6 Ideas to Explore

1. It is too late to save the New START treaty, but “the Trump administration could still ... mitigate some of the more serious potential consequences by sticking to New START’s caps and limitations,” argues Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities. Echoing Kavanagh, NYT’s W.J. Hennigan urges Donald Trump to accept Vladimir Putin’s repeated proposal to stick to the limits of the treaty and inspections for one year. While on Jan. 8 Donald Trump claimed with regard to New START that “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement,” Russian officials continued to express hope that at least some of the treaty’s central tenants could be salvaged somehow. For instance, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov argued on Jan. 29 that replacement of the treaty, which expires on Feb. 5, 2026, would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Both Peskov and Putin’s deputy in the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev urged the U.S. side to heed Russia’s initiative. Medvedev told Kommersant that “both sides [should] voluntarily maintain their commitment to the New START limits for at least one more year.” Asked what the arms control regime would look like after Feb. 5, Medvedev warned, “New threats to our security will be promptly and decisively countered… There's no need to look far for examples: it's enough to recall the Burevestnik, Oreshnik, and Poseidon systems.” Russia is clearly interested (perhaps more so than the U.S.) in preserving the central tenets of New START because the treaty fits both its limits and its ambitions. It locks in strategic nuclear parity with the United States at a level Russia can afford, while helping avoid an arms race in which it would struggle to keep up with the U.S., especially if the U.S. ramps up production of delivery systems and of long-range missile defenses. The agreement also provides a degree of transparency that strengthens strategic stability in the U.S.-Russian nuclear dyad. In addition, New START’s current framework leaves some novel long-range Russian systems—such as nuclear‑powered Burevestnik cruise missiles and Poseidon underwater drones—outside the treaty’s counting rules, arguably giving Moscow extra capability without formal constraint. Politically, adherence to New START allows Russia to present itself as a ‘responsible nuclear power,’ props up the broader bilateral dialogue with Washington, and reaffirms Russia’s nuclear superpower status, compelling the United States to engage it as an equal.

2. Who has been most interested in the energy truce during which Russia and Ukraine have committed to refrain from attacking each other’s energy distribution infrastructure? The answer is, unequivocally, Ukraine. Yes, Russia’s western border regions, such as the Belgorod Oblast, have seen weeks‑long outages with heating at only 50% capacity, but these blackouts are dwarfed by frequent and long power outages in major Ukrainian cities. As Reuters, BBC and WSJ reported prior to the beginning of the energy ceasefire on Jan. 30, Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s power grid had left up to 1.2 million properties without electricity in freezing temperatures (as low as -15°C or 5°F ), with 6,000 apartment blocks left without electricity in Kyiv less than a week prior to the beginning of the truce. The latter appeared to have ended on Feb. 2 with reported overnight strikes on energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Cherkasy Oblasts that left residents of these four regions¹ without power as of Feb. 2.² Prior to the purported end of the energy ceasefire, residents of the Kharkiv Oblast’s capital were reportedly receiving electricity no more than 10 hours per day. In Cherkasy Oblast, residents were to endure without electricity for 15.5 hours per day (24 hours). Last week Ukraine’s largest energy provider DTEK said Russian attacks have cost his company 60–70% of its generation capacity.

3. Are Ukrainians and Russians getting tired of the war? Yes, some people both in Ukraine and Russia are straining under a war so much that they simply want to end, Independent and Economist report. Vitaliy Kim, governor of Ukraine’s southern province of Mykolaiv and a key Zelenskyy ally told the Independent that “everybody is very tired,” stressing that most Ukrainians now define the victory as stopping the war with credible security guarantees so their children can regain a normal life. “We've only 40 million people and everybody is exhausted. Our soldiers cannot fight for four to 10 years,” Kim said. Across the border in Russia’s Belgorod region, front-line communities are also exhausted: villages emptied, power infrastructure repeatedly struck, and residents ignoring sirens as they trudge to work, according to the Economist. Local surveys show high levels of disappointment and lives “on hold,” this UK weekly reports. That said, the latest nation-wide poll in Russia by the Levada Center shows that the share of respondents who favor starting peace negotiations instead of continuing military operations actually declined from 66.4% in December to 61% in January, according to RM. At the same time, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in Ukraine that 69% of Ukrainians do not believe that the current negotiations will lead to a lasting peace, according to RM.
4. Russian officials have stated for months that Moscow will not end the war until it gains control of the last 2,082 square miles of the Donbas region, an area smaller than Delaware but central to negotiations. But why? For one securing the rest of this region would let Putin claim victory from a grinding stalemate, according to Paul Sonne of the New York Times. “If you can get at the negotiation table something you have not achieved by force, the question of who won the war and who dictated the terms of ending the war will be answered,” exiled Russian foreign policy expert Alexander Gabuev told Sonne. Beyond symbolism of capturing what Kremlin has repeatedly described “historically Russian” land, Sonne notes two concrete incentives. “First, the Ukrainian‑held part of Donetsk is “one of the most fortified parts of the front.” Second, a critical water canal for Russian‑occupied Donetsk has its main intake on Ukrainian‑controlled territory northeast of Sloviansk.
5. In "A Slow-Cooked Peace in Ukraine" WSJ columnist Holman Jenkins sketches a possible endgame in the Russian-Ukrainian war shaped by battlefield exhaustion and political recalculation. He notes that Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s former intelligence chief and now a close Zelenskyy aide, has suggested a Donald Trump–mediated settlement may be in sight. He also notes that Jade McGlynn of King’s College London, who studies opinion in Russian‑occupied areas, finds even resistance fighters increasingly accept that territorial concessions may be inevitable. Jenkins contends a “threshold of pain” is reachable at which Vladimir Putin would agree to a cease-fire. Moreover, if a peace deal is then reached, Putin won’t renew the war even in the absence of NATO troops in Ukraine because the Russian leader “or a successor would have a steep hill to climb to convince fellow elites to renew an experiment that has failed so miserably,” according to Jenkins.
6. Member of the Russian MoD’s Public Council Ruslan Pukhov argues that the Russian-Ukrainian war has demonstrated a true “drone revolution,” marking a shift from industrial‑era mechanized warfare to “drone war” and “digital (‘information’) war.” “As the component base becomes more miniaturized and cheaper, and as networked solutions based on artificial intelligence develop,” he writes, combat will increasingly consist of “swarms of drones… of the most diverse types, shapes, sizes, and purposes,” turning both front and rear into a continuous “kill zone,” Pukhov writes in Kommersant. Pukhov warns that many in Russia’s military‑industrial circles still treat the Ukraine-Russia war as an “anomaly” and expect things to “return to normal,” which he calls a “dangerous delusion” that will lock in a widening technological lag. Trying to rebuild Cold War–style force structures while also funding digital warfare will mean “there will not be enough resources in full measure for either one or the other,” he argues, insisting that “the era of Guards tank divisions is gone forever… The same can be said about attack helicopters.”

U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

• "Denys Shmyhal Calls on the International Atomic Energy Agency to Isolate Russia, Impose Sanctions, and Suspend Its Membership," Ministry of Energy of Ukraine, 01.23.26.
• "Statement by Russia’s Governor to the IAEA Board of Governors, Mikhail Ulyanov, at the Extraordinary Session on Ukraine," Russian Foreign Ministry, 01.30.26. in Russian
• "IAEA Director General's Introductory Statement to the Board of Governors," Rafael Mariano Grossi, IAEA, 01.30.26.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

"Russia, Ukraine, and the Mass Protests in Iran," Zeev Khanin, The Moscow Times (Russian edition), 01.26.26. Machine-translated.

• “At the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Iran saw mass public protests unprecedented in recent decades in both scale and level of violence,” Zeev Khanin wrote, noting that they began as “a reaction to the most severe economic and environmental crisis in the country’s history” and ended with “thousands killed and wounded; the protest drowned in blood.”
• On Ukraine’s stance, Khanin observed that “official Kyiv… unequivocally came out in support of the civil and political opposition in Iran,” and cited President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s comment that what is happening there “is becoming a clear sign that for Russia the situation will not become easier,” as well as his call that the international community “not miss the moment when changes in Iran have become possible.”
• Describing Moscow’s line, Khanin wrote that Russia’s position toward events in Iran and its vaunted “allied” relationship with Tehran “remains ambivalent.” He noted that while the Foreign Ministry condemned the United States and Israel for threats to strike Iran, the Russian embassy in Tehran spoke only of “clashes between ‘some elements and law enforcement officers who are doing their job to ensure order and legality’” and insisted that “despite ‘protests and demonstrations in some provinces’… ‘ordinary life goes on as usual’.”
• Khanin argued that the Kremlin is reluctant to enter “direct confrontation with Donald Trump,” on whom it still pins hopes that he will help end the war in Ukraine “on Moscow’s terms,” and that this helps explain why Russia has avoided strong public backing for Tehran. “Tehran can count on Russian consultations and supplies of suitable weapons, as well as on Russia providing refuge for Iranian leaders if things turn serious,” he concluded, “but hardly more than that, at least for now.”

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

"Inside the shadow war between Russia and Ukraine that exploits teens," Lizzie Johnson and Serhii Korolchuk, Washington Post, 01.28.26.

• “Sabotage operations are a dangerous new form of hybrid warfare, with both Russia and Ukraine accusing the other side of manipulating vulnerable populations—including children and the elderly—into committing acts of violence for a quick paycheck,” Johnson and Korolchuk write. Ukrainian officials, they note, have “identified and proved in court about 1,400 sabotage operations linked to Russian intelligence services over the past two years, including 800 in 2025, with a quarter of those arrested below the age of 18.”
• “Since 2022, the Russian Supreme Court alleged, every fourth person convicted of sabotage fell between the ages of 16 and 17,” the authors report, while also stressing that “Russian authorities rarely provide evidence and confession videos are often filmed by the Federal Security Service, known for its coercive tactics.” An SBU counterintelligence agent told them, “It’s easier to work with teenagers who are not psychologically ready to deal with stuff like that,” explaining that recruiters “can just threaten the victim with exposure” once initial small tasks escalate to violence.
• Describing the scene as Vika unknowingly prepared a bomb near a playground, the SBU officer recalled: “Kids are playing, this girl is making a bomb.” Later, Judge Volodymyr Aleynikov, who has “nine similar cases on his docket,” warned her at a hearing, “Just don’t look for a job with that phone,” underscoring how recruitment schemes now blend seamlessly into ordinary online job hunting.

"Peace negotiations give freezing Kyiv a hint of hope," The Economist, 01.30.26.

• “The huge working-class suburb [of Kyiv, Troyeshina district] has been without central heating for the best part of a week, with 300,000 people exposed to temperatures as low as -15°C,” the author wrote, adding that electricians “scuttle between the brutalist grey-pink housing blocks, trying desperately to patch burnt-out connections. At least two have died on the job.”
• “People hope we will deliver light after all,” Nina Svyrydovych, the head of one local utility team, said. “Everyone knows we need to survive February and half of March,” she added. “But then we will be heroes.”
• District administrator Maksym Bakhmatov warned that “catastrophe comes in stages. First water, then heating, then electricity, and finally sewage,” he said. Criticizing Kyiv’s mayor, he remarked: “A boxing champion is not the same as an effective manager.”
• A Ukrainian source close to the talks in Abu Dhabi said a potential compromise “would have to steer between ‘positions that are indigestible to both societies’.” “We can’t resolve any of this without agreeing on a security system for the region,” the source said. “The Russians cannot simply say: trust us.”
• Summing up local resolve, Bakhmatov declared: “If Putin thinks Ukrainians will give up because their toilets don’t work, he is mistaken. We will use ditches to crap in if we must—but we will do so singing ‘Putin is a dickhead’,” he said. “Ukrainians will never give in.”

"Ukraine peace deal must put people before land, warns key Zelenskyy ally," David Maddox, The Independent, 02.02.26.

• “The land is important, but still, people are more important and the situation is that we do not know what will be tomorrow,” Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv Oblast and a prominent Zelenskyy ally, told The Independent when asked about his priorities in the Trump‑led peace plan. For himself, he said, “victory is our borders from 1991 where people are happy and not killed, but everybody is very tired,” and, for most Ukrainians, “the victory is just stopping the war and some guarantees of security for the future, for our children to have the life that we had before the invasion.”
• Warning Western members of the “Coalition of the Willing” against repeating 1930s appeasement, Kim said: “I remember the history when [Neville] Chamberlain wrote the paper, when other leaders were promising to fight the aggressor, I remember what was happening next.” He stressed that “this is not a problem of our own in Ukraine,” but rather “different wars between autocratic and democratic countries, and the power of rules over the power of force.”
• Kim underlined Ukraine’s exhaustion and demographic limits: “We’ve only 40 million people and everybody is exhausted. Our soldiers cannot fight for four to 10 years,” he said, adding that while “the Russian economy is suffering also,” Moscow still “have a couple of years to start decreasing publicly” and “Ukraine does not have time.” He argued that Donald Trump’s “unpredictable” diplomacy has created a rare opening: “If it was a traditional policy, step by step, nothing could be changed with Russia, because they can predict it… I truly believe that only with such things, that with economic force, physical force, and only in such a way can we stop Russia.”

