacklisted not as a Russian agent but for “appearing on media outlets Brussels dislikes and promoting what the EU calls ‘pro-Russian propaganda,’” including his “(implausible) claim that Ukraine orchestrated its own invasion.”
- He contends the regime “upends the rule of law,” because terms like “disinformation,” “propaganda,” and “conspiracy theory” “lack precise definitions in EU law,” sanctions are imposed by a unanimous vote of foreign ministers “not with any court,” and targets are informed only “after the fact,” so “speech must be presumed punishable unless it clearly fits official views.”
- Koppl warns that without clear boundaries “self-censorship spreads among analysts, journalists and academics who fear becoming the next target,” and says Baud’s planned legal challenge “deserves support regardless of his views on Ukraine,” because “once a person’s life can be destroyed for expressing disfavored ideas, no one’s freedom is secure” and “Europe may position itself as a beacon of human rights, but that light is flickering.”
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Ukraine-related negotiations:
“Will Russia's War Against Ukraine End In 2026?” Steve Gutterman, RFE/RL, 01.12.26.
- “None of the conditions for a final resolution of the conflict are in place,” Ruth Deyermond of King’s College London told RFE/RL, noting that nearly four years after Putin’s full‑scale invasion on February 24, 2022, “neither Ukraine nor Russia seems to be in a position to achieve a conclusive victory on the battlefield” or to collapse under pressure.
- Russia has failed to achieve one of its core goals — full control of Donetsk — and “holds less Ukrainian territory than it did in the first few weeks of the onslaught,” Gutterman writes, even as Moscow continues slow, costly offensive operations while Kyiv still controls large parts of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson, RFE/RL’s Gutterman writes.
- The main obstacle to peace, several analysts argue, is Moscow’s stance: “Russia…seems to have no interest in an end to the fighting, let alone the war,” Deyermond says, while CSIS’s Mark Cancian adds that Russia’s “stated goals are totally unacceptable to any of the other parties” and its intransigence “stems from their belief that they are winning.”
- Looking ahead to 2026, Andras Toth‑Czifra predicts that “the pressure on Russia's domestic war machine will be bigger…than at any time over the past four years,” but Crisis Group’s Olga Oliker cautions that neither side is likely to crumble soon and that the war may “continue into its fifth year, with limited territorial gains, high casualties, and continuing missile and drone strikes.”
- Several experts see at best a cease-fire or “temporarily frozen conflict” in 2026, not a real settlement: for Ukraine, Deyermond says, Russia’s occupation and “imperialist desire to control Ukraine” is an existential threat, while on the Russian side “Putin's presidency is now so tied to the war…that no de‑occupation or withdrawal of demands…seems possible until Russia has a new president” — something she sees little chance of in 2026.
- Meduza recounts Budanov’s rise from CIA‑trained special forces officer in Unit 2245 to HUR chief and now presidential chief of staff, noting he led or was associated with “some of Ukraine’s most famous sabotage operations” against Russia and that under his leadership the Main Intelligence Directorate enjoyed a 71% public trust rating, with polling showing “more than 10 percent of respondents would vote for Budanov in a presidential election.”
- The article stresses Budanov’s deep negotiating experience with Moscow: since March 2022 HUR has run a back‑channel with GRU General Alexander Zorin that became “the most stable and effective line of communication” for prisoner exchanges and deals like the Azovstal surrender; Budanov has also quietly met GRU counterparts in places such as Abu Dhabi and took part in both the early‑2025 talks and the November 2025 U.S. peace plan process, leading one former Trump official to call him “one of the more realistic and sober guys” about how the war could end.
- Now, as Zelensky’s chief of staff and lead negotiator, Budanov brings established contacts with U.S. and Russian officials (including GRU chief Igor Kostyukov), a public profile he has cultivated as part of the “information war,” and a nuanced stance on a possible ceasefire—telling Il Foglio that “losing one square millimeter of our land is a bad result,” but that “sparing ourselves thousands and thousands of deaths is a good thing”—while insisting after the latest Paris and U.S. meetings that “there are already concrete results” and that “Ukraine’s national interests will be protected.”
- Malenko reports that Zelensky has made Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the 40‑year‑old head of military intelligence (HUR), his new chief of staff and “one of the heavyweight negotiators” in the Paris talks, quoting Zelensky’s framing that “there are two paths. The first is the priority of ending the war, and second is to be prepared for corresponding negative steps from Russia—unwillingness to end the war.”
- The piece emphasizes Budanov’s battlefield reputation and popularity: HUR’s spokesman says he has survived “more than 10 assassination attempts since 2014,” and a Razumkov Center poll found that “nearly three‑fourths of Ukrainians” trust military intelligence compared with 48% for Zelensky, with Malenko noting that Budanov’s standing “could help boost trust in the office of the president amid negotiations that might require concessions from Ukraine.”
- U.S. and Ukrainian officials praise him as a serious interlocutor: deputy MP Yehor Cherniev says Budanov has “a pretty good reputation in the United States—more via the lines of…the CIA and the Pentagon,” former NSC official Michael Carpenter recalls him as having “exceptional analytical abilities and geopolitical understanding,” and former CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella argues that if an “imperfect deal” must be sold, Budanov “has the stature and legitimacy to make the case. But if there is no deal, he knows what needs to be done to sustain the fight.”
- Kramer reports that after nearly a year of talks Zelensky now warns “I do not want and will not wait another six months hoping that maybe it will work,” saying Ukraine must pursue “two paths: The first priority is ending the war, the second is being prepared for negative steps by Russia — for its unwillingness to end the war,” and adding, “at some point, Russia may block everything.”
- The article notes that Moscow has “flatly rejected some Ukrainian proposals,” including on a demilitarized zone in Donetsk and on peacekeeping forces, and that Russian forces’ capture of Siversk and advances in eastern Donetsk “weak[en] Mr. Zelensky’s negotiating leverage on a future boundary,” even as Russia reiterates it will not accept “any presence by NATO troops in Ukraine.”
- Zelensky argues that only sustained U.S. pressure can raise the cost for the Kremlin of holding out: he says Washington could “hasten a settlement by backing up talks with sanctions and military aid for Ukraine,” and that despite his doubts about Russia’s intentions “there is no alternative” to the current U.S.-led format because any separate European mediation effort “would only extend the talks.”
“How Not To End a War,” John Erath, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, 01.07.26.
- Erath argues that the emerging Trump plan—U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in exchange for ceding territory to Russia—misdiagnoses the conflict: it assumes “Ukraine is losing, or about to lose,” and reduces the war to “who controls how much Ukrainian territory,” when Moscow’s unchanged 2022 aim “was to impose regime change in Kyiv,” i.e., Ukrainian independence from Russian domination.
- He warns that “land for peace” efforts repeat the mistakes of Minsk: the 2014 agreement “froze the front lines for almost eight years and turned down the violence but did not resolve anything,” teaching Russia that “aggression can be rewarded and that concern about a conflict turning nuclear can be utilized,” so a new ceasefire that ignores underlying issues would simply set up the next round of war.
- Offering U.S. guarantees in exchange for lost land, especially from an administration “perceived as pro-Russian, and on the record as opposed to foreign military involvement,” would provide “little deterrence,” essentially relying on U.S. nuclear forces and adding “another potential trigger for nuclear war,” while also feeding Ukrainian doubts about having given up nuclear weapons in 1994 and potentially encouraging future proliferation.
“‘Trump proposed a profitable solution.’ Political scientists talk about the end of the ‘special military operation.’ But the main problem still has to be solved,” Tsargrad, 01.11.26. Clues from Russian Views. (This organization is a Russian ultra‑conservative, pro‑Kremlin media outlet.)
- “Trump proposed for us both a profitable and an unprofitable solution,” said political scientist Sergei Karaganov, referring to the U.S. president’s calls for ending the war in Ukraine.
- “The goals of the special military operation have not been canceled. First and foremost, this is the liberation of southern and eastern Ukraine,” Karaganov stressed, insisting that Russia’s declared objectives remain unchanged.
- “One of the goals of the special operation has already been achieved. Through a series of measures we have managed to push the United States away from its course of global domination,” the analyst argued.
- “We will have to solve the European problem… I remind you that Europe is the source of all humanity’s misfortunes, including Russia’s misfortunes,” Karaganov said, warning that even if Moscow accepted Trump’s “profitable” offer, the core “problem of Europe” would still remain.
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- "NATO Just Laid Out Its Postwar Security Plan for Ukraine," Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 01.08.26.
- "France, UK Pledge Troops to Defend Ukraine—but Only After War Ends," Peter Suciu, The National Interest, 01.10.26.
Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:
- “Well, I don’t want to say that to you, but it may be a choice [between ownership of Greenland and existence of NATO]. You have to understand. Russia is not at all concerned with NATO other than us. China is not at all concerned with NATO other than us, because, sadly, you know, Europe is becoming a much different place, and they really do have to shape up. I want them to shape up,” Trump said.
- “I think we’ll always get along with Europe, but I want them to shape up. I’m the one that got them to spend more on the, you know, more G.D.P. on NATO. But if you look at NATO, Russia, I can tell you, is not at all concerned with any other country but us,” Trump said.
- “And I’ve been very loyal. Look, I’ve been very loyal to Europe. I’ve done a good job. If it weren’t for me, Russia would have all of Ukraine right now,” Trump said.
- “And don’t forget, even at the beginning, I gave them the Javelins. Obama gave them sheets,” Trump said.
- “And they took out those tanks at the very beginning with the Javelins. You know, if I didn’t give them [Ukrainians] those Javelins, this war would have been over immediately. But Putin would have had… he was going into Kyiv, and they got stuck, and I gave them the Javelins… But if the election weren’t rigged and I was president, this war would have never happened,” Trump said. “Putin would have never done it. I used to talk to him about it a lot. Putin would have never, ever started this war. He understood that,” Trump said.
- “Well, I feel strongly they [Russians] wouldn’t reinvade, or I wouldn’t agree to it. I feel strongly that they would not reinvade,” Trump said, in response to a question about Russia attacking Ukraine again after a settlement.
- “I think this—if I weren’t involved, No. 1, that agreement would have no chance of getting done. And No. 2, by this time, Russia would have taken over all of Ukraine. Which was its initial wish,” Trump said.
