Russia Analytical Report, Feb. 23–March 2, 2026

2 Ideas to Explore

  1. While some pro-Kremlin experts wondered “who’s next?”in the wake of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, Russia’s official line regarding these deadly strikes has been, so far, to condemn the deadly attacks, call for the preservation of Iran’s sovereignty and to position the Kremlin as a defender of “law” and diplomacy. Russian authorities have called the attacks an “unprovoked act of armed aggression” and criticized the U.S. for its serial practice of hunting foreign leaders, although Vladimir Putin refrained from naming names of those he believes guilty of the "cynical" “assassination” of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As for Russia’s actual strategic calculation vis-à-vis the conflict, the Kremlin is clearly worried that the attacks could lead to a regime change in Iran that would cost Russia geopolitically and economically. However, while seeing the danger of incurring costs, the Kremlin also sees an opportunity to reap potential benefits, such the diversion of U.S. focus and Western weapons supplies away from Ukraine.For an RM review of Russian views on the Iran crisis, click this link.*
  2. In his commentary for Responsible Statecraft, Anatol Lieven argues that “over the past four years, the Ukraine War has done more to change military weapons and tactics than any other conflict since 1945,” noting that while Russia and a Western‑armed Ukraine are “peer competitors, with comparable weaponry, training and (surprisingly) numbers,” a “combination of Ukrainian hand‑held anti‑tank and anti‑aircraft missiles nullified the Russian combination of armor, attack helicopters and ground attack aircraft.” Meanwhile, former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi framed the war as a pivot away from classic alliance politics and toward tech‑driven coalitions. He argued in remarks at Chatham House that “future conflicts will be fought by ‘autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic systems’” and that the “robotization of warfare will ensure military effectiveness without the need for human involvement.” Because “no single state” will dominate all critical technologies, he insisted “we will need technological alliances, not treaty articles,” implicitly critiquing traditional, slow‑moving security architecture. 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

“US and Israeli Strikes on Iran: Military and Nuclear Proliferation Analyses,” Darya Dolzikova and Matthew Savill, RUSI, 02.28.26.

  • On Trump and Netanyahu’s apparent aims, Dolzikova and Savill write that the two leaders “seem to be calculating that the Islamic Republic is weak enough that an air-only campaign will be enough to eliminate the twin threat of its missile capabilities and latent nuclear program while breaking its ability to repress its population,” but warn that “the unknown is whether the regime is genuinely brittle enough” for airpower alone to create an opening for domestic opposition.
  • Assessing the nuclear implications, they caution that “it would be misguided to assume that even regime change would necessarily mean that Iran ceases to pose a proliferation threat,” noting that “Iran’s nuclear program predates the Islamic Republic by some time, having been initially pursued by Imperial Iran; it has survived one change in regime, it can survive another,” and that any future leadership will have to decide whether its security is “better assured by pursuing a nuclear weapon or abandoning its nuclear activities completely.”
  • On U.S. strategy, the authors conclude that “today’s military action further reinforces the impression that Washington does not have a clear strategy to address” its proliferation concerns, arguing that “the wide-spread military attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites in June were insufficient to set the program back to a state that the US would have found acceptable,” and that neither Iranian NPT commitments, the JCPOA’s limits, nor recent diplomacy have satisfied the Trump administration.

“Statement by Russia’s Governor to the IAEA Board of Governors Mikhail Ulyanov at the Special Session on the Situation Around Iran,” Russian Foreign Ministry/IAEA Board, 03.02.26.

  • Ulyanov opens by saying Russia convened the emergency IAEA Board because the “tragic events in Iran are directly related to the Agency’s mandate,” and conveys condolences for “the cynical murder by the United States and Israel of the Supreme Leader and spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as the barbaric attack on a girls’ school in the city of Minab, as a result of which, according to reports, more than 150 people were killed, more than a hundred of them children.”
  • He “resolutely and categorically” condemns “the armed aggression launched on the morning of 28 February by the United States and Israel against Iran,” saying that “the scenario of the June attacks of 2025 has been repeated like a carbon copy,” with the nuclear talks used “as cover for the attack,” and argues that U.S. and Israeli statements “leave not the slightest doubt that their only goal is the overthrow of the legitimate government of Iran and the complete destruction of its statehood.”
  • Ulyanov insists that “any nuclear installations under no circumstances should become the target of strikes,” reminding members that “attacks on nuclear facilities and threats of such attacks are a violation of international law, the UN Charter and the Statutes of the UN and the IAEA,” and emphasizes that Russian personnel are still working at the Bushehr nuclear plant, demanding Washington and Tel Aviv “immediately cease military actions and return the situation to the channel of political‑diplomatic settlement” to avoid “catastrophic consequences for the entire Middle East.”
  • He accuses the West of instrumentalizing nonproliferation, saying that “the alleged concerns in the context of Iran’s nuclear program over the past quarter century were merely a screen for solving this single task” of regime change, and that this shows “non‑proliferation is regarded in Washington exclusively as an instrument for settling political scores with states whose independent policy and sovereign choice do not suit them.”
  • Turning to the broader regime, Ulyanov warns that Western actions mean “the IAEA safeguards system does not guarantee to states that have renounced, within the framework of the NPT, the possibility of possessing a military‑nuclear program, proper protection of their rights,” calling this “a most serious blow to the non‑proliferation regime, fraught with the spread of nuclear weapons,” and urges member states and the Secretariat to “support the authority of the Agency and the NPT,” stating that “the time for juggling vague phrases and playing at equal distance has passed.”

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

  • No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

"The United States Is Still Addicted to War," Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy, 03.02.26.

