5 Ideas to Explore

1. U.S. officials said the past two days of U.S.-Russia-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi were “productive,” with Donald Trump’s envoys shuttling between Russian and Ukrainian delegations to address all major issues, from Russian territorial demands in Donbas to the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and mutual de-escalation steps, according to Axios. U.S. negotiators said the trilateral meeting was a “critical step” toward the next phase of diplomacy, claiming they are “very close” to arranging a first Putin-Zelenskyy encounter if the next round of talks, provisionally set for Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi, makes further progress narrowing gaps over eastern Ukrainian territory and other unresolved issues, according to Axios. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also described the Abu Dhabi talks as constructive, but the dispute over control of land remained unresolved. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov also called the talks “constructive,” but was mum on a possible Putin-Zelenskyy meeting. “[F]or Vladimir Putin, conquering the whole of the Donbas still seems to be a minimum requirement,” according to Gideon Rachman.
2. At Davos, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy framed the current diplomacy as the “last mile” toward a possible peace deal, stressing that his team and the U.S. side had worked together so intensively that he joked they should be given American passports. He called his latest meeting with President Trump “positive,” but emphasized that any dialogue is “not simple” because he must firmly defend Ukraine’s interests. Zelenskyy argued that U.S. involvement is indispensable for future security guarantees, noting that Europe “has to be stronger, but… will need time,” while America “is very strong today.”
3. Drone saturation has erased Ukraine’s traditional winter lull, making movement perilous yet still possible, Cassandra Vinograd and Oleksandr Chubko write in The New York Times. “Earlier in the conflict, which began in February 2022, tanks and other heavy armor dominated the battlefield... Now, as omnipresent drones watch and attack from the skies, heavy armor struggles to move in any season,” they write. Russian forces “use overcast weather, fog and heavy snow as cover for infiltration attempts,” the authors note, with analyst Rob Lee saying “a higher percentage will make it past the front line when the weather’s bad.” Bare trees, easily visible footprints in the snow and lower temperatures that make thermal cameras more effective mean that “any movement [is] dangerous,” according to NYT.
4. The 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy casts Russia as dangerous yet structurally outmatched by Europe, using that assessment to justify a sharp rebalancing of U.S. roles and burdens. Moscow is described as a “persistent but manageable threat,” with ample military‑industrial depth and political resolve for a long war in Ukraine, but “in no position” to seek European hegemony. In contrast, “European NATO dwarfs Russia” in population, GDP and latent military power, according to the document. From this asymmetry, the strategy derives a political conclusion: Europe should “take primary responsibility” for conventional defense and for “supporting Ukraine’s defense,” while the United States provides “critical but more limited” backing. The document frames Washington’s role in NATO less as guarantor of Europe’s security than as enforcer of allied effort: calibrating U.S. posture downward, in contrast to Joe Biden’s NDS-2022. The new document insists that war in Ukraine “must end,” and making sustained peace contingent on European leadership, resources and political will. “For Russia, [NDS-2026’s] narrative is unambiguously more attractive and comfortable than the one that was characteristic of the Biden administration,” according to Moscow-based Russian researcher Prokhor Tebin. “Russia is described as a threat not to the United States and not even to NATO as a whole, but to ‘NATO’s eastern member states,’” and this threat is “persistent but manageable,” Tebin writes in his analysis of differences between NDS-2022 and NDS-2026.
5. “By demanding that Denmark cede the Arctic island [Greenland] to the United States, U.S. President Donald Trump could produce an outcome that Russia has pursued for eighty years to no avail—a rupture in the Atlantic community and the demise of NATO,” Thomas Graham writes in CFR, noting that even after a temporary “framework” deal, “European debate over the credibility of the U.S. commitment to the continent’s defense will not abate.” As the Greenland crisis unfolded, Graham notes that Putin “obeyed one cardinal rule of competition and conflict: Never interfere with the enemy while he is destroying himself.” In an interview with Kommersant, Graham argued that, “without Donald Trump, there would not be any serious consultations aimed at resolving the [Ukraine] conflict at all.” Like Graham, Rajan Menon also discusses the implication of NATO’s demise. Rather than seeing NATO’s erosion as a catastrophe, however, Menon contends that Europe “possesses both the motive and the means to protect itself” and should seize the moment to shed its “supine attitude” and build military autonomy with Britain and Canada.

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Six lessons for Russia from the Iran protests," Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 01.24.26.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

"No power, -18C and Russian attacks — Kyiv faces ‘catastrophe,’" Maxim Tucker, The Times, 01.21.26.

• Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko warns that President Vladimir Putin is driving the capital toward a “humanitarian catastrophe” after massive Russian strikes cut power, heating, and water to roughly half the city amid a brutal cold snap. “The situation is critical with basic services — heating, water, electricity. Right now, 5,600 apartment buildings are without heating,” he told The Times, urging residents to “leave if they can” as temperatures fall to –18°C and some 600,000 people have already fled this month. Authorities have even had to drain the city’s centralized heating and water system to prevent pipes from bursting as frozen water expands.
• The latest wave of attacks saw “some 470 drones, 47 cruise missiles and one ballistic missile” launched at Ukraine, reversing repairs made after an earlier January 9 strike that also hit Kyiv’s thermal power plant; in both cases, Klitschko says, Russian ballistic missiles targeted the same facility. Across the capital, the humanitarian knock‑on effects are stark: homes so cold that toilet bowls are frozen, icicles forming on window sills, schools and kindergartens closed until at least February 1 for lack of heat and power, and doctors finishing shifts “without electricity, without computers, just examining patients in the daylight” before lining up at special “trains of invulnerability” to charge batteries for electric boilers at home.
• The crisis has also deepened political strains. Zelensky has suggested Kyiv was less prepared than front‑line Kharkiv, while Klitschko calls it “not smart” for the president to fuel internal conflict when “electricity generation and air defense is the central government's responsibility” and says his requests for a meeting have been ignored. Experts warn that if water and sewage are not quickly restored there is a risk of “complete collapse,” yet many Kyivans respond with defiance—restaurants serving candlelit dinners off gas cookers, and residents of all‑electric new builds braving the snow for communal barbecues and street parties, one organizer saying, “We want a little distraction, and we want to show that Ukrainian spirit is unbreakable.”

"Freezing and in the dark, Kyiv residents are stranded in tower blocks as Russia targets power system," Derek Gatopoulos, Vasilisa Stepanenko, and Volodymyr Yurchuk (AP), The Washington Post, 01.24.26.

• The piece describes how “long daily blackouts caused by Russia’s bombardment of power plants and transmission lines have made working elevators a luxury” in Kyiv, leaving residents of Soviet‑era tower blocks “without power for most of the day.” One resident says, “When there’s no light and heat for seventeen and a half hours, you have to come up with something,” as she survives in a 19th‑floor flat using candles under stacked bricks as a makeshift heater.
• From upper floors, Kyivans watch as “flashes of explosions are visible as Russia continues its campaign against Ukraine’s energy system.” At one repeatedly hit coal plant, supervisor Yuriy walks through “charred machinery, collapsed roofs and control panels melted into useless lumps” and says, “After missile and drone attacks, the consequences are terrible — large‑scale… Our energy equipment has been destroyed. It is expensive. Right now, we’re restoring what we can.”
• With “too many power stations and transmission lines… hit to meet demand,” operators impose rolling blackouts even as Ukraine imports power from Europe, and the World Bank, EU, and U.N. estimate “more than $20 billion in direct war damage” to the energy sector. “I’m tired, really tired,” admits one pensioner trapped in a high‑rise, but adds, “the important thing, as all Ukrainians say now, is that we will endure anything until the war ends.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Here in One Kyiv Apartment Building, They Are Freezing—but Not Giving Up," Anastasiia Malenko, The Wall Street Journal, 01.25.26.
  • “Dark Winter,” Pauline Foret, Kennan Institute, 01.24.26.

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

"A Winter Lull in the Fighting? Not in the Age of Drone Warfare," Cassandra Vinograd and Oleksandr Chubko, The New York Times, 01.26.26.

• “Earlier in the conflict, which began in February 2022, tanks and other heavy armor dominated the battlefield... Now, as omnipresent drones watch and attack from the skies, heavy armor struggles to move in any season. Tactics have changed: Russia sends small groups of soldiers on motorcycles or on foot to try to infiltrate Ukrainian lines, hoping they are less noticeable to drones,” according to Vinograd and Chubko.
• Russian forces “use overcast weather, fog and heavy snow as cover for infiltration attempts,” with analyst Rob Lee saying “a higher percentage will make it past the front line when the weather’s bad.” Bare trees, easily visible footprints in the snow, and lower temperatures that make thermal cameras more effective mean that “any movement [is] dangerous,” but heavy snowfall can suddenly “wipe out visibility” for drones and open brief windows for Russian advances.
• On the Ukrainian side, a drone sergeant using the call sign Sol said bluntly, “Weather and tech are not friends,” explaining that extreme cold degrades battery life and that “snow was affecting his teams ‘a lot,’” even freezing drone propellers. To cope, crews have tried everything from warming drones over gas stoves and using costly de-icing sprays to rubbing “simple meat fat on the propellers” to keep them turning in temperatures that have recently plunged to around 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The Kremlin is weaponizing winter," Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 01.20.26.