- “I think he [Putin] wants to make a deal,” Trump said when asked about Putin’s response to the 20-point plan.
- “Well, I’ve had—double. I’ve had cases where I had Putin all done and Zelenskyy wouldn’t make the deal… Then I had cases where it was the reverse. I think now they both want to make a deal, but we’ll find out,” Trump said.
- “Well, his ships—his ships left awfully quickly today,” Trump said when asked whether he still trusts Putin.
- “I don’t know. I don’t know if it was the truth or not. He [Putin] did tell me that his home was attacked,” Trump said about Putin’s claim Ukraine attacked his residence.
- “I don’t want to say that. I just don’t want to be in a position to say that, because I have an obligation to see if I can save lives. You know, it’s—the war costs us nothing. We make money with the war now,” Trump said when asked whether he would rearm Ukraine if Putin rejected the plan.
- “You didn’t say what happened. So what happened out in the high seas? Russia sailed away, didn’t they? What happened? Do you know that, right?” Trump said.
- “No, it’s a sign of respect. They don’t sail away too often. But they sailed away. They understood,” Trump said, referring to Russian vessels.
- “Well, you know, until this, I had a great relationship with Putin. I always said, despite the fake Russia, Russia, Russia scandal… If it weren’t for me, and in this case, Putin, if we didn’t understand each other, we could have ended up in a world war,” Trump said.
- “Over the course of his career, Burns has sat down with some of the most prominent villains of the 20th and 21st centuries. Who, I ask, was… most difficult? “Putin,” he replies. “He’s just so stubborn.” In the autumn of 2021, as the U.S. gathered intelligence on Russia’s plans for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was Burns who was dispatched to Moscow… “He was utterly unapologetic,” Burns says. “He made no effort to deny it.” The CIA director returned to Washington convinced that Putin was going to go ahead with his war.”
- “America’s warnings about Putin’s plans proved to be startlingly right. Their expectation that the Russians would rapidly overwhelm Ukraine was not. Why was the U.S. so off-base about how the war would unfold? “We expected them to be much more effective,” he says of Putin’s army. Any western military would have moved quickly to take out the country’s air defences as well as its command structures. “The Russians didn’t do that. Partly because they were so cocky, they didn’t think they needed to.” He comes back to that word a lot to describe the Russian president. Cocky.”
- “The CIA was the only US government agency that remained on the ground throughout the Russian invasion, playing a quiet but pivotal role in aiding Ukraine. Burns travelled to Ukraine 14 times during the war.”
- “It was underestimating what happens when the circle is so tight that you’re not doing what you normally would do in terms of vetting a war plan or battle plan,” he says.”
- “Frustration with the war, which has cost Russia an estimated 1.1mn casualties and a good deal of economic pain, also created an opportunity for the CIA. “We had a lot of good fortune in recruiting.””
- “The revolution in technology,” Burns says, “is truly unlike anything we have seen in human society since the beginnings of the industrial revolution two centuries ago.”
- “The final weeks of 2025 brought a flurry of diplomatic activity as U.S., Ukrainian and European officials worked to come up with a peace deal—although Putin doesn’t appear ready to climb down. “I don’t think Putin is serious today because he is too convinced time is on his side,” he says, adding that the way in which the war is brought to a close is likely to have ramifications far beyond Ukraine’s borders, as the world enters a new and as yet unnamed era.”
- “The one thing the Chinese were not at all polemical about was the war in Ukraine. They listened carefully. Because they knew they had gotten it wrong before the war started. They thought the Russians would roll right over the Ukrainians,” Burns says. “I think that honestly had fuelled some of Xi’s doubts about issues such as Taiwan.””
“Russia and Venezuela—Toward a New Yalta?,” Angela Stent, AEI, 01.08.26.
- Stent notes that “The Kremlin’s response to Nicolas Maduro’s ousting has… been notably muted… neither Vladimir Putin nor… Dmitry Peskov have uttered a word,” even though “Venezuela has for decades been a significant Russian client state.” The silence may reflect calculation: “Putin has praised the Yalta system… as the model for international order,” arguing it “saved the world from large-scale upheavals,” and may believe that renewed U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere “will reassert its right to dominate its sphere of influence… and… reduce incentives to make concessions on Ukraine.”
- Since Chávez, “Russia has viewed Venezuela as a key client state in the United States’ backyard,” providing “intelligence support… training… and selling arms,” while Rosneft “loan[ed] billions of dollars.” Today, however, “Venezuela now owes Rosneft upwards of $2 billion… none of which may ever be repaid.” Moscow also “helped Maduro to remain in power after the disputed 2018 election” and “dissuaded Maduro from leaving the country to go into exile” in 2019.
- Despite this investment, Stent notes, the official reaction was limited to: “We reaffirm our solidarity with the Venezuelan people…” Stent suggests this restraint may stem from “Putin’s desire not to antagonize Donald Trump while negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war continue.”
- Russian commentators reacted differently. Z-bloggers argued Washington had conducted a successful “‘special military operation’… much more effectively than Russia’s operation in Ukraine,” lamenting that “what took U.S. forces a few hours… has taken Russia four years,” even concluding: “Maybe it’s time we started hiring American generals and planners.” Others noted that U.S. actions mean Washington “can no longer criticize Russia for its actions against Ukraine.”
- Stent cautions it is “premature to conclude that Russia has lost out in Venezuela,” but argues the broader implication is ideological: Trump’s position implies “other great powers have the same rights in their respective spheres of influence.” Putin’s belief that only “Russia, the United States and China” are truly sovereign underpins this logic. The Kremlin hopes Venezuela “will usher in a new Yalta system” and that Trump will “accept its right to subjugate Ukraine.”
- Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University, and a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making.
- In this interview with CNBC, Allison argues that reviving a Monroe Doctrine–style posture may sound rhetorically attractive but is strategically fraught in today’s environment. He notes that the original doctrine “declared the Western Hemisphere as America’s sphere” but initially had “little real effect” because the U.S. lacked power; it only became consequential under Theodore Roosevelt, when Washington claimed the right to intervene against states deemed to be “misbehaving,” leading to repeated interventions across Latin America. He emphasizes that this was “an era of overt interventionism,” whereas today’s world has “far less tolerance for imperialism or neo-imperialism,” making him “skeptical it would succeed in practice.”
- On contemporary reactions, Allison argues that recent U.S. behavior signals that Washington “still possesses enormous military power and is willing to use it,” prompting countries everywhere to reassess their vulnerability to pressure. In his words, “Any country not asking how it would respond to pressure from a powerful state isn’t thinking seriously.” He highlights the chilling effect on allies as well as rivals, pointing to Denmark and citing Germany’s chancellor warning that the two major threats are “Putin’s Russia and Trump’s America.”
- Economically, Allison expects interdependence with China to continue “more or less as before,” but stresses that security considerations will increasingly be treated as a risk factor. On spheres of influence and the Thucydides Trap, he confirms the concept is actively discussed in Beijing and that “the idea of spheres of influence does have appeal.” He suggests Xi might be “receptive” to a tacit bargain, yet concludes such an arrangement would be “difficult to formalize or sustain as a stable bargain” because neither side can enforce clean regional monopolies.”
- Meghan O’Sullivan writes, “What does it mean for the United States to “control” Venezuelan oil? While the image of President Trump making decisions about investments, output, export seems implicit in some of the recent rhetoric, practically speaking “U.S. control of Venezuelan oil” would mean one of two things (or both). First, it could mean that U.S. companies are directly involved in producing and selling Venezuelan oil (as the result of a contract with the Venezuelan government). Alternatively (or in addition), it could mean having a friendly government in place who would cede to U.S. demands or pressure over its oil policy.”
- She notes that greater Venezuelan output would lower global prices, benefiting U.S. consumers but also creating side effects, including U.S. shale producers potentially cutting back because their output is highly price‑sensitive.
- Geopolitically, O’Sullivan stresses that more “U.S.-aligned” Venezuelan barrels would “dilute the influence of OPEC and U.S. adversaries,” with lower prices hurting Russia and Iran in particular, and heavy Venezuelan crude likely displacing some Russian Urals in global markets.
- She adds that shifting Venezuelan oil “outside the orbit of America’s adversaries” would also weaken China’s strategy in Latin America and undercut allies of Caracas such as Cuba and Nicaragua, while reinforcing the petrodollar and thus U.S. financial dominance, even if it doesn’t give Washington a simple “oil cudgel” to wield at will.
- Lieven argues that U.S. outrage over Russia’s behavior in Ukraine is hypocritical given Washington’s own Monroe‑Doctrine tradition: “This longstanding U.S. strategy renders absurd the NATO and European line concerning Ukraine that ‘every country has the right to choose its international alliances,’” he writes, noting that great powers—including Russia—always seek to limit hostile alliances on their borders.
- The article draws a direct comparison between Trump’s bid to control Venezuela’s oil and past U.S. interventions, and Russia’s moves in its neighborhood: the dilemma Washington now faces in Caracas—“double down or quit?” if a client regime falters—is the same one the Soviet Union faced “in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and Russia faced in Ukraine in 2014.”
- Lieven warns Trump against repeating Russia’s Crimea mistake: “Trump and his team should… look at how the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 destroyed any chance of continued Russian influence over Ukraine,” he writes, arguing that land grabs against neighbors can permanently alienate them and backfire strategically.
- Just as “China drove its neighbors into Washington’s arms,” Lieven contends that Trump’s annexationist rhetoric about Greenland and even Canada risks driving America’s neighbors “into the arms of China”—mirroring how aggressive Russian and Chinese territorial claims have spurred regional balancing.
- The author notes that Russian officials’ bullying tone has already “weakened [Russia’s] influence over its neighbors,” and cautions that Trump aides like Stephen Miller now sound even more overbearing: “Even Russian officials at their worst…would be hard put to match the coarse, smirking arrogance” U.S. officials display when talking about demands for Greenland, he writes, suggesting Washington is repeating Moscow’s alienating style.
- “What a month this has been since our last foreign policy chat--Venezuela, Greenland, now Iran. Reckless, maybe. Illegal, possibly. Powerful, undeniably.”
- “Trump has a unifying strategy… of creating a world of three superpower spheres of influence, with the United States effectively ‘owning’ the Western hemisphere (which in Trump’s new NSC org chart includes Greenland)…”
- “I think if we actually invaded Greenland, we would face significant European sanctions.”