  • Since 1992, presidents from both parties have campaigned as peace candidates but repeatedly end up using force, from Clinton and Bush to Obama, Biden, and now Trump’s second term.
  • Walt argues that Biden’s vigorous response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022—and his earlier push to bring Ukraine “within the Western orbit,” which he says made war more likely—fits the same pattern of U.S. overreach.
  • Structural factors make war easy: vast executive power, weak congressional oversight, secrecy, and the ability to finance wars through debt rather than taxes, so the public rarely feels direct costs.
  • The all-volunteer force and social distance between the military and political/economic elites lower domestic resistance to new campaigns, while the military‑industrial complex and hawkish lobbies help “sell” insecurity and bigger defense budgets.
  • Technological advantages—precision weapons, drones, low‑risk air campaigns—create a “big red button” temptation: presidents can strike abroad with little fear of serious retaliation at home; Walt calls the new war with Iran the least necessary U.S. bloodshed since the 2003 Iraq invasion and evidence of an entrenched addiction to force.

“Trump’s Iran Operation Is the Opposite of a ‘One and Done,’” David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 02.28.26.

  • Ignatius argues that killing Khamenei “isn’t the same thing as regime change” and that “wars always are easier to start than to finish, especially when you’ve set a political goal of regime change, rather than a clearly defined military objective,” reminding readers that “President Vladimir Putin thought he would take Kyiv in a week. Israel thought it would throttle Hamas in a few months. But wars to erase a regime don’t work like that.”
  • He notes that Trump has set maximalist aims—telling Iran’s security forces to “lay down your weapons and have complete immunity. Or in the alternative, face certain death” and telling Iranians “this is the moment for action. Do not let it pass. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force”—but cautions that “it’s good news for Iranians if the regime’s apparatus of repression is crumbling. But just as Russia can absorb suffering in warfare, martyrdom is a powerful driver in Iran,” so without “a smart, bold post-war strategy … worthy of the Iranian people’s sacrifice,” this is likely to be “a protracted conflict, with many dangerous moments ahead.”

“John Bolton Sounds the Alarm on Trump’s Iran Gamble,” Scott Waldman, Politico, 03.01.26.

  • Bolton praises Trump’s decision to strike Iran as “the most consequential decision” of his presidency but warns that the president “doesn’t particularly think strategically” and that “there could be a lot of turmoil, a lot of bloodshed,” because “it’s going to be a struggle within the regime” and the administration appears not to have “done adequate consultation with the opposition on the ground in Iran.”
  • On Trump’s style, Bolton says “his pattern is he can swing wildly on a given issue in the course of a day,” adding that Trump has “obviously swung all the way from where he was in the first term to regime change. He could swing back,” so “I wouldn’t say we’re on a short course toward from point A to point B. You never are with Trump.”
  • Asked about the Strait of Hormuz, Bolton argues that “in an existential case, the answer would be yes” when asked if Iran could shut it down, and notes that mining the strait would be “a dangerous, time-consuming operation to de-mine,” but also points out that “all the ships have gone to port, so they’ve got nothing to hit at this stage,” predicting “a temporary pause of oil going through the Strait of Hormuz” and inevitable price spikes.
  • On Trump’s political calculus, Bolton concedes that a spike in gas prices is “one reason why it’s still hard to understand why he did it, because there’s a risk there,” but notes that “if the price goes up, American oil production picks up too,” and that Trump’s long‑standing opposition to Iran’s nuclear program—“that refrain, ‘You cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear bomb,’ goes on and on and on”—is “baked in from the beginning.”
  • Looking ahead, Bolton says that if Khamenei and top layers of the regime are removed, “it’s that kind of chaotic situation that gives the opposition and generals and the regular military an opportunity to say, ‘We’ve got to prevent this from spinning into total civil war.” We’re going to take over and everybody’s going to calm down. Then we’re going to figure out what we do next,’” while stressing that Trump’s lack of strategic planning and coordination with Iranian opposition forces makes the outcome highly uncertain.

“Lost Investments, Jeopardized Influence: What the U.S.-Israel Attack on Iran Could Mean for Russia,” Brawley Benson, The Moscow Times, 03.01.26.

  • Benson notes that after Khamenei’s reported killing, Putin swiftly called it a “cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law” and praised him as “an outstanding statesman who made a huge personal contribution to the development of friendly Russian-Iranian relations, raising them to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership,” but analysts say Moscow’s deeper fear is losing billions in Iran.
  • Nikita Smagin tells the paper that “Russia has invested a lot of effort and money in Iran,” pointing to the North–South transport corridor, a $25 billion reactor deal, and planned energy projects, and warns that “if we imagine regime change or if we imagine instability in Iran, all these projects are under threat,” especially if a new leadership “seeks more pragmatic relations with the West,” as nonproliferation expert Hanna Notte put it.
  • Short term, Benson writes, higher oil prices from turmoil in the Strait of Hormuz “would all be good news for Russia,” and Smagin adds that “Russia can even benefit short term… and maybe even these benefits can be really significant,” but he concludes that “everything that is happening in the Middle East is threatening Russian interests,” calling it “the change of a norm… how world powers act towards authoritarian countries. And certainly, it’s not a good signal for Russia.”

"Tehran Has Discovered Moscow Is a Fair-Weather Friend," Alex Vatanka, Foreign Policy, 02.27.26.

