6 Ideas to Explore

1. CFR’s Thomas Graham argues that while European leaders increasingly “prepare for the prospect of war” and warn Russia could strike “within five years,” a deliberate attack on NATO territory is “less likely than prevailing fears suggest” given Moscow’s mounting internal burdens. He notes Russia must revive a stagnating non‑military economy—with growth “under 1%,” rising inflation and high interest rates—while reintegrating hundreds of thousands of veterans and rebuilding occupied Ukrainian territories at “hundreds of billions” in cost. Graham contends, the “cumulative impact” of these challenges will “reduce the Kremlin’s appetite for external risk.” Western policy toward Russia, he concludes, should be built on “two pillars: deterrence and dialogue,” combining accelerated European defense spending with efforts to avoid alarmist rhetoric and maintain channels that can stabilize the long Russia–West frontier in a “competitive, uneasy, but stable coexistence.” Meanwhile, Samuel Charap and Hiski Haukkala argue in Foreign Affairs that U.S. and its NATO allies must both “shore up deterrence” and create new “formats for dialogue and interaction” with Russia—hotlines, incidents‑at‑sea–type agreements and a durable, enforceable Ukraine settlement—because a second full‑scale war in Ukraine or a crisis around Belarus, Georgia or Moldova could easily ensnare the alliance and trigger a NATO‑Russia war.
2. At a Quincy Institute debate on whether a Russian-Ukrainian peace is possible, John Mearsheimer argued bluntly that “there is no way you can negotiate a genuine peace settlement,” calling Geneva-style talks “Kabuki theater” because Russian and Ukrainian demands are “light years apart” and neither side is willing to compromise. Mearsheimer said Moscow sees NATO expansion to Ukraine as an “existential threat” and that Russia is “determined” to secure its own safety even if it is done at Ukraine’s expense. Beebe countered that because Washington itself has moved beyond the “unipolar moment,” real compromise is possible and necessary to prevent Ukraine’s slide toward a depopulated “rump state,” arguing Russia cannot solve its security problem by conquering Ukraine and ultimately must engage the West rather than remain a subordinate junior partner to China.
3. Unless Russia suffers “significantly higher casualties or greater economic pain,” it will continue its aggression through 2026 and string out talks, according to RUSI’s Jack Watling. Russia believes it can achieve militarily what is currently on offer diplomatically—leaving Europe with the task of countering Russian subversion, sustaining Ukrainian forces and actively imposing costs on Russia if it wants any eventual settlement to be durable, according to Watling.
4. Carnegie Endowment contributor Dmitry Kuznets finds Moscow still recruits 30,000–40,000 contract soldiers a month—enough to sustain, but not expand, the force. Kuznets estimates that cumulative Russian military deaths “did not exceed 400,000” by the end of 2025, with obituary data implying roughly 600 irrecoverable losses per day in 2025.¹ Meanwhile, German scholar Janis Kluge told Meduza that Russian budget data broadly confirms official claims that the army is signing up roughly 400,000–450,000 contract soldiers per year. He argues that the current setup is “unsustainable:” many regions are already cutting other services or yo‑yoing bonus levels as budgets allow, and unless Moscow increases transfers or expands debt‑relief schemes, regional budgets will fall apart under the burden of the war.
5. The Economist reports that, alongside faltering peace talks, Kremlin and White House envoys have recently discussed Russia’s implausible offers of deals worth $12 trillion for U.S. sanctions relief—stakes in Arctic oil and gas, rare‑earth mines, a nuclear‑powered data center and even a Bering Strait tunnel—figures it calls “plainly hyperbole designed to please Mr. Trump.” In reality, The Economist notes, all foreign firms in Russia earned only $18 billion in profit on $300 billion of revenue in 2021, potential buy‑back assets are worth about $60 billion, and Russia’s $2.2 trillion economy is smaller than Italy’s and mired in “rapacious” tax collection, corrupt courts and worthless contracts, with China already supplying most imports. Even wildly optimistic scenarios yield perhaps $340 billion a year, while a reopened Russia would quickly channel new trade and finance into rebuilding its war machine, this U.K. newspaper reports. The Economist argues that any U.S. president “with America’s interests at heart” should view Vladimir Putin’s $12 trillion offer “with a gimlet eye—and walk away.” There are various ways to measure the GDP of countries. If measured at market exchange rates, Russia’s GDP was $1.61 trillion in 2024, according to World Bank data, However, if measured in constant international dollars, PPP, Russia’s GDP exceeded $6 trillion in 2024, according to WB.*
6. Iran has sought for years to build closer military ties with China and Russia, but this duo is proving reluctant to step forward as U.S.–Iran tensions spike, according to Wall Street Journal. Moscow has joined Iran’s modest naval drills and provided Teheran S‑300s, jamming gear, shoulder-fired air defense missiles and other niche capabilities, according to WSJ and FT, but there is little indication Russia prepared to intervene if U.S. strikes imperil Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule. For the Kremlin, experts argue, not alienating Donald Trump and preserving flexibility on Ukraine matters more than defending Tehran. “These relationships are highly pragmatic, highly transactional,” Alexander Palmer, a fellow with CSIS, said regarding Tehran’s security ties to Moscow. 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

“Fixing America’s broken nuclear fuel supply,” Editorial Board, Washington Post, 02.22.26.

• The editorial notes that decades of policy drift left the U.S. heavily dependent on Russian enriched uranium until Congress banned imports in 2024; while that made sense for security, it exposed how much of America’s civilian nuclear fuel chain had effectively been outsourced to Moscow, creating new vulnerabilities once Russian supply was cut off.
• The board argues that rebuilding U.S. enrichment and reprocessing capacity—through ventures such as a new Tennessee plant with France’s Orano and potential waste‑recycling projects—is essential both to fuel a new generation of advanced reactors and to end reliance on adversaries like Russia, warning that if Washington fails to deliver, “the promise of nuclear innovation will evaporate.”
• See this link  for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "P5 perspectives on the 2026 NPT Review Conference: France," Emmanuelle Maitre, European Leadership Network, 02.18.26.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“Under Trump Pressure, Iran Finds Its Friends Are of Little Help,” David S. Cloud, Wall Street Journal, 02.22.26.

• Cloud reports that while Iran has courted Russia and China as security partners, Moscow’s support is highly limited and transactional: Russia joined small naval drills and has supplied some jamming equipment, S‑300s, and other niche capabilities, but there is “little indication” it is rushing meaningful hardware to Iran ahead of a possible U.S. strike, and analysts say Putin “isn’t likely to come to the aid of Khamenei if U.S. strikes appear on the verge of bringing him down.”
• For the Kremlin, not alienating Trump and preserving room to maneuver on Ukraine outweighs any desire to defend Tehran; as one expert puts it, these ties are “highly pragmatic, highly transactional,” and Russia does not have “a sufficient strategic interest in Iran to be willing to go to war with the United States over the country,” underscoring the limits of Moscow’s willingness to confront Washington directly even as it deepens cooperation with Iran elsewhere.

"Iran—A Gathering Storm?," Alexander Maryasov,² Valdai Discussion Club, 02.19.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Maryasov notes that “experts worldwide continue to speculate as to whether the United States will bomb Iran or not,” with “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli lobby in the United States, hawkish advisers to Donald Trump, and hardliners in the US Congress… urging the president to hasten strikes before Iran further strengthens its missile capabilities,” while “more sober voices… caution him regarding the dangerous consequences of Tehran’s retaliatory missile attacks,” which could cause U.S. casualties and “significantly weaken the Republican Party’s position in the forthcoming autumn congressional elections,” according to the author.
• “Iran is unwilling to halt uranium enrichment entirely but appears prepared to discuss possibilities for reducing enrichment levels and possibly exporting highly enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting or easing of sanctions,” Maryasov writes, arguing that “the negotiations themselves serve as a diversion, as neither side appears prepared to make fundamental concessions,” since “Washington is unlikely to abandon its demands that Iran permanently cease enrichment, curtail its missile program, and end support for regional proxies,” demands that “for Tehran… are fundamentally unacceptable,” as “the Iranian leadership believes that any concession would inevitably lead to further demands,” the author believes.
• Looking ahead, Maryasov warns that “should Trump decide upon missile and aerial strikes against Iran, several scenarios are conceivable,” from “limited bombardment of selected nuclear and military facilities” to “large-scale attacks targeting the religious-political leadership, military installations, nuclear sites, and other critical infrastructure,” yet he stresses that “the country possesses a relatively robust, deeply layered system of governance,” whose resilience is “underpinned by the powerful security apparatus of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” and by “the religious factor,” so that “rapidly destabilizing such an ideologically charged state system—whether through economic and military pressure or through large-scale political protests… would be quite hard,” the author writes.

“Iran agreed secret shoulder-fired missile deal with Russia,” Miles Johnson, Charles Clover, and Max Seddon, Financial Times, 02.21.26.

• The FT reports that Russia secretly signed a €495 million arms contract with Iran in December 2025 to supply 500 Verba man-portable air-defense (MANPADS) launchers and 2,500 9M336 missiles over 2027–2029, plus 500 “Mowgli‑2” night sights, according to leaked Russian documents and officials familiar with the deal.
• The agreement was negotiated by Rosoboronexport and Iran’s MODAFL representative in Moscow, Ruhollah Katebi—already sanctioned by the U.S. as “the Russian government’s point of contact” with Tehran’s defense ministry—and is seen by analysts as Moscow’s way of repairing ties with Iran after failing to assist during the 12‑day U.S.–Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025, while also signaling that Russia has no intention of honoring UN “snapback” arms sanctions on Tehran.
• Experts quoted in the article say the Verba systems, which Russia has barely used in Ukraine, are a relatively low‑cost export that don’t significantly weaken its own air defenses but could make U.S. and Israeli low‑flying or helicopter operations more hazardous in any future conflict with Iran—further underscoring how Russia’s war in Ukraine and its broader confrontation with the West are deepening Moscow–Tehran military cooperation in missiles, drones, and now air‑defense systems.

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

• "A Strike on Iran? Washington Calculating the Consequences," Mikhail Krutikhin, The Moscow Times, 02.20.26. (In Russian.)

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Ukrainian Women Tell Their Stories of Sexual Violence by Russian Soldiers,” Lynsey Addario and Sara Cincurova, New York Times, 02.20.26.

• Addario and Cincurova report that “hundreds of Ukrainian women and girls have reported sexual violence by Russian troops” since the full‑scale invasion in 2022, with advocates saying the true number is “most likely far higher” because many survivors, especially in occupied areas, fear stigma, retraumatization, or see “little hope of legal redress.”
• The article details individual cases: Lesya, who says a Russian soldier raped her while another shot her husband, who later died; Svitlana, who says she was raped by a soldier with the complicity of her pro‑Russian partner and later gave birth to a boy she initially tried to abort but now “loves almost like the others”; and Maria, a lawyer from Kherson region who recounts being turned into a “slave” near the front line, “beaten” and raped by two soldiers before crawling through minefields to reach Ukrainian positions.
• It also recounts the experience of activist Tetiana Tipakova, who says she was abducted in occupied Berdyansk, tortured with beatings, electric shocks and sexual assault in a prison colony until she agreed to record a pro‑Russian video; she now testifies internationally about abuses, while Ukrainian prosecutors and survivor groups such as SEMA Ukraine work to document what the women describe as sexual violence used as a weapon of war.

“Ukraine Has Passed a Point of No Return,” Masha Gessen, New York Times, 02.22.26.

• Gessen argues that after four years of full‑scale war, Ukraine has crossed a psychological and historical threshold: “Whatever lies ahead feels as if it will last forever. Ukrainians have organized their lives accordingly,” living the war “in their work, their social lives, their waking and sleeping hours,” in a way that will “define many future generations of Ukrainian life.”
• They detail the human and demographic transformation—an estimated pre‑war population of 36 million (excluding already‑occupied areas), some 6 million internally displaced, 4 million mostly women and children abroad, “more than 100,000” killed, and “some 100,000 Ukrainians… estimated to have lost limbs,” as cities like Lviv turn themselves into global centers of amputation and prosthetics and everyday memorials expand “with room to get bigger still.”
• Gessen contends that this prolonged total war has also reshaped politics and memory: under martial law, censorship, suspended elections, and mass mobilization, “Ukraine has become progressively less democratic,” even as it fights to preserve its democracy; the war is increasingly framed as an “eternal” struggle against Russian imperialism, and thinking of it as endless paradoxically makes a limited truce imaginable—“no one expects the current negotiations to bring permanent peace, but a truce… may be acceptable” when measured against occupations past—while leaving Ukrainians feeling, like former POW Mariana Mamonova, that “it is a kind of captivity… You scream and no one can hear you.”

“Life is harsh and dangerous in Russian-run parts of Ukraine, activists and former residents say,” Yuras Karmanau, Washington Post/AP, 02.20.26.