• The Post describes Russia’s latest wave of strikes—“more than 300” drones plus cruise and ballistic missiles—as a deliberate attempt to “freeze its smaller neighbor into submission.” Kyiv’s mayor reports that over 5,600 high‑rise buildings are without heat and roughly half the city lacks water, with temperatures as low as 4°F and, as Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal put it, “not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been attacked.”
• Ukraine’s generation capacity is down to 11 gigawatts against a need of 18, Zelensky warns, with limited import capacity (about 2.3 GW) from Europe and emergency repairs underway. The editorial notes that Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted many missiles, but at a cost—Zelensky said they spent €80 million in munitions in one night and that several systems have “run out of missiles,” forcing a delegation to plead for more in a meeting with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Miami.
• The board stresses that “Putin is not ready for peace,” and rejects Trump’s claim that Zelensky is the obstacle because he won’t cede unconquered territory. Instead, they see Putin shifting tactics: with the front line largely static despite huge Russian losses, he has “decided to terrorize Ukraine’s civilian population instead,” betting that blackouts and cold will break morale.
• Ukraine, the WP editors argue, is responding with both resilience and ruthlessness. New Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, credited with Ukraine’s large‑scale drone strategy, has set a goal of killing 50,000 Russian soldiers a month—“Last month, 35,000 were killed,” he said—on the theory that only massive attrition will change Moscow’s calculus. But without stronger and faster Western support, the Post warns, Ukraine is forced to fight this brutal, grinding war while “Europe frets over Greenland” and “the American president seems unwilling to learn” that Putin only respects strength.

"Ukraine’s new air-defense whiz must stop a redoubled blitz," The Economist, 01.22.26.

• Russian air assaults are “wrecking the damaged energy grid just as temperatures plunge to -20°C,” leaving Kyiv “a few steps away from a disaster.” An overnight strike on January 19 “left 1m users without electricity” and thousands of homes without central heating, as Russia “has found a strategy that works in ultra-cold weather” by targeting substations to “detach the capital from the national grid.”
• Ukraine now faces “too little power, too few air-defense missiles, unusually low temperatures and increasingly accurate Russian bombardment.” Shahed drones, “now produced by the hundreds daily,” are Russia’s main weapon, and the interception rate has fallen from 98 percent to 80 percent over the past year as “a missile punches through a target’s roof and dozens of drones follow into the breach.”
• In response, President Volodymyr Zelensky postponed his Davos trip and overhauled air-defense command, appointing Colonel Pavlo “Lazar” Yelizarov—a front-line drone commander whose unit is credited with destroying “more than $12bn-worth of Russian equipment”—as assistant air-defense chief. Yelizarov told The Economist his goal has been “to create the equivalent of McDonalds, a standardized system,” and Ukrainians “must hope his system can stop Russian drones before Kyiv freezes.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "How ‘Drone Kill Zones’ Could Save Ukraine," Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 01.25.26.
  • "Young Africans Are Being Lured Into Russia’s War Machine," Nosmot Gbadamosi, Foreign Policy, 01.21.26.

Military aid to Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

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

“Reliable Inferiority: What Russia's experience of living under sanctions teaches us,” Kristine Baghdasaryan, Re: Russia, 01.23.26.

• Baghdasaryan argues that since 2022, Russia has created “a new parallel foreign trade infrastructure integrated into its economic model,” in which initially “temporary loopholes” have become “a stable mechanism under de facto state protection” and part of a state‑backed “survival infrastructure.” This system relies on “grey” schemes—offshore intermediaries, barter, mirror ruble‑clearing, and crypto—that keep exports and imports flowing despite sanctions but “make economic development both extremely difficult and dependent on the political will of external players.”
• She notes that by late 2023 “the yuan already accounted for 35–37% of settlements in both exports and imports” and the ruble for a similar share, with hard currencies down to around 20 percent, yet stresses that the ruble’s rise “did not reflect an increase in its international appeal,” but rather mirror netting schemes whereby “trade participants learned to operate without direct cross-border transfers in reserve currencies, using them only as ‘units of account’.” At the same time, the “volume of cryptoasset flows estimated to be attributable to Russians” rose by 51 percent to 7.3 trillion rubles (about $75 billion), and between July 2024 and June 2025 “the Russian crypto transfer market reached $376 billion, surpassing the previous European leader, the UK.”
• Strategically, she warns that the parallel system “does not compensate for Russia’s disconnection from global financial markets,” locks Moscow into “growing dependence on a narrow set of partners, above all China,” and erodes transparency by expanding “a significant ‘grey’ zone in which government-endorsed schemes intersect with money laundering, embezzlement, and illicit arms or technology trading.” The formalization of these “grey” schemes, she concludes, is “a double-edged sword”: it eases sanctions pain in the short term but entrenches “reliable inferiority,” where Russia can muddle through but at the cost of long‑term competitiveness, investment, and financial resilience.
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Under the sanctions press: how Western pressure on Serbia will affect energy security and Russian-Serbian relations," Milan Lazović, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), 01.26.26. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Ukraine-related negotiations:¹

"U.S.-Russia-Ukraine trilateral talks to end war made progress, U.S. officials say," Barak Ravid, Axios, 01.24.26.

• U.S. officials said the Abu Dhabi trilateral talks were “productive” and that Trump’s advisers “felt they managed to go on a path that will allow them to narrow the gaps on the key sticking point — the territorial control in eastern Ukraine.” One official stressed that “both Putin and Zelensky agreed to send their negotiators. It shows they believe progress is being made.”
• Over two days, “all the issues were discussed,” including “the Russian territorial demands in Donbas, the dispute over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and what kind of de-escalation steps will be needed from both sides to make it clear that the war is over and will not resume.” “We haven’t left any issues out of the discussion, and we didn’t have to prod anybody,” one U.S. official said, adding that “we saw a lot of respect in the room because they were really looking for solutions.”

"Talks with US and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi were constructive but major challenges remain, Kremlin says," Associated Press, The Washington Post, 01.26.26.

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said talks between Russian, Ukrainian, and U.S. envoys in Abu Dhabi were “constructive” and that “another round is planned for next week,” but cautioned that “there is still serious work ahead” and “no major breakthrough so far.” He called “the very fact that these contacts have begun in a constructive way” positive, even as Moscow and Kyiv “differ deeply over what an agreement should look like.”
• The article notes that Russian President Vladimir Putin “apparently hasn’t budged from his public demands” despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s deadlines and sanctions threats, while German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul criticized Moscow’s “stubborn insistence on the decisive territorial issue” and warned that “if there is no agility here, I am afraid that the negotiations may take a long time or will not be successful now.”
• On the battlefield, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that air defenses “downed 40 Ukrainian drones late Sunday and early Monday, including 34 over the Krasnodar region and four over the Sea of Azov,” after strikes that Ukraine’s general staff said targeted “an oil refinery in the Krasnodar region” that “supplied the Russian military.” At the same time, Ukraine reported that Russian forces “launched 138 drones at Ukraine overnight, 110 of which were shot down or suppressed,” with 21 hitting targets in 11 locations.

“Special address by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, delivered at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos,” 01.23.26.

• Zelenskyy said: “I saw my team and they spoke with the American team and before my meeting with President Trump, my team spent a lot of time with the Americans, and even I wanted to ask President Trump to give them American passports, because I think that they, yes, they really spend a lot of time. ... But being honest, I think that the meeting is very important. We need in our boat, I hope this is the boat the ship to peace and we need very much to have the United States. For the future, for security guarantees, we understand that Europe has to be stronger, but Europe will need time. And today, America is very strong, and I think that our teams worked well and I think this is like the last last mile, which is very difficult and during any dialogue with any president, I have to defend the interests of my country, that's why the dialogue is, maybe it's not simple, but it was today, it was positive.”
• “Just last year, here in Davos, I ended my speech with the words, Europe needs to know how to defend itself. A year has passed and nothing has changed. We are still in a situation where I must say the same words.”
• “If you send 30 or 40 soldiers to Greenland, what is that for? What message does it send? What’s the message to Putin? To China? And even more importantly, what message does it send to Denmark?” Zelenskyy asked. “You either declare that European bases will protect the region from Russia and China .... or you risk not being taken seriously, because 30 or 40 soldiers will not protect anything.”
• “When united, we are truly invincible, and Europe can and must be a global force, not one that reacts late,” he said.
• “Putin is not on trial, and this is the biggest war in Europe since World War Two, and the man who started it is not only free, he is still fighting for his frozen money in Europe.
• “Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide, especially when America’s focus shifts elsewhere, Europe looks lost trying to convince the U.S. president to change,he said.
• On Russian aggression and sanctions evasion, Zelenskyy said: “This is the face of Russia. And really, this is the face of this war,” stressing that Moscow “tries to freeze Ukrainians… to death at minus 20 degrees Celsius,” yet “couldn’t build any ballistic or cruise missiles without critical components from other countries… and it’s not just China. Russia gets components from companies in Europe, the United States and Taiwan.”
• He condemned Europe’s reluctance to act decisively on frozen Russian assets and oil, saying “it’s Putin who’s trying to decide how the frozen Russian assets should be used, not those who have the power to punish him for this war,” and asking bluntly: “Why can President Trump stop tankers from the shadow fleet and seize oil? But Europe doesn’t… that oil funds the war against Ukraine.”
• Zelenskyy emphasized the scale of Russian losses and Moscow’s disregard for its own soldiers: “Russian losses are the biggest that they have ever had… the real statistic is 35,000 killed per month, 35,000 soldiers. Last year, these months, it was about 14,000,” adding that Russia mobilizes “40–43,000 per month” and that “their army stopped increasing… because of our drones technologies and our operators of drones.” 

"In Ukraine, it’s all about the land," Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 01.26.26.