  • Iran’s latest crisis with the United States is stress-testing its “Look East” doctrine and exposing the gap between strategic partnership with Russia and China and any real security guarantee.
  • Moscow has clarified that its strategic treaty with Tehran is not a mutual defense pact and has avoided steps that would turn U.S.-Iran confrontation into U.S.-Russia confrontation, even during a 12-day Iran-Israel war.
  • The limits of Russian backing—strong rhetoric, technical and internal security assistance, but no military guarantees—have sharpened domestic debate in Iran over dependency, autonomy, and the wisdom of deep Eastern alignment.
  • Critics such as Ali Motahari and Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh argue that Russia ultimately balances its own interests, will not jeopardize its wider Middle East ties or dealings with Washington for Iran, and that true autonomy requires diversification.
  • The episode shows that in today’s multipolar order, partners like Russia and China seek “influence without entanglement, leverage without liability,” forcing Tehran to redefine realism and strategic autonomy as it approaches a post-Khamenei era.

“Condolences over the assassination of Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei,” Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru, 03.01.26

  • Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian over the assassination of Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and members of his family. The message reads, in part: “Please, accept my deepest condolences on the assassination of Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Seyyed Ali Khamenei and members of his family, committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law. In our country, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei will be remembered as an outstanding statesman who made an enormous personal contribution to the development of friendly ties between Russia and Iran and to raising them to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership. Please, convey my most sincere sympathy and support to the family and friends of the Supreme Leader, as well as to the leadership and to the entire people of Iran.”

“Statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry regarding military aggression of the United States and Israel against Iran,” Russian Foreign Ministry, 02.28.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • The Russian Foreign Ministry condemns U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran as a “deliberate, premeditated, and unprovoked act of armed aggression” against a sovereign UN member state, claiming they blatantly violate core principles of international law including non‑use of force and non‑interference.
  • Moscow criticizes Washington and Tel Aviv for launching the attacks while a new negotiation process with Tehran was under way, accuses them of seeking regime change by “dismantl[ing] the constitutional order” of an “undesirable” state, and warns that they are driving the Middle East toward a humanitarian, economic, and potentially “radiological” disaster.
  • The statement denounces strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards as “unacceptable,” argues that U.S.‑Israeli motives have “no relation” to non‑proliferation, and claims such actions will spur other states—especially in the Middle East—to seek more powerful means of deterrence, even as Russia urges an “immediate return” to political and diplomatic solutions and offers itself as a mediator.

“Medvedev: World War III Has Not Yet Begun, But Could Start at Any Moment,” TASS interview with Dmitry Medvedev, 03.02.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Asked whether a third world war has already started, Medvedev replies: “Formally, no, but if Trump continues his insane course of criminally changing political regimes, it will undoubtedly begin. And the trigger could be any event. Any,” framing the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran as part of “a war of the U.S. and its allies to preserve global dominance. The pigs don’t want to part with the trough.”
  • On the killing of Khamenei, he warns that Trump has “committed a gross mistake,” saying that “by his decision he has put all Americans under potential attack,” and stressing that the late ayatollah was “the spiritual father of almost 300 million Shiites. And now he is also a martyr. Draw the rest of the conclusions yourselves. And now there is no doubt that Iran will with triple energy seek to create nuclear weapons.”
  • When asked whether the current negotiations with Moscow over Ukraine resemble the Minsk process, Medvedev says “such a danger exists,” but adds that “talks are not the main thing. The main thing is victory in the special military operation with the achievement of all the goals set by our Supreme Commander‑in‑Chief. And such a victory can be won without any negotiations,” implicitly rejecting Western hopes that Ukraine talks can be used to “arm” Kyiv as Minsk did.
  • On whether the West might one day try to deal with “unruly Moscow” the way it is dealing with Tehran, he bluntly answers: “There are no magic medicines against the actions of dyed‑in‑the‑wool idiots and clinical bastards… The only guarantee is this: the United States is afraid of Russia and knows the price of a nuclear conflict. In the event it occurs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki will look like a children’s game in a sandbox.”
  • Medvedev dismisses Europe’s response to the Iran strikes as “boot‑licking and vileness,” calling European governments “vassals” who “with lust and delight wipe their faces after receiving a portion of American–Israeli ‘yellow dew’ right in the eyes,” and when asked whether the IOC might now punish U.S. and Israeli athletes as it did Russians after the Ukraine invasion, he retorts: “To hell with it all… the IOC and the Olympic movement must be dissolved and reassembled anew, remembering the precepts of Pierre de Coubertin.”

“The U.S. First Kidnapped Maduro, Now It Has Killed Khamenei. Is Putin Also in Danger? And How Does Trump Choose His Victims?,” Alexander Baunov, Meduza, 03.02.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Baunov notes the irony that Putin “prayed for Donald Trump to make it alive to the presidency” and now finds that “Putin prayed for the killer of his ally, the head of a sovereign state, his official ‘spiritual leader,’” even though Russia claims to be confronting the West on the plane of “spirituality.”
  • He points out that, unlike after the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Putin issued a harshly worded condolence telegram over Khamenei’s killing but carefully avoided naming the culprit: “the main thing in Putin’s telegram is what is not said, namely: who killed Khamenei,” and that he “formulated it in such a way as to avoid direct accusations against Donald Trump,” which Baunov says reveals Putin as a “weak strongman” who “in reality cannot afford even verbally to hurt an American president who is destroying his allies.”
  • Comparing Russia’s complaints to its own behavior in Ukraine, Baunov quotes the Foreign Ministry’s line that the attacks “were once again carried out under the cover of a renewed negotiation process” and “contrary to the signals conveyed to the Russian side,” then remarks that “Russia itself demands that Ukraine conduct negotiations precisely under fire, and it itself denied its interest and intention to invade Ukraine when it gathered troops on its borders,” noting that “treachery is always more noticeable in the eye of one’s neighbor.”
  • He argues that, from Trump’s perspective, Iran and Russia are not in the same category: “in the Kremlin they perfectly understand that Trump attacked Iran not as Russia’s ally, but as a separate target… In relation to Russia, and especially personally to Putin, he feels nothing similar,” so “Maduro, Khamenei, and Putin are not, for Trump, part of one row of ‘who’s next’ memes,” and the strike on Iran is “not yet a proxy attack on Russia.”
  • Still, Baunov writes that the killing of Khamenei is a disturbing reminder in Moscow that “the first person” is mortal: “the murder of a leader in office is an unpleasant reminder that such a thing is in general possible,” because years of cultivating the aura of sacredness and inviolability can be “leveled in a second by a bomb,” and he suggests that this will intensify “involuntary side‑glancing” among Russian elites and raise again “the question of succession in the event of the sudden subtraction of the number‑one figure from the regime’s construction”—a question already sharpened by Russia’s war in Ukraine and its own use of force under the banner of regime survival.