"Near the front line, Russians are growing tired of war," The Economist, 01.28.26.

• In Belgorod region [of Russia]’s emptied border village of Kozinka, “fewer than ten of the thousand or so people who lived here remain,” the article reports. Former resident Alexandra Severina, 87, recalled Ukrainian soldiers entering twice but says “they did not target civilians,” while another villager insists, “We have always lived in harmony with Ukrainians. They are good people.”
• After Ukrainian strikes on Belgorod’s thermal power plant in early January, the region has teetered “on the verge of a blackout,” and Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has even warned the city might have to be evacuated. But locals “still head to work every morning, paying little heed to air-raid sirens,” and one passer-by at a front-line photo exhibition admits, “Everybody is tired. Many of those who supported it at the start are feeling disillusioned.”
• A January reader survey by local outlet Fonar found “a quarter of respondents felt ‘devastated and disappointed’” and another quarter felt their lives were “on hold,” while “only 6% said they gave aid” to participants in Russia’s war. Lawyer and activist Ilya Kostyukov says many soldiers now ask him to help terminate their contracts, but “even the injured have not been allowed to leave” for a year: “I tell them honestly: you can bang your head against the brick wall and pay me millions, but we will not succeed.”

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

"Why Is Taking the Rest of the Donetsk Region So Important to Putin?," Paul Sonne, New York Times, 02.01.26.

• “For months, Russian officials have suggested that Moscow will not stop fighting until Ukraine hands over the 2,082 square miles of the Donetsk region that Kyiv still controls,” Paul Sonne wrote, noting that this Ukrainian‑held area is “smaller than the state of Delaware” yet sits “at the heart of the talks.”
• Sonne stresses that Donetsk is central to the Kremlin’s entire war narrative: since 2014, Russian propaganda has framed the Donbas—Donetsk and Luhansk—as “historically Russian” and cast the invasion as a mission to “save” its predominantly Russian‑speaking population.
• Taking the remainder of Donetsk would also help Putin craft a story of victory from a costly stalemate. “If you can get at the negotiation table something you have not achieved by force, the question of who won the war and who dictated the terms of ending the war will be answered,” Alexander Gabuev told the Times, suggesting there would be “no credible way to spin that this has been a strategic Russian defeat” if Ukraine is pushed to hand over territory where “people have shed blood” for 12 years. Sonne adds that because Ukrainian troops and families have paid such a high price defending Donbas, any concession there would be “a ticking bomb under Ukrainian unity,” which magnifies the political value of that land for Moscow.
• Beyond symbolism, Sonne notes two concrete incentives.
  • First, the Ukrainian‑held part of Donetsk is “one of the most fortified parts of the front” with defensive lines dating back to 2014; if Russia gained it, Ukraine would lose a key buffer and become more exposed to any future Russian offensive.
  • Second, a critical water canal for Russian‑occupied Donetsk, the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas canal, has its main intake on Ukrainian‑controlled territory northeast of Sloviansk.

"Ukraine Can’t Defend the Entire Front. Russia Is Finding the Gaps," Constant Méheut and Olha Konovalova, New York Times, 01.30.26.

• “Stretched by Russian assaults across a 700-mile front line, Ukraine lacks enough troops to defend every sector equally,” the authors wrote, noting that in November and December “Russian forces made their biggest advances in Zaporizhzhia and the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, seizing nearly 170 square miles of territory,” which analyst Pasi Paroinen said was “about 20% more than in Donetsk [region] during the same period.”
• Paroinen told the Times that “the Ukrainians simply don’t have the resources to defend everywhere,” even as the article stresses that Russia’s overall 2025 gains remain limited: “In 2025, Russia captured less than one percent of Ukraine’s overall territory,” Méheut and Konovalova reported.
• The manpower shortfall is stark at unit level. “A battalion is supposed to have around 500 soldiers. In reality, we’re lucky if we have 100,” said Vladyslav Bashchevanzhy, chief of staff of a drone battalion in the 260th Territorial Defense Brigade. “Out of those 100, perhaps only 50 are actually combat‑ready—those not wounded or exhausted,” he added.
• Draft evasion and desertion compound the gaps: “Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, recently said that two million Ukrainians were ‘wanted’ for avoiding military service, while 200,000 soldiers were absent without official leave,” the reporters wrote, underscoring the scale of the strain on Ukraine’s ability to hold a 700‑mile line.

"Ukraine Can No Longer Spare Its Youngest Soldiers From the Front Lines," Matthew Luxmoore, Wall Street Journal, 01.29.26.

• “Incoming Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Jan. 14 that two million Ukrainians are dodging the draft and more than 200,000 soldiers have deserted, amounting to around one-fifth of the entire armed forces,” Matthew Luxmoore wrote.
• Rob Lee told the Journal that “manpower is likely the single most important factor that will determine how 2026 goes for Ukraine on the battlefield… as well as how far Russia is able to advance,” highlighting how severely Ukraine’s force has been thinned after “four years into a war that has decimated its professional army.”
• Luxmoore reported that Russia has “spent two years trying to capture the former mining hub of 60,000 people” at Pokrovsk, and that Ukrainian infantrymen are now “hiking more than 10 miles on foot to reach positions inside the devastated city in east Ukraine,” a sign of stretched logistics and manpower.
• Describing the new “Contract 18–24” scheme, he noted that it offers six months of training followed by six months of combat and that “hundreds of young Ukrainians have enrolled on the 18–24 program since last year,” with some, like 18-year-old Vyacheslav Malets, awarded medals by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before being killed or maimed within months.

"Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine," Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, CSIS, 01.27.26.

• “Russian forces have suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) and as many as 325,000 killed since February 2022.” “No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II.”
• “From late February 2024 to early January 2026, Russian forces advanced just under 50 kilometers, at an average pace of only about 70 meters per day.” “Russian forces have gained less than 1.5% of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024.”
• “In total, Russian forces have seized around 75,000 square kilometers (approximately 12% of Ukraine) since the 2022 invasion and control about 120,000 square kilometers (approximately 20% of Ukraine and an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania), including territory seized before 2022 such as Crimea and parts of Donbas.”
• “In 2025, Russian manufacturing declined at its fastest rate since March 2022, with contractions in output and new orders, a rising labor shortage, and a decrease in input buying.” “Economic growth slowed to 0.6% in 2025, and the International Monetary Fund estimated that growth would remain slow, at 0.8%, in 2026.”
• “While Russia still possesses nuclear weapons and a large military, it does not measure up as a great power in virtually any category of military, economic, or science and technology indicators.” “Russia has suffered the highest casualty rate of any major power in any war since World War II, and its military has performed poorly, with historically slow rates of advance and little new territory to show for its efforts over the last two years.”

"Russia and Ukraine Have Lost Nearly Two Million People in the War, U.S. Experts Calculate," Meduza, 01.29.26.

• Meduza argues that CSIS’s headline “two million” figure is misleading because it mixes killed, wounded, and missing: “Summing irrecoverable and sanitary (that is, temporary) losses in this way can only be misleading,” the editors write, noting that “we can document only the data on those killed on the Russian side … and on part of those killed and missing on the Ukrainian side,” while “estimates of the number of wounded in both cases are apparently either based on intelligence information or are purely conjectural.”
• On Ukrainian losses, Meduza questions the CSIS ratio that Russia is losing 2–2.5 times more troops than Ukraine: the report’s estimate of 100,000–140,000 Ukrainian dead “seems adequate only if about half of the missing in Ukraine are alive, and the ‘detection rate’ … in Ukrainian lists is almost 100%,” the article notes. “We know for sure that in Russia far from all the dead make it into the name-by-name lists,” and “losses among officers on both sides almost coincide… it is hard to reconcile this with a loss ratio of 2.5:1 or 2:1.”
• Meduza also criticizes the opacity of the methodology: “The authors of the report do not disclose the method by which they obtained estimates of losses for Russia and Ukraine,” it writes. They say only that their figures are based on “their ‘own calculations’ … analysis of data collected by Meduza and the BBC Russian Service, as well as interviews,” but “do not mention public name-by-name lists of fallen Ukrainian soldiers” like UALosses or explain “how the data on the wounded, who do not appear in any name-by-name lists, were obtained.”

"How Trump’s Push for Peace in Ukraine Will Unfold: Three Scenarios," Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal, 01.28.26.

1. “Keep fighting, keep talking” The most likely scenario: a fifth year of grinding attritional war while U.S.-mediated talks in places like Abu Dhabi continue but go in circles. Russia and Ukraine both keep fighting, both signal “constructiveness” to Trump, but no real breakthrough on territory or security guarantees is reached.
2. “Ukraine buckles first” Ukraine’s biggest risk is exhaustion: overstretched troop reserves, mounting desertions, and a “bedsheet too short” front line. If Ukrainian stamina runs out, Kyiv might be forced into a painful deal—ceding more territory, accepting limits on its military, and tolerating renewed Russian influence, with only weak or ambiguous U.S. guarantees.
3. “Russia gets tired” Russia’s economy stagnates, sanctions bite harder, oil revenues fall, and long-range Ukrainian strikes plus Western action against the shadow fleet increase costs. If Moscow (or both sides) concludes it can’t sustain the war much longer, negotiations could turn into a serious search for a minimally acceptable compromise—if Putin is finally convinced that continuing the war carries “really bad consequences” compared with a deal.

"‘DIY Warfare’: How Russia Crowdsources the Battlefield in Ukraine," Mariya Omelicheva, PONARS Eurasia, 01.27.26.

• Omelicheva defines ‘DIY warfare’” as “when private individuals, non-state organizations, and ad hoc groups exploit accessible technology, improvised tactics, and decentralized coordination to wage war alongside traditional military hierarchies, logistics chains, and command structures.” “The war in Ukraine has accelerated the spread and evolution of DIY warfare, particularly through the widespread use of low-cost drones and decentralized coordination of their procurement and deployment,” according to the author.
• “In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has pioneered large-scale war-related crowdfunding, integrating platforms set up by the government, nongovernmental actors, and international online communities,” the author notes. “On the Russian side, a sprawling patchwork of individuals, organizations, and informal networks have turned to online fundraising to provide military and tactical equipment and care for the wounded, albeit on a smaller scale,” Omelicheva writes.
• “DIY warfare broadens the range of actors, networks, and technologies that can influence battlefield outcomes,” according to the author. “The DIY networks will not dissolve with a ceasefire in Ukraine… irregular and volunteer formations frequently survive beyond the battlefield, destabilizing fragile postwar orders as criminal actors, entrenched power brokers, and insurgents,” Omelicheva warns.

"Russia’s new jet-powered Gerans," Fabian Hinz, IISS, 01.28.26.

• Hinz argues that the Geran‑4 and Geran‑5 mark a real break from Russia’s earlier Geran‑2–based iterations: Moscow appears to have decided that, as Ukrainian counter‑UAV capabilities improve, the operational benefits of much higher speed and altitude now outweigh the disruption of redesigning airframes and production lines.
• In the Ukraine war, the main effect is to defeat current air defenses: faster, jet‑powered Gerans “would be capable of outrunning” many of the fixed‑ and rotary‑wing aircraft Ukraine uses for counter‑UAV missions, as well as interceptor drones that usually fly at 200–300 km/h, even though Kyiv’s forces are reportedly receiving up to 1,500 interceptor UAVs per day.
• Hinz situates Geran‑5 in a wider trend toward low‑cost cruise‑missile‑like systems: these weapons forego advanced navigation, stealth, and efficient turbofans in favor of low unit cost, rapid scalability, and short development cycles. Ukraine has already invested heavily in such designs (e.g., Peklo, Ruta, Bars, Flamingo), whereas Russia “has lagged in this area”; the appearance of Geran‑5 and a new jet‑powered glide bomb suggests Moscow is beginning to close that gap, creating new problems for Ukrainian and European air‑defense planning.

 “The Era of Guards Tank Divisions Is Gone Forever,” Ruslan Pukhov, Kommersant, 01.28.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated.