• Rachman writes that “Vladimir Putin continues to insist that the minimum that Russia can accept is possession of the whole of the Donbas,” and notes there is “no indication Russia is yet prepared to accept western security guarantees that see European troops stationed on Ukrainian soil.”
• Citing Western security officials, he reports that “the Russian military sustained 30,000 casualties (killed and wounded) in December alone — with the Ukrainians losing just one soldier for every 25 Russian casualties,” attributing this to “Ukraine’s increasing skill in drone warfare and to Russia’s ‘meat-grinder’ assaults — which pay little regard to the loss of human life.”
• Despite “staggering losses” and rising economic pressures—“the government’s financial reserves dwindling, growth faltering and inflation rising”—Rachman says “western officials see no sign yet of a change of heart in the Kremlin,” and concludes that “for Vladimir Putin, conquering the whole of the Donbas still seems to be a minimum requirement.”

"Ukraine’s Answer Might Be Kosovo," Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy, 01.26.26.

• Hockenos notes that the original pro‑Russian 28‑point plan “calls for international recognition of all currently Russian-held territory as well as marking the entirety of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts as Russian,” an ultimatum that “positions Russia perfectly to eventually re-start its campaign in a better position.” By contrast, he writes, Ukraine’s 20‑point counterproposal “refuses to recognize any of the Russian gains in eastern Ukraine or Crimea as legal” and insists that any demilitarized and free‑trade zone in Donetsk “also wants Russian-held territory of equivalent size to be included.”
• Applying Edward P. Joseph’s Kosovo template, Hockenos suggests a deal under which “Russian troops would remain where they now stand” while an international force replaces Ukrainian troops in western Donbas and “all questions of sovereignty would be set aside until referendums in all of eastern Ukraine and Crimea eventually determine sovereignty.” For Moscow, he argues, such a compromise would “cease the war that is draining its nation’s blood and treasure” and offer Putin “a face-saving way… to convince Russians that the country’s tremendous expenditures were worth it,” especially “if sanctions relief were part of the package.”
• Critics quoted in the piece doubt that Russia would accept or honor such an arrangement. Historian Ulf Brunnbauer warns that “Russia is under no such pressure” as Serbia was in 1999 and that “Russia… has thus far never negotiated in good faith, breaking agreements one after another,” so “the practicability of this proposal would depend on the presence of a credible military force that deters Russia. I do not really see that.” Political scientist Peter Harris adds that from Kyiv’s perspective, agreeing to referendums would mean “a concession that these are disputed territories—and that Russia has a [legitimate] claim on them,” effectively creating “a legal process by which unlawful conquests… can be made lawful.”

"Groundhog Year or Double Game? Some conclusions on Trump's Ukrainian peacemaking efforts," Kirill Rogov, Re:Russia, 01.20.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Rogov argues that Trump’s first year back in office has unfolded as a “Groundhog Day” of six repetitive negotiation cycles: each begins with renewed optimism after a Putin call or Steve Witkoff visit, proceeds through pressure on Kyiv and talks with Moscow, then crashes when the Kremlin insists on maximalist terms—new territorial cessions, a de facto NATO veto, and limits on Ukraine’s armed forces—before Trump vents, threatens sanctions, and then resets when the next contact with Putin occurs.
• A central factual outcome, he contends, is that Trump’s immediate halt of U.S. military aid “did not bring peace closer, but rather acted as an incentive for continued military operations, shifting the balance of power in Moscow’s favor.” After failing to win a three‑year war of attrition, Putin was effectively “given a year” to recover and press offensives just as Ukraine’s resources were undercut and Washington began urging concessions from Kyiv.
• From Ukraine’s perspective, Rogov says, Putin and Trump function as a “good cop, bad cop” pair: Trump urges Zelensky to accept Russian demands, dangling limited economic sweeteners such as rare‑metals deals, while Putin escalates threats and battlefield pressure. The repeated “breakthrough” theatrics now look less like serious peacemaking and more like a “performative process” that creates political cover while granting Moscow “operational space and time” to grind down Ukrainian defenses.
• Rogov argues that Russia and the U.S. have de facto observed a “non‑aggression pact” toward each other’s main campaigns. While Putin pushes in Donbas and wages hybrid war on Europe, Trump has toppled Maduro, struck Iran, and pursued Greenland—areas “where Putin could theoretically have obstructed him, but in reality did not,” just as Trump has not materially blocked Putin’s war effort. The result, he writes, is “bilateral pressure” on a shared antagonist: contemporary Europe.
• On Europe, Rogov notes that cutting off U.S. aid has shifted the financial and arms burden almost entirely to EU and U.K. taxpayers, “exacerbating European instability and strengthening the influence of right‑wing populists,” who are backed from both Moscow and Washington. He cites the frozen‑assets fight—where a reported U.S.–Russian plan would see $100 billion of unfrozen reserves go under U.S. control for Ukraine and the rest return to Russia—as emblematic of an “anti‑European convergence,” leaving Europe caught in a pincer between Russian threats from the east and potential U.S. disengagement from the west.

“In Focus” in The Bulletin No. 2 — 176, R. Politik, Tatiana Stanovaya, 01.26.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Stanovaya writes that Moscow’s core demands have “remained unchanged”: Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Donbas; security guarantees “enforced by the permanent members of the UN Security Council and neutral states, with Russia retaining veto rights”; a ban on any deployment of NATO troops; “political change of what it labels the ‘Kyiv Nazi regime’”; and a reduced Ukrainian army.
• The Kremlin’s main motive for attending the Abu Dhabi talks, she argues, was to “display to Trump that it has a constructive attitude toward the peace process and readiness to discuss elements of the plan,” even as the real focus has shifted to technical issues such as “buffer zones, a monitoring mission, force disengagement, and ceasefire parameters.”
• Putin’s tactic, Stanovaya warns, is to “prompt the US to press Ukraine into withdrawing from the Donbas before it secures ironclad security guarantees, and then refocus the negotiations onto detailed security parameters, advancing Russia’s own interpretation of such guarantees,” a sequence that “would further weaken Ukraine both diplomatically and militarily.” In Moscow’s view, she concludes, this preliminary work on cease-fire and security arrangements in the remaining Kyiv‑held Donbas “helps advance issues that will become relevant only after a broader settlement—one that Russia expects to be accompanied by the establishment of a ‘friendly’ regime in Ukraine,” making the talks “far less optimistic than they may appear.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “'Fareed Zakaria GPS,” CNN, (01.25.26).
  • "John Kerry: We’ll Miss Alliances When They’re Gone," John F. Kerry, The New York Times, 01.25.26.
  • "How Venezuela Fits into Russia’s Strategic Calculus," Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash, Observer Research Foundation, 01.22.26.
  • "Five ‘What Is to Be Done’ for the European Union," Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club, 01.22.26. Clues from Russian Views
  • "Europe Needs a New Security Framework," Carl Bildt, Project Syndicate, 01.21.26.

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

“US Department of War’s 2026 National Defense Strategy,” U.S. Department of War, 01.24.26.

• Russia and the European Balance of Power
  • “Although the Russian military threat is primarily focused on Eastern Europe, Russia also possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize and diversify, as well as undersea, space, and cyber capabilities that it could employ against the U.S. Homeland.”
  • “Russia’s ongoing “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.”
  • “[Russia] still retains deep reservoirs of military and industrial power.”
  • “Russia has also shown that it has the national resolve required to sustain a protracted war in its near abroad.”
  • “Russia has also shown that it has the national resolve required to sustain a protracted war in its near abroad.”
  • “Moscow is in no position to make a bid for European hegemony.”
  • “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power.”
  • “Fortunately, our NATO allies are substantially more powerful than Russia—it is not even close.”
  • “Germany’s economy alone dwarfs that of Russia.”
• Russia-Ukraine War
  • “Our NATO allies are... strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense, with critical but more limited U.S. support. This includes taking the lead in supporting Ukraine’s defense.”
  • “As President Trump has said, the war in Ukraine must end.”
  • “As he has also emphasized, however, this is Europe’s responsibility first and foremost.”
  • “Securing and sustaining peace will therefore require leadership and commitment from our NATO allies.”
• NATO Burden-Sharing and Western Alliance Critique
  • “The last administration effectively encouraged them [America’s NATO allies] to free-ride, leaving the Alliance unable to deter or respond effectively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
  • “For too long, allies and partners have been content to let us subsidize their defense.”
  • “Our political establishment reaped the credit while regular Americans paid the bill.”
  • “President Trump has set a new global standard for defense spending at NATO’s Hague Summit—3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on core military spending and an additional 1.5% on security-related spending, for a total of 5% of GDP.”
  • “Europe taking primary responsibility for its own conventional defense is the answer to the security threats it faces.”
  • “The Department will also continue to play a vital role in NATO itself, even as we calibrate U.S. force posture and activities in the European theater.” 

"How the old and new US defense strategies differ on traditional priorities," Associated Press, The Washington Post, 01.24.26.

• The 2022 Biden National Defense Strategy said the Pentagon would “maintain its bedrock commitment to NATO collective security, working alongside Allies and partners to deter, defend, and build resilience against further Russian military aggression and acute forms of gray zone coercion,” and emphasized improving U.S. posture in Europe and “extended nuclear deterrence commitments” to address “Russia’s military threat.”

• By contrast, the 2026 Trump strategy bluntly states: “Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future,” signaling a downgrade of Russia as a driver of U.S. defense planning.