• Karmanau reports testimonies from former residents of occupied areas who describe “systemic and total control” by Russian forces: document checks, mass searches, filtration camps, denunciations, and a “vast network of secret and official detention centers” where tens of thousands of civilians are held, tortured, or disappeared, with one activist saying, “everyone knows that if you end up in the basement, your life is worth nothing.”
• Daily life in the annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia is marked by destroyed infrastructure, shortages of heat, water, power and healthcare, and forced “Russification”—Russian passports effectively required for medical care and benefits, Moscow‑approved curricula in schools, Russian language and media, and even street names and time zones changed; one former Mariupol resident says his parents had to take Russian citizenship and a token payout to survive.
• The article cites cases of civilians stripped and searched on buses for “Ukrainian tattoos,” friends “stopped on the street or in surprise door-to-door inspections,” and people illegally detained and abused, including journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, whose body was returned with signs of torture and organ removal; human-rights advocates argue Russia is using terror to “physically eliminate active people” – teachers, mayors, writers, journalists – and intimidate the rest.
• Despite Kremlin talk of a “large-scale socioeconomic development program,” residents and even some pro-Moscow figures complain of crumbling heating systems, a single ambulance serving whole cities, chronic water shortages, and new housing going to Russian newcomers rather than locals; as one displaced woman says of her depopulated Luhansk village, “All life is leaving the occupied territories. The people there aren’t living, they’re just surviving.”

"European Support for Ukraine Stumbles on Eve of Invasion’s 4th Anniversary," Jeanna Smialek and Constant Méheut, The New York Times, 02.23.26.

• Smialek and Méheut write that “the European Union had hoped to make a big show of support for Ukraine this week, on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” but that “those plans have been upended after Hungary said that it would block the latest package of sanctions against Russia and that it would also stall progress on an already-agreed-to financial aid package for Ukraine,” a development Kaja Kallas called “a setback and message we didn’t want to send today.”
• For Kyiv, the authors explain, Hungary’s move “creates uncertainty at a critical juncture,” since Ukraine “will soon need the aid package, worth 90 billion euros, or about $106 billion, to fund both defenses and day-to-day needs” and had expected “the first installments of the loan to arrive in the coming months,” with officials warning that they need the funds “by this spring to avoid a budget crunch.”
• Smialek and Méheut note that Hungary and Slovakia justify their stance by citing “disruptions to the Druzhba pipeline” and accusing Ukraine of “deliberately restricting oil supplies,” prompting them to halt diesel and emergency electricity deliveries that Kyiv denounced as “ultimatums and blackmail,” while critics like Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski say “the Hungarian government is once again blackmailing Ukraine” and Germany’s foreign minister Johann Wadephul insists that “Europe should be on Ukraine’s side” because “we are the supporters of Ukraine.”

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

“Does Russia Have Enough Soldiers to Keep Waging War Against Ukraine?” Dmitry Kuznets, Carnegie Politika, 02.16.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Kuznets estimates that cumulative Russian military deaths “did not exceed 400,000” by the end of 2025, with obituary data implying about 240 killed per day in 2024 and 390 per day in 2025; taking into account those medically discharged and those missing presumed dead, he argues it is “unlikely that the irrecoverable losses… over the past year exceeded 600 people per day.”
• Kuznets notes that by late 2025 roughly 90,000 court applications had been filed to declare missing servicemen dead, implying around 180,000 missing in total, and that these newly formalized deaths help explain the sharp rise in 2025 casualty figures; he adds that desertion “does not significantly impact overall casualty statistics,” with fewer than 1,000 desertion cases per month versus close to 10,000 killed in action per month in 2025.
• Kuznets calculates, from federal and regional budget data on enlistment bonuses, that over the past two years the armed forces and associated PMCs have been recruiting 30,000–40,000 contract soldiers per month—about 1,000–1,300 per day—which “covers current losses in personnel and equipment” but does not allow for a major expansion of the force; he stresses that this recruitment is becoming increasingly expensive and relies heavily on “socially disadvantaged people” with low skills and motivation.
• Kuznets concludes that Russia “is not currently struggling to recruit new contract soldiers,” so long as the paid‑contract system holds, but that the number of people willing to fight for money is dwindling just as the war demands more trained specialists (for example, drone operators in the new Unmanned Systems Forces); under these conditions, he argues, “the Russian authorities are unlikely to be able to significantly increase the current size of the armed forces,” and a new wave of mobilization would only make practical sense “if the current paid recruitment system collapses.”

“Russia’s military recruitment numbers remain steady, but how long can the regions foot the bill? Meduza asks researcher Janis Kluge.,” Q&A with Janis Kluge, Meduza, 02.23.26.

• Janis Kluge says Russian budget data broadly confirm official claims that the army is signing up roughly 400,000–450,000 contract soldiers per year—about 30,000–40,000 per month—with federal sign‑on bonuses doubled in August 2024 from 195,000 to 400,000 rubles (about $5,200); when the total spent on bonuses is divided by those amounts, the implied number of contracts “is relatively close” to what the Defense Ministry and Dmitry Medvedev report.
• He stresses, however, that the apparent stability masks growing strain: recruitment is driven overwhelmingly by money and targets socially vulnerable men (those in debt, in trouble with police, ex‑prisoners), and regions are under heavy top‑down pressure to meet quotas, resorting to ever‑higher bonuses and “more radical methods” as it gets harder to find volunteers.
• Kluge estimates that one‑time recruitment payments absorb about 0.5% of GDP, roughly a tenth of the 5.1% of GDP that Defense Minister Andrei Belousov says went to federal war spending in 2025; in the regions, bonuses now average 3–4% of regional budgets, with extreme cases like Mari El spending around 10%, comparable to health or education, contributing to a 1.5 trillion‑ruble ($19.6 billion) aggregate regional deficit—“a historic high.”
• He argues that this setup is “unsustainable”: many regions are already cutting other services or yo‑yoing bonus levels as budgets allow, and unless Moscow increases transfers or expands debt‑relief schemes, “regional budgets [will] fall apart under the burden of the war”; at the same time, if casualty rates become widely understood—he notes that, based on open‑source data, roughly 20% of a yearly intake of 400,000 may be killed—public perception that “it’s simply not worth it” could abruptly undermine the whole volunteer‑contract model and force the Kremlin back toward politically riskier mass mobilization.

“Vladimir Putin is caught in a vice of his own making,” The Economist, 02.19.26.

• The article argues that after four years of war Russia “cannot win” in Ukraine: in Donetsk, its forces have advanced only about 60km, they cannot mass in a 10–30km drone‑dominated “kill zone,” and by late 2025 Russia was “losing more men than it could recruit,” with poorly trained troops, rising desertion, and sign‑on bonuses up to 2.43m rubles as the war bill (5.1trn rubles a year) consumes roughly 90% of the federal deficit.
• Putin can still bombard Ukrainian cities and power grids, but the piece says aerial attacks alone are unlikely to force capitulation; his main hope is a Ukrainian political or manpower crisis, yet “his bet on a Ukrainian collapse has been a losing one for the past four years—and the odds are lengthening,” especially as European support actually increased last year.
• Geneva peace talks are described as having a “Potemkin quality,” built around a “preposterous” $12trn peace‑dividend promise and territorial demands Moscow has been unable to achieve by force; for Ukraine, surrendering its best‑defended ground would be “a strategic disaster,” and Trump’s leverage to “bounce” Zelensky into a bad deal has “passed its peak,” with any U.S. security guarantees likely to require Senate ratification.
• The leader contends that Putin “fears peace” because demobilization would expose a warped economy (defense at 8% of GDP), risk a deep recession and empower angry veterans, prompting questions about a “bungled campaign,” wasted lives and growing dependence on China; he therefore “cannot give up the war, but the cost of carrying it on is rising,” and the more sanctions and pressure bite—especially on oil revenues and the shadow fleet—the clearer it may become to Russians that he is “bringing ruin upon them.”

“Four Years Of The Ukraine Invasion: Has Russia’s Military Learned To Fight A Better War?,” Mike Eckel, RFE/RL, 02.20.26.

• Eckel reports that analysts see “adaptation rather than reform” in Russia’s forces: under intense pressure they have improvised solutions to immediate operational problems—stabilizing lines with “Surovikin” defensive belts, reverting to mass infantry “meat-grinder” assaults, and now using small, fast units on motorbikes and off‑road vehicles—but without the deeper doctrinal and institutional overhaul that “reform in the Russian sense” would require.
• Experts note that Russia has “lost the bulk of [its] armored vehicles,” relies on “bite‑and‑hold infantry attacks” and accepts “very high losses,” with front‑line units plagued by “rampant and horrific discipline problems”; they argue true reform would demand acknowledging these failures, something the leadership is unwilling to do even as cumulative casualties exceed those of all Russia’s wars since World War II.
• The article highlights genuine advances in artillery, electronic warfare and drones—especially the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies, a hybrid unit that has become a model for integrating R&D, combat testing and training—but stresses that many lessons are “fit for the needs of this war” and “possibly not transferable to the next,” and that Russia still may lack the manpower and resources to build a future force around them.

“Inside the ‘kill zone’,” Christopher Miller, Chris Campbell, Peter Andringa and Sam Joiner, Financial Times, 02.22.26.

• The FT describes how drones have transformed the eastern Ukrainian frontline into a “kill zone” where “anything that moves can be instantly targeted and destroyed”: FPV kamikaze drones and tethered quadcopters saturate a 30–50km deep belt, making traditional movement by road or mechanized column almost impossible and forcing troops to crawl under anti‑thermal cloaks, move only in bad weather, live mostly underground, and rely on drones and unmanned ground vehicles for resupply and medical evacuation.
• Ukraine has responded with extensive fortifications—anti‑tank ditches, dragon’s teeth and multiple belts of barbed wire—that funnel Russian infantry and vehicles into narrow, pre‑sighted crossing points under drone observation and fire; Kyiv’s Unmanned Systems Forces now claim over 100,000 drone flights a month, and Ukrainian officials say drones account for up to 80% of Russian battlefield deaths, with Zelensky estimating a “clear price” of 156 Russian soldiers per kilometer on parts of the Donetsk front.
• Cities such as Kherson have become laboratories for urban survival under drone attack: with Russia carrying out some 235,000 shelling incidents and nearly 100,000 drone strikes there in 2025 alone, local authorities have built a multilayered “drone dome” of nets over roads, hospitals and key infrastructure, combined with jammers, sensors and shotgun‑armed response teams; Governor Oleksandr Prokudin claims about 95% of incoming drones are now intercepted, even as resources are so tight that roughly 43% of the region’s modest 2026 budget (~$46mn) is devoted to fortifications and protective measures.

“Russia’s Aggression in Ukraine Will Persist Through 2026,” Jack Watling, RUSI, 02.23.26.

• Watling argues that from Moscow’s perspective the strategy remains to exhaust Ukraine rather than compromise: the Kremlin believes it can sustain the war into 2027, sees negotiations mainly as a way to split the transatlantic alliance, and maintains a maximalist position (full control of annexed regions and a Ukraine firmly in Russia’s sphere of influence).
• He notes that Russia is currently spending the equivalent of about $500 billion a year on defense (PPP) and “can keep up the war,” but as reserves dwindle and debt grows, the economy becomes more vulnerable to shocks; sustained European pressure—especially enforcing interdiction of Russia’s “shadow fleet” and expanding long‑range strikes on critical targets—could significantly raise the Kremlin’s costs.
• On manpower, Watling judges that Russia is likely able to maintain its current recruitment rate despite “punishing” casualties, though a rising share of new troops are mobilized reservists or coerced rather than volunteers; if Russia continues to make steady or accelerating gains, Putin will press on, but if progress slows and casualties mount, the domestic political risk to him will grow.
• He concludes that unless Russia suffers “significantly higher casualties or greater economic pain,” it will continue its aggression and string out talks, believing it can achieve militarily what is currently on offer diplomatically—leaving Europe with the task of countering Russian subversion, sustaining Ukrainian forces, and actively imposing costs on Russia if it wants any eventual settlement to be durable.

“After 4 years of war by Russia in Ukraine, peace is still elusive despite a US push for a settlement,” Associated Press, Washington Post, 02.22.26.

• The article notes that Russia’s full‑scale invasion has now lasted longer than the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany: 1,418+ days, with an estimated nearly 2 million soldiers dead, wounded, or missing on both sides, and Russia still occupying about 20% of Ukraine and advancing at what NATO’s Mark Rutte calls “the speed of a garden snail” — roughly 50 km in Donetsk over two years.
• Despite this attritional stalemate, Putin’s demands in U.S.-mediated talks remain maximalist—Kyiv must pull back from all four annexed regions, abandon NATO, curb its military, and grant Russian language status—while Zelensky insists on a ceasefire along current lines plus U.S.-backed security guarantees; Trump has reportedly set a June 2026 deadline and wants a deal before U.S. midterms, but with both leaders ruling out core concessions, “a quick deal appears unlikely.”
• Economically, Russia is under strain—growth has “slowed to a near halt” amid persistent inflation, labor shortages, and new U.S. sanctions on oil—but defense plants have increased output and the state has cushioned key groups, leading analyst Richard Connolly to conclude that although Russia is “poorer, less efficient and less promising,” it “remains capable of sustaining the war,” and its insulated political system leaves little channel for economic pain to translate into pressure for peace.