• The events of the special military operation in Ukraine have demonstrated a fundamentally new face of large‑scale military confrontation, expressed in the transition from the “mechanized war” of the industrial era to “drone war” or the “digital” (“information”) war of the post‑industrial era. In fact, we are now experiencing a new revolution in military affairs—a “drone revolution.” It is obvious that this revolution will continue to develop and deepen, since the potential for expanding “drone warfare” clearly exceeds the possibilities and prospects for overcoming it.
• As the component base becomes more miniaturized and cheaper, and as networked solutions based on artificial intelligence develop, combat operations will increasingly take the form of actions by swarms of drones on an incredible scale—of the most diverse types, shapes, sizes, and purposes (though mostly ever smaller and cheaper), and at the same time ever longer‑range and more autonomous. These will become the main means of warfare, since they make it possible to combine reconnaissance and strike capabilities. The battlefield and the rear for tens of kilometers will become a total “kill zone” in which literally everything will be destroyed by drones. Accordingly, the key countervailing type of combat operations will be counter‑drone warfare and clearing the skies of them.
• Meanwhile, there is a sense that a significant part of our military and defense‑industrial circles still do not grasp the depth of the transformation taking place in military affairs and cherish the illusion that in the combat operations in Ukraine we are dealing with some sort of “anomaly,” and that after the end of the special military operation, if not everything then very much in force development and in military‑technical policy will “return to normal.” This appears to be an extremely dangerous delusion, which may result for our country in the entrenchment of the military‑technical lag that has already been clearly revealed during the current war and may lead to the most catastrophic consequences for us in future conflicts.
• Many statements in the spirit of Voroshilov’s famous phrase that “the horse will still show what it can do”—that tanks or artillery will still show what they can do—ignore the fact that unmanned and digital technologies are also only at the very beginning of their development.
• … we saw this in military‑technical policy during the period 2012–2021, when, despite an abundance of military programs, a huge number of them ultimately were not brought to serial production status or to procurement in significant quantities. Practically everywhere it was “too late and/or too little.” In practice this resulted in heavy bloodshed and low combat effectiveness.
• Attempts to develop digital‑warfare technologies in parallel while at the same time trying to reproduce the force structure of the mechanized‑war era (for example, under the banner of “making up for equipment losses”) will most likely mean that there will not be enough resources in full measure for either one or the other.
• It is necessary to radically reconsider the priorities of military‑technical policy for the future, with strict prioritization of promising and advanced areas and the ruthless curtailment of R&D and, even more so, serial procurement of types and classes of armaments that are obsolete and of little relevance under conditions of a revolution in military affairs.
• Attempts at stopgap solutions to increase the survivability and combat potential of the tank by equipping it in the future with active protection systems, UAVs, and long‑range weapons appear largely inadequate.
• The conceptual crisis is aggravated by the obvious backwardness of our armored‑vehicle industry, which has in principle turned out to be incapable of creating a new‑generation tank… The era of Guards tank divisions is gone forever… The same can be said about attack helicopters. A similarly critical view must be directed at many other traditional types and classes of armaments… Only this will make it possible to free up sufficient funds for the necessary transformation of our armed forces and to ensure their leap into a truly modern form.”
• The challenge that faced Valerii Zaluzhnyi as commander of Ukraine’s armed forces (July 27, 2021, to Feb. 8, 2024) involved a kind of two-front war: first, a struggle to re-organize and equip Ukraine’s military for a threat it hadn’t anticipated, and second, a struggle to innovate the means to blunt and if possible reverse Russia’s military assaults on Ukraine. This follows from Zaluzhnyi’s book, which is entitled “Moya Viyna,” or “My War…” Throughout the book, Gen. Zaluzhnyi—who is now serving as Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K.—is clear that what’s at stake is far more than the loss of Ukraine’s easternmost territories to Russia: it’s the very survival of even the memory of Ukraine as an independent nation.
• At its core, the appropriately titled “My War” introduces a dedicated and talented Ukrainian officer’s struggle—not only with a Russia determined to subjugate Ukraine—but also with insufficient resources, out-of-date military doctrine and strategy, incompetent officers, timid allies and uninformed politicians.

“Gen. Zaluzhnyi on Ukraine’s War for Survival,” Review of Zaluzhnyi’s “Moya Viyna,” Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Russia Matters 01.29.26.

• The challenge that faced Valerii Zaluzhnyi as commander of Ukraine’s armed forces (July 27, 2021, to Feb. 8, 2024) involved a kind of two-front war: first, a struggle to re-organize and equip Ukraine’s military for a threat it hadn’t anticipated, and second, a struggle to innovate the means to blunt and if possible reverse Russia’s military assaults on Ukraine. This follows from Zaluzhnyi’s book, which is entitled “Moya Viyna,” or “My War…” Throughout the book, Gen. Zaluzhnyi—who is now serving as Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K.—is clear that what’s at stake is far more than the loss of Ukraine’s easternmost territories to Russia: it’s the very survival of even the memory of Ukraine as an independent nation.
• At its core, the appropriately titled “My War” introduces a dedicated and talented Ukrainian officer’s struggle—not only with a Russia determined to subjugate Ukraine—but also with insufficient resources, out-of-date military doctrine and strategy, incompetent officers, timid allies and uninformed politicians.
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "‘Ukraine Is Not Losing, Russia Is Not Winning:’ Amid Push For Peace, Here’s How Things Look On The Battlefield," Mike Eckel, RFE/RL, 01.30.26.
  • "Ukraine Is Essential to Europe’s Post-American Defense," Tatyana Deryugina, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Ilona Sologoub, Project Syndicate, 01.29.26.

Military aid to Ukraine:

“Fortress Ukraine: How a Coalition of the Willing Can Rearm Kyiv Without Washington,” Eric Ciaramella and Sophia Besch,” Foreign Affairs, 01.27.26.

• The article argues that Europe must treat Ukraine’s long-term defense as its own problem and build a “Fortress Ukraine” that can deter Russia even if Washington wavers. Current ideas—an eventual European-led force in Ukraine and Article 5–style guarantees after a cease-fire—are fragile because they depend on U.S. backing and Russian consent. Trump’s volatility and reluctance to confront Moscow mean any guarantee could be reversed, and tying protection to a cease-fire lets the Kremlin delay, dilute, or test Western promises, potentially even undermining faith in NATO itself.
• Instead, the authors say true deterrence rests on Ukraine’s own combat strength, backed by a predictable, multiyear European plan. That means solving manpower and training problems; making Ukrainian forces the first line of defense; using foreign troops mainly to build planning, logistics, and situational-awareness capacity; and integrating Ukraine’s defense industry into Europe’s. Europe should move from ad hoc donations to long-term contracts, co-production on EU/NATO soil, and mechanisms that cut through protectionism and fragmented procurement.
• Funding is the crux: estimates suggest Ukraine will need about $390 billion in budget support and military aid from 2026–29, requiring European NATO members to roughly double Ukraine-related spending to around 0.4% of GDP. This is politically difficult but cheaper than a defeated or crippled Ukraine and a more exposed Europe. Europe is slowly developing the institutions and habits of strategic autonomy; whether it succeeds will be judged by its ability to sustain Ukraine’s defense without depending on changing U.S. politics.

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

"Why Economic Pain Won’t Stop Russia’s War," Dr Richard Connolly, RUSI, 01.28.26.

• “One of the enduring beliefs of liberal internationalism is that economic pressure can substitute for military force,” Dr Richard Connolly writes. “History, however, offers limited comfort for this view. Wars are rarely abandoned because they become expensive,” the author argues.
• “Economic pressure tends to matter in war only when it triggers one of three outcomes: the collapse of a state’s capacity to fight, the fragmentation of the ruling coalition, or the destabilization of the regime itself,” Connolly notes.
• “Russia today is not immune to economic strain. The war and the sanctions regime imposed in response have reshaped its economic landscape,” the author observes, pointing to “slowing growth, persistent inflation, high interest rates and deteriorating investment prospects.” “These developments are significant. They imply a poorer, less dynamic economy over time. But the crucial question is whether they undermine Russia’s capacity or willingness to continue the war,” he writes.
• “In Russia, however, sanctions appear to have reinforced rather than weakened the cohesion of the ruling coalition,” Connolly argues, describing how “labor shortages are acute, driven by mobilization, emigration and the demands of the defense sector,” while resources are reallocated to arms production. “This creates a perverse stability. For many insiders, the continuation of the war is not merely tolerable but materially advantageous,” the author writes.
• “The history of war offers few examples of conflicts ended by economic pain alone,” Connolly concludes. “Economic pressure is a powerful tool. But in wars framed as existential, it is rarely a decisive one,” the author writes.

"The Shadow Fleet’s New Flags Challenge Order at Sea," Cornell Overfield, CNA, 01.29.26.

• The ships that have been circumventing oil sanctions for years in a reactive cat-and-mouse game with the U.S. and Europe have changed tactics,” Cornell Overfield wrote, describing how parts of the sanctions‑busting “shadow fleet” have shifted from false open‑registry flags (e.g., Panama, Guyana, Sint Maarten) to openly registering under Russian, Iranian, or Venezuelan flags after stepped‑up enforcement. The Bella 1/Marinera, seized by the U.S. Coast Guard on Jan. 7, 2026 after a week‑long chase, “epitomized this trend,” he noted: it went from falsely claiming Guyana’s flag to being entered in the Russian register in Sochi with a painted Russian flag on its hull, after Guyana denounced it as stateless.
• Once vessels sail under unauthorized registries, “they were actually vessels without nationality,” Overfield explained, allowing warships to board them under UNCLOS and, under long‑standing U.S. practice and several other states’ positions, subjecting them to the boarding state’s jurisdiction. He pointed out that in early December 2025 “the U.S. seized the Skipper, which Guyana denounced as falsely flagged,” and that by late 2025 “dozens of ships have reportedly followed suit” in joining Russian registers to avoid similar fates, “trading vulnerable stealth for the notoriety and protection of Russia’s flag.”
• The article “warns that continued seizures of vessels under the Russian or Iranian flag may disrupt oil flows, but they could also undermine a cornerstone of the law of the sea,” Overfield wrote, referring to exclusive flag‑state control. He argued that while the Bella 1 case may end up before ITLOS via a Russian suit against the U.K., “an alternative to seizures is for the U.S. and its European allies to continue leveraging their unique financial power to sanction companies supporting this oil trade at sea and on shore,” stressing that sanctions are “less dramatic than seizures, but they could better serve the long‑term U.S. interest in a stable international economy.”

"Ukraine’s ‘Kinetic Sanctions’ Change the Game," Edward Wrong, RUSI, 01.29.26.

• Wrong describes how Ukraine’s security service (SBU) has begun openly targeting Russia’s shadow fleet with maritime and aerial drones, what SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk calls “kinetic sanctions.” Since late 2024 and throughout 2025, at least 11 tankers closely tied to Russian crude exports have been badly damaged or destroyed across the Mediterranean, Black Sea, Baltic, and even off Senegal—likely amounting to 5–10% of the “core” Russian shadow crude fleet.
• The immediate impact on Russia’s war‑financing exports has been significant: Black Sea insurance rates for ships trading to Russian ports have spiked (up to 300% in early December, then doubling again in January), and Russian seaborne crude exports via the Black Sea temporarily fell by about 30%. Some major operators, including a large Turkish tanker firm, have announced they will no longer lift Russian cargoes after being hit, citing “untenable” risk.
• Wrong argues Kyiv is unlikely to be deterred by Russian retaliation, legal threats, or escalation risks: Ukraine is already under constant attack, far less dependent on exports, and technologically ahead in maritime drones. Many shadow‑fleet tankers operate under false flags, dubious insurance, and questionable seaworthiness, making legal redress difficult and increasing liability for ports and states that host ship‑to‑ship transfers. As Russian oil exports face tighter sanctions, a shrinking tanker pool, and growing physical risk, Ukraine’s “kinetic sanctions” substantially raise the costs of sanctions‑busting for shipowners, insurers, and coastal states.

"Interview with Vladimir V. Maslennikov, Director of the Department for European Cooperation, Russian Foreign Ministry," MID, 01.30.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated.

• Discussing sanctions and frozen assets, Maslennikov noted that war spending now dominates EU policy: “Any new sanctions package is accompanied by calls… to begin as soon as possible work on the next batch of restrictions,” Maslennikov said, adding that Brussels has already “on paper” divided up Russia’s sovereign reserves—“the proverbial hide of the not‑yet‑killed bear”—between Kyiv and European defense firms. He stressed that “in December 2025 the Bank of Russia already filed a claim in the Moscow Arbitration Court against Euroclear” to recover losses from being unable to dispose of Russian state funds, and said Moscow will “continue to seek the return of illegally held assets in the EU.”
• On NATO, Maslennikov pointed out that the alliance’s doctrinal documents now label Russia “the most significant and direct threat to security” for the “long‑term,” “even in the event of resolution of the Ukrainian conflict,” and that since 2014 “all contacts with us the alliance has broken off… only an emergency communication channel remains.” While he acknowledged that “very timidly, voices in favor of resuming dialogue with Russia have begun to be heard,” he concluded that “in such conditions it is out of the question to speak of any dialogue with NATO” unless the bloc “changes its position toward Russia.”

"How Russia weaponized global banking to silence dissidents," Alexandra Prokopenko, Financial Times, 02.01.26.