“In recent years, Russia has increased arms supplies to Iran — will they help in a new war?,” Nikita Smagin, Carnegie Politika/ Meduza, 02.28.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Nikita Smagin writes that Russia’s newly reported €500 million sale of Verba MANPADS to Iran will do little in a U.S.-Israeli air campaign: the systems hit only low‑flying targets directly over Iranian territory, whereas previous strikes have used high‑altitude bombers and stand‑off missiles launched from outside Iran.
  • Moscow chose Verba partly because it is of limited utility in modern warfare—including against drones—so transferring it does not weaken Russia’s own capabilities in Ukraine; the systems are more relevant for Iranian proxies operating near U.S. bases than for defending Iran itself.
  • Far more consequential, Smagin argues, are largely opaque deliveries already under way: Yak‑130 trainers, a planned 48 Su‑35s (2026–28), up to six Mi‑28 attack helicopters, Orsis T‑5000M sniper rifles, and Spartak armored vehicles that Iran has already used to crush protests—much of it revealed only by Iranian photos and video.
  • Even so, he concludes, Russia’s expanding arms supplies cannot seriously alter the regional balance against the United States and Israel; for now the Kremlin is “too busy” in Ukraine to rescue Tehran, though the quiet build‑up shows Moscow intends to keep the option of much deeper military‑technical cooperation with Iran open.

“The War Against Iran Promises to Deepen International Chaos,” Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia in Global Affairs, 03.02.26.Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Lukyanov argues that the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran “will have serious consequences for world politics,” not only for Tehran but for “how what is possible and permissible in international relations is perceived. This perception is changing, and the changes bode nothing good for the future.”
  • He says appeals to international law “no longer make sense,” noting that unlike in 2003, Washington did not even try to secure a UN resolution: “The diplomatic process itself is becoming its opposite… negotiations, without even formally breaking off, slid into a punitive military action.”
  • Khamenei’s killing marks a qualitative break: “The killing of the head of one state by the forces of another state and by decision of its leadership, in the same pattern as the liquidation of the leaders of terrorist organizations or drug cartels, is a fundamentally different dimension of world politics.”
  • For states dealing with Washington, the lesson is bleak: “You can’t believe anything at all. You should rely only on yourself and your own strength.” He adds that when there is “nowhere to retreat and nothing to lose… any of the ‘last’ arguments becomes legitimate — whatever kind of ‘red button’ one has, literal or figurative.”
  • On Trump’s regional design, Lukyanov writes that the plan is “military power dominance by Israel… combined with intensified economic interaction between Israel and the Gulf monarchies, in the interests above all of the United States,” with a weakened Iran clearing the way for influence “from the Caucasus to Central (and partly South) Asia.”
  • His final judgment: “The bet on naked force and coercion in world politics is growing. Everything else is brushed aside. Even hypocritical moral or ideological framing is no longer needed.”

"Seven Lessons from the Iranian Crisis for Russia," Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club/ Russian International Affairs Council, 03.02.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  1. Lesson 1. After sanctions comes the use of military force:
    • “In relation to Iran, the US has applied sanctions since the Islamic Revolution of 1979… In general, the practice of combining sanctions and military force in the hands of the United States is widespread.”
  2. Lesson 2. Western pressure will be long‑term:
    • “With respect to Iran, for many years a tactic of gradual exhaustion has been used… Russia should be prepared for long‑term application of sanctions. We are talking not so much about years as about decades.”
  3. Lesson 3. Concessions do not work:
    • “Compromises gave a short respite but ultimately did not remove from Iran the problem of long‑term pressure from the United States… After a compromise will follow demands for new concessions, and therefore it is impossible to go to them, at least unilaterally.”
  4. Lesson 4. Leaders are under the guns:
    • “The attack on Iran shows that legitimate leaders and key state officials are becoming priority targets… In the Iranian case we see the deliberate destruction of the supreme leader and a large number of officials, including together with members of their families.”
  5. Lesson 5. Internal unrest stimulates external intervention:
    • “Shortly before the airstrikes, Iran experienced mass protests… Protests may have served as an indicator of the weakness of its political system and confidence that an effective military strike would lead to the collapse of a weakened vertical of power.”
  6. Lesson 6. ‘Black knights’ are important but do not solve all problems:
    • “‘Black knights’ are effective in countering sanctions but useless in countering military strikes… Iran was left one‑on‑one with its opponents. Third countries do not help its adversaries, but they cannot or do not want to prevent military interventions.”
  7. Lesson 7. Balance of power is in demand:
    • “Unlike many other targets, Iran is hard to call a harmless object of military strikes… Russia has more options to respond to strikes on its territory and to level the balance of power… However, the very existence of such a possibility does not exclude that the damage from its actions will be perceived by the opponent as painful but acceptable.”