“The Ex-Taxi Driver at the Center of Russia’s Shadow War,” Michael Schwirtz and Adam Goldman, New York Times, 02.22.26.

• Schwirtz and Goldman detail how Aleksei Vladimirovich Kolosovsky, a 42‑year‑old former taxi driver from Krasnodar with ties to car thieves, hackers, and fake‑ID vendors, has become a key “service provider” for Russia’s military intelligence (GRU), recruiting criminal networks, Ukrainian refugees, and other cash‑strapped operatives across Europe to carry out a growing sabotage campaign—from arson at an IKEA in Vilnius and a Warsaw commercial center to plots against cargo planes in Germany, Poland, and Britain.
• Western officials say the GRU’s Special Activities Service (SSD), overseen by Gen. Andrei Averyanov and including subunits like the notorious Unit 29155 (now under Gen. Vyacheslav Stafeyev), has shifted from relying on officers under diplomatic cover—hundreds of whom were expelled after 2022—to outsourcing operations to “motley” criminal intermediaries such as Kolosovsky, who coordinate bomb‑making materials, thermite‑filled massage pads, and other devices via lockers, freight routes, and Telegram channels.
• The coordinated 2024 DHL parcel‑bomb plot, which nearly brought down a cargo plane over Europe, marked a dramatic escalation; it prompted a nine‑country investigation, criminal cases in Lithuania and elsewhere, and direct warnings from Washington to Moscow. Yet Russia’s interest in recovering key operatives—such as Kolosovsky’s associate Yaroslav Mikhailov, wanted by Poland but also claimed by Moscow via Interpol—shows how central these gray‑zone tactics have become to what Britain’s MI6 chief calls a conflict “between peace and war,” aimed at “tearing at Western unity.”

“The Ukrainian Bureaucrat Working to Squeeze Russia’s War Machine,” Constant Méheut, New York Times, 02.23.26.

• Méheut profiles Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Zelensky’s commissioner for sanctions policy, whose job is to persuade Western governments to tighten and enforce economic measures that “jam the gears” of Russia’s war machine. After four years of lobbying, he argues that sanctions are finally biting: Russia’s economy grew by less than 1% in 2025, and its oil‑export earnings in November fell to their lowest monthly level since the 2022 invasion.
• The article details how Russia has repeatedly adapted to sanctions—most notably by building a “shadow fleet” of tankers and using false geolocation data to sell almost all seaborne crude above the G7 price cap by late 2023—but also how Western responses have strengthened over time: the EU, having largely weaned itself off Russian energy, has now blacklisted more than 600 vessels linked to sanctions evasion, after initially moving very cautiously.
• Vlasiuk continues to push for harsher steps that would directly hit Russia’s ability to fund the war: he backs a U.S. Senate bill to sanction countries that do business with Moscow and urges EU states to seize shadow‑fleet tankers, arguing that aggressive enforcement—of the kind the U.S. has applied to Venezuelan oil—would quickly make crews and owners think twice about carrying Russian crude and could turn 2026 into the “tipping point” for Russia’s war economy.
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject: 
  • “Four Years of War in Ukraine,” Dmitry Gorenburg and Michael Petersen CNA Talks podcast, 02.18.26.
  • "Four Years On: Taking Stock of the War in Ukraine," Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash, Observer Research Foundation, 02.23.26. Clues from Indian Views.
  • “‘Ukraine is still standing’ after four years of war, says historian Serhii Plokhy,” interview with Christiane Amanpour, CNN, 02.20.26.
  • "Scaling Innovation Ukraine’s Military and ­Defense-Industrial Integration in the New Context," András Rácz and Lesia Ogryzko, German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), 02.17.26.
  • "Have Drones Replaced Artillery in the Ukraine War?" Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 02.20.26.
  • "Russia’s Wagner Group Is Back in the News—This Time in Europe," Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 02.18.26.

Military aid to Ukraine:

“A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them,” Shaun Walker et al., The Guardian, 02.20.26.

• U.S. and U.K. intelligence pieced together, largely from satellites and signals intercepts, that Russia was preparing a full‑scale invasion aimed at “taking over Kyiv,” with airborne landings at Hostomel, multi‑axis advances, and lists of Ukrainians to be “interned or executed”—a level of insight officials call a “spectacular intelligence success.” Among the U.S. intelligence leadership that pieced together Russia’s invasion plan was then CIA Director William Burns who in November 2021 warned Puti against it and who later reported to Joe Biden that Putin would “do it.”
• Yet the same services badly misjudged the outcome, assuming a swift Russian victory and planning to support a government‑in‑exile and partisan war; as Avril Haines put it, “We thought the Russians would be more effective initially – take Kyiv in a couple of weeks.”
• Most European services, scarred by Iraq and convinced Putin was “rational,” read the buildup as coercive bluff, not war; they shared the data on Russian forces but “differed in our analysis of what was in Putin’s head,” as one French official said, and refused to believe a major European land war was possible.
• In Kyiv, Zelensky initially dismissed U.S.–U.K. warnings as “scaremongering,” fearing panic and economic collapse; martial law was delayed, and limited preparations were done semi‑clandestinely by generals such as Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Kyrylo Budanov.
• The authors conclude the central lesson for intelligence and policymakers is not to rule out scenarios merely because they seem irrational or unprecedented: “They were just seized with the conviction that this simply made no sense,” Jake Sullivan recalls of disbelieving allies, prompting a post‑war shift toward planning for “worst‑case scenarios much more than we did before.”

“Europe Steps Up: Ukraine Support After Four Years of War,” Christoph Trebesch and Taro Nishikawa, Kiel Institute, February 2026. 

• “This brief provides a big-picture overview of support for Ukraine after four years of war. The key finding from 2025 is that Europe has almost offset the collapse in US support.
• US aid fell by 99 percent. At the same time, Europe sharply increased its aid allocations, by 59 percent for financial and humanitarian aid and by 67 percent for military aid compared to the 2022–24 average. As a result, total aid in 2025 remained close to previous years.
• Within Europe, financial and humanitarian aid is now dominated by EU institutions, as EU loans and grants account for 89 percent of these flows in 2025. Military aid is ever more concentrated on a few countries. Northern and Western Europe accounted for about 95 percent, in particular Scandinavia, Germany, the United Kingdom. In contrast, the military aid from Southern and Eastern Europe continued to fall.
• To help replace US support, NATO launched the PURL initiative, through which donors purchased US weapons for Ukraine worth EUR 3.7 billion in 2025, including HIMARS and Patriot systems. Donors also increasingly procured weapons directly from Ukraine’s defense industry. The share of procurement in Ukraine reached 22 percent in late 2025.”

“Europe Fills U.S. Aid Loss to Ukraine,” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 02.17.26.

• The Editorial Board notes that as “the Trump Administration has stopped providing weapons to Ukraine,” American aid “plummeted 99% in 2025,” but a Kiel Institute report finds Europe has “sharply” increased support “to offset much of the reduction in US allocations,” with European military aid up 67% versus the 2022–24 average and financial and humanitarian backing up 59%.
• According to the board, non-U.S. NATO members “bought more than $4.3 billion in American weapons for Ukraine,” while Denmark and at least 10 other countries have donated funds “to help Ukraine produce its own weapons,” and an EU loan of “nearly $107 billion” can now be used “to support its military,” helping Kyiv “hold the line” as Russian advances remain “slow and costly.”
• The editors warn that even so, global military allocations for Ukraine were still “4% below 2022 levels,” Ukraine “has especially felt America’s absence in a shortage of Patriot interceptors,” and that Vladimir Putin “won’t end his campaign of conquest until the costs are higher than the benefits,” which “still requires more American weapons and sanctions pressure.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject: 
  • “Ukraine After Year One of Trump’s Second Term, with Eric Ciaramella and Francis Farrell,” The Lawfare Podcast, 02.17.26.

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

“The Shadow Crypto Economy Feeding Russia’s War Machine,” Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, RUSI, 02.20.26.

• Saiz Erausquin argues that sanctions have “reshaped supply chains for critical military components” (Common High Priority Items, or CHPIs) but not stopped them; instead they have “driven adaptation,” with trade in items like microelectronics and CNC machine tools rerouted through a widening set of intermediary jurisdictions in Eurasia and Asia rather than directly from the West.
• As conventional banking channels have come under “heightened scrutiny,” Russia and intermediaries increasingly use cryptocurrency—especially dollar‑pegged stablecoins such as Tether (USDT)—to “settle cross-border transactions outside sanctions-compliant banking systems,” making crypto “a central pillar of Russia’s sanctions evasion strategy” rather than a fringe tool.
• The piece details a layered ecosystem of Russian exchanges (Garantex and its successor Grinex), platform-based payment agents (such as Exved) and a ruble‑backed stablecoin (A7A5, reportedly backed by deposits at sanctioned Promsvyazbank) that together provide a “parallel financial infrastructure” linking diverted CHPI supply chains to crypto settlement; A7A5 alone is said to have processed about $93.3 billion in less than a year.
• A key blind spot is over‑the‑counter (OTC) brokers, which convert cash into crypto through “informal, trust-based networks” without KYC, using rotating deposit addresses and layered wallets; blockchain transparency “does not equate to accountability,” and without off‑chain intelligence on ownership, couriers and physical locations, much of this activity remains effectively invisible.
• Saiz Erausquin calls for “ecosystem‑level disruption”: sustained pressure on circumvention networks; much better intelligence on OTC desks; structured public‑private data‑sharing on wallet attribution; network‑based sanctions that hit successor entities and “bridging assets” like A7A5 and USDT; and tighter integration of trade and financial enforcement, warning that unless sanctions “evolve in step with the systems they are intended to disrupt,” Russia’s crypto‑enabled procurement will continue to blunt their impact.

“After four years, Russian inflation may be key to ending the war,” Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 02.20.26.

• Mark Episkopos describes how sanctions and war‑driven policies are steadily raising the cost of living in Russia: groceries, housing, and everyday services are “noticeably more expensive,” VAT was hiked to 22%, and even affluent Russians “feel the squeeze.” Those are the inflationary effects he sees as politically significant.
• He then links this to the war’s endgame: he argues that the real Western leverage is not “brand-name” sanctions but the accumulated macroeconomic pain and, crucially, the opportunity cost of a Russia cut off from Western markets. In his view, a credible offer of sanctions relief and “sustained economic cooperation” as part of a peace deal is “one of the most powerful levers we have for ending the war on maximally beneficial terms.”
• Inflation alone will stop the war; it says that rising prices and declining living standards are part of a larger economic squeeze that, combined with a clear pathway back to growth and Western integration, can help push Moscow toward a settlement, according to the author.

“Day of Liberation From Tariffs,” Nikolai Pershin, Novaya Gazeta Europe, 02.21.26.

• Pershin recounts how Trump’s sweeping “emergency” tariffs, introduced in April 2025 under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), explicitly exempted Russia (along with Cuba, Belarus, and North Korea): while imports from Ukraine, the EU, China, India, and many others were hit with rates ranging from 10% to nearly 50%, Russian goods were not subject to these duties.
• He notes that later IEEPA‑based tariffs—used against India for buying Russian oil, and against Brazil, Cuba, Iran, and states importing Venezuelan crude—again left Russia untouched, even as the White House cited “national security” and drug‑trafficking threats to justify penalizing other countries’ trade.
• The piece emphasizes the asymmetry: Trump’s “America First” tariff war shifted tens of billions of dollars in costs onto U.S. firms and consumers and sparked a Supreme Court ruling striking down most IEEPA‑based tariffs, but it never directly restricted Russian‑U.S. trade, standing in stark contrast to the broad sanctions packages imposed on Russia by the Biden administration and European allies after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

“The Behind the Scenes Search for Compromise on Territory in Ukraine Talks,” Andrew E. Kramer and Anton Troianovski, New York Times, 02.18.26.

• Kramer and Troianovski report that although the latest talks “concluded on Wednesday without any sign of meaningful progress,” negotiators are quietly debating a demilitarized strip of eastern Donetsk—“about 50 miles long and 40 miles wide”—as a compromise between Russia’s demand that Ukraine “hand over the land it controls” and Kyiv’s refusal to “withdraw unilaterally,” fearing that “ceding land would embolden Russia to attack again.”
• According to the authors, officials have discussed “forming a demilitarized zone controlled by neither army,” reviving a Trump‑era “28‑point” plan and even adding a “free‑trade zone,” while Russia’s Yuri Ushakov has said Moscow could accept such an area if “Russian police or national guard soldiers were allowed to patrol it”; Ukraine, by contrast, wants an “international peacekeeping force” and has floated a civilian administration that might include “both Russian and Ukrainian representatives.”
• The article notes that Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that “allowing the aggressor to take something is a big mistake,” insists Ukraine will not pull back without “security guarantees,” and says he wants to “sign security guarantees first and then sign other documents,” so that Ukrainians “know — not just believe, but know — that in the future Russian aggression will be impossible or that if it does happen, we will not be alone.”

“Four Years of War in Europe,” Foreign Policy, 02.20.26.