• On Nov. 1, thousands of Russians living legally in Europe found their Revolut bank accounts frozen,” Alexandra Prokopenko wrote, noting that “students, long-term residents, anti-Putin activists who’d fled years ago” were all hit and that “their shared liability was their Russian passport.” Quoting Revolut co‑founder Nik Storonsky, she added: “The regulator’s expectations can be much stricter than the legislation itself. We are forced to comply,” arguing that “western financial systems amplify Russian repression through risk-averse compliance that cannot distinguish Putin’s critics from his enablers.”
• Prokopenko explained that “Russia’s financial intelligence unit often labels dissidents as ‘terrorists’ or ‘extremists’,” and that a late‑2024 law “expanded the unit’s powers to designate anyone for ‘disseminating false information’ or ‘threatening territorial integrity’.” As a result, she wrote, “Russia’s blacklist now contains over 16,000 names, including people whose only crime was to criticize the Kremlin,” and those designations are automatically scooped up by major compliance databases—Dow Jones, LexisNexis, and Refinitiv—so that “when a person’s status changes, banks receive terrorism notifications” and “over 95%” of the process is automated.
• “Currently, over-compliance is rewarded, and servicing legitimate refugees is punished. That must be reversed,” Prokopenko argued. She proposed that FATF and independent observers “track indicators of abuse,” such as when “a country adds 300 people monthly to terror lists and 10 per cent are minors,” maintain lists of abusers, and require enhanced scrutiny of their designations. She also called for “regulatory safe harbor for servicing individuals with asylum or protected status from autocracies” and independent review mechanisms so that “otherwise, it remains impossible for people to clear their names” against what she described as a “consequence-free way to extend repression globally while remaining within the international legal framework.”

"Study Explores How Russian Billionaires Have Navigated Sanctions," RBC/Russia.Post (summary of research by Elena Shvetsova), 02.02.26.

• According to Forbes, Russia still ranked 5th in the world by number of billionaires in 2025, with “more than 140 Russians” worth at least $1 billion; about three‑quarters of those on the 2021 pre‑war list remained. Shvetsova’s study tracked 125 billionaires on the 2024 Russia Forbes list and found that every other billionaire expanded their assets in Russia, every third complicated ownership structures, and every sixth sold assets abroad between February 2022 and January 2025.
• The impact of sanctions was highly uneven: half of the latest billionaire list is not under any sanctions, while “the toughest U.S. sanctions were applied to 37 Russian billionaires,” of whom 23 are also under EU sanctions and 21 were hit by what she calls “sanctions bombing” from the U.S., EU and others simultaneously. Among sanctioned billionaires, “nearly 60%” of those under EU/U.S./multijurisdictional pressure have taken steps to reduce their businesses in Russia, compared with nearly 60% of unsanctioned billionaires who invested more in domestic projects; roughly a quarter of sanctioned billionaires had to sell foreign assets quickly.
• Ownership tactics diverged sharply by sanctions status: “only 15% of billionaires untouched by sanctions have resorted to transferring assets to affiliated persons, versus 62% among those under the toughest restrictions,” the article notes. At the same time, 10 billionaires have renounced Russian citizenship—particularly in IT, finance, and venture capital—reflecting what Shvetsova calls a “new institutional phenomenon: billionaires who are [labeled by the Russian government as] ‘foreign agents’ and ‘extremists’” and are trying to “neutralize” their connection to Russia in hopes of eventually challenging Western sanctions.

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

"A Slow-Cooked Peace in Ukraine," Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 01.30.26.

• Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s ferocious former intelligence chief and now a close aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “said recently a Donald Trump-mediated ending of the war may be in sight, according to Jenkins.
• Jade McGlynn of King’s College London, who researches opinion in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, says even active resistance fighters accept the inevitability of territorial concessions, according to Jenkins.
• “A threshold of pain isn’t unobtainable where Mr. Putin would prefer a cease-fire to continuing the war,” Jenkins argued.
• Looking ahead, Jenkins contended: “Happily, neither NATO nor troops are needed. Ukraine, badly divided and taken by surprise, has already fought Russia to a standstill once.” In doing so, he wrote, “it’s now a model for NATO itself, less reliant on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, more able to deter Russia conventionally.”
• “Mr. Putin hasn’t abandoned his ambitions. But he or a successor would have a steep hill to climb to convince fellow elites to renew an experiment that has failed so miserably. A simple truth: Even if Mr. Trump were as bad as his detractors say, Mr. Putin would be hard-pressed to conjure a Ukraine ending now that wouldn’t simply be an exclamation mark on the overall trajectory of Russia’s decline,” Jenkins wrote. This holds water if one views Russia’s use of force in Ukraine as one continuous campaign since 2014. However, if you consider the conflict of 2014, in which Russia, among other things tried and failed to firmly anchor Ukraine to Russia, to be separate from the war of 2022–2025, then the latter can be viewed as the ‘renewal’ that Jenkins is referring to.

"Peacemaking Russian Style: Negotiations as the Continuation of War by Other Means," Pavel Baev, PONARS Eurasia, 01.27.26.

• “Moscow may decry any proposal that resembles the 2015 Minsk agreements, but it seeks, in essence, to negotiate an armistice that would grant it the ability to control the implementation of a ceasefire in Ukraine, influence political developments inside Ukraine, and exploit divisions in the Western coalition,” Pavel Baev wrote. “Achieving a deal that can be presented as a material victory is crucial not only for domestic purposes of ensuring regime stability, but also for boosting Russia’s global profile,” according to the author.
• “Moscow was certainly keen to manipulate conflicts rather than waiting for a ‘mutually hurting stalemate,’ which would make them ripe for a compromise solution,” the author wrote. “Fusing the role of a mediator and that of a party to the conflict was a typical feature of these Kremlin manipulations,” Pavel Baev notes.
• “Putin’s main goal is to ensure that a rump Ukraine is subjugated by Russia and distanced from NATO,” Baev argues. “The stubborn pursuit of a political triumph in what is an unwinnable war may prove to be a blunder of the same disastrous proportions as the decision to launch the blitzkrieg in February 2022,” Pavel Baev wrote.

"Ore and order: Russia’s rare-earth strategy for the Ukraine talks," Kirill Shamiev, ECFR, 01.26.26.

• “In May 2025, when U.S. and Ukraine discussed the ‘minerals-for-aid’ deal, Moscow pointed out the obvious: Russia’s rare-earth reserves dwarf Ukraine’s,” Kirill Shamiev wrote. “By December, elements of that argument had crept into U.S. president Donald Trump’s peace plan, which included major American investments in Russia’s rare-earth and energy sectors,” according to the author.
• “With this project, Russia hopes to raise its global supply share of rare earths from 1.3% today to 10% by 2030,” the author wrote. “Europe’s appetite for rare earths gives Russia’s mineral diplomacy a wedge and is likely to test the bloc’s cohesion,” the author believes.
• “Russian officials know that the West’s overreliance on Chinese rare earths is a strategic weakness,” Kirill Shamiev wrote. “If Beijing decides to restrict the export of these materials, their trillion-dollar ecosystem could collapse,” according to the author.
• “When Europe does not buy from China, it already turns to Russia,” the author, Kirill Shamiev, wrote. According to the head of another rare-earth plant in Estonia, “if Russia’s rare-earth supply is interrupted, we will not have a Western European defense industry,” the author notes.
• “Russia is betting big on the Angara-Yenisei Valley project with the creation of a special economic zone, tax breaks and infrastructure support,” according to the author, Kirill Shamiev. “European leaders will need to have a solid strategy in place if they want to resist that carrot,” the author wrote.

"Interview of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with Turkish media (TGRT TV and Türkiye newspaper), Moscow, 01.29.26," Russian Foreign Ministry.

• “Do we see this conflict as a broad confrontation between Russia and the West? The answer is yes,” Sergey Lavrov said. “Ukraine is a ‘pawn,’ an instrument used by the West to build up such a bridgehead right on the borders of the Russian Federation in order to create direct threats to our security.”
• On conditions for peace, Lavrov argued that a short cease-fire or “freeze” is unacceptable: “A truce, which Zelenskyy is again seeking, even for 60 days, and better for longer, is unacceptable for us,” he said, because “all previous periods linked to diplomatic efforts… ended with any cease-fire immediately being used to pump Ukraine with new weapons… and to give this regime a respite to continue the war against Russia.” He added that earlier Istanbul talks in 2022 produced “honest” security guarantees for both sides, but that “everything was ready, and Boris Johnson said ‘no,’” preventing a settlement.
• On the current U.S.–Ukraine security framework, Lavrov said: “We have not seen the agreement with the United States… Zelenskyy keeps saying, ‘we have a security agreement 100% ready’ and ‘not an inch of our land will we give up,’” but, in Lavrov’s view, the guarantees now under discussion “will ‘strengthen’ a regime that has lost its legitimacy… the only one in the world that has abolished the language of an entire people and banned the canonical Orthodox Church.” Any lasting settlement, he suggested, must address “the Nazi regime” in Kyiv, the rights of Russian speakers, and religious freedoms, not just lines on the map.
• On NATO and talk of World War III, Lavrov stated: “The scenario of NATO’s collapse does not interest us at all. The alliance is an atavism, a relic of a past era.” Western elites, he argued, are “inflating the story about preparation for a Third World War that Russia will start” because they “see no other way to mobilize their electorates to stay in power” than through “hysterics about the Russian threat.”
• Asked about Trump’s Greenland gambit, Lavrov replied that Putin had already said “this is not our issue, this is not our problem,” and noted that Russia “has never had any claims on Greenland.” By contrast, he said, it is the United States and some NATO members who “have long been trying to extend NATO’s area of responsibility, in particular to the Northern Sea Route,” whereas Russia “has never sent gunboats closer to Greenland.”
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • Podcast: "Vladimir Putin’s Art of the Deal," Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday, The National Interest, 01.27.26. After weeks of silence, Russian state media has suddenly pivoted toward a “let’s make a deal” narrative, signaling a startling shift in tone as high-stakes Ukraine negotiations revive in Moscow and Abu Dhabi.

"Most Russians Favor Escalation in Ukraine Over Concessions If No Peace Deal,” Simon Saradzhyan and Angelina Flood, Russia Matters (01.30.26).

• The Levada Center’s latest polling on Ukraine indicates a notable hardening of the Russian public’s attitude toward the war in Ukraine. While the poll indicates support for immediate peace talks remained higher than support for continued fighting, if peace talks fail, the balance could shift toward greater acceptance of escalation, according to the center’s January 2026 poll. At the same time, while confident in Russia’s victory, the majority of Russians believe the war will last another six months or more, according to the poll. Together, these trends point to possible further normalization of a long war and reduced public appetite for compromise in Russia.
• Interestingly, perhaps for the first time since the start of the conflict, the Levada Center asked its respondents how Russia should act if achieving peace is not yet possible: Should it make additional concessions or intensify attacks? In response, 5% said Russia should definitely make additional concessions and 16% said it should probably do so, while 28% favored probably increasing attacks and 31% favored definitely increasing them; 20% were unable to answer. Overall, a clear plurality favors escalation in such a scenario: 59% believe failure to achieve peace should be met with greater use of force, compared with 21% who advocate concessions.

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

"A chilling, yet plausible scenario: What if Putin wins?," The Economist, 01.22.26.

• “To an alarming degree, war and peace now depend on the whims of a handful of vain old men.” “Mr. Trump is the least predictable of all, wielding American firepower willy-nilly to give short-lasting dopamine shots to his own ego,” the article notes.
• In Carlo Masala’s scenario, “America forces Ukraine into a grim ceasefire, with Russia occupying a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Mr. Putin declares victory.” Later, “Two brigades of masked soldiers seize the small Estonian city of Narva… This is a direct attack on NATO soil, and ought to trigger Article 5,” the author writes.
• “America’s president has to decide whether to muster overwhelming force to repel the invaders in Narva… or let Russia continue to occupy NATO territory, thus making a mockery of Article 5.” In the end, “Xi Jinping is delighted at the demonstration that America will not stand by its allies. The global sheriff has retired,” the piece concludes.

"NATO without America: Europe ‘thinks the unthinkable’," Henry Foy, Ben Hall, et al., Financial Times, 01.28.26.

• “This crisis is much worse than anything we’ve seen in 77 years of Nato history and in many ways, anything since December 7 1941,” Ivo Daalder said, arguing that the idea that “the security of Europe was fundamental to the security of the U.S. … is gone. It’s over.” Rachel Ellehuus warned that “uncertainty about the credibility of the U.S. commitment is now an undercurrent of transatlantic relations.”
• Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte cautioned: “If anyone thinks … that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. If you really want to go it alone, forget that you can ever get there with 5 per cent [defense spending]. It will be 10 per cent. You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros.” The FT notes that directly replacing U.S. contributions would cost about $1 trillion and could require up to a decade for some capabilities such as spy satellites.
• “It’s not about being as good as the U.S., which will take us 15 years or even longer. It is just being better than the Russians,” Carlo Masala argued, calling that goal “completely different” and “achievable in three to four years.” Yet Stefano Stefanini warned that U.S. dominance in Nato has underpinned European integration: “You take away that presence, and Europe disintegrates, as well as Nato.”

"The Soviet Lessons for Trump’s Greenland Gambit," Howard W. French, Foreign Policy, 01.23.26.