• The new document stresses that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power,” and adds, “Fortunately, our NATO allies are substantially more powerful than Russia — it is not even close. Germany’s economy alone dwarfs that of Russia.”

• It highlights that, under Trump, “NATO allies have committed to raise defense spending to the new global standard of 5% of GDP in total, with 3.5% of GDP invested in hard military capabilities,” and concludes that allies “are therefore strongly positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense, with critical but more limited U.S. support. This includes taking the lead in supporting Ukraine’s defense.”

• While reaffirming that “Europe remains important,” the 2026 strategy notes that it has “a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power” and draws the strategic implication: “It follows that, although we are and will remain engaged in Europe, we must — and will — prioritize defending the U.S. Homeland and deterring China.”

"Resolute Realism in Washington: Trump’s New National Defense Strategy," Prokhor Tebin, Russia in Global Affairs, 01.26.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• Tebin notes that in the 2026 National Defense Strategy, “Russia is described as a threat not to the United States and not even to NATO as a whole, but to ‘NATO’s eastern member states’,” and that this threat is “persistent but manageable.” The document, he writes, “quite boldly asserts that Germany alone surpasses Russia in terms of the size of its economy, and that America’s NATO allies exceed it by a factor of 13,” concluding that “Russia is not in a position to claim hegemony in Europe.”
• The strategy states that the United States “will remain in NATO” and keep a military presence in Europe, but that “deterring Russia, helping Ukraine (‘The war in Ukraine must end!’) – all this should fall within the responsibility of the European allies,” to whom Washington will provide “critical but more limited U.S. support.” Tebin underlines that the phrase “critical but more limited U.S. support” appears nine times, signaling that “Washington is clearly trying to drive this idea home to its allies.”
• In contrast to Biden-era rhetoric about a bloc of autocracies, Tebin points out that while potential rivals listed include “China, Russia, Iran, and the DPRK,” the new strategy “completely lacks an ideological narrative such as ‘the struggle of democracies and autocracies,’ implying irreconcilable positions and the inevitability of confrontation.” Instead, it offers “a less confrontational vision of the balance of power,” where the U.S. plans to remain the leading power but is “prepared to coexist with other great powers” and where “peace is compatible with the interests of our potential adversaries, if they are reasonable and moderate in their demands.”
• For Russia, Tebin argues, “this narrative is unambiguously more attractive and comfortable than the one that was characteristic of the Biden administration.” At the same time, he cautions that “much more confrontational, hawkish, and ideologized positions remain widespread and strong in the American establishment,” and that these views are held “not only by liberal globalists but also by old‑school Republicans.”

"Trump’s Push to Take Greenland Holds Promise and Peril for Putin," Paul Sonne, The New York Times, 01.23.26.

• “This moment is filled with all kinds of promise and peril for Putin,” Fiona Hill said. “For him, it’s going to be complicated, just like for everyone else.”
• “The United States is basically saying, ‘We’re with you and we’re going to do the same things you’re doing,’” Hill observed, noting that an American president now “wielding unchecked power in the world” creates a “new reality” for Putin.
• “The problem for him might well be that Trump may try to out‑Putin him,” Hill said, warning that in a world “without rules, where each nation tries to maximize its power, the United States in many ways towers over Russia.”
• Hill added that Trump’s ability to strong‑arm tech billionaires and shape global trade is something Putin cannot match: “The power Mr. Trump has demonstrated over American tech billionaires who wield vast influence around the world cannot be matched by Mr. Putin… Nor can Mr. Trump’s influence over global trade.”
• Thomas Graham commented that from Moscow’s standpoint, “Yes, it is good to see tensions between the United States and Europe, and the breaking of that trans‑Atlantic alliance, which Russia has been trying to do for decades. But there has to be some concern about how the United States is going to deploy its own military forces, its own economic forces, across the globe in places with Russian interests.”
• “There is nothing about spheres of influence in Trump’s thinking,” Graham said. “Basically you get as much as you can defend.”

"Russia’s Wary Embrace of Trump’s Transatlantic Disruption," Thomas Graham, Council on Foreign Relations, 01.23.26.

• “By demanding that Denmark cede the Arctic island to the United States, U.S. President Donald Trump could produce an outcome that Russia has pursued for eighty years to no avail—a rupture in the Atlantic community and the demise of NATO,” Thomas Graham writes, noting that even after a temporary “framework” deal, “European debate over the credibility of the U.S. commitment to the continent’s defense will not abate.”
• At the same time, Graham stresses that from Moscow’s perspective, Trump has been “a decidedly mixed bag.” The Kremlin “originally thought that Putin and Trump would agree on a resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, which the U.S. president would then impose on Kyiv,” and expected “a rapid normalization of relations” with sanctions relief and U.S. investment, but “that has not yet occurred,” while U.S. actions in Iran, the South Caucasus, Venezuela, and Cuba have “directly undermine[d] Russian influence.”
• On Trump’s approach to Ukraine, Graham observes that “with rare exception” Trump “has been reluctant to pressure Putin to agree to a ceasefire or back off his maximal demands,” and that his “periodic expressions of outrage at Russia’s devastating aerial assault on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and major cities have carried no serious consequences for Putin.” In the Kremlin’s view, Graham writes, “Trump still appears to believe that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, not Putin, remains the main obstacle to peace.”
• As the Greenland crisis unfolded, Graham notes that Putin “obeyed one cardinal rule of competition and conflict: Never interfere with the enemy while he is destroying himself,” limiting himself to a jocular suggestion of a “reasonable purchase price” based on what the U.S. once paid for Alaska. “Yes, it is good to see tensions between the United States and Europe, and the breaking of that trans-Atlantic alliance, which Russia has been trying to do for decades,” he writes, but “there has to be some concern about how the United States is going to deploy its own military forces, its own economic forces, across the globe in places with Russian interests.”
• Looking at Trump’s rhetoric on spheres of influence, Graham concludes: “There is nothing about spheres of influence in Trump’s thinking. Basically you get as much as you can defend.” In such a raw‑power world, he warns, Putin must worry about Russia’s ability to “keep up with China and the United States” even as he hopes that Trump’s anger at Europe “will only fuel his desire to draw closer to Russia.”

"‘He believes U.S. interests can and should be advanced by force’: Thomas Graham on Trump’s first year," interview with Elena Chernenko, Kommersant, 01.19.26. The interview was granted in English, then translated into Russian by Kommersant, then translated back into English with use of machine-translation.

• “Donald Trump believes that all these actions are important for advancing U.S. national interests, as he sees them and as they are described in the new National Security Strategy,” Thomas Graham said of the Iran strike, Maduro’s abduction, and Greenland. Trump, he added, “is reaffirming U.S. influence and dominance in the Western Hemisphere” and links Greenland not only to security but to his inaugural promise “to make the U.S. great again — great, evidently, also in terms of territorial expansion.”
• Graham stressed that Trump is no isolationist: “Over the last 12 months it has become clear that Donald Trump himself is not an isolationist at all. He is ready for much more decisive action on the international stage than many of his predecessors.” At the same time, “at the moment he does not pay much attention to opinion polls,” and believes foreign policy has “only limited influence” on voters, so “in this respect, the president’s hands are practically untied.”
• On the rules‑based order, Graham was blunt: “Yes, absolutely. Trump personally does not believe in this concept.” “He thinks that force is much more important than rules,” he said, noting that the president “clearly treats laws and law with less reverence than most of his predecessors,” and that “he believes that U.S. interests can and should be advanced by force.”
• Asked whether others, such as Russia and China, also have the right to advance their interests by force, Graham replied: “Yes, but the question is how the promotion of these interests correlates with U.S. interests.” Earlier presidents would invoke international law or democracy to rally support, he said, whereas “the current president does not talk about this,” and when he sees Russia using force “against U.S. interests, he resists it one way or another. In essence, this is a contest of force.”
• On Ukraine, Graham argued that, “without Donald Trump, there would not be any serious consultations aimed at resolving the conflict at all.” Despite “zigzags and unpredictable turns,” he said, “Trump has nevertheless clearly adhered to a course toward achieving a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict,” seeking an outcome “acceptable to both sides,” which in his view rules out “both the idea of Ukraine’s capitulation and the idea of Russia’s strategic defeat” and instead requires a “compromise.”

"Russia’s no-show in Venezuela weakens its bad-boy image," The Economist, 01.22.26.

• “The Economist” argues that Russia’s failure to respond forcefully to the U.S. raid that captured Nicolás Maduro badly dents Putin’s “bad‑boy” image. On January 15, instead of raging over the removal of a long‑courted ally or the ease with which U.S. forces disabled Russian‑built air defenses and seized Russian‑flagged tankers, Putin delivered a surprisingly pacific speech about international law and “might makes right,” without mentioning Venezuela at all.
• This silence, the article says, exposes the emptiness of Moscow’s promises to shield partners from American power. Trump’s second term further undercuts Putin by making the United States look like a more powerful version of Russia’s own law‑breaking, escalation‑driven strategy. The swift Venezuelan operation contrasts sharply with Russia’s grinding “special military operation” in Ukraine. To compensate, Putin is intensifying attacks on Ukraine and signaling NATO overreach, while tightening digital control at home and eyeing future tests of Western unity, including over Greenland.

“The United States Miscalculated How Europe Would React to [Trump’s] Extraordinary Threat,” Sky News X Account, 01.21.26.