• Christian Caryl: “Ukraine has taught the Russians a harsh lesson about such failures. As the United States prepares for the wars of the future, its planners would be well-advised to consider the dangers of arrogance.”
• Angela Stent: “Performative negotiations are a way for Putin to humor Trump and prevent him from taking any more punitive actions against Russia.”
• Andriy Zagorodnyuk: “This is why Ukrainians do not believe that painful concessions will achieve lasting peace. It is not that they think a better deal might be available; it is that they do not believe any deal will be durable.”
• Keir Giles: “In a self-help world, these front-line states are far from helpless.”
• George Barros: “No one can predict when the guns will fall silent. There will be some arrangements—perhaps only temporary ones—between Russia and Ukraine. The Kremlin might try another big offensive this year, like similar failed attempts in 2024 and 2025. But at some point, Putin will have to concede that continuing the war will achieve nothing more than further weakening Russia.”
• Carl Bildt: “Peace in any genuine sense of the word can only come when Vladimir Putin has left the Kremlin and Ukraine has entered the European Union.”
• C. Raja Mohan: “Each in his own way, Biden and Trump have accelerated the emergence of an increasingly interconnected Eurasian geopolitical theater.”
• Agathe Demarais: “After four years of war, the future of Ukraine hinges on the outcome of the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Kremlin—while Europeans wait outside the negotiating room.”

“What price for peace in Ukraine?” Brookings Institution, 02.17.26.

• Aslı Aydıntaşbaş (on what a peace deal might require): “Russia’s slow advance in Donetsk can also allow Putin to claim some form of pyrrhic victory.… After having ruined and conquered many of the major population centers in Donbas… Moscow may conclude it is time to talk.”
• Pavel K. Baev (on Russian constraints pushing toward peace): “The stream of men ready to sign contracts to fight in the Donbas ‘kill zone’ may dry out. Russians are tired of the war, and Putin won’t want to be seen as the main obstacle to ending it.”
• Mariana Budjeryn (on domestic legitimacy as a condition for peace): “Whatever is agreed by a handful of men in Abu Dhabi or elsewhere will have to find broad-based support among the Ukrainians, who… are determined to safeguard their dignity and liberty from internal and external threats alike.”
• Philip H. Gordon (on the cost of relying on U.S. guarantees): “Credible U.S. security guarantees from Trump are not really on the table. The best way to make Ukraine secure is to help it build and maintain credible deterrent forces of its own.”
• Anna Grzymała-Busse (on Eastern Europe’s tolerance for risk in any peace): “Despite the seething criticisms and anxiety about American reliability and trustworthiness, no alternative exists… NATO, led by the United States, remains the only game in town.”
• Daniel S. Hamilton (on the price and payoff of EU membership as part of peace): “Integrating Ukraine into the European Union is a generational task that could strengthen both sides, but will require each to fundamentally change.”
• Mara Karlin (on what the war shows about the cost of misjudging peace): “Short and sharp conflicts often give way to thorny and protracted wars… four years later, [Russia] has suffered at least a million casualties and controls less than one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.”
• Steven Pifer (on refusing to be coerced into a bad peace by nuclear threats): “Ukraine and the West cannot ignore Putin’s nuclear threats… However, they should bear in mind that he does not want nuclear war… They can choose not to be intimidated.”
• Melanie W. Sisson (on the kind of imperfect peace the U.S. should seek): “The only way to prevent this unhappy triumvirate of catastrophic events is to end the war as soon as possible on terms that convince both sides they have more to lose than to gain from near-term noncompliance.”
• Constanze Stelzenmüller (on the transatlantic strain any peace will have to withstand): “It increasingly feels as though [Europeans] themselves are now in the crosshairs as well… Yet a Europeanized NATO… remains the best forum for Europeans to organize the defense of Ukraine as well as their own.”
• Thomas Wright (on Europe’s willingness to underwrite a sustainable peace): “Europe has done a lot and it also faces real constraints… With all that in mind, Europe has been a ray of hope for Ukraine in an otherwise dark moment.”

"Four Years Into Russia’s Invasion, Western Experts See Putin’s Aims Largely Unchanged, Prospects for Peace Dim," Jack Lennon and Angelina Flood, Russia Matters, 02.23.26.

• RM's Jack Lennon and Angelina Flood write that four years ago, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian tanks rolled across the Russia-Ukraine border as Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, noting that experts like George Beebe believed at the time that Putin was trying to show NATO and the West “what Russia’s role in the European security order ‘ought to look like,’” while Angela Stent argued that his goals included a regime change in Kyiv, with the subjugation of Ukraine.
• “Four years in, multiple Western experts concur with Stent that Putin has not achieved that goal,” Lennon and Flood write in their introduction to Western experts' survey on the Russian-Ukrainian war, but they stress that Max Bergmann and Maria Snegovaya “believe that Russia is winning the war of attrition—and that, eventually, ‘it can overpower and outlast Ukraine,’” an assessment that, in their view, helps explain why “some of [Bergmann and Snegovaya’s] fellow scholars believe Russia’s engagement in the negotiations with Ukraine is not genuine,” the authors note.
• Citing the deep pessimism about diplomacy, Lennon and Flood highlight John Mearsheimer’s claim that “there is no way you can negotiate a genuine peace settlement to this conflict,” his description of the current peace talks as “basically Kabuki Theater,” The Economist’s skepticism that any plan will “satisfy Russia,” and former U.S. ambassador James Gilmore’s judgment that “the objectives of Russia and Ukraine are so diametrically opposed that it's not realistic to expect a breakthrough,” the authors write.

“What does Putin really want?” Martin Di Caro, Responsible Statecraft, 02.21.26.

• Di Caro canvasses several Russia and Ukraine experts, who broadly agree that Putin’s minimum war aims go well beyond a simple land grab: they include keeping Ukraine out of NATO, restricting or reshaping its military, cementing Russian control over Crimea and the four annexed regions, and, in many interpretations, securing a government in Kyiv that is “receptive to Russian interests” rather than an “anti‑Russia.”
• Contributors such as Nicolai Petro and Nikolas Gvosdev stress that for Moscow, a “victory” would mean a neutral, non‑nuclear, demilitarized Ukraine that does not host NATO infrastructure and does not obstruct Russia’s Black Sea access or its self‑image as a great power; they argue that Russia will likely spin any settlement that moves in this direction as success, while Western governments will present anything short of that as a Russian defeat.
• Others, like Sergey Radchenko and Sumantra Maitra, warn that Putin’s fixation on Ukraine is tied to his vision of restoring Russian greatness and a sphere of influence, and that Western promises of future security guarantees to Kyiv are unlikely to be credible; they suggest that, absent a negotiated demarcation line and acceptance of some form of buffer, the war risks dragging on in a World War I‑style attritional stalemate that leaves both Ukraine and the broader “rules‑based order” deeply damaged.

“Is the war in Ukraine any closer to ending?” Owen Matthews, The Spectator, 02.18.26.

• Owen Matthews writes that Donald Trump claims “Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky will have to hurry,” while Europe remains “deeply skeptical,” with Kaja Kallas warning that “the greatest threat Russia presents right now is that it gains more at the negotiation table than it has achieved on the battlefield.” Yet, he notes, there is “no sign of any newfound spirit of compromise from the Russian side,” as Dmitry Peskov insists on Kyiv surrendering the remaining “20 percent of Donbas,” and Vladimir Medinsky declares Russians are “ready to lose millions and live on bread and water for the sake of the special military operation.”
• According to Matthews, Medinsky’s return as head of the Russian delegation signals a shift from “strictly military-technical talks” to demands over “de‑nazification,” including changes to Ukrainian language and memory laws and lifting restrictions on the Moscow‑aligned church. On the Ukrainian side, he notes, Rustem Umerov, David Arakhamia and Kyrylo Budanov are “rumored… to be more willing to swallow a deal with Moscow than Zelensky,” even as Zelensky says it often feels “like the sides are talking about completely different things.”
• The author argues that Zelensky’s “room to maneuver is shrinking by the day,” citing eroding public support, corruption scandals, and a stalling 20‑point Kyiv‑Brussels peace plan, while parallel U.S.–Russia talks—including a reported “$12 trillion” Russian investment offer—proceed without Europe “even in the room.” Matthews concludes that although the “timeline of a final peace deal is uncertain,” the “rough outline” is already visible: “territorial losses for Kyiv plus some kind of security guarantees from the West.”

“Transcript: Chrystia Freeland on how to negotiate with autocrats — and allies,” Gideon Rachman with Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times, 02.18.26.

• Freeland says Marco Rubio’s conciliatory Munich speech “was significant,” but stresses that “Rubio is not the president,” and in Trump’s America “what really matters is what the president says.” Even if it were “merely a different tone, tone matters a lot,” she argues, because it signals “your level of respect for your counterparty” and is “the way you deal with allies,” while warning it would be “unwise to assume that the Marco Rubio direction is gonna be the only direction.”
• Drawing on Canada’s NAFTA fight, she says dealing with Trump’s “zero‑sum” mindset required clear red lines: “we will not escalate and we will not back down,” because “we weren’t gonna be pushed around,” and she criticizes early European “appeasement” as based on underestimating Trump—treating him “like… an angry toddler”—even though “a person does not get elected President of the United States twice… without being a formidable person and a formidable strategist.”
• As an unpaid economic adviser to Zelensky, Freeland describes Ukraine as “exhausted, but also angry and not in the mood to surrender,” calling Russia’s bombardment of heating infrastructure “truly, truly horrifying,” yet insisting Westerners have “consistently overestimated Russia’s strength and underestimated Ukraine’s endurance,” with the war now a grinding stalemate in which Moscow pays a “very, very high price for every meter of Ukrainian land it takes.”

“Debate: Is a Peace Agreement in Ukraine Possible?” debate between George Beebe and John Mearsheimer, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, February 2026.

• John Mearsheimer:
  • “My basic argument is that there is no way you can negotiate a genuine peace settlement to this conflict. What you see taking place in these negotiations in places like Geneva is basically kabuki theater. It is going nowhere,” John Mearsheimer said.
  • “Both sides have demands that are light years apart, and neither side is willing to compromise. If neither side is willing to compromise, that means you have no bargaining space to get a deal,” Mearsheimer said.
  • “What the Russians think about what is going on in Ukraine is that it is an existential threat. They think that Ukraine becoming part of NATO is an existential threat to Russia. It is a threat to their survival,” Mearsheimer said.
  • “The Russians are determined that they are going to make sure their security is taken care of, and in the process Ukraine is going to be screwed,” Mearsheimer said.
  • “Someday, when we look back at the April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine into NATO, it is going to be seen as one of the most disastrous foreign‑policy decisions the United States has ever made,” Mearsheimer said.
• George Beebe:
  “This war began as a geopolitical clash between the United States and NATO on the one hand, and Russia on the other, over what the European security order ought to look like — what Russia’s role in that order ought to be, and what Ukraine’s place ought to be,” George Beebe said.
  • “If the United States has already decided that that ‘unipolar moment’ is off the table and not in America’s own interests, then that in turn suggests that the possibilities for agreement — some sort of compromise to end the war in Ukraine — are real,” Beebe said.
  • “If this war continues for very much longer, Ukraine is on a path toward destruction, toward becoming a dysfunctional, ineffective rump state, depopulated, in a demographic crisis, without an ability to reconstruct itself,” Beebe said.
  • “To deal effectively with China, we need a Russia that has greater autonomy and greater room for maneuver, that is not a dependent, subordinate partner to China, but has the ability to deal with the United States and the West in a more normal fashion,” Beebe said.
  • “The Russians cannot fix their fundamental geopolitical problem or their fundamental security problem by winning the war against Ukraine. They still have a NATO security challenge that they cannot address without engaging with the West, so they are going to have incentives to try to find a way out of that situation,” Beebe said.

“As Peace Talks Stall, Russia and Ukraine Share One Aim: Keep Trump Happy,” Matthew Luxmoore and Alexander Ward, Wall Street Journal, 02.19.26.

• Luxmoore and Ward report that U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva have produced “no real movement,” yet both Russia and Ukraine “have converged on one goal: to avoid angering President Trump by appearing to block peace,” turning rounds of “tough but businesslike” and “substantive” negotiations into what one former U.S. ambassador calls “a game to avoid being blamed for Trump’s failure to end the war.”
• The authors note that Trump, who wants a Ukraine deal as his “greatest diplomatic victory,” has repeatedly warned that “Ukraine better come to the table fast” and called leaders “stupid” if they don’t settle, while already slashing U.S. financial aid by 99% but still providing vital intelligence and weapons sold to Europe; both Kyiv and Moscow fear he could further hurt them if he “loses interest” as midterms near.
• According to Western intelligence cited in the piece, Putin is “not negotiating in good faith” but using the process to seek gains he “is struggling to achieve on the battlefield,” insisting Ukraine hand over all of Donbas and accept far‑reaching political control and a “rewiring” of its state, even as Zelensky publicly blasts Russian negotiators’ “historical s—” and refuses to surrender Ukraine’s best‑fortified eastern positions.
• The article says limited side deals—such as prisoner exchanges and technical talks on cease-fire monitoring—have been reached, but core issues remain stuck: Russia rejects Western security‑guarantee schemes and insists Ukraine meet all its demands; Ukraine insists on binding U.S.–European guarantees before any territorial concessions; and senior European officials now expect the war to drag on “another one to three years” as the Trump administration’s interest in the talks slowly wanes.
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • Podcast: “Why Vladimir Putin fears peace,” Edward Carr and Zanny Minton Beddoes with Adam Roberts, Shashank Joshi, and Arkady Ostrovsky, The Economist, 02.18.26.
  • "The US Is Multitasking Two Very Different Peace Deals," Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 02.17.26.
  • “Geneva Talks” in Tatyana Stanovaya’s Bulletin No. 4 (178) 2026, R. Politik, 02.23.26.
  • “What’s Going On With the Negotiations? On the eve of the war’s fourth anniversary, we’d like to believe peace is closer than ever — but it still hasn’t come. Why?,” Meduza, 02.23.26. Clues from Russian Views.  