• “Much has been written in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s astonishingly naked bid to bully Denmark—and with it, all of Europe—into accepting a U.S. takeover of the world’s largest island, Greenland,” Howard W. French writes. “Few have looked back to the Soviet precedent, which perhaps offers the surest key to understanding how a decadent superpower’s final years of domineering sway might play out,” according to the author.
• “Trump claimed that he needed to take ownership of Greenland in order to strengthen the defenses of NATO, and hence of the West, even as he pursues measure after measure to slacken U.S. commitments to the military protection of Europe,” the author argues. “After one Trump insult after another, [Europe’s leaders] seem to have finally understood that the United States they once knew and relied on for military, economic, and political leadership has vanished and will probably never fully return,” French writes.
• “What seems certain, though, is that a trans-Atlantic project that began half a millennium ago … has entered onto an uncertain new path after 80 years of U.S. leadership,” the author believes. “Given the decay in U.S. leadership and the turmoil it could unleash, to compare today with a previous era of world wars and a great depression no longer feels so farfetched,” Howard W. French concludes.

"How NATO is preparing for war in the Arctic," Richard Milne and Anastasia Stognei, Financial Times, 01.27.26.

• “The shortest flight path of a projectile launched from Kola towards major U.S. cities on both coasts is over the Arctic, close to the North Pole and Greenland,” Norway’s defense minister Tore Sandvik said. “This is homeland defense . . . for the U.S., for London, for Paris, for Berlin, for all of the alliance,” according to the authors’ account.
• “Today Moscow has more than 40 military facilities along the Arctic coast, including military bases, airfields, radar stations and ports,” Milne and Stognei report. “The Northern Fleet, and in particular its submarines, is a pillar of Russia’s strategic deterrence,” they note, citing analyst Ondrej Ditrych.
• “My concern is that security is dominating the Arctic agenda, and we forget that there are other issues that are just as important such as climate change, infrastructure, the rights of indigenous people,” a senior Nordic official told the FT, the authors write. “It’s a race in strategic competition in the Arctic,” Sandvik said, according to Milne and Stognei.

"Fyodor Lukyanov: Russia’s Place in the World," interviewed by Peter Slezkine, Stimson Center, 01.23.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Whatever happens, whether we like it or not, but the behavior of the United States sets a tone for the whole international atmosphere. Still now, maybe it’ll change in the future, but now it is a fact of life,” Fyodor Lukyanov said. “So, reluctantly, conclusions will be made that now we need, at least, to consider what options we have in areas where our interests lie, to behave in a more or less similar way.”
• “The conclusion which has been made by all, regardless of what people think about Trump, like him or not, is that the liberal world order is over completely,” Lukyanov stated. “Understandably, the only country which could destroy that world order was the United States—not China, not Russia, not Iran. The country which created this world order decided to get rid of it.”
• “Russia was very much against the rules-based order. Now, we have order without any rules, or disorder without any rules,” he said. “Europe, without the United States, is actually much more hostile towards Russia than it used to be before. And all the most radical energy and ideas on how to… deter Russia… come from Europe. It doesn’t come from the United States anymore.”
• “This is the last battle of the Cold War, actually. It’s not the battle for the future of Ukraine, of Russia, of Europe,” Lukyanov argued. “Those problems were never seriously discussed, considered, and settled after the Cold War… Consequences of collapse, the way how the Soviet Union collapsed, and how the whole European arrangement was made after 1991.”
• “The importance of the Ukrainian issue… is that big that it is hardly measurable in the context of deals, what Trump likes,” he said. “The problem is that Ukraine is seen here as something that important for everything, for Russian existential future, for the future of Russian civilization, that this issue cannot be put in the framework of relative advantages.”
• “Russia is the country which would mostly benefit from a very strong and stable peace in the world,” Lukyanov concluded. “Because if there is peace and everybody thinks about cooperation, about benefits, and so on, you cannot bypass Russia. Russia is an indispensable power… because whatever you do, you have to cooperate with Russia, and Russia has to cooperate with the rest of the world.”

"A Better Greenland Deal: How to Turn Trump’s Tantrum Into a Win for Everyone," Sumantra Maitra and Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, Foreign Affairs, 01.28.26.

• The authors argue that Trump’s provocative talk about “buying” or annexing Greenland is strategically misguided but creates an opportunity for a much better deal for all sides. The United States already has major security interests in Greenland, and Denmark and Greenland share an interest in a stronger U.S. presence—especially if Trump needs a visible “win” he can sell domestically. Rather than sovereignty changes, Washington should aim to deepen defense, economic, and political ties within the existing constitutional framework.
• Legally, the United States already enjoys de facto military sovereignty under the 1951 U.S.–Denmark defense agreement (updated in 2004), which lets it establish and operate bases on Greenland as long as Copenhagen and Nuuk are informed. The piece insists that pushing for formal annexation is both unnecessary and counterproductive: most Greenlanders want more autonomy or eventual independence from Denmark, not U.S. rule—only about 6% favored becoming part of the United States in a 2025 poll.
• Instead, the authors propose revising and expanding the defense agreement to lock in U.S. access and basing rights, including unrestricted troop movements, upgrades at Pituffik Space Base, a network of new radar sites, and a fully integrated missile defense architecture. Given Greenland’s position on the shortest missile flight paths from Russia and China to North America, it is central to a future “Golden Dome” shield. At the same time, Washington should displace China’s growing economic role—Beijing is currently Greenland’s largest export market—by making the United States Greenland’s preferred security and export partner, using trade and investment rather than coercion to cement long‑term alignment.

"Sergey Karaganov: The transport network must lead people to develop new territories," Sergey Karaganov, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 01.27.26.

• On the war and what comes after, Karaganov writes that Russia must not only “finish the war victoriously,” but also “end its overly long one-and-a-half-century European journey.” He argues that after an “intermediate and all the more so decisive victory,” Russia’s strategic course should be a “shift of the center of spiritual, economic, human, and even political development of the country to the East, to Russian Asia, to Siberia.”
• On Europe and the West, he claims that “there is no future on the western part of Eurasia,” and that from there “metastases of moral decay, the habitual for Europe and once again reviving aggressiveness, and later instability will spread.” While “no Russian patriot should renounce the best that the ‘European vaccine’ gave us in the past—great literature, great music, cinema,” in his view “the West is the past.”
• On Ukraine and reconstruction, Karaganov warns against repeating what he calls a Soviet “historic mistake:” “In the liberated regions, especially in Donbas, it is necessary to partially restore housing for normal life and some industry, but in no case repeat the historical mistake… when regions of Ukraine liberated from the fascists were restored in the first place, largely at the expense of central Russian and Siberian regions.” He sees resources as better directed to a Siberia‑focused “second turn to the East” rather than rebuilding Ukraine’s formerly occupied areas on a large scale.

"‘A call for overtly rejecting great power influence’," Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Politico, 01.26.26.

• “For years, middle powers have been waging a quiet struggle to secure their places in a more uncertain world, but 2026 has put them on center stage in a prominent—and perhaps uncomfortable—way,” Meghan L. O’Sullivan wrote.
• “What is new—and untested—are three things: a definition of ‘middle powers’ which includes America’s closest historical allies; a view of the world that equates U.S. and Chinese power as equally disruptive and predatory; and a call for overtly rejecting great power influence rather than working around or with it,” she observed.
• “In some areas, such as trade and investment, middle powers will be able to protect their direct interests by working together instead of standing individually in a system of power politics that holds more downsides than upsides for them,” O’Sullivan argued.
• “In both the climate and technology arenas, middle powers must aspire not only to protecting themselves, but also to shifting the trajectory of U.S.-China relations from competition to cooperation,” she wrote.
• “The question is whether middle powers can move from tactical coordination to strategic impact, using their collective weight not just to survive great-power rivalry, but to reshape it,” O’Sullivan concluded.

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

• "How Trump Should Think About the Arctic," Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy, 01.27.26.
• "The real 'civilizational erasure' is happening in America," Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, 01.30.26.
• “The Day Russia’s War Collided With History, Alexey Kovalev, Foreign Policy, 01.30.26. Clues from Russian Views.
• "If the U.S. Leaves NATO, Europe Can Protect Itself," James Stavridis, Bloomberg, 01.29.26.
• "In an Age of Superpowers, Geography Is Still Destiny," Hal Brands, Bloomberg, 02.02.26.
• “We are all Eurasians now: The old land empires can help us manage diversity,” Anatol Lieven, Unherd.com, 01.19.26.
• “Dmitry Trenin: America First Goes Global,” Dmitry Trenin, Pravda (01.30.26).
• "Not 2027, but 2026 could become the year of Russia's war against a NATO country," Alexander Shulga, The Moscow Times, 01.30.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

"Is There Really a Threat From China and Russia in Greenland?," Andrei Dagaev, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 01.27.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• “Having previously only ever made headlines in the context of global warming, Greenland now finds itself at the center of the world’s attention as U.S. President Donald Trump explores ways to seize control of the island,” Andrei Dagaev writes. “For now, however, Washington’s actions are proving more destabilizing than Moscow and Beijing’s extremely limited influence in Greenland,” according to the author.
• “Neither China nor Russia can be considered key partners of Greenland,” Dagaev argues. “China remains open to cooperation with Greenland, but currently prefers to take a wait-and-see approach and avoid raising suspicions of having ulterior motives,” the author notes.
• “In reality, the supposed threats from China and Russia pose far less of a danger to both Greenland and the Arctic than the prospect of an unscrupulous takeover of the island,” the author concludes. “The latter would not only undermine the transatlantic partnership and set a very dangerous precedent for border revisions, but also end the principle of Arctic exclusivity, which guaranteed security and stability in the region,” Dagaev writes.

"‘Self-Revolution’ Mode: Why Xi Jinping Is Reshuffling China’s Military Leadership," Andrei Fedotov, Forbes Russia, 01.27.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• “The Central Military Commission has been literally emptied,” Andrei Fedotov writes, noting that after the investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, it “now consists only of two members: Xi Jinping himself and another vice chairman, Zhang Shenmin, who also heads the CMC’s discipline inspection commission.”
• “The dismissal of Zhang Youxia shows that even good personal relations with Xi Jinping are no longer a guarantee of safety,” the author argues. Zhang “was considered a general enjoying the absolute trust of the head of state,” a ‘red prince’ whose father was a prominent revolutionary, and one of only three leaders exempted from the informal “67 up, 68 down” retirement rule at the 20th Party Congress, Fedotov notes.
• According to Fedotov, Xi is signaling that “the party’s position in the fight against corruption is the absence of forbidden zones and a principle of zero tolerance—regardless of who it is and what their rank is,” and that the anti-corruption drive has become “a new form of political modernization,” aimed in part at “preventing a repetition of the 1989 Tiananmen events,” when public anger over corruption helped fuel mass protests.

"China’s Global Security Initiative and Russia’s Eurasian Security Initiative: Areas of Convergence," Xu Bo and Wu Hao, Valdai Club, 01.28.26. Clues from Chinese Views.

• Xu and Wu argue that both China’s Global Security Initiative (2022) and Russia’s Eurasian Security Initiative (2024) are responses to “great changes unseen in a century,” with a shifting power structure and a growing “global security deficit” marked by bloc confrontation, major‑power rivalry, and crises such as the Ukraine war and the Israel‑Palestine conflict. The GSI, they write, aims to address “the return of traditional security concerns,” the “emergence of the security dilemma” (citing Mearsheimer’s view that the Ukraine crisis is rooted in NATO expansion), and the “need for global security governance” beyond NATO‑style regional models.
• They describe Russia’s initiative as seeking “a new framework of cooperative and indivisible security and development across Eurasia,” expanding Moscow’s security focus from the post‑Soviet space to the entire continent, while the GSI calls for building “a community with a shared future for mankind,” inviting broader global participation. Convergence, they argue, can be advanced by: strengthening the SCO as “the cornerstone of security and stability in Eurasia” (especially after its 2024 enlargement); jointly enhancing cooperation with the Global South on development, food, energy, and climate; and deepening joint work on “non‑traditional” security issues such as climate change, AI governance, and preventing the weaponization of outer space.
• Looking ahead, Xu and Wu say alignment of the two initiatives must reckon with three structural factors: the transformation (and “NATO‑ization”) of traditional alliances, especially in the Indo‑Pacific; the enduring influence of the United States and the transatlantic partnership on Eurasian security; and the “anarchical structure” of international relations, where lack of mutual trust drives zero‑sum dynamics. The “ultimate goal” of both GSI and the Eurasian Security Initiative, they conclude, should be “to mitigate the challenges presented by this anarchical environment by establishing a broader cooperative system,” which, if successful, would be a “fundamental contribution to the overall development of international relations.”

Missile defense:

"Why Golden Dome for America: The Case the Administration Should Make," Kari A. Bingen, CSIS, 01.30.26.