- “There is an aggressive, ongoing attack against Russia's ‘shadow fleet,’ but it's being done in the shadows…”
- “Putin is blowing the best chance he'll get to achieve something he can call victory.”
- “I think the U.S. will continue to provide intel support for Ukraine… hard to imagine that Putin will dominate the country, as he still hopes.”
- “Ukraine keeps fighting a bloody stalemate, with ever more potent weapons like the Flamingo cruise missile, autonomous ground vehicles to hold back Russian forces in Donetsk and other developments.”
- “Yes, I think Trump resented Zelensky…”
- “The countries that are prepared to fight for their sovereignty—and are innovators in defense technology—are nations like Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Sweden, the Balts.”
- The NYT journalists write that Putin’s silence after Maduro’s capture and the seizure of a Russian‑flagged tanker reflects a new hierarchy of priorities: “He has one goal, which is to come out on top in Ukraine, and everything else is subordinated to that goal,” Hanna Notte remarks, adding that Moscow will not “give the Americans a bloody nose there and get on their wrong side” if it risks a rupture with Trump.
- Sonne, Hopkins and Kramer argue that Russia’s global clout has eroded badly since the 2022 invasion: the war has become “a dark hole that consumes Russia’s resources,” in Alexander Gabuev’s phrase, contributing to the loss of influence in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Moldova, the collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria, mass protests in Iran, and now U.S. “assertion of power over Venezuela, a top Russian partner in Latin America.”
- They note that while the Kremlin still pushes a world of “regions where great powers… should have privileged interests,” Putin is increasingly constrained: even as Trump openly talks of “run[ning] Venezuela” and hints at taking Greenland—moves that could “finish” NATO and be “incredible for the Russians,” as Notte says—Russia’s main response has been symbolic, such as launching an Oreshnik ballistic missile at western Ukraine to show, as Ukrainian analyst Mykola Davydiuk puts it, that “he is weak in geopolitics but he wants to emphasize that he is still here, in Ukraine.”
- Eveleth argues that norms aren’t what restrain Moscow: “Russia has never respected any supposed prohibition on targeting foreign leaders,” noting that in 2022 “Russian agents infiltrated Kyiv with orders to seize Zelenskyy and hold him until airborne forces landing in nearby Hostomel could reinforce them,” but that “neither objective was achieved,” so “having failed with the scalpel, Russia is now relying on brute force, not special operations, to break Ukraine.”
- On China, he writes that the PLA’s constraint is “a near-total absence of combat experience,” since its last major war was in 1979 and it “lacks a cadre of veterans with real-world combat experience to train the next generation in conducting complex special operations,” so while Beijing rehearses leadership decapitation and has even built a replica of Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building, “rehearsal is not experience.”
- Eveleth concludes that Russia and China won’t be “emboldened” by the Maduro raid because “they lack the capability to do so,” stressing that U.S. forces have conducted operations over Yemen, Iran, and Venezuela “without losing a single confirmed manned aircraft,” whereas “Russian forces routinely lose combat aircraft in Ukraine,” and the PLA “explicitly trains its pilots not to engage in aerial dogfights” with the United States—evidence that both powers must rely on “brute force to compensate for their tactical inferiority,” not Venezuela‑style precision raids.
“How China and Russia are using Maduro’s capture to sway U.S. discourse,” Naomi Nix, The Washington Post, 01.10.26.
- Nix reports that Russian influence operators linked to the covert network “Storm‑1516” are using a “throw spaghetti at the wall” strategy around Maduro’s capture, pushing “contradictory narratives” via MAGA‑branded and Ukraine‑war accounts on X—ranging from claims that “Democrats are absolutely FURIOUS” about Trump’s success to RT clips of rallies demanding Maduro’s release—in order to “dilute the entire information environment” and “create chaos that makes it difficult for the everyday person … to discern what are they seeing that might be true,” as Atlantic Council researcher Layla Mashkoor puts it.
- The piece notes that another Russian operation, the “Pravda Network,” has been reposting Kremlin talking points on websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets, while Storm‑1516 amplifies conspiracies that the Rothschilds orchestrated the raid or that Maduro’s capture is a false flag—part of a broader effort, Mashkoor says, to “obscure the fact that [Russia] was unable to protect its ally by painting the U.S. as the unreliable ally” after blows in Syria, Iran and now Venezuela.
- In parallel, China is using state media and AI‑driven memes to portray the United States as reckless and hegemonic: Beijing condemned the strike as violating international law, and inauthentic X accounts boosted a CCTV video featuring an AI‑generated parody song with a dancing bald eagle bragging about U.S. interventions in Iraq, Syria and Venezuela for oil—an example, Mashkoor says, of how Beijing is adapting to “a new era of how states … try to communicate to each other and to domestic and foreign audiences” by mimicking Trump‑era digital political culture.
“Putin’s and Xi’s sunk costs,” Meduza, 01.06.26.
- Meduza notes that Washington’s move “greatly increased the risks to Russia’s and China’s economic interests in the region,” pointing out that Russia’s state‑owned Roszarubezhneft now controls development rights to Venezuelan fields holding “around 2.3 billion barrels of oil,” assets that could be challenged if the U.S. forces open Venezuela’s oil sector to Western companies.
- For Moscow, the article argues, “the greatest risk posed by a U.S. return to Venezuela isn’t necessarily the loss of specific assets” but rather that “any sustained increase in Venezuelan output would further strain Russia’s federal budget, already destabilized by massive military spending,” by putting “downward pressure on global oil prices.”
- Meduza stresses that while “Trump’s Venezuela gamble threatens to upend years of painstaking work by Russia and China in a country that holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves,” a true revival of production would be slow and uncertain, and “for now, investors have responded calmly to events in Caracas… there has been no oil price crash,” leaving Putin exposed to longer‑term, rather than immediate, economic pain.
“In Maduro’s capture, Russia sees a great-power rival act with impunity,” Francesca Ebel and Catherine Belton, The Washington Post, 01.07.26.
- Ebel and Belton write that many in Moscow see Trump’s raid as confirmation that “a global order based on spheres of influence is emerging,” quoting a Russian academic close to diplomats: “The U.S. has ‘its own backyard, and Trump is returning to the Monroe Doctrine’ … ‘we will have even more basis to lay claim to our own sphere of influence close to our borders.’”
- At the same time, the operation exposes Russian weakness as a patron: despite pledging “full support” to Caracas, the Kremlin appeared “paralyzed” as U.S. commandos removed Maduro, prompting even pro‑Kremlin voices to complain; RT chief Margarita Simonyan quipped, “We will be envious, Comrade Beria,” while the “Two Majors” channel said, “Most likely, this is exactly how our ‘special military operation’ was meant to unfold: fast, dramatic and decisive. It’s hard to believe Gerasimov planned to be fighting for four years.”
- Russian elites also fear economic fallout, with oligarch Oleg Deripaska warning that if Americans “reach Venezuela’s oil fields… more than half of the world’s oil reserves will wind up under their control,” and that Washington’s plan is to keep “the price of our oil” below $50 a barrel, making it “difficult for our sacred state capitalism to maintain everything as it is”—even as the war in Ukraine and sanctions already strain Russia’s ability to support allies from Syria to Armenia.
“Trump's ‘Donroe Doctrine’ sets U.S. on great-power collision course,” Zachary Basu, Axios, 01.08.26.
- Basu writes that Trump is “moving to eject America's adversaries from the Western Hemisphere,” using the momentum of the Maduro raid to enforce a MAGA-era Monroe Doctrine: the “Donroe Doctrine” casts the hemisphere as “a U.S. sphere of influence that will not tolerate encroachment by rival great powers,” putting “adversaries like Russia, China and Iran—and even NATO ally Denmark, as it relates to control of Greenland… officially on notice.”
- He highlights a direct clash with Moscow as an early test: the Coast Guard’s seizure of a Russian‑flagged tanker allegedly violating Venezuela sanctions occurred while “Russian naval assets, including a submarine, were operating nearby,” prompting Russia to denounce the move as “outright piracy” and marking “one of the most direct U.S. confrontations with Russian forces in years.”
- Critics quoted in the piece warn that by normalizing spheres of influence, Washington “may lose the credibility to oppose Chinese moves around Taiwan and the South China Sea—or Russia's aggression in Ukraine and NATO's eastern flank,” while the White House insists Trump sees Greenland and the broader Arctic—where “Russia's expanding footprint” is growing—as “critical terrain in the great-power competition.”
“Greenland isn’t worth destroying NATO over,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 01.06.26.
- The board notes that after the Maduro raid “an emboldened Trump expressed a renewed interest in making a play for Greenland,” with his press secretary saying he’d prefer to buy it but that “utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option,” prompting seven European leaders to warn that “Greenland belongs to its people” and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to say that if the United States attacked Denmark, “then everything stops.”
- It argues that even hinting at using force against a NATO ally “has major costs,” stressing that “the purpose of NATO is to ensure members protect each other from invasion, and the alliance would end if its most powerful member invaded a weaker one,” and that such rhetoric will “undermine attempts to secure Denmark’s cooperation on other issues, including competition with China.”
- The editorial warns that “deliberately wrecking the alliance would embolden a revanchist Russia and delight China, as well as Iran and the successors to Maduro,” especially at a moment when European allies “have taken on a bigger financial burden in defending Ukraine and agreed to spend much more on their own militaries,” and urges Trump to drop the Greenland talk before too much damage is done to NATO.
- which “the U.S. tak[es] the lead on ceasefire monitoring and Europe tak[es] the lead on fielding a multinational ground force to deter future Russian aggression,” and concluding that while Putin “has not agreed to any of this—and likely never will,” Trump is now willing to “impose real costs on the Russian strongman over his intransigence,” with the tanker seizure as one such signal.
- Milne reports that senior Nordic diplomats with access to NATO intelligence flatly dispute Trump’s justification for seizing Greenland: one says “it is simply not true that the Chinese and Russians are there. I have seen the intelligence. There are no ships, no submarines,” while another calls the idea that waters around Greenland are “crawling” with Russian and Chinese vessels “just not true… they are in the Arctic, yes, but on the Russian side.”
- Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide echoes that assessment, telling NRK “it is not correct that there is a lot of activity from Russia or China around Greenland,” noting that Russian submarines are active near Norway and the Barents Sea but that “around Greenland there is very little,” contradicting Trump’s claim that the island is “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”
- The article adds that Chinese interest in Greenland has largely evaporated since Denmark blocked Beijing from financing airports in 2018 “under heavy pressure from the U.S.,” and that while Danish and Greenlandic officials are open to closer U.S. security cooperation in the GIUK gap, Greenland’s party leaders insist “we do not want to be Americans, we do not want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” rejecting Trump’s talk of acquisition.
- The piece explains that Norway is sharply tightening control over Svalbard—a visa‑free Arctic archipelago governed by the 1920 Svalbard Treaty—by stripping many foreign residents of voting rights, blocking land sales to foreign buyers, and asserting seabed claims over an area “the size of Germany,” moves that have triggered protests from Russia, Iceland and the EU, which argue Oslo’s sovereignty there has “important limitations.”
- Russian and Chinese activity are central concerns: Moscow still runs a shrinking coal‑mining colony at Barentsburg, but officials and analysts note efforts to “firm up” claims, including talk of renaming Svalbard the “Pomor Islands,” rhetoric that Russia has an obligation to protect Russian speakers there “as it does in Ukraine,” and the deployment of a Russian Orthodox priest seen as a Kremlin emissary; American officials, meanwhile, accuse Chinese scientists at the Yellow River Station of dual‑use military research using powerful radar, prompting Norway to bar Chinese students from the local university and demand removal of two granite guardian lions as incompatible with Norwegian sovereignty.
- The article portrays Svalbard as a strategic prize in an emerging Arctic great‑power contest: its location just 500 miles from the North Pole makes it one of the best places on earth to download data from polar‑orbiting satellites and monitor missile trajectories, while studies suggest vast copper, cobalt, lithium and rare‑earth deposits lie in its surrounding seabed—leading Norway’s foreign ministry to warn that Svalbard “has for too long been seen… as sort of a free‑for‑all,” and that Oslo must “make it a bit clearer” that “this is Norwegian sovereign territory” before it becomes a launchpad for hostile powers.
- “Russia and China are increasingly working together in the Arctic region, and their presence there will be a growing threat to NATO allies,” NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said.
- “They’re not studying the seals and the polar bears. They’re out there doing bathymetric surveys and trying to figure out how they can counter NATO capabilities on and under the sea,” the commander warned.
- “In the Arctic and the high north, we see a similar trend. Russian and Chinese vessels are conducting more and more joint patrols,” Grynkewich noted.
- “Chinese icebreakers and research vessels are in Arctic waters, and their research is not for peaceful purposes. It’s to gain a military advantage,” he said.
- “In short, the Arctic and Northern Europe, by extension, has become a front line for strategic competition,” Grynkewich told the Swedish national security conference.
“Trump Broke the World Order. Now What?,” New York Times Opinion package, 01.11.26.
- Adam Tooze argues that the emerging order will be shaped by a clash between energy “giants”: a U.S. drifting into oil‑obsessed, anti‑science “steampunk” politics while China, with a far larger fossil and industrial base, drives a real transition toward battery‑ and solar‑powered electro‑industry—yielding a “multipolar disorder lavishly powered with cheap energy.”
- Monica Duffy Toft contends that the world is sliding back into spheres of influence without “sphere discipline,” as the United States, Russia, and China all pursue domination without clear rules or limits, creating more flashpoints among nuclear powers, more proliferation, and less capacity to cooperate on global threats.
- Matias Spektor predicts a rough, improvisational order in which states of the “global south”—scarred by past hierarchies but highly agile—hedge, forum‑shop, and weaponize interdependence, constantly testing and renegotiating great‑power attempts to draw rigid lines.
- Rush Doshi warns that Trump’s “Fortress America” focus on dominating the Western Hemisphere misdiagnoses U.S. strength, cedes time and attention to China’s tech‑driven rise, and risks a “Chinese century” unless Washington refocuses on renewing domestic capabilities and building “allied scale” in Asia and Europe.
- Margaret MacMillan foresees a prolonged era of “radical uncertainty,” in which a fraying rules‑based order, volatile electorates, unchecked technologies, and revisionist leaders like Putin, Xi, and Trump produce shifting alliances, competing spheres, and multiple hot spots where wars can start by accident and prove hard to contain.
“Europe needs to think the unthinkable on NATO,” Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 01.12.26.
- “Some European members of NATO would probably try to keep the alliance going, even if America did invade Greenland, reasoning that they still need U.S. protection from Russia,” Gideon Rachman writes, highlighting how fear of Moscow could tempt Europeans to cling to a fatally damaged alliance.
- “The EU and the UK combined have the wealth and population numbers to deter Russia,” the author argues, suggesting that a post‑NATO European security pact could still be capable of balancing Russian power if Europeans were willing to spend more on defense.
- “The countries that signed a joint letter supporting Denmark—Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain—could form the basis of that alliance, along with the Nordics,” Rachman notes, implying a core grouping that would need to organize collective defense primarily with Russia in mind.
- “The risks for European countries of a divorce from the U.S. would clearly be very high,” he writes, warning that without the American security guarantee, Europeans would have to “move fast to establish a new security pact to replace NATO” in order to deter Russia.
“Europe should embrace the idea of going it alone,” Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, 01.10.26.
- Sandbu argues that a year of “supplication” to Trump—accepting “vastly unbalanced tariff changes,” U.S. interference in European regulation and elections, sanctions on EU officials, and “taking on the full financial burden of containing Russia’s imperial military ambitions”—has brought Europe real harm without clear evidence that pushing back would be worse, especially given that Washington now gives Ukraine “hardly any money or weapons” and has “lost significant leverage over Ukraine.”
- He contends that Europe’s real constraint is a “psychological anxiety” and “inferiority complex” that prevents leaders from contemplating going it alone on security, technology, and the economy, even though the combined economies of the EU, U.K., Switzerland, and Norway are “about 90 per cent that of the U.S.” and the union has powerful tools—from regulating U.S. digital giants to a “buy European” industrial policy and common spending—that could quickly build capacity in AI and arms production.
- On security, Sandbu questions why anyone would think a MAGA‑led U.S. is more likely to defend a “repeated pushover than one willing to fight back when challenged,” and suggests that even a “small number of additional European troops” in places like Greenland could change Washington’s calculus by raising the costs of any attempted grab, urging Europeans to channel the 1940 “Very well, alone” spirit and make clear what they are prepared to fight for rather than relying on ingratiation.
“What to Put Up Against Force? Three Models,” Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club, 01.09.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)
- Timofeev argues that the U.S. raid on Maduro, ship seizures, threats to take Greenland, and airstrikes revive a basic security question for most states: how to respond when a vastly stronger country is willing to use force with few restraints. Only a small group of great powers can “answer force with force,” he notes; for the rest, classic balance‑of‑power deterrence is “a luxury.”
- His first model is nuclear deterrence: in current conditions, he writes, “building up nuclear arsenals or becoming a nuclear power becomes a rational strategy for ensuring national security.” North Korea shows that even a poor, small state can do it if it concentrates resources. He suggests that both U.S. adversaries (notably Iran) and allies (South Korea, Japan, and potentially Germany) now have rational incentives to move toward nuclear status, while Washington will find it paradoxically harder to restrain allies than enemies.
- The second model is asymmetric resistance and internal hardening short of nuclear weapons. Timofeev points to Afghanistan as an example where, “for all its power, the U.S. could not defeat the resistance” and was forced to withdraw. Most countries lack Afghanistan’s geography and social conditions, but they can still improve security by investing in counterintelligence, protection of leaders and critical facilities, and information security, making interventions costly and uncertain.
- The third model is reliance on alliances and accommodation. During the Cold War, security could be obtained by joining clear U.S. or Soviet blocs; today, he says, alternative centers of power exist (China, Russia, possibly a future “European army”), but they are reluctant or unable to form tight anti‑U.S. alliances. At the opposite extreme, simply yielding to U.S. demands can work in the short term only if backed by substantial American economic support—and even then, loyalty “evaporates when resources shrink,” as shown by U.S. failures in Afghanistan and the Soviet experience in Eastern Europe.
“Venezuelan Transit: The Hybrid International Order and the Dismantling of Coalition Authoritarianism,” Vadim Grishin, Re:Russia, 01.08.26.
- Grishin writes that in Venezuela “we are dealing not with a personalist regime but with a ‘networked’, coalition‑based rentier authoritarianism,” where the system functions as “a coalition of heterogeneous actors bound together through exchanges of loyalty for access to rents, immunity from prosecution and security guarantees,” so that “the removal of Maduro in itself does not create sufficient incentives for the nodes of power and loyalty within the coalition to switch to the winners’ side,” but only “marks the beginning of bargaining and the reassembly of a multi‑actor coalition or, if this scenario fails, its fragmentation.”
- He stresses that the Venezuelan collapse is “of an internal, institutional nature,” arguing that “the claim that the Venezuelan crisis is an ‘imported product’ of external pressure does not withstand serious analysis,” and noting that over the past decade “Venezuela’s average GDP growth has been around –9% per year, a figure unprecedented in peacetime,” that GDP per capita in 2025 was “around $3,757, which is 3.4 times lower than in 2013,” and that “the country has effectively lost half a century of development.”
- On the U.S. operation, Grishin says that Maduro’s arrest shows “not the complete destruction of the international order, as some argue, but its further profound modification,” in which “norms are still formally preserved but are applied selectively and on a precedent basis” and concepts such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, sanctions and legitimacy “become elements of a new grammar of power based on exceptions and special regimes,” creating “a hybrid mechanism in which criminal law, sanctions logic and foreign policy pressure are combined into an instrument for dismantling a specific political system.”
- He notes that from Washington’s perspective, the raid is “perceived as a strategic task aimed at dismantling the ‘arc of instability’ Venezuela–Cuba–Nicaragua, in which Caracas serves as the resource core of anti‑American mobilization,” and also as a way to “bundle regional security with the task of optimizing the energy sphere,” given that Venezuelan heavy crude is “structurally compatible with a number of refineries in the southern United States” that have absorbed “more than $100 billion in investment.”