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

“Rupture: (Re)thinking Middle Powers in a Fragmented World,” Munich Security Conference, 02.14.26. Summarized by RM student associate Jack Lennon.

• Belfer Center Director Meghan O’Sullivan and NYT’s David Sanger facilitated a conversation on strategies available to “middle powers” amidst a rupture in the liberal international order. O’Sullivan defines middle powers as “countries of global consequence that are struggling to situate themselves [amidst] increasing competition between the United States and China.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent Davos speech served as a frequent touchstone in the conversation. 
• Chrystia Freeland, the Fisher Family Visiting Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, emphasized Canada’s co-leadership of the Lima group as an example of a middle power assuming a significant role in multilateral forums as the United States scales back its global engagement. Freeland noted, “that was an example of America, and actually a Trump administration, recognizing that a powerful way to lead was not being right at the center, and letting the middle powers take the lead… Mike Pompeo judged, I think very correctly, that it was better… for the hemispheric partners to be taking the lead.”
• Freeland argues against tendency to think about great powers and middle powers as interchangeable. Likening nations to pieces on a chess board, Freeland argued, “The nature of each piece makes a difference … the future of Canada-South Korea cooperation is going to be much more fruitful, much richer, and much more impactful than Canadian cooperation with a Belarus.”
• Freeland assesses the “great capitulation” of middle powers to Trump is now ending. She recalled, “there was a view taken at the beginning of the Trump administration that the most effective strategy was to try to get along…that involved a mixture of capitulation and flattery… the mistakes of the great capitulation were, actually, an underestimation of President Trump.” Freeland argues an approach which identified shared interests and sources of leverage worked in Canada’s NAFTA negotiations with the Trump administration: “we got a deal… it was a deal that was supported by President Trump and Nancy Pelosi.” 
• GZero Media’s Ian Bremmer, also a senior fellow at the Belfer Center, argues creating a common strategy for middle powers will require delineating structural concerns from concerns which are “actually about Trump.” While powers which “hedge” are comfortable accommodating President Trump on ego projects such as the Board of Peace, countries that “care about the liberal international order…cannot and will not join with Trump when he represents [only] himself on the global stage,” Bremmer assesses. Bremmer identifies “forever wars” and questions about America’s commitment to collective security, its leadership and architecture of the free trade system, and its willingness to promote democracy internationally reflect broader structural matters which “have been coming for decades” which will require a variety of responses. 
• Bremmer assesses China and Canada have hit a tipping point in their capitulation to Trump, while Mexico is in “full on capitulation.” As Mexico lacks the similar leverage to Canda, “they are going to double down on everything the Americans want, and maybe even more than that.” Bremmer emphasized, “there are a lot of countries, that cannot afford, will not afford, to push back.”
• Bremmer argues that the “U.S marching away from a lot of its own architecture,” benefits China. “Why were the Chinese the first country to immediately say ‘we’re not joining the board of peace? Because they understand that they benefit from the vacuum. They understand that if they can be number one in the U.N., that is really good for China long term,” he said. Bremer argues the Europeans should not “cede these institutions to the Chinese.” Bremmer argues any “core middle power strategy” should ensure the that institutions America is walking away from do not break. 
• Carnegie Endowment Senior Fellow Oliver Stuenkel noted Brazil and other countries of the Global South have typified a middle power strategy which is being considered by other states now: “A lot of the criticisms of the rules based order preceded Trump… [these nations demonstrated an] unwillingness to commit fully to alliances in order to maintain strategic autonomy.” Stuenkel noted historic opposition to “a free trade area of the Americas” because “the reading is Mexico made a terrible mistake.” Brazil is thinking, “Thank god we didn’t ‘go Mexico,’ because if we had ‘gone Mexico’… our capacity to maintain our strategic autonomy now would be severely diminished.” Brazil’s now is “hedging on all fronts.” 
• Stuenkel expressed concern at the difficulty middle powers will face in trying to hedge against the U.S. and China, while simultaneously trying to preserve international structures which have depended on the United States: “It’s not like you have that many middle powers willing to pick up the tab. Stuenkel has “lot of doubts,” but anticipates to see a lot of case-by-case cooperation on “particular issues.” This will make it difficult to develop a “middle power coalition.” 
• Centre for Liberal Strategies’ Ivan Krastev assesses that “Europe is too big to be a middle power” but is “lacking one of the major characteristics of a middle power”—the ability to see more opportunity than risk in the shifting international order. Krastev argues the EU is too preoccupied with a loss of unity to act decisively as a middle power: “the European Union is facing something that is much more difficult than anyone else, this is keeping unity. The European Union is not a nation state… The crisis of the liberal order is a much bigger existential crisis for the European Union than for anyone else.”
• Krastev argues middle powers will have to decide if they want to “hedge” to maintain an independent foreign policy or become a “middleman in a Trumpian world.” Freeland’s fundamental question for middle powers centers on security: “at the end of the day, if you are middle power you have to ask yourself, ‘who’s going to have my back if I get attacked?” Freeland commented, “So far the only entity that has shown an ability to do that… [is] NATO.”
• Despite turbulent transatlantic relations, Bremmer is “less concerned about an existential threat to NATO than some of the headlines.” He believes the Europeans have leverage since “there is zero chance Trump is going to stop American defense companies … from selling to the Europeans.”
• Bremmer argued “it is a mistake” to analyze middle powers with a “traditional geopolitical hat.” Middle powers are not just states, and each have varying levels of influence and autonomy depending on the domain. Bremmer suggested, “the reality is, that hedging… especially when you can’t be a middle power on everything… it’s whoever can help you. Some of that is American states… some of that is going to be technology companies… Anthropic has a very different view of the world and of European-model governance than it does the United States. X is rather different. If I were a middle power thinking about how to hedge, I would put myself very much in the former camp and not the latter.”

“Europe’s Next War: The Rising Risk of NATO-Russia Conflict,” Samuel Charap and Hiski Haukkala, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2026.

• Charap and Haukkala warn that even if the war in Ukraine ends, a cease-fire could “mark the start of an even more dangerous era,” with Russia and Ukraine “still… locked in a tense confrontation,” Moscow rearming and “likely increas[ing] its destabilizing activities,” Europe “remilitarizing,” and “little communication and much suspicion between NATO and Russia”—a situation in which “the risk of a direct conflict between Russia and Western states will remain unacceptably high.”
• They argue that the post–Cold War security architecture has “fallen apart”: the NATO-Russia Council is gone, Moscow has left the Council of Europe, the OSCE has become a venue for “ritualistic condemnations,” and EU‑Russia trade has plunged from “around $300 billion” to “around $80 billion,” while both sides are building up forces along the frontier and see each other as hostile in intent.

“Right-Sizing the Russian Threat,” Thomas Graham, Council on Foreign Relations, 02.17.26.

• Thomas Graham writes that “Europe is preparing for the prospect of war,” with leaders warning Russia could attack “within five years,” but insists that “rhetoric and history do not determine policy.” He argues that, given Russia’s situation, “a deliberate invasion of Europe, even a small-scale one, appears less likely than prevailing fears suggest,” and that “the cumulative impact of those urgent challenges will likely reduce the Kremlin’s appetite for external risk.”
• According to the author, Moscow must “reenergiz[e] the nonmilitary segment of the economy,” amid growth plunging “to under 1%,” inflation “expected to pick up,” and interest rates that still “discourage investment.” He notes Russia must also “reintegrat[e] hundreds of thousands veterans,” rebuild Ukrainian territories at a cost of “hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars,” and invest in “cutting-edge technologies—particularly artificial intelligence, where Russia lags far behind the United States and China.”
• Graham argues Western policy should rest on “two pillars: deterrence and dialogue.” He urges Europe to “accelerat[e] the buildup of defense capabilities” while resisting “alarmist rhetoric” that “demonizes Russia and Russians.” Dialogue, he writes, “is not a concession but a safeguard,” helping “stabilize the long frontier between Russia and the West” and enabling a “competitive, uneasy, but stable coexistence.”

“Trump Plays the Peace Game,” Serge Schmemann, New York Times, 02.19.26.

• Serge Schmemann argues that Donald Trump’s new “Board of Peace” recalls Soviet-era “peace” fronts, noting that the Kremlin once ran a “World Peace Council,” “Soviet Peace Fund” and “Soviet Peace Committee” that turned “peace” into “a major weapon in Soviet foreign policy,” a classic bit of doublespeak in which “war is peace” and a repressive system was sold as democratic.
• He points out that Trump’s Board, initially created to oversee Gaza, now looks like a “fully Trump-controlled, by-invitation-only and pay-to-play alternative ($1 billion for a permanent seat) to the U.N. Security Council,” with Trump proclaiming it “the most consequential International Body in History,” and even offering Vladimir Putin a seat while the Russian leader wages a war that has left “almost two million people” killed, wounded or missing.
• Drawing parallels between Soviet-style authoritarianism and Trump’s methods, Schmemann highlights the shared reliance on mythmaking, personal cults and reversal of reality—while stressing that, as in the Soviet case, such “elaborate lies” cannot be sustained forever, even if Russia’s own post-Soviet relapse into authoritarianism is a warning rather than a comfort.

“The ‘Discombobulator’ arms race has begun,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 02.19.26.

• David Ignatius reports that after the Jan. 3 U.S. raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, officials have begun hinting at exotic directed‑energy systems, with Trump boasting U.S. forces used what he called “the Discombobulator” so that Venezuelan defenders “pressed buttons, and nothing worked,” while the Pentagon’s CTO’s office posted that “the @DeptofWar has directed energy weapons. Yes, we are scaling them,” under the slogan “Light‑Speed Lethality.”
• A purported Venezuelan guard’s account—radars suddenly shutting down, “a very intense sound wave,” heads “exploding from the inside,” “bleeding from the nose” and “vomiting blood”—closely echoes early “Havana syndrome” descriptions; Ignatius notes that a 2020 National Academies study judged directed energy “the most plausible mechanism,” even as CIA-led assessments later said it was “very unlikely,” then the Biden NSC in 2025 again called “pulsed electromagnetic or acoustic energy… a plausible explanation in certain cases.”
• Former CIA officers such as Rolf Mowatt‑Larssen criticize the agency’s reluctance to confront Russian use of “exotic technical attacks,” recalling Cold War‑era Moscow as saturated with “microwaves, X‑rays, laser attacks” and other systems, and Ignatius warns that a directed‑energy “arms race” is now underway, making it urgent to set “rules of the road”—distinguishing military from civilian targets—because “what goes around comes around.”

“U.S. Elite Troops Hardened by War on Terror Retrain for Arctic Combat,” Sune Engel Rasmussen, Wall Street Journal, 02.23.26.

• Rasmussen embeds with a U.S. Green Beret A‑Team training in northern Sweden and uses their struggle with –30°F conditions to illustrate how NATO is rapidly relearning Arctic warfare as great‑power competition shifts north and Russia, the only non‑NATO Arctic state, has spent decades expanding bases, nuclear‑submarine and icebreaker fleets on the Kola Peninsula.
• NATO planners see the High North as central in any future confrontation with Russia: the shortest route for Russian missiles to North America runs over the Arctic, and Russia shares almost 1,000 miles of border with Finland and Norway; Arctic exercises like Norway’s Cold Response and NATO’s new “Arctic Sentry” initiative are meant both to deter Russian probing and to ensure that, if Moscow ever moves, allied forces can fight and survive in extreme cold.
• The piece notes that this military build‑up is occurring amid political friction inside NATO over Trump’s threats to seize or annex Greenland and disputes over Ukraine and trade, making close military cooperation with Nordic allies doubly important to “offset tension in other parts of the NATO alliance” while signaling to Russia that the Arctic is not a neglected flank.

“Forget Greenland: This Arctic NATO Island Already Has a Russian Presence,” Matthew Luxmoore (photos by Andrea Gjestvang), Wall Street Journal, 02.20.26.