“Who’s Next? On Trump’s Actions in the Iranian and Venezuelan Contexts,” Oleg Barabanov, Valdai Club, 02.03.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Barabanov notes that Trump’s new operation “on the very first day of its conduct led to the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as the defense minister and other senior Iranian generals,” and that U.S. statements imply they “knew in advance the time and place of the meeting of the country’s top leaders,” suggesting that “American intelligence managed to recruit its own agents in the very highest circles of Iran’s political and military leadership.”
  • He contrasts Iran’s response with Venezuela’s, writing that “even after the death of its leadership, Iran was able to deliver a retaliatory strike,” including drones hitting “international airports in Dubai and Kuwait, as well as five‑star hotels in the UAE and Bahrain,” which has already “destroyed the seemingly unshakable external security and well‑being for affluent residents and guests of the Gulf monarchies” and may tarnish the “legend of the ‘Dubai paradise.’”
  • Drawing a lesson from Caracas, Barabanov says Trump’s Venezuela operation “showed that it is enough to remove just one person—the top leader of the state—and all the others quickly submit to the superior force of the United States,” and that “ideological and value ‘bonds’ of a political system, however unshakable they may seem, can disappear in a moment—just remove one person from the system.”
  • For Iran’s remaining leaders, he writes, there is now “a serious choice—continue the struggle or submit, avoiding destruction and preserving themselves in power,” and he notes that Iran’s ability to retaliate after Khamenei’s death shows that “the system of military decision‑making not locked onto concrete personalities… really works,” raising the question of whether anyone will now “stop the execution of this pre‑worked plan” or whether an Iranian “dead hand” will keep striking.
  • Barabanov concludes that, once the blows end, “nothing will prevent Trump from declaring the outcome of his special operation a ‘great victory,’” and pointedly asks, “Which country will Trump choose for the third time… Will it be Cuba, pressure on which Trump intensified after Venezuela? Or will he choose some other country?”, implying that the next target is likely to be Cuba or another vulnerable, anti‑U.S. autocracy.

“It’s Time to Wake Up: Talks With the U.S. Always End With Missiles on the Capital,” Dmitry Ilyinsky, Moskovsky Komsomolets, 03.02.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Ilyinsky claims recent U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran’s parliament, Supreme Court, Khamenei’s residence, and the presidential palace show that Western negotiations are just a cover for force, writing that in Venezuela and now Iran “the Americans were simply buying time” before a military operation, even as Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were talking compromises in Geneva.
  • He argues that Russia is now in the same trap, warning that “now the U.S. is negotiating with Russia… we apparently are offering compromises,” and asks rhetorically whether it is really impossible to imagine that Washington is again just “dragging things out,” urging Russians to “wake up” and “take a good sniff of the ‘spirit of Anchorage.’”
  • The author portrays the U.S.-led West as a predatory “civilization” run by “the inhabitants of Epstein’s island” that is “devouring our allies one after another,” saying Trump has already “torn apart” Venezuela and is now “devouring Iran” and even “has already declared the imminent swallowing of Cuba,” all while soothing Moscow with talk of unprecedented Russian‑American cooperation.
  • Turning to Ukraine, he calls it “the striking fist of this civilization” and notes that Zelensky has “fully paid tribute” to the U.S. and Israel’s actions by arguing that Tehran “decided to become an accomplice of Putin” by supplying Shahed drones and other weapons, and therefore it is “fair” to give Iranians “a chance to get rid of the terrorist regime.”
  • Ilyinsky highlights Russian intelligence claims that France and Britain are secretly preparing to transfer a nuclear warhead—such as France’s TN75—to Ukraine, masked as a domestic “Flamingo”‑type project, and approvingly cites Dmitry Medvedev’s warning that any “direct transfer of nuclear weapons to a warring country” would force Russia to use “any, including non‑strategic, nuclear weapons” against threatening targets in Ukraine and, if necessary, against supplier states that would thereby become “participants in a nuclear conflict with Russia.”

“Iran was marinated for a long time. Obviously, the U.S. will come after us next: What Russian propaganda is saying about the new war. A brief summary,” Meduza, 03.02.26. Machine-translated. Clues from Russian Views.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“The Russians Turning to Google Maps in Search of Missing Soldiers,” Sophie Spiegelberger, The New Yorker, 02.24.26.

  • Spiegelberger estimates that since 2022 “around a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded,” and that for families who get no official word, “this is often just the beginning of a grim digital odyssey that can last months, or even years,” which for some ends with desperate Google Maps reviews like a mother’s plea: “Hello, could you please tell me if Abutalipov Alexander Rafkatovich, born January 19, 2003, has been admitted to your care. He went missing on August 11, 2025. Call sign: ABU. Please help. Mom.”
  • She writes that Google Maps has become “a digital place of last resort,” since unlike censored Russian services “Google Maps allows us to annotate collectively and to create a new kind of common knowledge about the world,” so that “with a few exceptions, we are all using the same Google Maps, regardless of our location” and “generally, every review is visible to all.”
  • Recalling that Rostov’s Military Hospital 1602 and its morgues now receive Russia’s war dead, Spiegelberger cites one wounded soldier’s review—“There is no hot water, if warm, it only trickles, they feed us like cattle, they give us overcooked gruel”—and a brother’s question to a Rostov morgue posted from Tajikistan: “I’m looking for my brother. We were told he died and is in the morgue in the Rostov region. How can I get him?”