- Looking ahead, Grishin argues that any transition “will inevitably be non‑linear and mosaic‑like,” because under a “formally personalist but in reality ‘networked’ regime” the fall of the leader produces a “decapitation paradox”: “Formally, the ‘apex’ has been dismantled, but on the ground there is a risk of the diffusion of control and the strengthening of actors least interested in transparent institutional reconstruction,” so the most likely outcome is “fragmented stabilization”—“a ‘two‑speed Venezuela’” where “some parts of the country and the economy stabilize relatively, while others operate in a grey zone dominated by autonomous actors.”
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- “Trump Captivates the Globe,” Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 01.11.26.
- "The World Order Is Becoming More Cutthroat," Hal Brands, Bloomberg, 01.11.26.
- “‘The “International Law” Illusion’), WSJ Editors, The Wall Street Journal, 01.06.26.
- "The cost to Russia of losing Maduro," Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 01.10.26. Clues from Russian Views
- “Why Is the Kremlin Quiet on Venezuela?,” podcast with Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday, The National Interest, 01.07.26.
- “The U.S. capture of Maduro reveals Russia’s weakness,” John E. Herbst, Atlantic Council, 01.05.26
- “A New World Is Taking Shape, No Matter What Trump Does,” Sarang Shidore, The New York Times, 01.12.26.
- "Russia Fired a Hypersonic Warning Shot from Belarus. NATO Isn’t Listening," Brandon J. Weichert, The National Interest, 01.07.26.
- "Russia—USA—Ukraine—Europe: Diplomatic Results of the Year," Boris Bondarev, The Moscow Times, 01.06.26. Clues from Russian Views
- "There is nothing new under the sun," Vladislav Inozemtsev, The Moscow Times, 01.07.26. Clues from Russian Views
- “Your Regular Russian Saboteurs”, Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 01.05.26.
“Russia’s Threats Against Finland Are Disturbingly Familiar,” Edward Lucas, Foreign Policy, 01.09.26.
China-Russia: Allied or aligned?
“Is Russia Repositioning Itself Inside China’s Taiwan Strategy?” Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash, Hindu/ORF, 01.11.26. Clues from Indian Views.
- “Reports of Russian supplies of amphibious and airborne hardware, joint drills, and training for Chinese troops suggest Moscow may be quietly boosting China’s capacity for a Taiwan contingency.”
- “While Russia formally supports Beijing’s ‘One China’ position on Taiwan, the author argues that open Russian backing for an invasion remains unlikely.”
- “The deepening Russia‑China military‑technical partnership reflects a broader convergence on how the two powers want the East Asian security architecture to look.”
- “Since 2015, Moscow’s skepticism toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative has eased, with the BRI linked to the Eurasian Economic Union and underpinned by major arms sales like Su‑35s and S‑400s.”
- “Russia has sharply criticized the ‘Indo‑Pacific’ concept and U.S.-led alliances, casting them as efforts to contain China and justifying closer strategic alignment with Beijing, including missile‑warning cooperation.”
- “After declaring a ‘no‑limits’ partnership just before the Ukraine invasion, Russia and China have avoided the phrase but expanded trade, joint drills, and coordination with North Korea, reinforcing a de facto strategic triangle.”
- “The author notes that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could badly damage Russia’s relations with Japan, South Korea and ASEAN, so Moscow may actually prefer a U.S.-China grand bargain over Taiwan that boosts Beijing’s influence short of war.”
- “From India’s perspective, a tighter Russia‑China condominium in the Indo‑Pacific runs counter to its security interests, forcing New Delhi to balance its reliance on Russian defense ties with concern over China’s regional ambitions.”
Missile and air defense:
- “Venezuela’s advanced, Russian-made air defense systems were not even hooked up to radar when U.S. helicopters swooped in to snatch President Nicolás Maduro,” the NYT journalists report, noting that the vaunted S‑300 and Buk‑M2 systems left Venezuelan airspace “surprisingly unprotected.”
- “Russia shared in the failure,” the article states, since Russian trainers and technicians would have had to ensure the systems were fully operational, yet “Russia’s own war demands in Ukraine may have limited its ability to sustain those systems in Venezuela.”
- Two former American officials “argued that Russia may have quietly allowed the military equipment it sold Venezuela to fall into disrepair, to avoid greater conflict with Washington,” the reporters write, suggesting Moscow did not want its systems used to shoot down U.S. aircraft.
- “The ouster of Mr. Maduro and the Venezuelan government’s new, if uneasy, partnership with the United States is a blow to Russian influence in the region,” the authors note, adding that Moscow had spent 15 years rebuilding its Latin American presence through arms sales and alliances.
- “I think, coming out of this crisis, Russian prestige is going to be quite tarnished,” former U.S. diplomat Brian Naranjo says, arguing that Russia “didn’t show up when Venezuela needed it” and has been “revealed to be a paper tiger.”
Nuclear arms:
"Don’t Lose the New START Treaty. Use It," Editorial Board, Bloomberg, 01.08.26.
- New START, expiring Feb. 5, is the last major U.S.–Russia arms‑control accord, limiting each side to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 long‑range delivery systems; if it lapses, the final legal cap on Russia’s strategic arsenal disappears, the Bloomberg editorial board warns.
- Vladimir Putin suspended Russia’s participation in February 2023 (while pledging to observe the limits) and in September offered to extend the same ceilings to February 2027 as part of a broader “reset,” an offer the editorial board says should be treated skeptically but still engaged.
- The treaty doesn’t cover Russia’s large stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons or new “exotic” systems like the Poseidon nuclear torpedo, leaving major elements of Moscow’s arsenal outside existing arms‑control rules, the editorial board notes.
- Letting New START die could backfire on Washington because Russia is better positioned in the near term to upload more warheads and build additional missiles, potentially gaining a numerical edge while the U.S. struggles to modernize its submarines and ICBMs, the editors argue.
“On Nuclear Disarmament: Acta non Verba,” Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Today, Jan./Feb. 2026.
- Kimball warns that with New START expiring on Feb. 5, 2026, “this essential pillar of nuclear strategy is at risk,” noting the treaty capped each side at “no more than 1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 deployed long-range missiles and bombers,” and that after six years in office “President Donald Trump has failed to make any progress” on arms control while expanding modernization and even hinting at renewed nuclear testing.
- He highlights Putin’s September 2025 offer that “Russia is ready to continue to adhere to the central quantitative restrictions under the [New] START Treaty for one year after February 5, 2026 if the United States reciprocates,” and Trump’s initial reaction that it “sounds like a good idea to me,” but stresses that “the White House has not yet formally replied to the Kremlin offer,” nor moved seriously to engage China on risk‑reduction.
- If Trump does nothing, Kimball argues, “each side likely will begin increasing the size of its deployed nuclear arsenal for the first time in more than 35 years by uploading additional warheads on existing long-range missiles,” a move he calls pointless because “the United States already has a massive, devastating, and largely invulnerable nuclear force” and “more nuclear weapons will not make anyone safer,” but will instead “further destabilize the mutual balance of nuclear terror” and push China to accelerate its own buildup.
- By contrast, he says, if Trump and Putin “pledge to maintain mutual restraints on their strategic nuclear arsenals and resume bilateral talks on further nuclear reductions,” they could help uphold their Article VI NPT obligations and gain leverage to press China, France, and the U.K. to “freeze their forces at the current number of strategic launchers,” pointing out that Russia and the United States each have “fewer than 800” strategic launchers, China “about 550,” and France and the U.K. “about 100” combined.
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Counterterrorism:
- No significant developments.
Conflict in Syria:
- No significant developments.
Cyber security/AI:
“The Fog of AI,” Brett V. Benson and Brett J. Goldstein, Foreign Affairs, 01.06.26.
- Benson and Goldstein use the war in Ukraine as a key example of how AI is already transforming deterrence against Russia, noting that “AI tools allow the Ukrainian military to scan satellite and drone images to identify Russian troop and equipment movements, missile sites, and supply routes,” and to aggregate radar, sound, and radio data to create “a more complete picture of Russian force strength.”
- They warn that the same tools can be turned back against the United States and its allies—including in crises involving Russia—because adversaries can “poison the training data of models on which countries rely, thereby altering their output,” so that in a high‑stakes confrontation “such confusion could cause a country’s deterrence to fail, even when its underlying capabilities and resolve are strong.”
- The authors argue that AI‑driven information warfare by hostile states such as Russia and China could corrode domestic support needed to deter aggression, stressing that “operations that manipulate public sentiment can weaken that state’s signals of resolve” and that AI‑enabled influence and model‑poisoning attacks could leave even “a powerful country such as the United States” struggling to signal credible deterrence against “aggression by Moscow and Beijing.”
- “Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a decisive phase—one defined less by speculative breakthroughs than by the hard realities of governance, adoption, and strategic competition,” according to Chris McGuire.
- “For the United States and its partners, the challenge is no longer whether AI will reshape society but how and under whose rules,” the author wrote.
- “We could be entering ‘AI takeoff’—a period where capabilities advance so rapidly that they will have transformative economic and national security implications,” McGuire believes.
- “U.S. cloud providers are projected to spend $600 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026 to support the massive growth in AI demand,” the author noted.
- “The era of speculation is ending. 2026 will be the year we discover what it means to live alongside machines that can think,” McGuire wrote.
See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- “Cyberdefense Enters a Dangerous New Phase. Allies fear that Washington is retreating from leadership at the worst possible time,” Rishi Iyengar, FP, 01.05.26.
- “The Myth of the AI Race: Neither America Nor China Can Achieve True Tech Dominance,” Colin H. Kahl, Foreign Affairs, 01.12.26.
Energy exports:
“Trump’s Military Flex Gives Russia and China Black Eyes,” Tom O’Connor, Newsweek, 01.08.26.
- “I do see the seizure of these tankers (particularly the Marinera) as a significant change in the U.S. approach to sanctions enforcement,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project, and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, calling it “a real challenge to the approach Moscow has taken thus far to protect its shadow fleets by reflagging them.”
- O’Sullivan argued that targeting a Russia-flagged vessel directly undermines Moscow’s strategy of using reflagged “shadow fleet” tankers to evade oil sanctions and signals that Washington is now prepared to enforce sanctions with coercive measures at sea.
- “Russians, Chinese, and Europeans—with different interests of course—will wonder whether America’s muscular approach to disrupting illicit trade will extend beyond Venezuela’s oil to that of Russia,” O’Sullivan told Newsweek, suggesting allies and adversaries alike will have to reassess their exposure.