• Luxmoore reports from Barentsburg on Svalbard, a Norwegian (and thus NATO) archipelago governed by a 1920 treaty that grants access to multiple states but bans military use. In Barentsburg, a Russian-run coal town 800 miles from the North Pole, salaries are paid in rubles, Russian TV and SIM cards dominate, a Russian curriculum is taught in the local school, and Soviet-era symbols—including a Lenin statue and propaganda murals—underscore a long‑standing Russian footprint.
• Norwegian officials worry that Russia’s growing Arctic military build‑up and Trump’s threats to annex Greenland are destabilizing a region that had enjoyed “decades of tense calm.” Svalbard sits astride key routes to the U.S. and near the Bear Gap leading to Russia’s Kola Peninsula and its nuclear submarine bastions; Moscow’s foreign ministry has questioned Oslo’s sovereignty, and figures like retired general–turned‑lawmaker Andrei Gurulyov have openly called for “great bases” on “Spitsbergen” to project power “over the entire Arctic.”
• Norway has responded by tightening control: increasing frigate patrols, restricting foreign activity, floating seabed resource exploration, banning Chinese students from Svalbard’s university after its intelligence service flagged Beijing’s scientific station as a dual‑use risk, and declaring 2026 its “Total Defense Year,” training everyone from fishermen to schoolchildren in spotting threats and first aid. Analysts warn that if Oslo were to place overt military assets on Svalbard, Russia could claim the treaty was broken and move to seize the islands in a crisis—making Svalbard, in one expert’s phrase, “the second or third domino that falls if we’re in an actual NATO‑Russia conflict.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • Video: “Former National Security Advisors Examine America's Evolving National Security Strategy,” World Class podcast with H.R. McMaster, Jake Sullivan Stanford FSI, 02.20.26.
  • Podcast “Tough Love in Munich,” Andrew Kuchins and Chris Monday, National Interest, 02.17.26.
  • "Countering Hybrid Threats: Lessons from Eastern Europe," Anastasia Pociumban and Ricarda Nierhaus, German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), 02.20.26.
  • "Security in Europe: A Problem Without a Solution," Ivan Timofeev, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.18.26. (In Russian.)
  • "Nuclear umbrellas and new alliances: the Saudi‑Pakistani factor in the emerging world order—a blitz interview by Maxim Nosenko with Dmitry Trenin," PIR Center, 02.20.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“Marriage without love: The Sino-Russian partnership and what it means for the world,” Bobo Lo, John Lough, Sergey Aleksashenko, Sergei Medvedev, and Aleksei Chigadaev, New Eurasian Strategies Centre, 02.12.26.

• The authors argue that “the Russia-China partnership should not be viewed as a deliberate or inevitable strategic alliance,” but as “reactive in nature” and “largely driven by both countries’ confrontation with the West, and, in Russia’s case, by the consequences of its war against Ukraine.” They contend that interpreting the relationship as “a unified anti-Western front is misleading,” because “Moscow and Beijing pursue different long-term objectives.”
• According to the authors, interaction “remains transactional and limited in scope,” with “persistent asymmetry, with Russia in a subordinate position.” Economic ties are “relatively resilient but appear close to their upper limit,” with trade “highly dependent on global oil price dynamics” and failing to become “broad-based investment or technological cooperation,” as “China avoids long-term commitments,” seeing Russia as “an undesirable competitor… but a useful supplier of raw materials.”
• They predict a “stable but limited partnership, largely declaratory in nature,” in which a “genuine military-political alliance… remains highly unlikely,” and warn that the lack of clear Western strategies risks “deeper Russian dependence on China” in a relationship “driven by tactical convergence rather than strategic unity.”

“China’s Drone Exports to Russia Use a New Route Through Thailand,” Antony Sguazzin, Andy Lin, and Pathom Sangwongwanich, Bloomberg, 02.19.26.

• Bloomberg reports that Bangkok-based Skyhub Technologies, a low‑profile firm operating from a serviced office, has become Thailand’s second‑largest importer of Chinese drones, bringing in about $25 million worth in 2025—mainly Autel Robotics models such as the EVO Max 4T—while Thai trade data show that “the bulk of drones imported into the country are re-exported to Russia,” part of a perfectly legal but politically sensitive trade.
• Official data show that from January–November 2025 Russia imported $125 million of drones from Thailand—88% of Thailand’s total UAV exports and eight times the previous year—while China shipped $186 million of drones to Thailand in the same period, indicating a tight China‑Thailand‑Russia pipeline that has largely escaped notice as the West tries to cut off dual‑use supplies to Moscow.
• The article notes that Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries have become key transshipment hubs as earlier routes via the UAE and Kazakhstan came under pressure; UK sanctions have already hit two Thai firms, including China Thai Corp. (now rebranding as Lanto Global Logistics), which imported $144 million of drones from China in 11 months of 2025 and has also been linked to sanctioned Russian electronics buyers—illustrating, as one sanctions expert put it, that “the countries may change but the methods do not: rerouting via third countries using shell companies.” Russia is not alone in getting drone parts from China. See, for instance, “Chinese Drone Tech Fuels Both Sides of Russia-Ukraine War,” Quinn Urich, Russia Matters, 09.10.25.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“What comes after New START?,” Steven Pifer, Brookings, 02.19.26.

• Pifer notes that New START lapsed on Feb. 5, 2026, after Washington “ignored” Putin’s offer to keep its numerical limits for a year without verification, and that Trump now wants a “new, improved and modernized Treaty” that brings in China and covers all Russian and U.S. nuclear warheads—goals he calls “laudable” but far harder than advertised.
• He argues that China’s arsenal is “rising faster than any other state,” from about 250 warheads in 2015 to some 600 operational today and possibly 1,000 by 2030, yet Beijing “has refused to engage in nuclear arms negotiations,” while Russia has long rejected talks on nonstrategic warheads and insists that British and French forces be counted—making a comprehensive three‑way (or broader) deal vastly more complex than past bilateral treaties.
• Pifer suggests there is still room for “one more bilateral agreement constraining U.S. and Russian nuclear forces,” alongside multilateral confidence‑building via the P5 (for example expanding launch‑notification regimes), but warns that serious talks with Moscow and Beijing would likely require Washington to put politically sensitive issues—missile defense, especially Trump’s ambitious “Golden Dome,” and long‑range conventional strike—on the table.
• He concludes that if the Trump administration is “serious about nuclear arms control,” it must start negotiations early, accept that any agreement will be “complex and arduous,” and realistically choose between a good U.S.–Russia bilateral deal while continuing to seek Chinese engagement, versus chasing an “all‑but‑unattainable” tripartite treaty that tries to do everything at once.

“How Worried Should We Be About Nuclear War?,” Ravi Agrawal interviewing Rafael Grossi, Foreign Policy, 02.18.26.

• Rafael Grossi says New START’s expiry means “we don’t have… any other arms limitation treaty to set a maximum number of warheads,” but he does not expect “a dramatic change in nuclear arsenals in the immediate future”; instead, the loss of treaties removes “predictability” at a time when the United States wants to bring in China and “new technologies now—vectors and hypersonic submarine drones—would need to be included.”
• On proliferation, Grossi warns that more than 30 states could “theoretically be in a capacity to move into this sphere,” and that talk in NPT‑abiding countries of revisiting their stance is “a very disturbing trend,” because a world with “20 countries with weapons” would make nuclear use in “regional or subregional conflicts” almost inevitable, with “the potential of escalation.”
• Rejecting arguments that more nuclear states might stabilize crises, he insists “not at all,” expanding the “nuclear club” would be “a slippery slope,” and abandoning nonproliferation for a “free‑for‑all, each one fending for itself, would be a dramatic mistake,” unraveling the “world nuclear order as we know it.”

“Last nuclear weapons limits expired—pushing world toward new arms race,” Matthew Bunn, The Conversation, 02.05.26.

• Matthew Bunn warns that with New START’s expiry, “for the first time in more than half a century, there are no binding restraints on the buildup of the largest nuclear forces on Earth,” ending limits that kept U.S. and Russian deployed strategic warheads at “1,550 each” and provided inspections, data exchanges, and a bar on “interference with satellite monitoring,” and he argues this “upends decades of international nuclear stability.”
• He writes that with China “rapidly building up its nuclear forces” and “intense rivalry between the United States, China and Russia,” there is “a real potential of an unpredictable three-way nuclear arms competition,” which he believes pushes “the danger of nuclear conflict… higher than it has been in decades,” even though past accords “left the United States safer” and helped dismantle “more than four-fifths of the nuclear weapons that used to exist in the world.”
• According to Bunn, Trump ignored Vladimir Putin’s proposal to stay within New START limits while exploring “a ‘better’ deal,” and domestic pressure now favors a U.S. buildup, yet he argues that the existing “more than 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons” are “a sufficient deterrent,” and urges some form of “strategic pause” or new constraints to avoid a costly, destabilizing arms race. 

“Life without the New START Treaty: What nuclear weapons states can do to help strengthen the non-proliferation regime,” Edward Ifft, European Leadership Network, 02.17.26.

•  Edward Ifft writes that with New START’s expiry “the last treaty constraining the nuclear weapons and their delivery systems of the United States and the Russian Federation” is gone, ending a “half-century process of reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world” and likely leading to “increases in all three leading nuclear weapons states,” a development he warns could be “a disaster for the non-proliferation regime and undermine global stability.”
• He stresses that New START’s intrusive verification regime—“up to 18” on‑site inspections a year, “approximately 2,000 notifications per year” and large data exchanges via the U.S. and Russian Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers—has now been lost, along with the ban on interfering with national technical means, and cautions that without new arrangements “the ability to monitor deployed warheads is deteriorating” and the risk of “uncertainties and worst‑case planning” will grow.
• •Ifft argues that, despite bleak prospects, nuclear‑armed states can still act constructively: “the U.S., Russia, and China, or, more realistically, the U.S. and Russia, should begin urgent negotiations to develop a new agreement or agreements to follow New START,” the P5 should “play a greater role in nuclear arms control,” all nuclear-weapon states should become “more transparent” to build a global baseline, and countries should “resume, individually and cooperatively, work on the verification measures needed to verify the process of eliminating nuclear weapons,” even as he warns that if “the U.S. refuses to negotiate with Russia, and China refuses to negotiate with the U.S., the future of nuclear arms control looks bleak indeed.”

“Why let this nuclear treaty expire? Because of what Trump can do now,” Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 02.19.26.

• Marc A. Thiessen defends Trump’s decision to let New START expire, arguing that in a world where the U.S. now faces “not one but two nuclear-peer competitors” and Russia has already “suspended compliance,” it is “pointless to extend a bilateral treaty that did not restrain China and which Russia was no longer observing anyway,” and that Washington should instead unilaterally set whatever force levels are needed.
• Citing the 2002 Moscow Treaty as a model, he urges a new Nuclear Posture Review and a large nuclear buildup: “loading additional warheads on existing land- and sea-based strategic missiles, forward-stationing nuclear-capable aircraft in Europe and the Pacific, growing the planned fleet of strategic missile submarines and expanding the next-generation B-21 bomber program,” along with possible “resumption of testing.”
• Thiessen also calls for massive investment in missile defense, including Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” shield and far more theater missile interceptors, plus “acting decisively to stop Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon,” all funded by raising the U.S. defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion; whether or not these changes are later codified in a treaty, he concludes, “the security of the free world does not depend on a piece of parchment” but on a “credible nuclear deterrent.”

“Putin Spotlights Nuclear Triad, Awards Officers on Defender of the Fatherland Day,” The Moscow Times, 02.23.26.

• President Vladimir Putin used a midnight Defender of the Fatherland Day address to declare that “the development of the nuclear triad, which guarantees Russia's security and ensures effective strategic deterrence and a balance of forces in the world, remains an absolute priority,” underscoring that modernizing land‑, sea‑ and air‑based nuclear forces is central to Moscow’s strategy.
• Speaking just after New START’s expiration, the Kremlin reiterated that Russia would continue to take a “responsible” approach to its strategic nuclear capability and to respect the treaty’s numerical limits on its arsenal, even without a legally binding framework with the United States.³
• Putin also presented Hero of Russia titles to nine officers and Orders of Courage to two National Guard commanders for offensive operations in Ukraine, then laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and met widows of soldiers killed in the war.

“Sergey Karaganov: The EU is playing with nuclear fire,” Sergey Karaganov, RT/Russia in Global Affairs, 02.17.26. RT is a Russian government-funded outlet. Clues from Russian Views.

• Karaganov claims the war has “dragged on longer than necessary” because of a “lack of determination to employ active nuclear deterrence,” arguing that this is “the only mechanism capable of resolving the ‘European problem’” and warning that Western Europe’s elites are “driving the continent toward catastrophe.”
• He urges Moscow to be ready, if conventional attacks on European “command centers, critical infrastructure, and military bases” fail, for “limited but decisive nuclear strikes using operational-strategic weapons,” insisting Russia must be “militarily, politically, psychologically” prepared and that “excessive restraint is no longer responsibility. It’s quite the opposite now because it’s negligence.”
• Karaganov calls for revising doctrine and “abandon[ing] the outdated notion that ‘there are no winners in a nuclear war,’” and even raises “the question of depriving France and the UK of access to nuclear weapons,” arguing that “any Western European move toward nuclear proliferation must be treated as grounds for preemptive action,” while insisting he is “not advocating nuclear war” but seeking to use nuclear threats to “halt escalation.”

“Avoiding Oblivion… and Rehabilitating Humanity,” Sergei A. Karaganov interview with Al Mayadeen, Russia in Global Affairs, 02.18.26.