• “Russia and China are expanding their nuclear and conventional arsenals in ways that stress existing defenses,” Kari A. Bingen wrote, pointing to “advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles with maneuverable warheads and hypersonic glide vehicles,” as well as “Russia’s tested Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile and undersea vehicles” that are “designed to evade traditional defenses.”
• Describing recent conflicts, Bingen noted that “missiles and drones launched simultaneously and in coordinated waves” are now used to achieve massed effects, citing “Russia’s September 2025 aerial assault on Ukraine with more than 600 drones and missiles” as an example of the kind of saturation attack that exposes how “the U.S. homeland is more vulnerable today than the existing defense architecture was designed to handle.”
• “The systems designed to defend against earlier generations of threats are no longer sufficient on their own,” Bingen argued, adding that Golden Dome “represents an effort to adapt, using available technologies and new integration approaches to reduce vulnerability and strengthen deterrence” so that U.S. leaders have options “through active defenses, short of having to resort to nuclear responses” against Russia, China, or other advanced adversaries.

Nuclear arms:

"Salvaging a New START," Jennifer Kavanagh, The American Conservative, 01.30.26.

• “On Feb. 5, 2026, the New START treaty, the last nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, will expire,” Jennifer Kavanagh wrote, arguing that “the treaty’s end brings few benefits and lots of risks to the United States,” and that “it’s probably too late to prevent the agreement’s demise, but the Trump administration could still take steps to mitigate some of the more serious potential consequences by sticking to New START’s caps and limitations, at least in the short term.”
• Kavanagh recalled that President Vladimir Putin had offered “to continue observing the … central quantitative restrictions’ for one year if the United States did the same,” and that Donald Trump responded that the plan sounded “like a good idea to me,” but she noted that “his administration issued no formal response to the Russian proposal.” When Trump later said of New START, “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement,” Kavanagh called this “mere wishful thinking,” pointing to his similar, still‑unfulfilled promise after leaving the JCPOA.
• Warning against using New START’s end to justify a U.S. buildup, Kavanagh wrote that “the United States already has rough nuclear parity with Russia and a nuclear triad that assures a U.S. second strike,” and that any move to exceed the treaty’s limits “will only encourage Russia to do the same, drive China to invest more to speed its nuclear buildup, increase the risk of miscalculation, and perhaps incite proliferation elsewhere as well.” With “less than a week to go,” she urged the administration at least to “signal its intention to stick to the treaty’s current caps,” matching Russia’s one‑year offer informally to avoid further damage to U.S.–Russia relations and to Ukraine peace talks.

"Trump Faces High-Stakes Choice as Final Nuclear Pact With Russia Expires," Michael R. Gordon and Robbie Gramer, Wall Street Journal, 01.31.26.

• Gordon and Gramer note that New START, which “limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 nuclear warheads,” is set to expire on Feb. 5, ending “the first time that American and Russian nuclear forces aren’t constrained by an arms-control agreement in over half a century” unless a new understanding is reached. Putin announced on Sept. 22 that Russia was prepared to adhere for a year to the treaty’s “central quantitative restrictions,” while Trump said the plan “sounds like a good idea to me,” the authors wrote.
• The article contrasts competing views in Washington: Sen. Jim Risch said he opposed New START from the start because “Russia has a history of cheating and they proved me absolutely right all the way through this,” and he opposes any extension. By contrast, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen warned that “walking away from the last remaining guardrails without a plan would hand strategic advantage to Russia and China, trigger the onset of a new nuclear arms race and increase the risk of a devastating nuclear miscalculation,” Gordon and Gramer reported.
• Looking beyond Russia, the authors cite a December Pentagon report stating that China’s nuclear stockpile “was in the low 600s through 2024” and is “projected to grow to more than 1,000 by 2030,” with previous estimates suggesting it could reach “about 1,500 by 2035.” Against that backdrop, Matthew Kroenig argued that “it’s time to face the new reality,” while Mallory Stewart countered that accepting a one‑year caps extension would let Trump “take the upper hand in the narrative,” showing he is “willing to talk about something that everyone cares about” while trying to draw Russia—and perhaps China—into new arms‑control discussions.

"Let the Arms Race Begin," W.J. Hennigan, New York Times, 01.30.26.

• Hennigan warns that with New START expiring on Feb. 5, “we will have returned to an era without limits, when arsenals can reach unconstrained heights,” ending “a half-century of collaboration between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.” He notes that global stockpiles fell from about 70,400 warheads in 1986 to 12,500 today thanks to successive agreements, but that era is now giving way to “the looming potential for an unconstrained three-way arms race, with China’s participation.”
• Despite Trump’s claim that “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement,” Hennigan argues the administration has “slashed the number of diplomats” working on arms control, openly discussed resuming nuclear testing, and shown “almost no sign of life” on negotiations since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Instead, pressure is building to “upload” additional warheads onto the 400 U.S. ICBMs now carrying a single warhead each—reversing a 2014 drawdown—at the very moment China is racing from an estimated 600 warheads toward parity and Russia retains MIRVed systems it never dismantled.
• The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ decision to move its Doomsday Clock to “85 seconds to midnight” frames what Hennigan calls a rapidly darkening picture: without at least a political commitment to keep New START’s 1,550‑warhead ceilings and restore on‑site inspections, both Washington and Moscow will be forced to “plan for the worst.” He urges Trump to accept Putin’s stated willingness to stick to the limits and to propose a one‑year extension plus inspections, arguing that “the world has come too far to allow the progress of the past half-century to slip away” and that 91% of U.S. voters in a recent YouGov poll favor maintaining or reducing current nuclear limits.

"The U.S. and Russia’s nuclear weapons treaty is set to expire. Here’s what’s at stake," Georgia Cole, Chatham House, 01.26.26.

• Cole warns that if New START expires on Feb. 4, 2026, “it will mark the first time since the early 1970s that there will be no legally binding limits on U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces,” removing “the last agreed framework governing the size of the two largest nuclear arsenals worldwide.” Even in weakened form—after Putin suspended participation in 2023—“both sides have continued to signal that they are adhering to the treaty’s core numerical limits,” which she says “still reinforce strategic stability.”
• She notes that in September 2025 “Putin proposed a one-year voluntary extension of New START’s central limits,” and that Moscow now “indicated that it no longer has clear interlocutors within the U.S. administration” to pursue that offer. Linking the expiry to Trump’s “Golden Dome,” she cautions that an accelerated U.S. missile-defense push “combined with the disappearance of New START’s constraints, risks reinforcing Russian (and Chinese) incentives to expand and diversify their offensive arsenals, fuelling arms race dynamics.”
• Cole argues that without New START, “strategic planning on both sides is more likely to be driven by uncertainty and worst-case assessments,” increasing “the risk of a new arms race,” and that the expiry, just before the 2026 NPT Review Conference, would signal that “nuclear powers are abandoning restraint.” In today’s climate, she concludes, “the margin for error is already small,” and “preserving some form of mutual restraint—however limited—remains preferable to risking the dangerous instability of unconstrained nuclear competition.”

"What will happen when there are no guardrails on nuclear weapons?," William D. Hartung, Responsible Statecraft, 01.29.26.

• “Letting the treaty expire would increase the risk of nuclear conflict and open the door to an accelerated nuclear arms race,” William Hartung writes of New START’s looming lapse. He notes that the treaty “capped deployed warheads to 1,550 for each side, and established verification procedures,” providing “much needed guardrails on nuclear development that reduced the prospect of an all-out arms race.”
• Hartung points out that Washington is already pressing ahead with a nearly trillion‑dollar modernization: “the Pentagon is moving forward on a plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers and submarines… at a projected cost of $946 billion over the next decade,” including “at least $140 billion” for the Sentinel ICBM. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because presidents have only minutes to decide whether to launch, Hartung notes.
• Public opinion runs strongly against letting New START collapse: a poll commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative found that “91% of Americans—including 85% of President Trump’s supporters—believe that ‘the United States should negotiate a new agreement with Russia to either maintain current limits on nuclear weapons or further reduce both countries’ arsenals,’” Hartung writes, adding that allowing the limits to lapse is also “out of step” with 74 states that have ratified the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

"Goodbye Arms Control, Hello Nuclear Anarchy," Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg Opinion, 01.30.26.

• Kluth argues that New START’s expiry on Feb. 5 means that, for the first time since the chilliest days of the Cold War, “no formal arms-control regime will limit the two atomic superpowers,” marking a shift “out of a world in which the great powers restrained themselves with rules, and into a brave new world of anarchy.” While some vestiges like the CTBT and NPT remain, he writes, their disarmament promises are now “a joke,” as all nine nuclear states modernize and expand their arsenals and experiment with exotic and tactical systems that make escalation more likely and harder to control.
• He warns that tactical nuclear weapons are inherently destabilizing because they are seen as more “usable,” and that in any crisis states confronted with incoming missiles will face a “discrimination problem”—unable to tell if they are under tactical or strategic attack, they will feel pressure to “use it or lose it.” Citing the Doomsday Clock’s move to 85 seconds to midnight, Kluth criticizes calls within Trump’s MAGA camp for a massive U.S. nuclear buildup and argues instead that deterrence still rests on a survivable second strike, not numerical warhead parity with a combined Russia–China.
• In his view, the main danger is a spiral of miscalculation, worsened by Trump’s pursuit of a space‑based “Golden Dome” missile shield and his undercutting of alliance guarantees, which could encourage further proliferation by U.S. allies. The only way to reduce the existential risk, he concludes, is to return to arms‑control talks—ideally trilateral among Washington, Moscow and Beijing—and to restate the Reagan–Gorbachev axiom that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” then work weapon system by weapon system to “de‑risk” the nuclear relationship.

"Life after New START," Pavel Podvig, RussianForces.org, 01.28.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• “New START, the treaty that limited U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, will expire on 5 Feb. 2026. So, what will happen next?” Pavel Podvig asks. He notes that in September 2025 “the Kremlin announced that Russia is prepared to continue observing the treaty's central quantitative restrictions for one year after Feb. 5, 2026,” but that “the United States has not responded to this offer one way or another.”
• Podvig argues that “the U.S. expert and political community has essentially reached consensus on the need to expand the U.S. strategic arsenal,” and that “the momentum to ditch New START limits is very much unstoppable.” On the pessimistic scenario, “the United States will declare that it is free from any constraints and proceed with what is known as ‘upload’—returning reserve warheads to its missiles,” potentially increasing “the number of deployed warheads from the New START 1550 to about 3500.”
• On Russia’s likely course, he writes: “I would expect that it will confirm its offer and pledge to adhere to the treaty limits for at least one year no matter what the United States does. There is really no downside for Russia in doing so. It would get to show itself ‘a responsible nuclear power’… Then, in February 2027 Moscow would reluctantly say that it has no choice but to follow the United States. But it's not like Russia needs more warheads.”

"‘Problems in the strategic sphere are only continuing to grow’—Dmitry Medvedev on the expiring key Russia-U.S. arms control treaty," interviewed by Elena Chernenko, Kommersant, 01.26.26. Clues from Russian views. Machine-translated.

• Medvedev said: “In September of last year, our country proposed going even further. The President of Russia put forward a constructive initiative: that both sides voluntarily maintain their commitment to the New START limits for at least one more year after the end of its life cycle. The head of our state emphasized that this measure can only be viable if the United States acts in the same way and does not take steps that would undermine the current parity. Implementation of the Russian initiative could make a significant contribution to global security and to expanding the strategic dialogue with the United States. However, we have yet to receive a substantive official response to our proposal from Washington.”
• Asked what arms control regime would look like after Feb. 5, Medvedev warned, “Russia is ready for any development of events. New threats to our security will be suppressed in a timely and tough manner. There should be no illusions about this. All the more so because, in addition to traditional strategic offensive weapons, new, very powerful types of weapons are appearing. All countries are working on this. We are, of course, as well. You don’t have to look far for examples: it is enough to recall the ‘Burevestnik,’ ‘Oreshnik,’ and ‘Poseidon’ systems,” Dmitry Medvedev said.
• “I am sure that the nuclear club will expand. A number of states possess the technical capabilities to create a military nuclear program; some of them are already conducting research in this area,” Medvedev stated.
• “Let’s be honest: humanity is not interested in this, but, to put it frankly, humanity has not come up with any other way to reliably protect its country, its sovereignty, and its interests,” he said.
• “We should not dissemble; we should openly acknowledge that if the Soviet Union—and now Russia—did not have nuclear weapons, then, quite possibly, our country would no longer exist,” Medvedev declared.
• “Remember what happened at the end of the year, when there was an attack on the residence of the president of the Russian Federation using a massive number of unmanned aerial vehicles. In fact, this could have become grounds for a retaliatory strike, including with the use of special weapons. Such games are extremely dangerous,” he warned.
• “It is impossible to say unambiguously what military nuclear capability brings into the conditions of humanity’s existence. On the one hand, it creates enormous tension, and on the other, it airs out the brains of those who may have the most dangerous designs,” Medvedev said.

"Key U.S.-Russia nuclear pact difficult to replace—Kremlin," RT, 01.29.26. RT is a Russian government funded outlet. Clues from Russian Views.