- According to O’Sullivan, the operation is not just about Venezuela but about setting a precedent: it raises the question of whether the U.S. might next move against other sanctioned flows, including Russian crude, using similar “muscular” interdiction tactics.
- By framing the tanker seizure as a “significant change” and a “real challenge” to Moscow’s methods, O’Sullivan believes the move could reshape expectations about how far the U.S. is willing to go to police sanctions—and force governments and companies to rethink their tolerance for involvement in gray-zone energy trade.
- The article describes how Russia, Iran and Venezuela now rely on a “shadow fleet” of aging tankers—more than 1,470 vessels by TankerTrackers.com’s count, or about 17% of the global tanker fleet according to S&P Global—to move sanctioned oil; Kpler estimates the fleet carried 3.7 billion barrels in 2025, roughly 6–7% of world crude flows, much of it Russian crude bound for China and India.
- A typical operation in the Russian network saw the Russia‑flagged Kapitan Kostichev transfer 700,000 barrels of crude ship‑to‑ship in the Sea of Japan to the Jun Tong (formerly Fair Seas/Tai Shan), which has cycled through flags from Malta, the Marshall Islands and Panama to Cameroon; such ships routinely turn off transponders, spoof GPS positions, change names and use “flags of convenience” from small states like Cameroon, Comoros and Sierra Leone to disguise Russian origin and ownership.
- The seizure of the Marinera (ex‑Bella 1)—which hastily reflagged as Russian, painted a crude tricolor on its hull, and was being escorted by a Russian submarine when U.S. Special Forces boarded it off Iceland—shows Washington’s new willingness to use force against Russia’s sanctions‑busting fleet; as sanctions lawyer Nathanael Kurcab notes, “we’re now having to do almost what sanctions were never supposed to require, which is using military assets to enforce the blockade of Venezuela,” highlighting both the scale of Moscow’s evasion effort and the limits of financial sanctions alone.
- “A growing number of sanctioned oil tankers are now sailing under the Russian flag,” according to the authors Costas Paris, Joe Wallace, and Benoit Faucon.
- “Operators hope that flying Russia’s flag will shield their tankers from U.S. interception,” the authors wrote.
- “Despite reflagging, U.S. forces have continued to seize tankers involved in sanctioned oil shipments,” the authors believe.
- “The Bella 1 tanker was captured by U.S. special-operations forces even after it displayed a Russian flag,” Paris, Wallace, and Faucon wrote.
- “Dozens of tankers tied to sanctioned oil trades have reflagged to Russia in recent months,” according to the authors.
- “These flag changes deepen tensions between Washington and Moscow over enforcement of oil sanctions,” the authors wrote.
- “The shadow fleet relies on tactics such as false coordinates and frequent name changes to disguise cargo origins,” the authors believe.
- “Russia’s growing role in the shadow fleet reflects its broader oil-export strategy under Western sanctions,” Paris, Wallace, and Faucon wrote.
- “The Bella 1 operation highlighted coordination between Venezuelan and Russian interests in sanctioned oil movements,” according to the authors.
- “Moscow’s willingness to send naval assets to shadow-fleet tankers risks new confrontations with the U.S. at sea,” the authors wrote.
“Trump seizes a tanker and loses patience with Putin,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 01.07.26.
- The board notes that the Marinera (ex‑Bella 1) reflagged as Russian “waiving all normal procedures” after repelling a U.S. Coast Guard boarding, and that Moscow then “deployed a submarine and other naval assets to meet the Marinera and escort it,” formally asking Washington to back off—only for the Trump administration to “ignore Moscow and take the ship anyway,” a move they say has “Cold War overtones.”
- They argue Trump’s tone toward Putin has shifted, highlighting his remark after the Maduro raid, “I’m not thrilled with Putin. He’s killing too many people,” and his rare public walk‑back of the supposed drone strike on Putin’s residence: “I don’t believe that strike happened, now that we’ve been able to check,” after initially saying he was “very angry about it,” suggesting irritation that Putin “li[ed] to him directly.”
- “OPEC members struggling to preserve their market share amid a sinking price for oil now have an unexpected new variable to contend with: President Trump’s move to dominate Venezuela’s oil supply,” according to the authors Georgi Kantchev and Summer Said.
- “Trump… is planning a sweeping initiative to rehabilitate Venezuela’s oil fields and market its output,” the authors wrote.
- “That would reshape the global oil map—putting the U.S. in charge of the output of one of the founding members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,” the authors believe.
- “Even a small near-term output increase—followed by a larger rise over the longer run—could exacerbate the global imbalance and push prices further down,” Kantchev and Said wrote.
- “Ships of the shadow fleet have been sailing the world’s oceans for years now and are credited with keeping the Russian economy afloat,” the authors write, noting that Venezuela has been “a prime source of the oil that they carry.”
- The U.S. has “a clear interest in enforcing sanctions, particularly in light of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine,” Rowlands and Tuckett argue, framing the Bella 1 / Marinera interdiction squarely in the context of tightening pressure on Moscow.
- “Bella 1 / Marinera has already sparked friction between Washington and Moscow at a time when peace was starting to look more likely in Ukraine,” the commentary notes, warning that the boarding of a purportedly Russian‑flagged tanker could complicate any diplomatic opening.
- “If the post-Cold War rules-based international order beloved by liberal democracies was already on life support, then this action may be seen by future historians as the moment the plug was pulled out of the wall,” the authors write, suggesting that ignoring Russia’s registry claim risks a precedent others—including Moscow—may later exploit.
- “Who else will be tempted to take similar measures in the knowledge that if the U.S. can get away with it, then so could they?” Rowlands and Tuckett ask, raising the prospect that Russia might one day justify its own high‑seas seizures by pointing to the U.S. treatment of Bella 1 / Marinera.
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- "A simple way to deprive Russia of the ability to export liquefied gas," Vladimir Slivyak, The Moscow Times, 01.09.26. Clues from Russian Views
Climate change:
- No significant developments.
U.S.-Russian economic ties:
- No significant developments.
U.S.-Russian relations in general:
- Troianovski writes that Trump’s December pledge to seek “strategic stability with Russia” has collided with his drive to “display American power,” exemplified by the seizure of a Russian‑flagged tanker that Moscow called “21st-century piracy,” and that these moves “create many more problems than he solves” for Putin, in the words of Kennan Institute director Michael Kimmage.
- The article notes that in Ukraine Trump has not delivered what the Kremlin wants: despite talks with Putin, he has “not forced Ukraine to capitulate to a Russian victory,” continues to share “valuable American intelligence with Kyiv,” and Europe’s resulting push to “invest in its own defense” is “a less pleasant development for Moscow” even if intra‑alliance discord is satisfying to watch.
- In Venezuela and beyond, Trump’s shows of force both validate and expose Putin’s position: the Maduro raid “validated Mr. Putin’s spheres‑of‑interest worldview but also highlighted Russia’s inability to aid its partners,” prompting U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to jeer that “those Russian air defenses didn’t quite work so well,” while Russia’s muted response to the tanker seizure—protesting it as illegal but avoiding concrete retaliation—“revealed the limits of its own power” as it seeks to keep the door open to a favorable Ukraine deal.
- Kent argues that Trump’s early‑2025 dismantling of USAID, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center “gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a gift,” noting Moscow was asked “nothing in return” while RT and Sputnik continued to spread propaganda “at scale,” and Russian officials crowed that “even the Americans” now saw USAID as “undesirable, indecent, and corrupt.”
- He details how the loss or shrinkage of U.S. soft‑power tools has hollowed out a pro‑democracy media ecosystem in Eastern Europe and Eurasia that had exposed Russian influence operations and corruption—USAID alone had committed $16.8 billion to the region in 2023—and says their disappearance will let Russia “hijack its audience,” expand RT and Sputnik, and use new initiatives such as the RT Academy and a Kremlin‑aligned “Global Fact‑Checking Network” to redefine journalism training and “fact‑checking” on its own terms.
- Kent concludes that “for the moment, Russia seems the clear winner” from Trump’s moves: pro‑democracy NGOs and independent outlets across the post‑Soviet space are left scrambling for smaller European grants and new fundraising, while Moscow can fill part of the vacuum with its estimated $1 billion in annual foreign aid and a messaging strategy that plays on “grievance and cynicism,” making Western information efforts sound like “preaching from somewhere outside their reality.”
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
II. Russia’s domestic policies
Domestic politics, economy and energy:
- Phillip Inman argues that hopes of collapsing Putin’s war effort via sanctions and lower oil prices “underestimate how far the Kremlin has rewired its economy,” noting that oil’s share of state revenue has already fallen from about 50% to 25% and the gap is being filled by higher taxes on households and firms.
- Despite near‑zero growth, almost 20% interest rates, new tax hikes, and a severe labor shortage (unemployment “almost 2%” as men are drafted and families emigrate), Inman writes that Russia’s macro position remains relatively solid, with public debt just under 20% of GDP and a projected budget deficit of about 3.5%—modest by international standards.
- He quotes sanctions expert Richard Connolly of RUSI saying, “We are not near the economy being a decisive factor in the Kremlin’s thinking about how to pursue the war,” adding that Putin has successfully framed the conflict as a struggle “with the west,” helping him sell the economic pain at home.
- Inman stresses that while Russia’s economy is being turned into a “junkyard” and can “and should” be hurt further by tougher energy and shipping sanctions, in the short term—“this year and perhaps next”—Moscow can still fund the war, helped by buyers like China and support from North Korea, so Europe must both tighten the trade “tourniquet” and “help Ukraine push back harder militarily.”
“The Russian economy has achieved ten record-breaking achievements,” Olga Samofalova, Vzglyad, 01.03.26 via Johnson's Russia List of the Stimson Center. Clues from Russian Views. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)
- The ruble strengthened by about 27% in 2025, with the dollar falling from 103.5 to 76 rubles, making it the best‑performing major currency and reflecting tighter monetary policy, more trade settled in rubles, a trade surplus, and capital controls.
- Inflation was pushed down to an expected 5.7–5.8% by year‑end 2025 (from 9.5% at end‑2024 and 10.3% in March 2025) through a record key rate hike to 21%, later eased to 16%, which the article presents as a successful anti‑inflation strategy.
- Despite sanctions and high rates, Russia’s GDP is said to have grown 9.7% over three years versus 3.1% in the eurozone, with 2025 growth at 1%, described as a deliberate cooling to preserve macroeconomic stability.