• Karaganov says Russia has been “too soft and indecisive” and argues that if European elites continue “provocations” after any stop‑gap peace in Ukraine, Moscow must “go to another level of escalation:” first “waves of conventional strikes” on “valuable targets” in the main warring European states, and, if there is a response, “a wave of nuclear strikes,” which “should not be tactical strikes, they should be operational-strategic, so that those people will finally understand what they are facing.”
• He calls for Russia’s nuclear doctrine to stipulate that any war against an opponent “predominant in terms of demography and economy would entail the automatic use of nuclear weapons,” and advocates deploying “more nuclear weapons on the borders of Europe” as part of a deliberate effort to convince both the Kremlin and Russians at large that they must be ready to undertake such a step.
• Karaganov insists he is not seeking nuclear war but deterrence: using nuclear weapons would be a “sin,” he says, but allowing the world to “descend into World War III” would be “an even worse sin.” He explicitly rejects the old maxim that there are “no winners in a nuclear war,” arguing instead that only a credible willingness to inflict devastating nuclear punishment can “rein in the war‑mongers” in Europe and the United States.
• On possible retaliation, he dismisses the likelihood of an American nuclear response—saying that would require “madmen in the White House who hate America”—while warning that any “suicidal counterattack by the Brits or the French” would be met by “a disarming and decapitating strike on them,” with “one sole warhead heading for Russia” triggering “a wave of strikes on their cities… and that would mean the elimination of France and Britain.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Donald Trump Should Restart New START,” Benjamin Giltner and Evan Sankey, The National Interest, 02.23.26.
  • "Nuclear Umbrellas and New Alliances: The Saudi-Pakistani Factor in the Emerging World Order," Dmitry Trenin, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.20.26.

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

• No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

“How the War and Latest Western Sanctions Are Impacting Russia’s Oil Sector,” Sergey Vakulenko, Russia.Post, 02.17.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• The analyst says the Western pro‑Ukraine coalition largely stopped buying Russian oil by early 2023, and new U.S. and EU sanctions now target buyers of Rosneft and Lukoil crude and the traders and shippers moving it to India and China, forcing “shell games” with front companies, raising risks and transaction costs, and slightly widening discounts—but in a global market without much spare supply, buyers still “have no viable alternatives” and generally pay near world prices.
• War‑related pressures are slowly eroding Russia’s upstream capacity: capital is expensive, labor is “in serious trouble,” and the industry is mostly “drilling wells in old fields without developing new ones,” so production is likely to start a steady decline of about 2–3% per year; sustaining current levels would require a big investment surge that the Finance Ministry resists because it “cannot afford to take less rent from the oil sector” while war spending is high.
• Refining is especially vulnerable to repeated Ukrainian drone attacks—single strikes can be patched, but “regular beatings” could eventually force full replacement of key units—yet even if exports fell to, say, the roughly 1 million barrels per day piped to China, the expert doubts this would make Russia “physically unable to finance military operations”; looking ahead, Western firms would “be willing and happy” to buy some Russian oil again after the war, but many European governments will continue to see Russia as “a danger that is best avoided,” limiting any bounce‑back.

“How to Bust the Sanctions-Evading Ghost Fleets,” John Bolton, Wall Street Journal, 02.18.26.

• John Bolton argues that sanctions on Iran, Russia and Venezuela are being undermined by “oil tankers known as ‘ghost ships’ or the ‘dark fleet’,” which let rogue states sell discounted oil—often to China—despite Western measures, and says sanctions “have been frustrated by ineffective enforcement.”
• He proposes using the 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) as a model: a “lean and agile” coalition based on a “Statement of Interdiction Principles,” ship‑boarding agreements with flags of convenience, and the legal concept of “stateless vessels” (including many false‑flag tankers) that “may be boarded without violating a flag state’s rights” under the Law of the Sea.
• A “PSI 2.0,” Bolton writes, should aim “to sweep oil-tanker ghost fleets from the seas entirely, delegitimizing them across the board, by interdictions, seizures and financial and commercial means,” including tightening the International Maritime Organization’s transponder system and pushing owners to scrap ghost ships.
• Citing Woodrow Wilson’s description of sanctions as a “peaceful, silent, deadly remedy,” Bolton contends that if the U.S., NATO allies and Indo‑Pacific partners coordinate PSI‑style enforcement, they can finally make that “hand upon the throat of the offending nation” effective against sanctions‑evading fleets and their sponsors.

“Europe should treat energy security as defense policy,” Richard Shirreff, Financial Times, 02.18.26.

• Richard Shirreff argues that “logistics determine the outcome of every major conflict” and that for developed states “the most critical logistics system is energy infrastructure.” He notes that in Ukraine Russia’s campaign against the grid left the country with “only about one-third of its prewar generation capacity by mid‑2024,” showing that when power fails, “the capability of a nation’s armed forces” is at risk.
• According to Shirreff, Russia is already targeting European infrastructure, “blending cyber and kinetic attacks on energy grids to deliberately probe Europe’s defenses,” and old assumptions about guaranteed U.S. protection have been “fatally weakened.” He insists Europe must treat energy security as “de facto defense policy,” moving beyond a narrow focus on “efficiency and decarbonization” to prioritize resilience.
• The author calls for decentralized, distributed systems so “if one node is disabled…the rest of the system can remain online,” stronger cyber and air defenses, and ending dependencies “that could be weaponized,” warning that energy has become “the frontline of defense.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject: 
  • "U.S. restrictions on Russian oil and petroleum product supplies: the diversity and contradictions of the American legal framework," Roman Nasretdinov, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.17.26. (In Russian.)

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

“How big is the prize of reopening Russia?,” The Economist, 02.17.26.

• The article notes that Russia has dangled “deals worth $12trn” to America in return for sanctions relief—“plainly hyperbole designed to please Mr Trump”—including stakes in Arctic oil and gas, rare-earth mines, a nuclear-powered data center and a tunnel under the Bering Strait, but argues that “the available riches are a small fraction of what the Kremlin is touting.”
• Trade and “stranded assets” are limited: in 2021 all foreign firms in Russia earned only “$18bn” in profit on $300bn of revenues, the assets Western firms might buy back are valued at “just $60bn,” Russia’s economy is only “$2.2trn—less than Italy’s,” and any reopening would face “nearly 23,000” existing sanctions, hostile legislatures, and a business climate where “the taxman is rapacious; the courts are corrupt; contracts are worthless.”
• Mega-projects such as West Siberian shale and Arctic oil (Vostok Oil) and rare-earth mining could, in theory, be big, but they depend on “vast injections of foreign technology, workers and capital,” suffer from “Soviet-era” data, overlapping licenses, infrastructure gaps and an oil “superglut” likely to push prices down, while China already supplies “62% of Russia’s goods imports” and guards its rare-earth know-how.
• The Economist concludes that even wildly optimistic trade and investment flows would yield only about “$340bn a year”—nowhere near $12trn—and warns that a reopened Russia would let its economy “recover, paving the way for the next war,” so “a president with America’s interests at heart would look at Mr Putin’s $12trn offer with a gimlet eye—and walk away.”

“Will investing in Russia really bring America a $12trn bonanza?,” The Economist, 02.17.26.

• The Economist recounts that, alongside faltering peace talks, “other envoys from the Kremlin and the White House have been discussing business,” with Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying Russia has promised the U.S. “deals worth $12trn” for sanctions relief—an idea the article calls “plainly hyperbole designed to please Mr Trump.” America has reportedly been offered “Arctic oil and gas, rare-earth mines, a nuclear-powered data centre and a tunnel under the Bering Strait.”
• The article notes that, even if sanctions were eased, Russia’s market is modest—its “$2.2trn economy is smaller than Italy’s,” with foreign firms’ prewar profits in Russia just “$18bn” a year—and warns that post‑war Russia would still feature “rapacious” tax authorities, “corrupt” courts and “worthless” contracts, while China and other countries have already seized many niches, with China supplying “57% of Russia’s goods imports in 2024.”
• The Economist concludes: “Should the White House take the bait, the rest of America will wait in vain for a windfall as political costs mount. Congressional hawks would loathe it if a reopened Russia started rewarding its allies, particularly China. More trade, finance and investment would soon allow Russia’s economy to recover, paving the way for the next war. Any president with America’s interests at heart would look at Mr Putin’s $12trn offer with a gimlet eye—and walk away.”

“With ‘Tremendous’ Deals at Stake, Trump Is Bringing Russia in From the Cold,” Anton Troianovski, New York Times, 02.19.26.

• Anton Troianovski reports that Texas investor Gentry Beach, a longtime friend of Donald Trump Jr., “quietly signed an agreement” with major Russian energy firm Novatek “to develop natural gas in Alaska,” a venture he says is “motivated by business interests and not politics” but that “shows how Mr. Trump is starting to bring Russia back into the Western economic fold” even as the war in Ukraine continues and U.S. sanctions formally remain in place.
• Beach tells the Times that “Trump is a transactional president” and that “people would have felt less comfortable working with Russian companies during the Biden administration,” adding that “this project is known about at the highest levels in Moscow and Washington” and casting himself as a “bringer of peace,” while Novatek confirms it is in talks on “the potential use” of its LNG technology in “remote northern Alaska” but stops short of naming him.
• The article notes that Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has been pitching “a multitude of potential deals” to Trump’s team—up to an “improbable $14 trillion” in supposed opportunities—while Trump talks of Russia’s “tremendous opportunity” and says “Russia wants to make a deal” and that “Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving,” raising fears that early movers like Beach are testing whether U.S.–Russia deals can proceed even before a peace settlement is reached.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Putin Had High Hopes for Trump. They Have Been Dashed.,” Hanna Notte, New York Times, 02.23.26.

• Notte argues that Putin initially saw Trump’s return as a chance to get Washington to “wash its hands” of Ukraine and restore a great‑power bargain, but that a year on “those hopes have been dashed”: Trump has rebuffed Russian mediation offers on Iran, sidelined Putin at Gaza diplomacy, and undercut Russian influence in regions Moscow sees as its backyard, from the Caucasus (U.S. brokering Armenia–Azerbaijan) to Venezuela (the Maduro raid).
• She notes that Trump has also hurt Russian interests directly—imposing sanctions on Russian oil companies, seizing a Russian‑flagged tanker, and pressing India to cut Russian crude purchases—while ignoring Putin’s proposal to extend New START limits and instead elevating China as Russia’s senior rival in a mooted “G2,” a posture that undercuts Moscow’s quest for parity.
• In Notte’s view, Trump’s “Trump First” approach leaves Russia neither respected nor accommodated: unable to get from Trump what he wants in Ukraine, Putin will “fight on, sinking Russia’s resources ever more deeply into his calamitous war,” while the U.S. continues to disrupt the global order without offering Moscow the great‑power concert it craves.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“How four years of war have changed Russia,” The Economist, 02.19.26.

• The Economist describes how many Russians “try to ignore the war” but find that “is getting harder,” as everyday life is reshaped: GPS “spoofing” to foil Ukrainian drones leaves satnavs thinking they are “50 kilometers from their actual location,” air travel suffers from sanctions and “more than 500 airport closures,” and even lifts break down for lack of foreign spare parts, with repairmen saying, “You’re asking the wrong people.”
• Economically, aggregate growth and “extremely low” unemployment of 2% mask a “fundamentally changed” economy in which the war machine has “sucked up manpower,” hundreds of thousands have fled, civilian sectors show “malaise,” new business registrations have fallen to a 14‑year low, and expropriations have exploded from “no more than one… a year” in the 2010s to “more than 500 firms” seized since the war began, prompting one entrepreneur to ask, “Why would I invest and expand if it will be taken from me tomorrow?”
• The article details how violence has been normalized and legally excused: joining the army routinely clears “past crimes, no matter how depraved,” over 1,100 criminal cases (including “murder and rape”) have been dropped for recruits, around 1,000 people have been killed or injured by war participants at home, and Patriarch Kirill has promised that dying in the war “will wash away all sin,” leading one defrocked priest to say “the patriarch has removed responsibility for killing.”
• Demographically, the war worsens labor shortages and a collapsing birth rate: soldiers’ families complain “while our men are being destroyed there, we’re being squeezed here,” the fertility rate fell to 1.3 in 2023, nearly a third of Russians say they have “postponed or completely abandoned” plans to have a baby, and despite state natalist campaigns and bans on “promotion of childlessness,” pollsters find people feel “like an insect stuck in amber,” with many believing that “even if the war were to stop, things would not get back to how they were before.”

“OVD-Info Releases Annual Report on Persecution in Russia,” Russia.Post, 02.19.26.