• Ambassador Burns: It’s been rollercoaster of a day, obviously, the president had to back down from the threat of military force. He had to back down from the threat of tariffs because the Europeans, the United Kingdom, and Canada were united, and they presented a united front. And it was very impressive… I think this was inevitable that the United States miscalculated how Europe would react to this extraordinary threat of a military attack or coercion by the United States against a NATO ally.
• Interviewer: Ambassador Burns… I guess while they did present a united front, and this crisis, this particular crisis has been averted, do you think, though, this is the end of this saga, or are we likely to see more such crises that the Europeans will have to deal with?
• Ambassador Burns: I think it's difficult to say, but I imagine that the wounds here are real and they're going to persist because we've never had any NATO leader threaten to attack another NATO country in the 77 years of NATO.
• Interviewer: Yeah, I mean, certainly people I've been speaking to in Washington as well have said this is an epic distraction. Donald Trump should have spoken about Ukraine at this conference, about Iran, about great power competition with China, the issues around Russia. Trying to reach some of these peace deals, the ongoing crisis in Gaza. Instead, it's been almost a distraction, a waste of time, and futile sort of going in circles with NATO allies over Greenland.
• Ambassador Burns: That's right… I think the key issue here is that the United States should continue to stand with Europe and the United Kingdom and Canada against President Putin, and in support of President Zelensky and the heroic Ukrainian people, as we will soon observe next month the fourth anniversary of the start of this horrific war. That's a real issue. And as you say, China is a real issue as a problem, a strategic problem for both Europe and the North American countries.

"The Balance-of-Power Theory Strikes Again," Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 01.23.26.

• Walt argues that Trump has done “just about everything balance-of-threat theory warns against,” noting that the president has “openly and repeatedly proclaimed expansionist aims toward Canada, Greenland/Denmark, and Panama” and that he and his advisers “appear to believe that international law—including the norm of sovereignty—is meaningless and that the strong can just take whatever they can get.”
• In contrast to the post–Cold War era, when Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran were the main states balancing U.S. power, he writes that “former friends” are now “distancing themselves, reducing their dependence on an unreliable and potentially hostile America, and making new arrangements with each other and potentially with some U.S. adversaries.”
• This behavior, Walt warns, is “eroding America’s once-remarkable array of global partnerships” and vindicating balance‑of‑threat theory: states are responding not just to U.S. power but to “highly revisionist ambitions” and territorial grabs, and “you can’t accommodate a predator who believes all prior agreements are open to renegotiation at any time and who interprets any concession as an invitation to demand more.”

"“Principled and pragmatic: Canada’s path” Prime Minister Carney addresses the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting," Government of Canada, 01.20.26.

• Carney frames his speech around the end of the “nice story” of a rules‑based order and the onset of “a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” Citing Thucydides’ line that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” he warns that this aphorism is now treated as “inevitable,” but insists that “it won’t” buy safety for middle powers that try to accommodate or “live within the lie” of a system that no longer protects them.
• Drawing on Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” Carney urges states and companies to “take their signs down” and stop pretending the old rules‑based order still functions. “This bargain no longer works,” he says, noting that great powers have turned economic integration into a weapon—“tariffs as leverage,” “financial infrastructure as coercion,” “supply chains as vulnerabilities”—and that multilateral institutions like the WTO, UN, and COP are “greatly diminished,” pushing states toward costly “fortresses” and strategic autonomy.
• He presents Canada’s response as “values‑based realism,” or being “principled and pragmatic”: “Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, respect for human rights. Pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental … that not every partner shares our values.” Canada, he says, is “no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength,” doubling defence spending by 2030, fast‑tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals and trade corridors, and striking new trade and security deals worldwide.
• On security, Carney highlights two flashpoints directly: “On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security.” In the Arctic, “we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future. Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering.” Canada is investing in over‑the‑horizon radar, submarines, aircraft and “boots on the ground” to secure NATO’s northern and western flanks, and “strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve shared objectives of security and prosperity for the Arctic.”
• Carney casts Canada’s broader strategy as middle‑power coalition‑building: “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” Middle powers “cannot…go it alone,” so Canada is pursuing “variable geometry—different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests,” from bridging the TPP and EU into a 1.5‑billion‑person trade bloc, to G7‑anchored “buyer’s clubs” for critical minerals, to AI rules with “like‑minded democracies.” The goal, he says, is to “live in truth” by naming reality, building real institutions to match rhetoric, reducing vulnerability to coercion, and “act[ing] together” so that “the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong—if we choose to wield it together.”

"Former MI6 Chief on the Changing World Order," Wall Street Journal, 01.21.26.

• “There’s a very straightforward example of Russia, backed by China, challenging the West, and it’s in Ukraine. This is the most blatant challenge to the international order … since the second World War. It’s ongoing. We still need to ensure that Putin doesn’t succeed in that. And he is backed to the hilt by China.”
• “I feel people sort of think that China’s over there. Without China, Russia would’ve lost. It’s as simple as that.  The headlines are grabbed by North Koreans … or those Iranian drones that came in at the beginning of the conflict. But the thing that keeps Putin in Ukraine is Chinese support.”
• “I see in the Ukrainians, in particular in President Zelenskyy, someone who’s prepared to make extraordinary sacrifices for peace. He’s prepared to give up de fact 20% of his country. … I would like to see that outcome with proper guarantees that Putin doesn’t just come back.”
• “If you are a Ukrainian, you have to have the sort of guarantees that people are talking about in order to stop it.”
• “This is all lovely… but it requires Putin to desire to stop. And this is the problem. There was never a sign when I was in the job, and I am not aware of anything since to suggest that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin wants to stop grinding forward in Ukraine. Until the pain level goes up for Putin and until we lean in harder with Ukrainian to help them, to help defenseless civilians being bombed out of their apartments and houses, him destroying their energy supply in the midst of winter. These are war crimes, and somehow we’ve all become a bit normalized to it. 

"Always beware a declining superpower," Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 01.20.26.

• Ganesh argues that Trump’s “mistreatment of Greenland, the gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean and other Suez-style attempts to recover lost prestige” are symptoms of U.S. status anxiety rather than just one man’s whims. Even under a “normal president,” he writes, “a status-anxious US would be lashing out,” because “it is a rare superpower that takes decline well.”
• He contends that U.S. disillusionment with the “rules-based liberal order” predates Trump—George W. Bush already spurned the International Criminal Court—and reflects a deeper, relative decline: sanctions bite less, the tech and military gap with China has narrowed, and Beijing now owns strategic assets in the Western hemisphere. In this sense, he likens U.S. behavior to “Russia’s war in Ukraine,” which he calls “a protest at its reduced status since the Soviet collapse,” and to earlier cases where modest loss of status unhinged previously dominant actors.
• Ganesh explicitly challenges the fashionable invocation of Thucydides’ line, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” arguing that it is not peak power but slipping power that breeds aggression. The U.S. was “never mightier” than around 1946, yet chose the Marshall Plan, NATO, and democratic reconstruction of Germany and Japan; by contrast, “the belligerent turn in American behavior has in fact come during its relative decline.” “It is easier for a nation to be magnanimous from a great height,” he concludes; as that height lowers, “paranoia and aggression set in.”

"The End of NATO Is Coming, and That’s No Disaster," Rajan Menon, The New York Times, 01.23.26.

• Menon argues that Trump’s threats to “buy” or seize Greenland—“an extraordinary conceit” in which the U.S. president said he could take allied territory “by force if necessary”—have shattered assumptions about NATO’s reliability and show that “NATO as we know it … is coming to an end.” Even though Trump has now announced a vague “framework” and pulled back from invasion and tariffs, Menon warns that “no president has created so much doubt about America’s commitment to trans-Atlantic security.”
• He notes that Trump’s National Security Strategy depicts Europe as economically declining, at risk of “civilizational erasure,” and less important than Latin America or East Asia, and even questions whether some European states will “remain reliable allies.” Against that backdrop, Menon says Europeans “have finally begun to show some resolve,” citing the European Parliament’s suspension of the EU‑U.S. trade deal, talk of counter‑tariffs and use of the EU’s anti‑coercion instrument, and even a Danish pension fund’s sale of U.S. Treasuries in response to the Greenland crisis.
• Rather than seeing NATO’s erosion as a catastrophe, Menon contends that Europe “possesses both the motive and the means to protect itself” and should seize the moment to shed its “supine attitude” and build military autonomy with Britain and Canada. With non‑U.S. NATO members now spending a combined $608 billion on defense—“more than four times Russia’s expenditure”—and Russia’s shambolic, costly war in Ukraine revealing its limits, he argues that a Europe that modernizes its forces and forges a long‑term defense partnership with Kyiv can secure its eastern flank without permanent U.S. protection.

"Why Putin Was Rooting for a U.S. Invasion of Greenland," Angela Stent, The Wall Street Journal, 01.22.26.

• Stent recalls that as a KGB officer in Dresden, Putin said his job was to gather information on “the main opponent,” NATO—an obsession that has continued throughout his presidency. Since 1949, she writes, “the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been the Kremlin’s No. 1 enemy,” and successive Soviet and Russian leaders have tried to “separate the U.S. from Europe.” Against that backdrop, Trump’s confrontation with allies over Greenland “threatened to damage the world’s most successful alliance in a way that decades of Russian sabotage failed to do,” something she says Putin and his inner circle “can only marvel at.”
• Putin doesn’t fear NATO as a physical threat, Stent argues, but as “the chief obstacle to his imperial ambitions,” because its enlargement into former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states undermines his goal of re‑establishing a Russian sphere of influence. He justified the 2014 annexation of Crimea by warning that if Moscow hadn’t moved, NATO’s navy would be “right there” in Sevastopol, and she notes that “had Ukraine been a member of NATO, Russia wouldn’t have dared to invade it.”
• That is what makes the Greenland episode so ironic, Stent concludes: a U.S. dispute with its allies “over a NATO member’s territory could end up undermining NATO and helping Mr. Putin realize his goal of subjugating Ukraine.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, clearly delighted, called it “hard to imagine” that “one NATO member is going to attack another NATO member,” implying that Trump’s threats handed Moscow a propaganda victory and reinforced the Kremlin’s belief that the trans‑Atlantic alliance is “seriously weakened.”