• With New START expiring “in just a week,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that replacing it “takes a lot of time and is complicated” and that letting it lapse would create a “serious deficit” in the legal framework on nuclear arms, “undermine global stability, and serve neither Russian nor U.S. interests.”
• “In September, President Vladimir Putin offered a stopgap, saying Moscow was ready to continue observing New START’s central limits “for one year after Feb. 5, provided the U.S. did the same.” Washington has not formally responded; Trump has also floated a broader framework including China, which Beijing has rejected as “neither reasonable nor realistic” given its far smaller arsenal. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Peskov said Moscow’s stance on the issue was “consistent,” adding: “We continue to wait, but the deadline is close. There has been no response from the United States.”
• “Peskov warned that negotiating a replacement “takes a lot of time and is complicated.” Letting the treaty lapse, he said, would create a “serious deficit” in the legal framework governing nuclear arms, undermine global stability, and serve neither Russian nor U.S. interests.”

"Rudiment or Necessary Mechanism: The Future of New START," Boris Rozhin, TASS, 01.27.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated.

• Describing the end of New START, Rozhin wrote: “In February 2026 the document will finally lose force due to the expiration of its term, which will lead to the disappearance of one of the basic mechanisms that for a long time restrained the race of nuclear‑missile armaments.” He argued that “there is little point in adhering to agreements that the main counterparty does not observe,” and that the remaining arms‑control accords increasingly “look like a rudiment of a bygone era.”
• Looking ahead, Rozhin insisted: “Russia, of course, cannot and will not ignore attempts by the United States to destroy nuclear‑missile parity and will also actively develop its nuclear triad,” stressing that “the technological groundwork of the Russian Federation for this exists,” and that “in the event of the complete exhaustion of New START, Moscow will have something to answer to attempts by Washington to tilt the scales of strategic nuclear superiority in its favor.”

 “'Russia: Use nuclear weapons to calm the West, and only stop after occupying the entire eastern and southern Ukraine,” [interview with Karaganov] iNews, (02.03.26). Clues from Russian Views.

• “We are not at war with Ukraine, but with the West collectively,” Sergey Karaganov said, warning that growing talk of peace negotiations is “actually a very dangerous trap” and that “no negotiations” should occur “until our agenda is set.”
• Karaganov argued that talks are acceptable only on terms of “peaceful surrender of the West,” including “the return of NATO’s military structure to the borders of 1997,” “compensation for the economic losses caused to Russia,” and “the demilitarization of all the territory of Ukraine,” adding that the United States must be made to realize it could be “subject to a nuclear response from Russia.”
• Justifying escalation, he said: “That is why I advocate greater emphasis on nuclear deterrence. Without it, a world conflict is inevitable, which will lead to the Third World War,” and called for using “more powerful pressure tools” so that the U.S. “deep state” understands that supporting Ukraine is “no longer beneficial… has begun to cause losses, or has begun to threaten their vital interests.”
• On territorial aims, Karaganov stated that “the entire left bank of the Dnieper and southern Ukraine are such tactical goals, including Odessa and Nikolaev,” insisting that “military operations cannot stop until these goals are achieved,” while suggesting that central and western Ukraine are “spiritually and technologically backward” and “we do not need” them.

"How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats’ in the Twenty-First Century," George Perkovich, Carnegie Endowment, 01.20.26.

• “The United States’ Voice of America asserted that Russia had made 135 ‘nuclear threats’ between Feb. 24, 2022 and Dec. 17, 2024,” George Perkovich wrote, but he argued that “careful analysis shows that Russian leaders… did not make 135 ‘nuclear threats’ that deserved to be taken seriously.” Most of these, he said, were “frightening allusions to Russia’s nuclear strength and the horror of nuclear war, or symbolic gestures unaccompanied by changes in the operational status of nuclear forces.”
• Perkovich concluded that “at least once, in late September, through to early October 2022, public and secretly collected evidence indicated that Russian military leaders were setting the stage for possibly detonating non-strategic nuclear weapons to stop Ukrainian advances,” a moment when nuclear risk genuinely spiked “to a level unknown since the Cuban Missile Crisis.” He contrasted this with the 2025 India–Pakistan crisis, where new Carnegie papers “conclude that neither side made nor perceived the other to make a nuclear threat,” despite Trump’s claim that “we stopped a nuclear conflict.”
• Warning against sloppy language, Perkovich wrote that “discourse that too readily labels leaders’ utterances or gestures as threats can inflate fear and weaken national or alliance resolve,” while casually dismissing menacing rhetoric as bluff “may expose states and alliances to grave dangers.” The aim of his Assessing Nuclear ‘Threats’ project, he explained, is to develop “a more nuanced framework” so policymakers and publics can distinguish serious nuclear signals from “mere noise or allusion,” thereby avoiding both self‑deterring overreaction and catastrophic underestimation of genuine Russian (or other) nuclear use risks.

“The Nuclear Component of the Union State,” Dmitri Trenin and Andrey Rusakovich, Russia in Global Affairs, 01.01.26.Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• In December 1991, Belarus undertook to join the NPT as a non-nuclear state and export Soviet tactical nuclear weapons to Russia. Belarus signed the Lisbon Protocol to START-1 in May 1992 and joined the NPT as a non-nuclear state in July 1993. The last ICBM was removed from Belarus in November 1996. During the 1990s, Belarusian leadership promoted creating a nuclear-free zone in Central and Eastern Europe.
• By late 2021, President Lukashenko indicated Minsk was considering deploying Russian nuclear weapons as a response to possible NATO actions, particularly U.S. nuclear weapons deployment in Poland. On Feb. 27, 2022, a referendum excluded the provision on neutral and nuclear-free status from Belarus's Constitution.
• In March 2023, President Putin announced deployment of Russia's non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSAO) in Belarus. By early 2024, two divisions of Iskander-M missile systems were deployed, capable of delivering nuclear warheads up to 480 km—covering almost all of Poland, the Baltic States, and Ukraine. Moscow also helped re-equip Belarusian Su-25 aircraft for nuclear weapons use…
• This marked the first deployment of Russian nuclear weapons outside Russia since the USSR's collapse… Belarus participates in nuclear planning and has carriers capable of delivering nuclear weapons, though authorization remains with Russia… Russia maintains control and decision-making authority over the weapons.
• In November 2024, Russia's nuclear doctrine—"Basic Provisions of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence"—was updated to indicate Russia's readiness to defend Belarus with nuclear weapons if necessary. Paragraph 18 states Russia "reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to… aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) the Republic of Belarus as members of the Union State with the use of conventional weapons, posing a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity."
• Belarus is the only ally directly named in the document—such clear nuclear guarantees distinguish Belarus from Russia's other allies… effectively equating Belarus's security with Russia's own security. "The security of Union State members is indivisible."
• For the first time in the post-Soviet period, "Russian nuclear deterrence is doctrinally, legally, and operationally spreading to another state…"

"What Conclusions Should Russia Draw from the U.S. National Defense Strategy?," Dmitri Trenin, Profile, 01.29.26.Clues from Russian Views.

• “The problem of maintaining strategic stability between Washington and Moscow, which for more than half a century served as the basis of bilateral relations of the leading nuclear powers of the world, did not find reflection in the National Defense Strategy,” Dmitri Trenin wrote, noting that the term “strategic stability” appears there only once, “applied to U.S.–China relations.” He added that “the history of the arms control process between Washington and Moscow ends on Feb. 5, when the term of the New START Treaty expires.”
• Trenin argued that the United States “prefers to have freedom of hands in the matter of developing its arsenal of strategic weapons,” and that this, combined with the lapse of New START, means Russia must assume that “the basis of our policy in relation to the United States remains nuclear deterrence–intimidation, the credibility of which must be increased.”
• Looking ahead, Trenin warned that even if a Ukraine settlement is reached, “the United States will remain, for the entire foreseeable future, a geopolitical opponent of Russia,” and that Moscow must therefore focus on “strengthening the foundations of the country’s political, economic and ideological systems” and on deepening “military‑strategic and military‑technical partnership with China” as “the most important element of Russia’s security system in Eurasia” in a post–arms control world.³

"It is now 85 seconds to midnight: 2026 Doomsday Clock Statement," John Mecklin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 01.27.26.

• The Science and Security Board set the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, “the closest it has ever been to catastrophe,” citing “three regional conflicts involving nuclear powers,” a looming unconstrained arms race as New START expires, and the U.S. plan to deploy the Golden Dome space‑based missile defense, which they warn is “likely fueling a new space-based arms race.”
• On climate, the Bulletin notes that atmospheric CO₂ has risen to 150% of preindustrial levels, that 2024 was the warmest year in the 175‑year instrumental record and 2025 temperatures were similar, and that for the third time in four years Europe experienced more than 60,000 heat-related deaths. Floods displaced 350,000 people in the Congo River Basin and “over half a million” in southeast Brazil, while global sea level reached a record high.
• The statement highlights multiple cascading technological risks: the recognition in 2024 of “mirror life” as a potentially existential biological threat, AI‑enabled design of novel pathogens, and “rapid degradation of U.S. public health infrastructure,” alongside growing military AI integration by the United States, Russia, and China. Coupled with the “rise of nationalistic autocracy,” these trends, the board warns, act as a “threat accelerant,” making nuclear, climatic, and technological dangers “all the harder to reverse.”

"Doomsday Clock Ticks Closer Than Ever to Apocalypse," John Yoon, New York Times, 01.28.26.

• “The Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical timepiece meant to depict how close humanity is to destruction, ticked closer than ever to midnight on Tuesday: 85 seconds to the stroke of doom,” John Yoon reports. This is “the grimmest outlook yet” since the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began setting the clock in 1947, advancing it “four seconds from last year.”
• “Catastrophic risks are on the rise, cooperation is on the decline, and we are running out of time,” Alexandra Bell, president and chief executive of the Bulletin, said. The group cited, among other factors, that “the Russia-Ukraine war entered its fourth year,” nuclear tensions spiked in conflicts involving India and Pakistan, the United States and Israel “launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites,” and “the last major nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia moved closer to expiry in February this year.”
• The Bulletin also pointed to worsening systemic risks: “The global average temperature was the third warmest on record,” with climate change driving “deadly weather events” from floods in the Democratic Republic of Congo to extreme heat that “killed tens of thousands in Europe.” At the same time, “artificial intelligence grew more sophisticated,” scientists warned that synthetic “mirror life” could trigger “a devastating pandemic,” and the rise of “nationalistic autocracy” in major powers meant leaders increasingly favored “competition over cooperation,” which “increases the risk of global catastrophe,” the group said.
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "'All Options Are on the Table': Assessing the International Legality of Nuclear Threats," Anna Hood and Monique Cormier, Carnegie Endowment, 01.27.26.
  • "Analysis and possible consequences of the failure of a Russian ICBM flight on 28 November 2025," Christian Maire and Etienne Marcuz, Foundation for Strategic Research, 01.29.26.

Counterterrorism:

"How to Counter a Decentralized Islamic State," Clara Broekaert and Colin P. Clarke, Foreign Policy, 01.28.26.

• “The Islamic State has evolved from a hierarchical organization capable of holding territory to a decentralized movement that increasingly relies on ‘inspired’ rather than ‘directed’ attacks,” Broekaert and Clarke write.
• “This franchising model allows the group to survive leadership decapitation and territorial losses,” the authors argue, noting that it “creates a broader pool of potential attackers who may never have direct contact with the organization’s core.”
• “Counterterrorism strategies that focus solely on the group’s leadership or territory will miss the growing threat from loosely connected cells and lone actors,” they conclude, calling for approaches that address “online radicalization, local grievances, and resilient community structures.”

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

“Geopolitics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Strategy and Power in an Uncertain AI Future,” Jake Sullivan and Tal Feldman, Foreign Affairs, 01.26.26.

• The article argues that U.S. policy on artificial intelligence is driven by unspoken bets about the future: whether AI races toward transformative superintelligence or levels off at “bounded and jagged” capabilities; whether breakthroughs are easy or hard to copy; and whether China is truly racing for the frontier or mainly counting on copying and commoditizing U.S. advances later. Combining these three binary questions yields eight possible “worlds,” each with different strategic implications. In some, the logic points to a “Manhattan Project 2.0”–style push for superintelligence and very tight export controls; in others, the priority shifts to diffusing safe U.S. and allied AI systems globally faster than China can spread its own stack, potentially relying more on open or widely licensed models.
• Across these futures, several constants remain: control of compute (chips, data centers, energy), robotics and advanced manufacturing, a strong research‑industrial base, and robust risk management to prevent accidents, misuse, and loss of control. Diffusion—whose AI systems become the default infrastructure for other countries—emerges as a central battleground, not just a technical detail. Beijing is already exporting its AI technologies and governance templates; Washington talks about diffusion but has yet to fully operationalize it.
• The authors urge U.S. leaders to treat AI strategy as probabilistic rather than prophetic. The National Security Council and intelligence community should use the eight‑world matrix to stress‑test policies, monitor signals (pace of progress, ease of replication, Chinese behavior), and adjust as evidence changes. The framework is meant to discipline decision making and debate: before arguing about policy, actors should be explicit about which AI future they are assuming.
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "AI and Grand Strategy: The Case for Restraint," Erica D. Lonergan and Benjamin Jensen, CSIS, 01.28.26.