- Non‑oil and gas revenues rose by 3 trillion rubles in the first 10 months of 2025 while oil and gas revenues fell by 2 trillion, so hydrocarbons now provide only about 30% of federal budget income, which the article frames as proof Russia is no longer “just a gas station.”
- Thanks to a 71% rise in gold prices to about $4,500/oz, Russia’s gold reserves increased in value from $198.1 billion to $310.7 billion in 2025 (at a steady ~75 million ounces), validating its long‑running shift from dollars into bullion.
- Agriculture is highlighted as a pillar of strength, with a 2025 grain harvest expected at 137 million tons net and projected grain exports of 53–55 million tons (about 43 million tons of wheat), keeping Russia the world’s top wheat exporter despite adverse weather.
- For the first time, Russia became the number one exporter of sunflower oil, selling 5.2 million tons abroad in 2024/25 and overtaking Ukraine (4.7 million tons), amid broader growth in vegetable‑oil exports.
- The meat industry is described as having undergone a “historic transformation,” with meat and livestock exports projected to reach 1 million tons in 2025, turning Russia from a major meat importer into a net exporter selling to over 100 countries.
- The IT sector’s share of GDP surpassed 2.5% in 2025 (over 5.5 trillion rubles of output, given projected GDP of 221.8 trillion rubles), double its 2019 share, with officials forecasting a rise to 5% of GDP by 2030 under a push for “digital sovereignty.”
- Russia reportedly normalized sales of sanctioned LNG in the second half of 2025, with projects such as Arctic LNG‑2 and Portovaya LNG sending discounted cargoes (up to 40% below market) to a dedicated Chinese terminal, ensuring continued exports despite U.S. restrictions.
“Ruble’s World-Beating Rally Poses New Risk for Russian Economy,” Bloomberg News, 12.24.25.
- “Russia’s ruble has outpaced every major currency against the dollar [in 2025], a rally that caught policymakers off guard and threatens to undermine the nation’s wartime economy. The ruble has strengthened 45% since the start of the year and is trading near 78 per dollar, within touching distance of levels seen before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago. Over the past 12 months, the appreciation has been the strongest since at least 1994, the data show.”
- “A key driver has been a sharp drop in demand for foreign currency in Russia amid international sanctions, while exceptionally tight monetary policy has boosted the appeal of ruble assets for residents. The central bank’s key rate stayed at a record-high level from October last year until June, before policymakers cut by a cumulative 5%age points to 16%.”
- “The government had forecast an average exchange rate of 91.2 per dollar for this year. The resilience has persisted despite weaker oil prices and fresh U.S. and European sanctions, amplifying the drag on state finances by squeezing exporters’ revenues when converted into rubles. Support for the currency has also come from the Bank of Russia’s foreign-exchange sales, mirroring the Finance Ministry’s operations as it disposes of yuan and gold from the National Wellbeing Fund to replace lost energy revenues. Oil and gas budget proceeds plunged 22% in the first 11 months of the year, Finance Ministry data show.”
- “The ruble’s advance this year places it among the five best-performing global assets by spot return after platinum, silver, palladium and gold, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.”
- “For the central bank, a stronger ruble is welcome in the fight against inflation, and Governor Elvira Nabiullina has signaled that the disinflationary effect hasn’t yet been exhausted. But economists at the Moscow-based Stolypin Institute for the Economy of Growth warn that the appreciation is increasingly turning into a threat.”
- At the same time, the ruble’s strength is “amplifying the drag on state finances by squeezing exporters’ revenues when converted into rubles.” “A weaker ruble would benefit not only exporters and the budget, but “the entire economy,” Alexander Shokhin, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told local media outlet RBC on Tuesday.“
“Russia is running out of money,” Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, 01.07.26.
- Citing Bruegel’s Marek Dabrowski, Sandbu notes that hydrocarbon rent now supplies a much smaller share of Russia’s budget: in 2024 such taxes were “30.3% of the federal budget revenue and 15.6% of the consolidated budget,” but in the first three quarters of 2025 they had fallen to “24.5% and 12.2%, respectively,” forcing Moscow to hike the corporate income tax from 20% to 25%, raise VAT from 20% to 22% in 2026, and increase “land and real estate taxes, higher excises and higher tax rates for small businesses.”
- He stresses that Russia’s National Welfare Fund has been depleted, writing that “the liquid part of the Russian government’s savings fund… has fallen to a fraction of its pre-2022 high and would now hardly suffice to fund one year’s budget deficit,” leaving the Kremlin with “few available sources of money left” given rising deficits, blocked reserves, and “very little access to international credit.”
- Drawing on a PeaceRep study, Sandbu reports that alternative inflation measures suggest true price growth is “about twice the official rate,” implying that instead of more than 4% official real growth in 2023 and 2024 “the Russian economy shrank in real terms in both years, leaving it 1.5 per cent smaller last year than before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” and that “only about 20% of Russia’s population is better off in material terms because of the war,” with average real wages “down 5%” rather than showing the double‑digit gains in official statistics.
- “The year has started badly for Vladimir Putin,” Amy Knight writes, noting that after 1,418 days of war, “Russian troops captured less than 1% of Ukrainian territory” in 2025 and are advancing so slowly it could take another year just to reach the Donetsk border Russia is demanding.
- The U.S. raid in Caracas “further highlighted Russia’s military weakness,” Knight argues, quoting analyst Abbas Gallyamov that America’s “brilliant success” in Venezuela starkly contrasts with “the striking inefficiency of their Russian colleagues” and has demoralized both Russian elites and the public.
- “Another embarrassment for Mr. Putin came Wednesday, when the U.S. seized an oil tanker south of Iceland that was escorted by the Russian navy,” she notes, adding that pro‑war bloggers raged that “your ships are seized” while the Kremlin only “express[es] concern.”
- The costs of the war are biting hard at home: “Russia’s total military spending in 2025 has been estimated at 15.5 trillion rubles—in nominal terms, five times that of 2021,” Knight writes, while oil and gas revenue fell 34% year‑on‑year and a VAT hike from 20% to 22% is raising the cost of living for ordinary Russians.
- Public and elite patience is fraying: by December 2025, “only 25% favored a continuation of the conflict and 67% wanted peace negotiations to begin,” she reports, arguing that if Washington gives Ukraine the weapons it needs to blunt Russian drones and missiles, Putin’s “war‑weary colleagues—and oligarch cronies—might well pressure” him into a peace deal Kyiv could accept.
“The US Takes Maduro: Domestic Aspects” in “Trump Seizes Maduro; Ukraine Talks Advance; Moscow Hardens Line; Kozak’s Future Questioned; Business Voices Discontent,” Tatyana Stanovaya, Bulletin No. 1m R.Politik, 01.13.26.
- “The Maduro case has had a tangible domestic impact in Russia. It has fueled criticism and irritation over what is increasingly seen as Putin’s irresolute, indecisive conduct of the war in Ukraine,” Stanovaya writes.
- “For the ultra-patriotic camp, the contrast between Russia's lack of progress and the rapid American success has sharpened demands for bolder, faster and more demonstrative use of force against Ukraine, reinforcing calls for escalation rather than prolonged attrition,” she writes.
- “The episode has galvanized the Z-community, leading to pressure on the leadership to translate tactical military momentum into visible strategic outcomes. At the elite level, the situation has exposed growing discrepancies in threat perception and strategic priorities,” according to Stanovaya.
- “ Some see the Venezuelan episode as a tactical opening, arguing that the new global environment is creating room for new, more pragmatic approaches (with the US), even at the expense of Russia’s longer-term positions in Latin America. Others interpret these developments as part of a broader, multilateral strategic threat, in which American readiness to act unilaterally undermines Russia’s peripheral partnerships and narrows its geopolitical headroom well beyond Ukraine,” according to Stanovaya.
- She notes, “The sentiments expressed by different groups reflected both anxiety over growing chaos in geopolitical processes and resentment over the failure of Russia’s own military campaign on Ukraine.”
“A New Wave Of Xenophobia” in in “Trump Seizes Maduro; Ukraine Talks Advance; Moscow Hardens Line; Kozak’s Future Questioned; Business Voices Discontent,” Tatyana Stanovaya, Bulletin No. 1m R.Politik, 01.13.26.
- “Russia’s decision to welcome tens of thousands of Indian workers has triggered visible social tensions and sharpened the issue of social justice. More importantly, it has exposed a growing imbalance in decision-making,” according to Stanovaya.
- “With the security services, given the ultra-patriotic, conservative environment, having successfully pushed through a significant tightening of migration policy, the economic authorities have been forced to search for alternative ways to address mounting labor shortages. These competing interests have created room for individuals, such as Boris Titov (Putin’s special envoy), and the regional authorities to promote the recruitment of Indian workers,” Stanovaya explains.
- “ The initiative dovetails with Russia’s broader desire to optimize relations with India, a country with a labor surplus (there are an estimated 11–12 million new entrants to the workforce each year there and the Indian government has been looking for ways to offload these excess workers abroad through diplomatic agreements),” Stanovaya writes.
- “ As a result, the migration issue has acquired a new resonance: the security services remain cautious, while the economic authorities and regional administrations have effectively been compelled to allocate additional financial and administrative resources to sustain the project—ultimately calling its efficiency and sustainability into question,” according to Stanovaya.
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
- "The Price of Public Surveillance, or What We Understand About High Costs," Dmitry Nekrasov, The Moscow Times, 01.12.26. Clues from Russian Views
Defense and aerospace:
- The authors point out that Russia’s naval and missile procurement indicate planning for conflict beyond Ukraine.
- The authors note that Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg went from “a roughly $264 million loss” in 2023 to “a $41 million profit” in 2024 after “a flurry of state naval contracts,” while steel consumption “jumped by 98% at Baltic Shipyard in one year, and by 93% at Vyborg Shipyard since 2022,” alongside a $2.6 billion plan to modernize and consolidate five shipyards into a single cluster.
- Admiralty Shipyards “has continued serial production of nonnuclear submarines,” including the Project 636.3 Yakutsk (launched October 2024) and the Lada-class (Project 677) Kronstadt (entered service early 2024); these small diesel‑electric boats, optimized for the “North Sea, Baltic, or Mediterranean,” are designed to carry long‑range cruise missiles and electronic‑warfare systems.