"Putin’s New Competitor in Wielding Unchecked Power Is Trump," Paul Sonne, The New York Times, 01.23.26.

• “This moment is filled with all kinds of promise and peril for Putin,” Fiona Hill said, adding, “For him, it’s going to be complicated, just like for everyone else,” as Trump’s Greenland gambit showed Washington “wielding unchecked power in the world” in ways that echo the Kremlin.
• Hill warned that “the United States is basically saying, ‘We’re with you and we’re going to do the same things you’re doing,’” and that “the problem for him might well be that Trump may try to out‑Putin him,” since “in a global arena without rules, where each nation tries to maximize its power, the United States in many ways towers over Russia.”
• Since Trump’s return to the White House, Sonne writes, Putin has “focused on using the arrival of a more Kremlin‑friendly administration in Washington to achieve his goals in Ukraine,” appearing “intent on securing the dividends that a renewed relationship with the United States would unlock for Moscow… without sacrificing his core demands on Ukraine.”
• Thomas Graham called Trump’s second term “a mixed bag” for Moscow: “Yes, it is good to see tensions between the United States and Europe, and the breaking of that trans‑Atlantic alliance, which Russia has been trying to do for decades,” he said, “But there has to be some concern about how the United States is going to deploy its own military forces, its own economic forces, across the globe in places with Russian interests.”
• In a world where “everything is about raw power,” Graham said, Putin “must worry about Russia’s ability to keep up with China and the United States,” and he underlined that “there is nothing about spheres of influence in Trump’s thinking. Basically you get as much as you can defend.”

"Britain’s New Spy Chief Has a New Mission," Edward Lucas, Foreign Policy, 01.23.26.

• In her first public speech, Blaise Metreweli “focused on Russia’s campaign to export chaos,” citing “arson, sabotage, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, drones buzzing airports and military bases, ‘aggressive’ undersea activity, and influence operations that create and exploit ‘fractures within societies.’”
  • Describing the gray zone “between peace and war,” she said that MI6 would “no longer restrict itself to understanding its foes.” Instead, “We will sharpen our edge and impact with audacity, tapping into—if you like—our historical SOE instincts,” explicitly linking the response to Russia to Churchill’s mandate to “set Europe ablaze.”
  • Lucas writes that Ukraine, often a victim of Russian “active measures,” has also mounted “spectacularly successful counter-operations across Russia,” and that “it is an open secret that SIS has worked closely with the Ukrainian services, coaching and training them, as well as supplying the high technology and intelligence information needed to make these operations successful.”
  • As one former officer put it, “Russian corruption means that most databases can simply be bought without the need to steal them. Rather than find out what Vladimir Putin had for breakfast, why not just embarrass him by leaking his associates’ private emails? Or leave some breadcrumbs that will stoke a frenzy of spy paranoia?”
  • Lucas lists options for covert action against Russia, including “leaking the personal financial details of Putin’s cronies or disrupting everyday life in Russia with ruses, stunts, and pranks,” such as fake ads suggesting “young Russian women are finding easy employment in Chinese massage parlors” to “play on deep-seated Russian racism and subtly stoke Russians’ growing resentment at their country’s growing dependence on Xi Jinping’s regime.”

"Middle powers may miss the global order more than they think," Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, 01.24.26.

• Sandbu warns that many emerging powers, frustrated by a “rules-based” order that “made some countries more equal than others,” may welcome “an amoral take on the global order” and be “tempted by the immediate freedom that comes with unashamedly pursuing one’s national interests.” But, he cautions, “they risk finding that that freedom is worth little if another, stronger country has views about how they should exercise it,” because “all that is left is power.”
  • He notes the tension in Canada’s stance, pointing out that Mark Carney’s Havel‑inspired appeal came “the week after he signed a partnership with China,” and that “in the context of China’s support for Russia against Ukraine, it is hardly ‘calibrating our relationships so their depths reflect our values.’”
  • Sandbu argues that without a reconstructed liberal order, disorder or “superpower dominance” are likelier than a benign middle‑power balance, especially as “the flames of… seemingly unfettered sovereignty — the flames of which the Trump administration is energetically fanning” — grow hotter. The only plausible anchor for a renewed, rules‑based system, he writes, is the EU, which must offer deeper institutional ties to countries that still see “a liberal rules-based order — one that works — as their best hope.”

"The Sanchez Effect," Interview with Sergei Karaganov,  RT.com, 01.21.26. Clues from Russian Views. RT is a Russian government-funded.

• Karaganov assessed “the Americans have already started to withdraw” from the conflict in Ukraine because “they understood that the stakes on our side are very high.” He views the bigger issue as persuading the “insane” European elites to come back to [their] senses and to withdraw support for Ukraine: “I think they are not ready.”
• Karaganov noted “When President Bush [W.] rejected American participation in the antiballistic missile treaty, the decisions were made within Mr. Putin’s mind, within our mind, that conflict is inevitable.”
• He alleges Putin made a nuclear threat to Europe a month and half ago: “Recently, they changed Russian nuclear doctrine, lowering the nuclear threshold, and very recently… [Putin] said, ‘if you continue that war and start a war against Russia, there will be no one in Europe to talk to.’”
• Karaganov views U.S.-Russian relations as “moving in the right direction,” but assesses Russia still must “roughly deter the United States, because it has still hegemonic ambitions”
• The “right direction” entailed by Karaganov would “avoid great thermonuclear war” and lead to an order in which “four great powers” will lead the world toward a “better order.” Europe is not among the four powers implied, but not articulated, by Karaganov.
• Karaganov is “not one of the fans of Mr. Trump’s proposals,” viewing it as a “piecemeal solution, which does not solve the problem,” and an “armistice.” He believes such armistice “will be useful, but if the problem is not solved, the problem with Europe, the war will be restarted. Then the question in our analysis will be that Russia will have to escalate closer to the nuclear level to push the European aside and then probably have to take over, or return, some of the Southern and Eastern areas which are purely Russian. I do not want Russia from the beginning to take over all of Ukraine, because parts of Ukraine, particularly the central and eastern parts are not really Russian… they have been a burden on the neck of the Soviet Union.”
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Trump Wants Peace Board to Rewrite Global Order—but Major Powers Aren’t Sold," David S. Cloud and Alexander Ward, The Wall Street Journal, 01.22.26.
  • "Trump is erasing the global economic order," Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 01.21.26.
  • "Trump’s Foreign Policy After Year One: A Look Back, A Look Ahead," Ambassador Mitchell Reiss, RUSI, 01.20.26.
  • "Enabling NATO Digital Capabilities: Lessons from Swedish investment in digital capabilities for defence," Judith Huismans et al., RAND Europe, 01.21.26.
  • "The Personalist Global Order: When Individual Whims Drive Great-Power Policy," Seva Gunitsky and Semuhi Sinanoglu, Foreign Affairs, 01.26.26.
  • "The Power of Grievance: What History Reveals About Authoritarianism’s Animating Force," Benjamin Carter Hett, Foreign Affairs, 01.20.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

"China’s Silent Nuclear Warning to Russia: The New Type 096 Submarine," Brandon J. Weichert, The National Interest, 01.26.26.

• Weichert writes that, historically, “even at the lowest point of Russia’s post-Soviet era, it could safely be argued that the Russian Navy’s submarines were more advanced than whatever the Chinese PLAN had at that time in the 1990s.” Today, however, he notes that Marine Insight assesses China has “around 32 active nuclear submarines” while “Russia has between 25–28,” and concludes that “a real shift in the naval balance of power is about to happen (if it has not yet already) in the Sino-Russian relationship.”
  • “Other than the Americans, the Russian Navy has long been ahead of China in the continuous, at-sea deterrent mission,” Weichert observes, but now “the Chinese may have caught up,” and with mass production “Beijing’s continuous at-sea deterrent will likely outnumber the Russians’ force.” In his view, the new Type 096 SSBN thus represents “a greater challenge to Russian maritime supremacy than it is to America’s” in the near term, even though it will “inevitably threaten American nuclear submarine supremacy” over the longer run.
  • Weichert argues that China’s accelerating undersea buildup should prompt strategic rethinking in both Washington and Moscow, suggesting that “perhaps the US and Russian navies should start partnering to counter this rising Chinese undersea threat.”

"Graham Allison at Davos: Trump and Xi may lock in more binding understandings on Taiwan," Geopolitechs, 01.22.26.

• Allison said at WEF panel that the past nine years fit his “Thucydides Trap” framework: as “China rises and the U.S. tries to maintain its primacy, the shifting balance of power amplifies mistrust and miscalculation—small incidents can spiral into major crises.” The “good news,” he argued, is that “both sides understand the catastrophic cost of war, especially nuclear war, so they have no choice but to find a way to coexist within competition.”
• On Taiwan, Allison suggested that when Xi and Trump meet in April, “both may see Lai Ching-te and ‘incremental independence’ moves as a destabilizing threat,” and even floated the idea of “a ‘fourth U.S.–China communiqué’, where the two sides might try to lock in more binding understandings on Taiwan”—though he stressed that outcome would depend on “high-level political creativity and bargaining.”
• Zhao Hai countered that “the deeper problems—U.S. misperceptions about China and a persistent zero-sum mindset—haven’t been resolved,” saying Trump “keeps talking about having a great relationship with Xi, but there’s still no workable cooperation agenda.” He called for “clearer guiding principles, a more explicit cooperation framework, and more ‘doable’ deliverables for April,” including fentanyl cooperation, expanded U.S. exports, investment treatment, and more institutionalized channels for communication.