"Thanks, Ukrainians Say, but Please Stop Calling Us Resilient," Maria Varenikova, The New York Times, 02.25.26.

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

"Ukrainian ambassador Valerii Zaluzhnyi says future wars will require ‘technological alliances, not treaty articles,’" Chatham House, 02.24.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

  • In a speech at Chatham House, Zaluzhnyi argued that “future conflicts will be fought by ‘autonomous and semi‑autonomous robotic systems’” and that the coming “robotization of warfare will ensure military effectiveness without the need for human involvement,” reducing casualties while fundamentally transforming modern war beyond “conventional weapons and tactics,” according to the news release.
  • Warning that no single state will be able to dominate all critical technologies, Zaluzhnyi said “we will need technological alliances, not treaty articles,” and called for sanctions on Russia to be maintained and intensified in order to “make the war more costly for Russia, and as a result, lead to its inevitable defeat,” the release reports.
  • Asked about speculation regarding his own political future, Zaluzhnyi replied that he would only consider it “when the war is over, when martial law is lifted,” insisting such talk is a distraction, and summed up Ukraine’s predicament starkly: “We Ukrainians no longer have a choice. We will either perish or survive. The formula for survival is simple: continue to fight, strengthen the economy and maintain unity,” he said.

"Ukraine Is Losing the War: With Moscow Pressing Its Advantage, Kyiv Should Trade Land for Peace," Michael C. Desch, Foreign Affairs, 02.26.26.

  • Desch contends that despite its valor, Ukraine is “losing the war”: Russia now controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s 1991 territory, enjoys large advantages in population, manpower, and equipment, and has adapted tactically with drones and infiltration tactics, while Ukraine faces acute recruitment problems, stretched defenses, corruption, and insufficient forces to both hold the line and mount major offensives
  •  He argues that Russia’s minimal war aims—full control of Donetsk and Luhansk plus keeping Ukraine out of NATO—are aligned with its capabilities, whereas Kyiv’s goals (restoring 1991 borders including Crimea and full alliance freedom) are not; at current rates of advance it would take Moscow decades to conquer the rest of Ukraine, but it could plausibly seize the remaining “fortress cities” in the Donbas and more slices of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia within a few years.
  •  Given this asymmetry and waning Western support, Desch urges Kyiv and its backers to consider a compromise peace that trades occupied territory for an end to the fighting, arguing that a smaller but secure, westward‑oriented Ukraine that uses the respite to reform, fortify, and innovate militarily may be preferable to a prolonged war that Ukraine lacks the resources to win.

"Ukraine marks biggest evolution in military tactics since WWII," Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 02.23.26.

  • Lieven argues that “over the past four years, the Ukraine War has done more to change military weapons and tactics than any other conflict since 1945,” noting that while Russia and a Western‑armed Ukraine are “peer competitors, with comparable weaponry, training and (surprisingly) numbers,” a “combination of Ukrainian hand‑held anti‑tank and anti‑aircraft missiles nullified the Russian combination of armor, attack helicopters and ground attack aircraft” that had been central to big‑war planning, according to the author.
  • As the war progressed, Lieven writes, “the tremendous advantages that a combination of old and new weapons gives to the defense” became clear: satellite intelligence lets each side “spot where the other side was concentrating troops for an attack,” while “the vast deployment of drones by both sides has created a no man’s land more than 15 miles wide, in which any visible movement is very likely to be fatal for men, and certainly for machines,” making it “impossible to accumulate the mass of men and machines for a decisive breakthrough” and even forcing Russian assault groups down to “two or three men,” the author observes.
  • Lieven warns that military conservatism and the interests of the “military industrial complex” mean Western forces may cling to “large, sophisticated and hugely expensive weapons platforms” even though “drones will remain the lords of the battlefield” for years, and concludes that perhaps the most consequential lesson is for a U.S.–China clash over Taiwan: Ukraine’s ability, “with no navy whatsoever,” to “defeat the Russian Black Sea fleet with land‑based missiles and airborne and seaborne drones” shows both that a Chinese amphibious invasion would be “an appalling risk” and that U.S. warships near China would be “in mortal danger,” so that “the greatest lesson of the Ukraine War for states will be not to go to war in the first place,” the author writes.

"The Shadow War That’s Strengthening Europe," David Ignatius, Washington Post / Foreign Policy syndication, 02.26.26.

  • Ignatius argues that Putin has suffered a “double failure”: he has not conquered Ukraine or even the full Donbas, and his campaign of hybrid warfare against Europe—sabotage, arson, parcel bombs, cyberattacks, and threats against undersea cables—has backfired by galvanizing European intelligence services and political leaders into tougher, more coordinated pushback.
  • Citing Dutch, Estonian, and German intelligence reports, he details Russia’s growing use of criminal proxies in a “spook‑gangster nexus” to conduct attacks just below the threshold of war, and Europe’s response: mass expulsions of Russian intelligence officers, seizures and bans of “shadow fleet” oil tankers, arrests of sabotage cells in Poland and Romania, and new sanctions targeting Russian energy logistics and Chinese dual‑use exporters.
  • Ignatius concludes that far from cowing Europe into abandoning Ukraine, Russia’s shadow war has reinforced perceptions of Moscow as a hostile aggressor, strengthened Western unity, and, together with enormous Russian casualties and a deteriorating economy, turned Putin’s invasion into a textbook case of unintended consequences that will shape European defense planning for years.

"Russia-Ukraine War in 10 Charts," Seth G. Jones, Riley McCabe, Yasir Atalan, Benjamin Jensen, Romina Bandura, Emma Curtis, Caitlin Welsh, Otto Svendsen, Max Bergmann, Mark F. Cancian, and Chris H. Park, CSIS, 02.24.26.