- Citing Ukrainian intelligence, they write that Russia is producing “115–130 long-range systems per month,” meaning Kalibr sea‑launched cruise missiles, Kh‑101/102 air‑launched cruise missiles, and Iskander ballistic missiles—“a pace that, if sustained, builds stockpiles well beyond immediate war needs,” given Moscow’s preference to use “huge numbers of cheap Shahed-type drones” in day‑to‑day strikes on Ukraine.
- At the Votkinsk Machine‑Building Plant, which makes Iskanders and ICBM components, media investigations show “thousands of new machines and thousands of additional workers… brought on since 2022”; at the same time Russia is building a new facility at the Biysk Oleum Plant to produce “up to 6,000 metric tons of high explosives per year,” while munitions maker Sverdlova Plant has received “billions in state investment” to boost TNT output, and MKB Novator has shifted to 24/7 production of Kalibr and Iskander missiles.
- The piece notes that these weapons, plus the RS‑28 Sarmat heavy ICBM now in serial production at Krasnoyarsk, allow Russia to “hold targets across the continent at risk from multiple angles at once”: Kalibr‑armed ships already patrol the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean, and long‑range bombers converted to carry cruise missiles now fly regular routes over the Barents and Norwegian Seas, supported by forward‑deployed aircraft at the refurbished Severomorsk‑2 airfield on the Kola Peninsula.
- The authors conclude: “Even as their invasion of Ukraine continues, Russian forces are increasingly testing European defenses with drones, manned aircraft, and warships. These are not merely mistakes or simple reconnaissance operations—they’re an attempt to normalize intrusion. And behind each probe sits a retooled and increasingly efficient military-industrial machine: shipyards churning out ice-capable submarines, missile factories running three shifts to stockpile long-range strike weapons, and explosives plants expanding to strategic scale.”
- Vinograd and Jakes note that the Oreshnik is a nuclear‑capable intermediate‑range ballistic missile, a modified RS‑26 Rubezh that Putin has touted as “unstoppable”; it was first used in November 2024 against Dnipro and, according to Ukrainian officials, can carry “six warheads, each with a cluster of six sub‑munitions,” giving it a range of about 3,410 miles—enough to reach “most of Europe.”
- The latest strike saw an Oreshnik launched toward western Ukraine, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying the missile traveled “about 8,000 miles per hour” and struck roughly 40 miles from Poland; a Ukrainian assessment found that the warheads “contained no explosives,” leading Colonel Roman Kostenko to conclude the launch was largely “an attempt to send a message,” which European officials interpreted as “a warning to Europe” and the United States.
- Politically, the authors stress that the use of a “nuclear‑capable” system is “highly symbolic” in a war where Moscow has repeatedly brandished nuclear threats: Russia’s Defense Ministry framed the shot as retaliation for an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on a Putin residence—an attack U.S. intelligence says there is “no evidence” for—prompting Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiha to call the launch “a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the trans‑Atlantic community” and demand “strong responses to Russia’s reckless actions.”
- 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:
“Strategic Stability in Eurasia: What to Do After the End of Arms Control,” Dmitri Trenin, India’s World, 01.05.26.
Ukraine:
- “Experts on democracy and elections say it would be impossible to meet international standards for a free and fair election in wartime conditions,” the article notes, with millions of Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion and ongoing fighting—a context that shapes any future presidential bid by Valery Zaluzhny, now 52 and serving as ambassador to Britain since July 2024.
- Zelenskyy’s hints about elections come as he is “under pressure from President Donald Trump to accept a plan to halt the war that will likely force him to cede territory,” Adam writes, a settlement that would define the strategic landscape Zaluzhny would inherit if he ever became president.
- Many Ukrainians “expect Russia to attack again even if the war is halted,” political scientist Mykola Davydiuk told the Post, adding that in such a scenario voters want a leader like Zaluzhny “who understands how to prepare for—and deter—another war.”
- Polling underscores Zaluzhny’s potential: in a December IPSOS survey, 23% of respondents preferred Zaluzhny compared with 20% for Zelenskyy, while other figures trailed well behind (Petro Poroshenko 9%, Kyrylo Budanov 7%), highlighting the ex‑commander’s status as the leading alternative.
- Democracy experts quoted in the piece highlight the irony that Vladimir Putin, who “rewrote Russia’s constitution to eliminate term limits,” criticizes Zelenskyy for staying in office during wartime—even though it is Russia’s war that has postponed elections in which Zaluzhny could one day be a frontrunner.
- Deprez reports that after a serious corruption scandal toppled his powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy has launched a sweeping reshuffle “to make Ukraine more resilient,” centering on appointing former military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov as head of the presidential office—a move analyst Volodymyr Fesenko calls “a demonstration that Zelenskyy is restoring and maybe even strengthening his power” while also co‑opting a popular potential rival.
- The overhaul extends across the security and civilian apparatus: Zelenskyy removed widely liked SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk (whom many in politics and civil society see as being punished for not blocking the “Operation Midas” corruption probe), reassigned the border guard chief, and shuffled senior figures such as Denys Shmyhal (from defense to energy) and Mykhailo Fedorov (tapped to become defense minister), with Zelenskyy insisting, “I’ll do the rotations that I’ve decided to do.”
- The shake‑up serves multiple aims: shoring up a fragile parliamentary majority, “strengthening defense, while projecting the image of Zelenskyy as a national leader and protector of Ukraine,” and positioning the president for either “a fourth year of grinding war or the fraught prospect of a negotiated peace,” including any eventual postwar election in which Budanov or former commander Valeriy Zaluzhny might otherwise emerge as strong challengers.
- Skorkin writes that Zelenskyy’s choice of Kyrylo Budanov, “one of Ukraine’s most popular security officials,” as chief of staff will “help strengthen Zelenskyy’s authority” and “bring much-needed balance to Zelenskyy’s team,” since Budanov remained “one of the few independent power centers in Ukraine with access to the president” and “Yermak tried—and failed—to remove him several times.”
- He notes that Budanov, “unusually for a spymaster, often gives interviews,” has been involved in “a series of successful military operations” (from defending Kyiv against sabotage groups to planning the western Black Sea campaign), and, as head of the presidential administration, will now “replace Yermak as the lead peace negotiator with the White House,” where he is “a more acceptable negotiating partner for Washington than the high-handed Yermak.”
- At the same time, Skorkin warns that “unlike Yermak, who operated in the shadows, Budanov may have political ambitions,” citing polls that put him third in a hypothetical presidential race and even show him “beating the incumbent president if the two men entered a second-round run-off,” so appointing him to a “traditionally unpopular post” is unlikely to neutralize him; instead “the political risks for Zelenskyy are likely to increase from this appointment, not recede,” especially as political competition and talk of elections return to wartime Ukraine.
Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:
“Why Kazakhstan May Be Vladimir Putin’s Next Target,” Adam Dixon, The National Interest, 01.08.26.
- Dixon argues that even a “victorious” Russia in Ukraine will remain driven by “the potent logic of the tyrant:” “Any step back from my maximum demands is an impossible admission of weakness. If I cannot win this war, then I need another that I can,” and he warns that “weakened in Ukraine, Putin needs a more achievable target, and Kazakhstan could be that target.”
- He notes that many of Moscow’s stated and unstated justifications for invading Ukraine also apply to Kazakhstan: alleged “mistreatment” of the roughly 18% ethnic‑Russian minority, Soviet‑era “gifts” such as Baikonur, and vast resource wealth (“fossil fuels, uranium, precious metals, and the third-largest proven reserves of rare earths in the world”), while Russian rhetoric has “cast doubt on Kazakhstan’s legitimacy as a nation-state” and portrays Astana’s neutrality on the war as “disloyal.”
- Despite Kazakhstan’s “multi-vector” diplomacy and efforts to build the “Middle Corridor” away from Russian routes, Dixon stresses that “for the time being… Russia’s domination of the transportation system connecting Kazakhstan to the outside world remains overwhelming,” with 80% of its oil exports going through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to Novorossiysk and another 13% via Atyrau–Samara, and he concludes that in a world of resurgent spheres of influence “Kazakhstan is the single most attractive target for any follow-on or alternative war that Putin may decide is a personal necessity.”
“I May Be Free, but the Belarusian People Are Not,” Ales Bialiatski, The New York Times, 01.07.26.
- Bialiatski stresses that Belarus must not be written off as a Russian satellite, arguing it is “a mistake to assume that Belarus always sides with Russia,” and noting that “notwithstanding Mr. Lukashenko’s alignment with President Vladimir Putin, some polls indicate that most Belarusians oppose sending troops to fight in Russia’s war on Ukraine.”
- He urges the world to “always distinguish between the Belarusian people and the Belarusian regime,” saying the population is “being held hostage by Mr. Lukashenko,” whose “so‑called victory” in 2020 was denounced as neither free nor fair, and whose security forces carried out “violent repression of peaceful protests,” arbitrary imprisonment, and abuses that U.N. investigators say “could amount to crimes against humanity.”
- Bialiatski calls on democracies to step up support for Belarusian civil society against both Minsk and Moscow, arguing that “large segments of the Belarusian population unequivocally reject” Lukashenko’s dictatorship, that “many pro‑democracy activists work in exile” and must be protected and funded, and that “we must find new ways to build solidarity across borders because of the scale of the challenges facing the Belarusian people.”
See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
Endnotes
- Mark Bennetts of The Times of London notes that that Putin’s full-scale invasion has now lasted 1,419 days, longer than the Soviet Union’s 1,418 day war against Nazi Germany, yet Russian forces remain bogged down in Donetsk “about 30 miles” from their 2022 start lines.
- If Trump did choose Greenland and invaded the island, European countries could “divorce” from the U.S. and would then need to move quickly to establish a new security pact to replace NATO, according to Gideon Rachman of FT.
- If the other two players are the rest of the P5, then this would be a step toward accommodating Russia’s call to include France and Germany in a multilateral nuclear agreement that would involve China.
- The success of the U.S. operation also raises questions about why Russian-supplied air defense and other systems “fizzled in Venezuela,” according to NYT.
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 formatting and hyperlinking items in this product.
*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute a RM editorial policy.
Slider photo: In this photo, provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, an MRLS BM-21 "Grad" is prepared to fire towards Russian army positions in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
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