Missile defense:

"Trump’s Golden Dome Is No Silver Bullet," Alexandra Sharp and John Haltiwanger, Foreign Policy, 01.22.26.

• Golden Dome is meant to shield against “aerial attacks from any foe,” a May 2025 Pentagon press release said, with its initial focus on intercepting ICBMs from “U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China.” Since then, its remit has expanded to include “cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, drones, whether they’re conventional or nuclear,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in May.
• “If you’re dealing with nuclear weapons, you’ve got to have such a high percentage intercept to really feel like you’re safe,” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution warned. “You need multiple tiers. And the problem is that multiple tiers, multiple layers of defense, many of them can be spoofed or fooled or, you know, saturated by a major power.”
• Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute said “the absentee ratio is the real killer,” explaining that “most of these interceptors or lasers—because they’re constantly orbiting given their altitude—will therefore not be in good position, and we’ll have to have, like, 10 up there for every one that’s in the right place.” The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that “even a limited space-based interceptor system would cost more than $500 billion,” while overall Golden Dome costs could reach “a whopping $3.6 trillion over 20 years,” Sharp and Haltiwanger write.

Nuclear arms:

“Russia’s Latest Weapons Have Left Strategic Stability on the Brink of Collapse,” Maxim Starchak, Carnegie Politika, 01.21.26.

• Starchak argues that Russia’s nuclear‑powered Burevestnik cruise missile and Poseidon underwater drone—both touted by Putin as “unique” systems and reportedly tested in October 2025—have created a new asymmetry in strategic weapons that Moscow sees as a way to bypass U.S. missile defense and compensate for its inferiority in high‑precision conventional strike. Their effectively unlimited range and flexible trajectories, he notes, are designed to negate both current and future U.S. defenses and to serve as a cheaper “superweapon” alternative to traditional ICBMs.
• In Moscow’s narrative, these systems are a response to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the growth of U.S. missile defense, and the expansion of U.S. precision‑guided munitions—developments that Russian elites came to see as undermining the deterrent value of their nuclear arsenal. Since at least 2015, the Kremlin has refused further strategic reductions until Washington addresses missile defense and “prompt global strike,” and now believes it has gained a “strategic advantage”: Russia can keep its nuclear forces at or above New START ceilings while the U.S. is constrained, and use Poseidon and Burevestnik as leverage.
• Starchak warns that this perceived edge makes serious arms control talks unlikely. In Putin’s system, he writes, negotiations are mainly a tool to extract U.S. concessions; absent those, “negotiations lose all value for Moscow.” Putin’s offer to extend New START limits for a year changes nothing substantively, while allowing Russia to preserve its advantage. Meanwhile, conservative voices in Washington are calling for renewed nuclear testing and U.S. development of similar systems—moves Trump has signaled openness to—which together risk turning a collapsing arms‑control regime into “a new qualitative and quantitative arms race” with strategic stability “on the brink of total collapse.”
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Why Trump Should Accept Putin’s New START Offer," Ariel Petrovics, Foreign Policy, 01.23.26.
  • Podcast: “The Oreshnik Comes to Belarus,” Decker Eveleth and Gabriela Iveliz Rosa-Hernandez, CNA, January 2026.
  • "2025’s Nuclear Year in Review," Tomáš Nagy, The National Interest, 01.20.26.

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

• No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

Video: “Who is Winning on Energy Security?,” Fatih Birol, Meghan O'Sullivan, Mike Henry, Sir Robin Niblett and Andrés Gluski, Majid Jafar, World Economic Forum panel, 01.20.26.

• Sir Robin Niblett: “If this is a period where geopolitics are interfering or at least eliding with this huge increase in energy demand, it means a new scramble potentially, does it not, for influence, for possession, for control; each country trying to make sure it has access to that energy security over time. What’s the kind of shape that you’re seeing that’s changing? Which parts of the world are being acquired the most and which are being most acquisitive? And you know, where I’m leaning a little bit on that question.
• Meghan O’Sullivan: “I feel you’re being delightfully diplomatic here Robin… Certainly looking at the landscape today… it's easy to draw historical analogies to maybe the 19th century scramble for resources in Africa or even post-World War II in the Middle East. And I would say there's no question that the intensified geopolitical competition between great powers is playing out in more competition for energy resources, particularly as the energy system becomes more complex… So a real perception that Venezuela's oil trajectory and who controls that or develops it is part and parcel, part of dominating the Western hemisphere. So there's a desire not just for physical control, but a desire to ensure that others don't control resources… But this is not new within the last year or two or even three years. We can look back at China's energy strategy over decades, really, and see that there's been a concerted effort to focus on the ability to control or have access to resources… So I would say, yes, we're seeing an intensification. It's not entirely new. What is very different from any of the historical analogies that we might have looked upon in the past is that producer countries, the countries with these resources, have more agency now. I won't say they're on equal footing to some of the great powers, but they certainly know better how to try to negotiate better contracts. And we see a wave of resource nationalism, whether it's in Chile or in Indonesia, where policies like banning the export of just raw nickel is a way of exerting more control over a country's resources. So it is more positive in that way, but it certainly opens the door to more resource competition ahead.”

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

"Why Trump Sides With Putin," Fiona Hill interview with David Frum, The Atlantic podcast, 01.22.26.

• “He wants a world in which might makes right, in which it’s a battle for, basically, spheres of influence by strongmen, and on the surface, that seems to be where we are,” Fiona Hill said of Putin’s preferred international order.
• On the invasion of Ukraine, Hill called it “a catastrophic blunder”: “This wasn’t intended to be the largest military action in Europe since World War II… It certainly wasn’t intended to last longer than the Soviet Union was battling Nazi Germany… It was supposed to be a ‘special military operation.’”
• Yet she stressed Putin’s long‑game resilience: “Putin is something of what one might call a survivalist and a prepper… his bet is that… because of these changes in international circumstances, especially because of the incumbent in the White House, that he will be able to last everyone else out… despite all the losses… everybody else will fold. That’s his bet.”
• On Russia’s dependence on China, Hill warned: “Russia’s slide toward becoming a Chinese economic colony does seem to have accelerated,” adding that after the war “it’s much more likely to end up being some kind of appendage of China… even more so than it already is.”
• Looking ahead, she argued that Russia’s great‑power ambitions are doomed: “They no longer think of Russia as a superpower, and they absolutely, certainly do not think of Russia as a technical, innovative, economic superpower,” and by 2036 “we’ll have two superpowers: the United States and China… Where’s Russia? Maybe there with Japan and Britain… nothing like an India, let alone a China or the United States, in the way that Putin imagined he might be when he started the Ukraine war.”
• Hill also underlined how Trump misreads Russia through a Cold War lens: “He’s said it many times in relationship to Ukraine, that Russia is just a big power. He thinks of it just as Putin does,” she noted, even though “Russia was up there in the larger economic powers” before Crimea but, after years of war and sanctions, “that’s not likely to be where Russia is” any longer.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

"Double Blow: Russia enters a period of relatively low oil prices while simultaneously losing revenue from gas sales to Europe," Re:Russia, Timothy Dziadko, 01.22.26.

• Re:Russia notes that Russia’s oil and gas revenues fell 24 percent in 2025, with December receipts just 57 percent of the previous December’s level and Urals crude dipping below $40 per barrel. Analysts now expect Russia to operate with an effective oil price of $40–45 per barrel in 2026, versus the $59 assumed in the budget, at the same time as volumes and prices remain uncertain.
• The crunch is compounded by the loss of the European gas market. Before the full‑scale invasion, Russia supplied 45 percent of EU gas imports; by 2025, pipeline exports to the EU had fallen to 18.1 billion cubic meters and total exports (including LNG) to 38 bcm. Under the REPowerEU plan approved by the European Parliament, Russian LNG and pipeline gas will be phased out completely by late 2027, costing Moscow an additional $15–17 billion a year in export revenues in 2026–27 on top of earlier losses.
• The piece argues that this is an “irrecoverable blow” for Russia’s gas sector: there is no realistic “plan B” to redirect lost European volumes in the near term. Power of Siberia‑2 to China remains a vague declaration of intent with no financing or pricing agreed, and would take at least five years to build. Meanwhile, expanded LNG capacity in the U.S., Qatar and elsewhere is expected to create a global gas surplus by the late 2020s, keeping prices under downward pressure. Putin, who once sought to make Russia an “energy superpower,” has instead left the country facing a prolonged period of low oil prices and the loss of its premium, contract‑stabilized European gas market.

"Meduza’s sources say Dmitry Medvedev is tired of being a ‘troll’ and wants back in Russia’s political spotlight," Andrey Pertsev, Meduza, 01.22.26.