Energy exports from CIS:

"The West and Ukraine are capsizing Russia’s shadow fleet," The Economist, 01.27.26.

• “The loose fleet that exclusively ships oil under Western embargo has more than doubled in size since mid-2022,” the article notes, now “nearly 700 mostly older vessels… rising to as many as 1,500 if you count those that occasionally run shifty crude.” In December, these tankers “carried nearly 5m embargoed barrels per day, equivalent to 11% of global seaborne flows,” the authors write.
• “Altogether 623 vessels were added to a sanctions list for the first time in 2025, compared with 225 in 2024,” the article reports. “About 40% of the ships that ferried Russian oil last year are now blacklisted by at least one government; for Iran the share is two-thirds,” it adds, noting that blacklisted tankers become “30% less productive… in the six months after being added to a European blacklist and 70% less when added to an American one.”
• “Since late November [Ukraine] has attacked at least nine tankers, seven of them shadow-fleet vessels,” the piece says, with war-risk insurance in the Russian Black Sea jumping “to 1% of the value of a tanker’s hull and machinery,” versus “seldom exceed[ing] 0.05%” in high-risk but peaceful waters. As a result, “the price of a barrel of Urals crude… [is] $27 below that of Brent,” and “Russia’s oil-and-gas revenues could soon fall below $10bn a month,” the authors conclude.

"Russia’s Oil Revenue, the Lifeblood of Its War Machine, Is Plummeting," Ivan Nechepurenko, New York Times, 02.01.26.

• “Last year, Russia’s oil and gas revenue fell by almost a quarter, according to the Finance Ministry,” Nechepurenko reports, adding that the war’s costs now “exceed about $170 billion a year” and amount to “about 30% of Russia’s $580 billion annual budget.” Economist Yevgeny Nadorshin says, “This situation is manageable. But no one is comfortable with that.”
• Discounts on Russian crude have widened sharply: “The economy ministry said this month that the average price of Russian oil was $39 per barrel in December, down from more than $57 in August,” Nechepurenko writes. He notes that Russia’s budget deficit “reached $72 billion in 2025, nominally the highest since 2009,” and Nadorshin expects it “to increase further this year.”
• The article highlights how sanctions and enforcement have bitten: in October Trump “imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft… and Lukoil,” while stepped‑up action against the “shadow fleet” has seen the U.S. military seize a Russian‑flagged tanker in the North Atlantic and the French Navy intercept another in the Mediterranean. At the same time, the ruble “surged by about 45% against the U.S. dollar in 2025,” which “means that the government receives less money for each barrel of crude that is sold,” forcing Moscow into higher debt and tax hikes on both large firms and “smaller enterprises like bakeries and shops.”
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "The Devil is in the Details, or Why the EU Isn't Violating Its Own Sanctions Against Russian LNG," Vakhtang Partsvania, The Moscow Times, 01.29.26.
  • "Russia revels in Ukraine energy crisis it caused," Denis Kasyanchuk, The Bell, 01.27.26.
  • "Placing the EU on a Warfare Footing: Energy and Raw Materials Priorities for 2026," Marc-Antoine EYL-MAZZEGA, Diana-Paula GHERASIM and Thibault MICHEL, IFRI, 01.28.26.

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• No significant developments.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

"After The Boom: The investment surge of the war years has resulted in an imbalance that depresses the civilian sector of the economy," Re:Russia, 01.27.26.

• The article notes that average fixed‑investment growth in 2021–2024 reached 8.4% per year, compared with 3.4% over the previous 15 years, but that the boom has already stalled: in Q3 2025 investment fell year‑on‑year for the first time since Covid, leaving January–September 2025 investment just 0.5% higher in real terms than a year earlier, versus almost 9% growth over the same period in 2024.
• Budget‑driven stimulus was key: the Ministry of Finance estimates the “fiscal impulse” at 5% of GDP in 2020, around 4% in both 2022 and 2023, and about 3% in 2024; by contrast, in 2025 it fell to just 2% of GDP, and the budget share of investment resources dropped from 17.5% in 2022–2023 to 12.9% in 2025. Over 2020–2025, allocations from the National Wealth Fund to “other assets” jumped from 1.8 trillion rubles to 9.3 trillion, but liquid assets stopped growing in the second half of 2025 as the government began to restrain spending.
• Sectorally, investment in coal has fallen by “almost 25%” compared with 2022, while construction is down 18%, transport and storage 29%, and information and communications 5% (Jan–Sep 2025 versus a year earlier). At the same time, overall industrial output growth of 0.8% in January–November 2025 masks a split: a “rapidly growing but narrowing” cluster of military and quasi‑military industries versus a civilian segment in decline, with Central Bank surveys showing firms’ assessments of current investment activity dropping from 8–9 points in mid‑2023/24 to just 2–3 points in 2025—below even the “normal” 2018–2019 range.

"Chechnya: Laboratory of Authoritarian Identity Engineering," Evgeny Romanovskiy, Kennan Institute, 01.20.26.

• Romanovskiy argues that after two wars, “Chechnya’s leadership under Ramzan Kadyrov has pursued a deliberate campaign of constructing a ‘new Chechen identity’,” one that “blends ethnocultural distinctiveness with loyalty to the Russian state and operates through a dense web of institutions,” from religion and education to gender norms and memory politics.
• He notes that official concepts such as the “Concept of State and National Policy of the Chechen Republic” and the “Unified Concept of Spiritual and Moral Education” portray Chechens as a “distinctive titular nation” whose values evolved “with the Russian and other peoples,” while Kadyrov insists that a “true” Chechen should take pride in ethnicity and Islam while remaining “unconditionally loyal to the Russian state and its president,” effectively defining “to be a good Chechen” as “to be a good Russian citizen.”
• Comparing Chechnya with the broader Russian context, Romanovskiy writes that under Putin the federal center promotes a civic rossiyanin identity and downplays ethnic particularism, whereas in Chechnya “ethnic and religious distinctiveness is not merely tolerated but instrumentalized,” with Islamic dress codes, Chechen‑language promotion, and a pervasive cult of Akhmad and Ramzan Kadyrov. This asymmetrical deal, he concludes, makes Chechnya “a laboratory of authoritarian identity engineering” whose stability ultimately hinges on whether an identity project so tightly bound to one man can survive his eventual succession.
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Waging war with the poor," Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 01.31.26.
  • "Starting the year in the red," Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 01.28.26.

Defense and aerospace:

"To Build a Fire: How Russian military intelligence is recruiting young people online to carry out espionage, arson, and other attacks across Europe,” Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 02.02.26.

• “In nearly every case, prosecutors have concluded that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., has been the principal organizer of single-use-agent operations in Europe,” Joshua Yaffa wrote, describing how GRU’s Department of Special Tasks recruits mostly young, often vulnerable Russian‑speaking migrants online—“single‑use” or “disposable” agents—to carry out low‑cost acts of espionage, vandalism, arson, and sabotage from London to Warsaw and Vilnius.
• Yaffa reported that handlers using Telegram and obscure apps like Zangi pay a few hundred euros or cryptocurrency for tasks that range from putting up anti‑NATO posters to placing cameras along rail lines carrying aid to Ukraine, sending incendiary packages via DHL, and even burning a Vilnius IKEA and a major Warsaw shopping center—operations meant less to cripple logistics than to “heighten tensions or cause cracks within society or, at least, create the image of such a thing,” as one European intelligence chief told him.
• Yaffa wrote: “The deployment of single-use agents allows Russia to maintain at least a semblance of deniability. In 2024, after the DHL plot was uncovered, officials in the Biden Administration tried to intervene, worried that, if unchecked, Russian sabotage operations would lead to a major catastrophe. (“You don’t launch a plan like this if bringing down an airplane isn’t an outcome you’re comfortable with,” the European prosecutor told me.) Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national-security adviser, placed a call to Yuri Ushakov, a top aide to Putin; William Burns, the director of the C.I.A., also contacted his counterparts in Russia’s security services. The message, according to a person familiar with those conversations, was, in essence, “Knock it off.” The Russian officials played dumb.”
• “It’s a swarm tactic,” Arkadiusz Nyzio, a Polish researcher, told Yaffa. “They run an operation that costs a few thousand euros, carried out by people they don’t care about losing,” while European services mount months‑long, cross‑border investigations. A senior European official likened the GRU’s remote tasking to ISIS methods and warned that today’s low‑level arson and harassment—kept “below the threshold of war” to avoid a direct NATO response—could be turned up like a dial: “Maybe right now it’s set to Level 1. But what if it goes to 10?”
• See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

"National Insecurity," Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times, 02.01.26.

• Nazaryan reviews Gordon Corera’s The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, arguing that its originality lies in showing “the U.S.S.R.’s demise from the vantage point of its security services” and how “the Kremlin’s obsession with national security degrades civil society.” He quotes Corera’s line that “fear was the sinister energy that animated the rotting, hulking corpse of the Soviet Union” and traces how Chekism—“the most important institution in the Soviet Union”—became a national culture of denunciations and enforced conformity.

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s external policies, including relations with “far abroad” countries:

Vladimir Putin’s Remarks: "Meeting of the Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation with Foreign States," Kremlin.ru, 01.30.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine translated.

• Putin said that in 2025 “Russian military products were supplied to more than 30 countries of the world, and the amount of foreign‑currency revenue exceeded 15 billion dollars,” stating that this was achieved “despite” what he described as growing Western pressure on partners to “block” defense ties with Russia.
• Looking ahead, he said that under the new federal project “Development of Russia’s Military‑Technical Cooperation with Foreign States” for 2026–2028, “additional support measures” are being introduced and that “the volumes of military exports in accordance with the plan for 2026… must significantly increase,” signaling a planned expansion beyond the 2025 level.
• Putin highlighted the scale of joint development work by noting that “with 14 states more than 340 such projects are already being implemented or are in the stage of elaboration,” and expressed confidence that this cooperation would “improve the characteristics of existing weapons and equipment and develop new advanced models.”
• He also emphasized that many defense‑industry plants are producing substantial amounts of civilian output, saying that on these enterprises “a significant volume of products is civilian in designation,” and argued that the $15 billion in export earnings provides “additional opportunity to direct funds to modernization of defense‑industry enterprises, to expanding their production capacities, [and] to promising scientific research.”
• On regional priorities, Putin underlined that from Jan. 1, 2026 Russia assumed the chairmanship of the CSTO, calling cooperation with CSTO and CIS partners “one of the priority tasks for strengthening both bilateral and multilateral relations” and linking expanded military‑technical ties with Eurasian security, while also pointing to “new prospects” with states in “other regions of the planet, including the countries of the African continent,” where he recalled that the USSR and then Russia had supplied a “significant quantity” of arms and trained specialists “over the years.”
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "The evolution of the special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India," Alexey Kashin, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), 01.28.26.
  • "On the Russian platform in PACE," Vladislav Inozemtsev, The Moscow Times, 01.27.26.

Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

"Countering Russia-style autocracy in Georgia," Harper Fine, Hanna Hodgetts, and John Kennedy, RAND, 02.02.26.

• “Despite widespread support for EU membership, the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party has turned decisively away from the West and towards a full embrace of illiberalism and Russia-style autocracy,” Harper Fine, Hanna Hodgetts, and John Kennedy wrote, arguing that over the past two years GD has shifted “from a posture that sought, at least rhetorically, to accommodate the pro-EU ambitions of the Georgian people to an outright embrace of authoritarianism.”
• The authors highlight that in 2024 Georgia adopted “a Russia-style Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence (often called the ‘foreign agent’ law)” and followed it with “an even more restrictive amendment to the Law of Grants in 2025,” while “continued electoral fraud, most recently in the 2024 parliamentary elections, and ongoing arrests of opposition leaders, journalists and civil rights activists are just some of the features of the contemporary Georgian political system.”
• Emphasizing the Kremlin’s role, Fine, Hodgetts, and Kennedy frame these developments as part of a broader “specter of Russian influence” in the region and conclude that “increased Western support… will be vital if Georgia is to be persuaded to reverse course,” calling for more robust engagement to counter the spread of “Russia-style autocracy” on the EU’s periphery.
• See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Without War and Peace: The Post-Conflict Development of the South Caucasus," Rimma Mkrtchyan, Valdai Club, 01.29.26.
  • "Moldova is severing dangerous ties with Russia," Dmitry Stratievsky, The Moscow Times, 01.31.26.

Footnotes

1. Last week saw Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov say Trump merely asked Vladimir Putin to halt strikes on Kyiv until Feb. 1 and Putin agreed to heed that request.
2. In addition, emergency power cuts hit Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, as well as Moldova, after a technical failure on lines linking the two countries triggered cascading outages and shut down water supplies and the Kyiv metro (Washington Post, 01.31.26).
3. For a review of the entire strategy, see "The 2026 National Defense Strategy by the Numbers: Radical Changes, Moderate Changes, and Some Continuities," Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, CSIS, 01.27.26.

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

AI agents were 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: President Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sign the New START treaty, Thursday, April 8, 2010, at the Prague Castle in Prague. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)