• The report highlights a sharp rise in cases under treason, espionage, and “secret collaboration with foreigners” (a 2022 Criminal Code article), citing lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov of Department One, who argues that “any prosecution under these articles… can be considered ‘political,’” since almost any assistance to Ukraine, contact with foreigners, or similar actions can trigger charges; official data show treason convictions nearly doubled in the first half of 2025 (115 vs. 55), and Department One believes the real figure may be three times higher.
• OVD-Info notes that terrorism and sabotage prosecutions now average “five verdicts” per day; while not all are political, they are often used against captured Ukrainian soldiers, residents of occupied territories, and Russians accused of damaging military infrastructure or contacting Ukraine, indicating growing abuse of counterterrorism and “anti-extremism” laws to suppress dissent.
• The report documents expanding use of extremism legislation against opposition and marginalized groups: Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has been labeled first “extremist” (2021) and then “terrorist” (2025), with at least 120 criminal cases against donors; the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on “LGBT” as an “extremist organization” has led to hundreds of cases against LGBTQ+ people and allies, from publishers and sex educators to bar owners and social‑media users, alongside ongoing persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims alleged to have ties to Hizb ut‑Tahrir, and decolonial activists linked to the “Forum of Free Nations of Post-Russia.”

“Was Vladimir Putin’s tyranny inevitable?,” review of “The Successor” by Mikhail Fishman, The Economist, 02.19.26.

• The review explains that Mikhail Fishman’s biography of Boris Nemtsov, “The Successor,” poses the counterfactual at the heart of the headline: Yeltsin once wanted the liberal, pro‑Western Nemtsov—“a preternaturally gifted statesman and a committed, pro‑Western believer in capitalism and liberal democracy”—to follow him as president, and the book makes you ask “where would Russia and the world be today if only the old man had stuck with him, instead of shifting to the former KGB officer from St Petersburg?”
• Fishman traces Nemtsov’s rise from physicist‑turned‑activist in Nizhny Novgorod, where as governor he pioneered Russia’s first privatizations, fostered a free press, and turned the region into a showcase for how post‑Soviet Russia could prosper, to his move to Moscow, cabinet missteps, and fall from grace after the 1998 default—misfortunes that “cleared the way for a very different sort of operator,” Vladimir Putin, whom the review calls “Nemtsov in the negative.”
• The piece argues that Putin’s ascent owed as much to contingency—oil prices soaring from $18 to $130 a barrel in his first decade, public exhaustion with chaos, oligarchs’ media campaigns that destroyed Nemtsov while they mistakenly believed one‑man rule was over—as to design; Nemtsov’s later role as a leading oppositionist, his open denunciation of Putin after Crimea, and his subsequent murder by a Chechen hit squad underscore that alternative, more liberal paths for Russia were real enough to be worth killing, not historically foreclosed.

“Following The Ayatollah: In their fight against Telegram, Iran and Russia are trying to solve the central dilemma of digital authoritarianism, but are so far failing,” Re:Russia Analytics, 02.20.26.

• The piece argues that Russia’s battle with Telegram has closely tracked Iran’s since 2018: Roskomnadzor’s first blocking attempt (2018–2020) failed technically and socially, forcing Moscow to restore access in 2020; since then, Telegram’s Russian audience has exploded from about 7.2 million monthly users in 2017 to 94–105 million by the end of 2025, turning it into the country’s main information and coordination hub for opposition, business, everyday communication, and state propaganda and governance.
• Russian authorities have tried, like Iran’s, to replace Telegram with a “national messenger” (MAX) modeled on WeChat, but the app’s reputation as a surveillance tool, its poor functionality, and the presence of entrenched rival ecosystems (Sber, Yandex, Telegram itself) mean that usage is largely artificial: by late 2025, about 70–75% of MAX channels belonged to state bodies and local authorities, and even the largest cloned Telegram channels had amassed only about 1.4 million subscribers on MAX versus ~87 million on Telegram.
• Lacking an attractive product, the Kremlin has shifted to coercion: restricting calls on WhatsApp and Telegram, mandating MAX pre‑installation and migration of state agencies, and now deliberately “degrading” Telegram—regional slowdowns, file‑upload problems, and public threats of a full block—in an effort to push “loyal” users off the platform while minimizing collateral damage to state, economic, and military functions that also depend heavily on it.
• The article describes this as Russia’s version of the core dilemma of digital authoritarianism: any serious move against a central platform like Telegram risks crippling government communications, military coordination (“a field headquarters in your pocket,” as pro‑war bloggers put it), and business, while half‑measures mainly normalize VPN use and drive content and audiences into harder‑to‑control channels—much as has happened with YouTube, whose throttling has reduced measured audience by about a third but not eliminated use or content production.
• Re:Russia concludes that, barring “extraordinary and high‑risk measures” such as a full whitelisting (“positive filtering”) of the Russian internet, the confrontation between technology and repression will likely drag on: Telegram’s infrastructural role in Russia’s public and state life makes an outright ban “virtually impossible” in the near term, and the experience of both Iran and Russia so far shows that clumsy attempts to replace or strangle such platforms tend to fail while entrenching workarounds and undermining the regime’s own digital capacities.

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

• "Russia’s economy after four years of war," Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 02.21.26.
• "Big problems for "big people,'" Vladislav Inozemtsev, The Moscow Times, 02.18.26. (In Russian.)
• "The Gulag is no longer a museum," Irina Mak, The Moscow Times, 02.21.26. (In Russian.)
• “The Dangerous Legacy of Alexander Herzen,” Kathleen Parthé, The Russia File (Kennan Institute), 02.16.26.
• "Russia "Won't Quit Drinking," or Why You Shouldn't Expect an Economic Crisis," Dmitry Nekrasov, The Moscow Times, 02.23.26. (In Russian.)
• "The average Russian sympathizes with dictators, not with those who oppose them," Sergey Shelin, The Moscow Times, 02.20.26. (In Russian.)
• Video: "How collapsible is Putin's Russia? (The Bell in Moscow's Shadows)," Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 02.17.26.

Defense and aerospace:

• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Moscow’s war funding sows seeds of long-term slump," Pierre Briancon, Reuters, 02.19.26.
• See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

• No significant developments.

   

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

“Russia is using monuments to peddle misinformation,” Fiona Greenland, Financial Times, 02.17.26.

• Fiona Greenland writes that exhibitions such as Children of War “smuggled into this worthy appeal… a novel type of Russian propaganda,” centering on a statue of “a boy sacrificing himself to protect a young girl” whose supposed death at the hands of Ukrainian soldiers is “unsubstantiated.” She argues that “Russia’s war against Ukraine is fought not only with artillery and drones but with history and art,” as the Kremlin erects monuments “less about remembrance than about control.”
• According to the author, Moscow has refined “cultural heritage exploitation”: attaching propaganda narratives to monuments to “legitimize territorial claims, justify violence and shape international opinion.” Monuments present “the illusion” that “something happened here,” embedding claims that “Ukraine is run by Nazis,” Russian speakers face “an existential threat,” and Ukrainian statehood is “artificial and illegitimate,” while removed Soviet statues are recast as proof of “anti-Russian discrimination.”
• Greenland argues that “stone and bronze have become tools of hybrid warfare,” with Kremlin-linked firms, the army and the Orthodox Church coordinating production, logistics and consecration, so that deceptive installations like Children of War should be treated “not as heritage objects but as foreign disinformation.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Russia, the Palestinians and Gaza: Adjustments after October 7th," Dmitry Maryasis, IFRI, 02.23.26.

Ukraine:

“Ukraine’s ex-army chief reveals to AP a rift with Zelenskyy,” Samya Kullab and Susie Blann, AP News, 02.18.26.

• The authors report that Valerii Zaluzhnyi, long seen as Zelenskyy’s chief rival, described for the first time a “deep rift” with the president, saying tensions flared “soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion” and culminated when “dozens of agents from Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service raided Zaluzhnyi’s office,” an episode he alleges was “an act of intimidation.”
• According to AP, Zaluzhnyi said that during the 2022 raid he warned Andrii Yermak, “I will fight with you and have already called in reinforcements to the center of Kyiv for support,” and told him, “I would repel this attack, because I know how to fight,” while the SBU insists “no search was carried out” and that the address was only one of several in an organized-crime probe.
• Zaluzhnyi argues the 2023 counteroffensive plan failed because Zelenskyy and others would not concentrate forces into a “single fist,” claiming resources were spread out, “diluting their striking power,” even as polls now show him narrowly leading Zelenskyy and he insists, “Until the war is over or martial law ends, I am not discussing” politics.

“Billionaires on Outsourcing: In Armenia, the Kremlin has once again placed its bets on a Russian businessman as leader of the opposition,” Roman Chernikov, Re:Russia, 02.17.26.

• Roman Chernikov argues that Armenia has become “another post-Soviet state where Moscow's influence has weakened significantly,” yet the Kremlin is now “plac[ing] its bets on Russian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan,” expected to lead a united opposition with the Armenian Apostolic Church and to rally those angry over the peace process with Azerbaijan and Yerevan’s “distancing from Moscow.”
• He notes that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance used his “first-ever visit to Yerevan” to sign nuclear‑energy and drone deals and to offer “direct backing” to Nikol Pashinyan, while the EU funds efforts to “counter potential Russian interference,” even as Moscow warns that Eurasian Economic Union membership is “incompatible” with EU accession and Kremlin propagandists openly speculate about a new “special military operation.”
• According to Chernikov, Pashinyan’s support is “highly conditional,” with large pools of undecided and disillusioned voters, while an alliance of the “ultra‑wealthy” Karapetyan and a Church trusted by “58% of Armenians” could become “a serious challenge,” potentially depriving the prime minister’s bloc of dominance in parliament even if it falls short of the two‑thirds majority needed to make Karapetyan prime minister.
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "How Ukraine’s Economy Has Defied the Odds," Tatyana Deryugina, Anastassia Fedyk and Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Project Syndicate, 02.23.26.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Russia and Its Neighbors: Mutual Responsibility and Joint Development,” Timofei Bordachev, Valdai Club, February 2026. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• The report argues that the conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine has accelerated deep structural changes across the post-Soviet space, pushing neighboring states to reassess their geopolitical positions amid a shifting global order.
• Most of Russia’s neighbors (except the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Moldova) seek diversified foreign ties to avoid becoming collateral damage in great-power rivalry and to preserve strategic autonomy, aligning with what the author calls the “global majority.”
• The post-Soviet space is increasingly divided into three subregions: (1) the European part, marked by sharper geopolitical lines; (2) the South Caucasus, characterized by fluid alignments and growing regional agency; and (3) Central Asia, which shows relative cohesion and balanced engagement with major powers.
• In the European subregion, Belarus remains Russia’s closest ally, while Ukraine and Moldova have moved decisively toward Western security structures, though their long-term trajectories are described as not fully predetermined.
• In the South Caucasus, Armenia’s defeat in Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s strengthened position have reshaped the regional balance, increasing flexibility in foreign policy and opening space for Turkey, Iran, and other actors alongside Russia.
• Central Asia faces internal structural challenges—demography, economic modernization, climate and water stress, and risks of radicalization—yet remains relatively resistant to external military penetration and continues to view Russia as its primary security and economic pole.
• The report concludes that Russia cannot impose rigid demands on its neighbors; instead, it should pursue a flexible, sovereignty-based strategy focused on security, economic pragmatism, and managed competition with other major powers, while adapting to the growing autonomy of surrounding states.

“Long-term stability in Eurasia is possible only in a multipolar world,” Mikhail Galuzin, Valdai Club, 02.19.26. Clues from Russian views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• Mikhail Galuzin argues that the confrontation between Russia and the West is a long‑running constant, not something that began in 2014 or 2022, and that the “Ukrainian crisis” is the cumulative result of NATO expansion, the advance of Western military infrastructure toward Russia’s borders, and efforts to inflict a “civilizational defeat” on Russia and exclude it from the ranks of great powers.
• He contends that this clash has had a “healthier” side effect for global politics by accelerating the move toward a more polycentric international order in which regional powers and the “Global South” gain weight; Russia, as a “Eurasian power,” is responding by restructuring its economy, diversifying foreign economic ties, deepening integration with Belarus and Central Asia, and strengthening multilateral formats such as the CIS, EAEU, CSTO, SCO, and CICA.
• Galuzin insists that lasting stability in Eurasia is only possible in a multipolar system “where no state or group of states can claim exceptionalism or the right to dictate its will,” and where any regional initiative is “truly viable” only with Russia’s participation; he presents Russia’s strategic partnership with China and outreach to the Global South as key pillars of this emerging order and calls for bolstering the sovereignty—including economic, cultural, and industrial—of Russia and its neighbors to withstand mounting Western pressure.
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • "Reliability Is the New Power," Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, The National Interest, 02.18.26.
  •  "Transnistria: A Conflict Unfrozen but Not Thawed," Leah Kieff, CSIS, 02.18.26.
  • “Armenia’s Choice” in Tatyana Stanovaya’s Bulletin No. 4 (178) 2026, R. Politik, 02.23.26.

Endnotes

1. For more estimates of casualties on both sides, see RM’s latest war card.
2. Alexander Maryasov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Iran (2001-2005).
3. A U.S. delegation to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva met Russian officials on Feb. 23 and will meet Chinese counterparts on Feb. 24 to discuss nuclear weapons, as the Trump administration seeks a new round of arms control talks with both Moscow and Beijing just weeks after the New START treaty expired. (Bloomberg, 02.23.26)

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 was used in production of this digest.

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

Slider photo: Ukrainian servicemen of the 48th separate artillery brigade load an artillery shell before firing towards Russian positions on the frontline in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)