  1. Russian GDP Growth Is Stagnating
    Despite sanctions, Russia’s nominal GDP remains in the range of Canada or Italy, far below top powers, and its GDP (PPP) is about 5.5 times smaller than the U.S. and 4 times smaller than China. The state now spends about 50% of its budget on the armed forces, the military‑industrial complex, domestic security, and debt servicing, while attracting little foreign investment and falling behind in high tech (no Russian firms in the global top‑100 tech companies).
  2. Russia Is Advancing at Historically Slow Rates
    From February 2024 to January 2026, Russian forces advanced just under 50 km from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk, averaging only ~70 meters per day, slower than Allied advances in the World War I Battle of the Somme. Other offensives around Kupiansk and Chasiv Yar have been even less efficient, moving at mere fractions of those already very low historical rates.
  3. Russia Has Suffered an Unprecedented Number of Fatalities
    Between February 2022 and December 2025, Russia suffered nearly 1.2 million battlefield casualties (killed, wounded, missing), including an estimated 275,000–325,000 fatalities. Ukrainian forces likely suffered 500,000–600,000 casualties and 100,000–140,000 fatalities, meaning Russian casualties and deaths are roughly 2–2.5 times higher, with combined losses on both sides potentially reaching 2 million by spring 2026.
  4. Russia Has Seized About 20% of Ukraine’s Territory Since 2014
    In total, Russia controls roughly 120,000 km² of Ukrainian territory—about 20% of the country and an area similar to Pennsylvania—including Crimea and parts of Donbas seized before 2022. Since the full‑scale invasion, it has captured around 75,000 km² (~12% of Ukraine), but in 2024 and 2025 its gains were limited to about 3,604 km² (0.6%) and 4,831 km² (0.8%) respectively, plus 473 km² retaken in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
  5. Russian Drone Launches Have Surged Since September 2024
    Average weekly launches of Shahed‑type one‑way attack drones jumped from about 75 per week before September 2024 to roughly 900 per week within six months. In 2025, Russia launched over 50,000 Shahed drones—around 5 times the previous year—with successful weekly hits rising to about 160, nearly triple the earlier average.
  6. Ukraine Faces $588 Billion in Damage and Reconstruction Needs
    New estimates put Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction bill at $588 billion over the next 10 years, roughly 3 times its 2024 GDP. This figure includes repair, restoration, and upgrades for efficiency and modernization, with especially heavy damage in housing, transport, and energy and with intense strikes occurring across the country in 2025.
  7. Ukraine’s Centralized Energy System Is Highly Vulnerable
    Because Ukraine’s grid is highly centralized, attacks and major failures can trigger wide‑scale blackouts, as seen repeatedly since the full‑scale invasion. Rebuilding around more decentralized, secure, and sustainable energy systems would not only increase resilience against Russian strikes but also speed integration with Western energy markets.
  8. Demining Is Critical to Restoring Ukraine’s Agriculture
    Large swaths of Ukrainian farmland remain contaminated with landmines and explosive remnants of war, posing a long‑term hazard even after significant areas have already been cleared and put back into production. Comprehensive demining—whose full scale and cost will only be clear after the war—is essential for reviving agricultural output and generating revenue that reduces Ukraine’s reliance on international aid.
  9. The Financial Burden of Military Support Has Shifted Toward Europe
    U.S. military aid for Ukraine peaked in 2022–2023, totaling about $68 billion, and largely stopped being newly allocated in early 2025, as existing funds were committed. Europe has allocated about $99 billion in military support on a steadier schedule, and with no new U.S. authorizations and Biden‑era deliveries tapering off by 2027–2028, Ukraine will increasingly depend on Europe as its principal security backer.
  10. U.S. and NATO Deliveries Continue via USAI, FMS, and PURL
    U.S. equipment contracted under USAI and FMS is still arriving in Ukraine at roughly $1 billion per month, even though all Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) stocks have been delivered. Under the new Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), created with NATO in July 2025, European states have so far committed more than $4.8 billion in U.S. equipment (after an initial $578 million package), mainly air‑defense munitions, against President Zelensky’s stated need of $15 billion in PURL gear in 2026 (with nearly $600 million committed by February).

"As War Enters Fifth Year, Ukraine Shows Russian Victory Is Anything but Inevitable," James Marson and Alistair MacDonald, The Wall Street Journal, 02.23.26.

  • Marson and MacDonald report that a Ukrainian counterattack in the southeast is “chipping away at Russian advances” and shows Kyiv’s forces “have got plenty of fight left,” even as Russia tries to portray victory as inevitable; in reality, Russian offensives now move “a few dozen yards a day at best,” after suffering “well over one million” casualties, of which up to 325,000 have been killed, according to CSIS and European defense‑intelligence assessments, the authors write.
  • The article notes that Ukraine has “embarrassed Russian generals’ claims of significant gains” by largely clearing Kupyansk and retaking villages in Zaporizhzhia, while using tactical assaults to force Moscow to shift reserves, and that long‑range strikes, Western sanctions, and seizures of Russia’s “shadow fleet” tankers are “pushing down prices for Russian oil,” prompting researcher Janis Kluge to observe that Russia no longer looks “invincible… with growing revenues and GDP,” the authors report.
  • Strategically, Marson and MacDonald highlight CSIS analyst Seth Jones’s view that because “his military is unable to win” outright, Vladimir Putin is dangling economic deals before Donald Trump in hopes the U.S. will “come to their aid” by cutting support to Kyiv or pressuring it to surrender territory “that his army hasn’t conquered” — “the big breakthrough” Russia now seeks, according to Jones, the authors note. 