• A Kremlin insider told Meduza that Medvedev “needs to recapitalize his image — to reintroduce himself to both the elites and the public.” Right now, the source said, “his public persona — an Internet troll holding a vaguely defined post — doesn’t match his actual bureaucratic weight,” even though he “does have real leverage through the party and his position on the Security Council, over the defense industry and over the government.”
• According to sources in United Russia and the presidential administration, Medvedev is personally pushing to head the party’s federal list in the 2026 Duma elections, using officially high “trust ratings” as a pretext. But those numbers, one Kremlin‑linked source said, are mostly a function of name recognition: in open‑ended polls “Russians don’t mention Medvedev” at all, and a United Russia insider called the ratings talk “really just a formal pretext for putting him at the top of the list.”
• Not everyone in the system welcomes his ambitions. A political strategist close to the Kremlin said that because of Medvedev’s “controversial image,” it will be hard to deliver record results for United Russia: “He’s explicitly pro‑war. And people are tired of the war,” adding that putting him alongside other war‑linked figures risks cementing the party as a “party of war.” Another source argued that a Medvedev‑led list would give him a “head start in the race” to succeed Putin, since “he would have a trump card in the form of United Russia’s official election result — regardless of how that result is achieved. The others won’t have anything like that.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "The Collapse That Created Today’s Russia," Ian Garner, Foreign Policy, 01.23.26. Garner reviews Mikhail Zygar’s “The Dark Side of the Earth,” arguing that it shows how the Soviet collapse did not lead to liberal democracy but to a “corrupt, nihilistic, and warmongering elite.”
  • "No insulation from nationalization," Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 01.21.26.
  • "Repression is the norm: how Russia finished off journalism in 2025," Anna Telegina, The Moscow Times, 01.26.26.
  • "SVOshniks: the “new elite”, which the nomenclature does not accept and fears the common people," Sergey Shelin, 01.22.26.
  • “Traditional Values, Old Methods: Russia’s Revival of Forced Family Mediation,” Rustam Alexander, Russia.Post, 01.23.26.

Defense and aerospace:

"Countering Russian escalation in space," John Klein and Clementine G. Starling‑Daniels, Atlantic Council, 01.21.26.

• Klein and Starling‑Daniels warn that current U.S. approaches are “inadequate to address the growing threats from Russia in space,” pointing in particular to “its designs to place a nuclear weapon in orbit, in clear violation of its obligations under international law.” They argue that such a move would “alter the rationale for pursuing proliferated low‑Earth orbit (LEO) constellations” and demand a “more resilient space architecture.”
• The authors stress that some U.S. policymakers may be “reluctant to take the necessary coercive action to compel acquiescence by Russian political and military leaders,” because anticipatory action “will be a political decision based upon a Western mindset and worldview.” In shaping Moscow’s calculus, they rank tools “in priority order” as: “deterrence by denial of benefit; assurance and reassurance; and deterrence by cost imposition.”
• 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:

"Antihegemonism and Dynamics in the Russia–India–China Triangle," Anton Bespalov, Valdai Club, 01.21.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• Bespalov notes that Russia, China, and India share “a common rejection of hegemonism, that is, the exclusive position of one power to the detriment of the interests of the rest,” but that “in the case of Russia and China claims of hegemonism are addressed to the United States, while India has traditionally been concerned not so much with American hegemony as with potential Chinese hegemony.”
• He writes that for Russia “its ‘own region’ is the post‑Soviet space,” and that “systematic ignoring by the West of Russia’s interests in the sphere of security has led to the largest military‑political crisis in Europe since the Second World War,” while NATO and EU triumphalism combined with “the conviction of part of the Ukrainian elites and society that Russia’s concerns can be ignored” produced “an extreme case of miscalculation in relations between great and small/medium powers.”
• Unlike the United States, Bespalov argues, “neither Russia, nor China, nor India has ever claimed global hegemony,” but each seeks “a dominant role in its own region,” which critics see as little different from hegemonism and which “is embedded in the strategic culture of all three countries.” For Russia, that role is linked not only to “the need to protect vast territories” but also to its “self‑perception as a cultural‑civilizational center organizing the space around itself.”
• He contrasts the West’s post‑Cold War doctrine of Russia’s “strategic irrelevance” with the logic in Asia, where smaller states accept that “the great power is not going anywhere and long‑term relations have to be built with it.” The Western stance, he says, treated Russia as having “no legitimate interests in the sphere of security,” and the Ukrainian crisis is “a lesson to the rest of the world” in what happens when great‑power concerns are dismissed.
• Looking ahead, Bespalov contends that in the RIC triangle “overlapping ambitions… at present exist only between Beijing and New Delhi,” while Russia’s role should be to act as “an important catalyst of such understanding” that regional problems need regional solutions. “For Russia, building a stable architecture of security in Europe is a key task,” he writes, and Moscow “can and must” promote similar thinking in Asia “both in bilateral dialogues and within multilateral formats” such as BRICS and the SCO.
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Divided civilization as a reality of our time," Vladislav Inozemtsev, The Moscow Times, 01.21.26. (In Russian.)

Ukraine:

"Ukraine keeps pushing for early EU entry as peace plan talks rumble on," Henry Foy, Financial Times, 01.26.26.

• The piece notes that Ukraine’s EU accession is now explicitly tied to the US‑led peace process with Russia: initial drafts of the 20‑point plan “specified a 2027 date for accession,” but that is “under negotiation following pushback from some EU countries,” even as Kyiv insists that a “very bold political commitment” is needed to anchor Ukraine “in Europe’s camp” after the war.
• Brussels wants the €800bn “prosperity plan” for Ukraine—covering “recovery requirements until 2040”—to mesh with accession and be conditional on reforms, both to rebuild a frontline state facing Russian aggression and to reassure EU publics that funds will help lock in rule‑of‑law standards that distinguish Ukraine from “Russia’s system of corruption and arbitrary power.”
• Although the article focuses on EU timelines, the backdrop is a war of attrition with Russia that has made Ukraine’s integration an existential security issue: Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said Ukraine “could be ready to join before 2030,” while Deputy PM Taras Kachka argues that “in the context of geopolitical urgency, even this process can be shortened,” underscoring that the speed and credibility of EU accession are now seen in Kyiv as part of the broader deterrent against future Russian attacks.
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "What Ukraine’s resilient banks can teach Zelenskiy," Pierre Briancon, Reuters, 01.23.26.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

"Baku Proceeds With Caution as Ethnic Azeris Join Protests in Neighboring Iran," Bashir Kitachaev, Carnegie Politika, 01.22.26.

• Kitachaev writes that the Iranian protests are “a major event for Azerbaijan,” not only because they occur in “a large neighboring country” but because of “the millions of ethnic Azeris living in Iran’s northwestern provinces,” which nationalist circles in Baku routinely frame as an opportunity for “the ‘reunification’ of the Azerbaijani people.”
• He notes that “radical nationalist narratives calling for the ‘liberation of historical lands’ are increasingly creeping into the Azerbaijani government’s rhetoric,” and that amid the current unrest “the Azerbaijani authorities—who are typically quick to crack down on any rallies—have allowed a protest to be held outside the Iranian embassy in Baku under the slogan ‘Let Azerbaijan be united.’”
• At the same time, Kitachaev stresses that “there is no evidence of serious separatist sentiment among the parts of Iran populated by ethnic Azeris,” and that Azeri Iranians’ grievances “generally align with those of the rest of the nation: dissatisfaction with corruption, the economic crisis, and repression,” while many in the community are “widely represented within the political and security elites,” including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian.
• He points out that “the Aliyev regime is hardly such an appealing alternative to that of Iran’s ayatollahs,” writing that “in many respects, Azerbaijan today is even less free than Iran,” with “no cult of the ruling family” in Tehran but one in Baku, and that the leadership “understands that notions of reunification are a utopian fantasy,” which is why “the president and key officials prefer not to comment publicly on the protests.”
• Baku’s caution, Kitachaev argues, reflects fears that “a conflict with its large neighbor promises no strategic benefits, while the consequences are unpredictable,” from losing “a vital trading partner” and facing “a painful blow to many sectors of Azerbaijan’s economy,” to triggering “uncontrollable processes on Azerbaijan’s southern border, including possible immigration flows” and inspiring domestic unrest: “If Azeris are protesting en masse against economic problems and arbitrary rule on the southern side of the border, why shouldn’t they do the same to the north of it?”

"Can Russia Revitalize the CSTO?," Justin Mitchell, The National Interest, 01.23.26.

• At the November 2025 CSTO summit, Vladimir Putin promised “a large-scale program to supply the collective forces with modern Russian weapons and military equipment, which have proven their effectiveness in military operations on the ground,” including “developing air force and air defense systems, collaboration of defense industry enterprises, and information security.” Yet he conceded that “amid the special military operation, our capabilities for some components are currently not great … we must meet our own needs.”
• Mitchell notes that Russian arms exports to Central Asia and the South Caucasus “decreased by 23 percent and 44 percent, respectively, between 2021 and 2023,” and that CSTO members have “refused to recognize the Russian-occupied territories” in Ukraine, leading to “merited skepticism about how much can be accomplished” under Russia’s 2026 chairmanship. He concludes that without follow‑through, Moscow’s tenure will “simply prolong the survival of a struggling military alliance” rather than restore its security primacy in the post‑Soviet space.

Footnotes

1. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that a U.S. security guarantees document for Ukraine is “100% ready” after two days of talks involving representatives from Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia. (AP, 01.26.25)

The cutoff for reports summarized in this product was 10:00 am Eastern time on the day this digest was distributed. Unless otherwise indicated, all summaries above are direct quotations. 

AI was used in production of this digest.

*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute a RM editorial policy.

Slider photo taken from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, a Russian soldier prepares a drone to launch for an action in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)