"Why Ukraine is still standing," Edward Luce, Financial Times, 02.27.26.

  • Luce argues that “on any appraisal” Putin has failed in his core war aims: Ukraine has not been subjugated, Ukrainian nationalism has been forged rather than extinguished, and NATO has expanded (notably with Finland), even as Russia has suffered several hundred thousand dead and wounded in a grinding campaign that has yielded only modest territorial gains.
  • He notes that Putin bet heavily on Trump delivering a “dramatic break” from Biden and pressuring Kyiv into capitulation, but that Moscow’s maximalist demands and mounting battlefield and economic costs are now jeopardizing even the opportunity of having a pro‑Russian U.S. president, as Trump grows more ambivalent about being seen as Putin’s pawn.
  • Drawing on Ukrainian frontline accounts and films such as 2000 Metres to Andriivka, Luce stresses that Ukraine’s survival has come at catastrophic human cost and asks whether its society can sustain this resolve for “months and possibly years” more, even as the war has already shattered Russia’s pretensions to easy victory and exposed the limits of its power.

"Four years, 200,000 confirmed dead, yet major cities remain ‘largely untouched.’ Mediazona and BBC Russian analyze Russia’s military losses on the full-scale invasion anniversary," Meduza, 02.24.26.

  •  Meduza reports that Mediazona and BBC News Russian have now “identified more than 200,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine,” with a database containing “the names of 200,186 men,” and notes that while 35,000 entries were added in the last month, this spike reflects new access to official records—“primarily… lists from the [national] probate registry”—rather than a sudden change at the front, according to the outlets.
  • Citing the joint analysis, Meduza says the journalists conclude with “a ‘high degree of certainty’ that 2025 was likely the bloodiest year yet for the Russian military,” with 49,935 deaths already confirmed for that year but “tens of thousands of obituaries” still unprocessed, and preliminary estimates suggesting “last year’s death toll could exceed 90,000” once all data are analyzed, the report states.
  • • A geographic breakdown by Mediazona finds that roughly 180,000 of the dead come from 26,600 settlements, with “major metropolitan centers and cities with over a million residents” remaining “largely untouched” while “two-thirds of the deceased lived in small settlements with fewer than 100,000 residents,” and that casualty rates are highest in poorer regions such as Tyva and Buryatia, where, as BBC News Russian writes, “the higher the poverty level, the higher the loss rate,” and an anonymous demographer adds that a sense there is “nothing left to lose” is increasingly driving enlistment.

"Meeting of Federal Security Service Board," Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru, 02.24.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Early in his address, Putin claimed that Russia’s “adversary does not shy away from using other means,” citing media reports of “attempts, or plans, to use some kind of a nuclear component” and warning that “they should know how that may end,” while also alleging a plot to blow up the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the Black Sea to sabotage ongoing diplomatic efforts.
  • He praised the FSB’s role in the “special military operation,” noting that more than 2,000 officers received state awards in 2025 and four were named Heroes of Russia, and framed a rise in terrorist incidents and long‑range strikes on Russian infrastructure as “undoubtedly perpetrated by Ukrainian special services and their foreign handlers,” calling for stronger protection of energy, transport, and public facilities and more “pre‑emptive” counterterrorism.
  • Putin tasked the FSB with tightening border security, counterintelligence, and information and cyber defenses; combating “Russophobia, xenophobia, and religious intolerance” in a declared “Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia”; ensuring that upcoming State Duma and other elections proceed without “external interference”; and intensifying efforts against corruption and economic crime so as to “reliably protect the country from internal and external threats.”

“Chapter Four: Russia and Eurasia,” The Military Balance-2026, IISS, February 2026.

  • The IISS assesses that after another year of war, Russia has occupied “less than a further 1% of Ukrainian territory,” gains that have come at “a high cost,” with Russian forces averaging “over 1,000 casualties per day” for several months, underscoring the grinding nature of the conflict and the limited operational payoff of Moscow’s offensives. 
  • Framing the war as a contest of adaptation and endurance, the report highlights how both sides have institutionalized drone warfare: Ukraine’s June 2025 “Operation Spiderweb” used explosive-laden quadcopters launched from pre-positioned trucks to strike Russian air bases and damage aircraft including Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 bombers, while Russia has scaled production of one-way-attack UAVs such as the Geran-2 to “up to 2,700 units per month,” enabling mass strike waves; the conflict has thus accelerated innovations in UAV tactics, electronic warfare and counter-drone defenses 
  • On manpower, the IISS notes Russia’s sustained recruitment of roughly 32,000–35,000 personnel per month in 2025, putting it on track to exceed annual targets and allowing deployment of an estimated 600,000–700,000 troops in or near Ukraine, whereas Ukraine’s “principal constraint remains manpower,” with sections of the front thinly manned despite favorable loss ratios, limiting Kyiv’s ability to rotate forces and sustain prolonged attrition 
  • Economically, Russia’s war footing has driven military expenditure to an estimated 7.33% of GDP in 2025 under the NATO definition, up sharply from pre-war levels, though the 2026 budget projects a modest decline to around 6.55% of GDP; the report cautions that official figures likely undercount total war-related spending, as costs are increasingly hidden across other budget categories and regional contributions 
  • Looking ahead, the IISS concludes that neither side appears willing to compromise core war aims: Moscow continues to signal its objective of military and political domination of Ukraine, while Kyiv refuses to abandon sovereignty over occupied territory and insists on security guarantees; with both combatants dependent on external support, especially Ukraine, decisions taken in foreign capitals will significantly shape the war’s trajectory. 

“Russia–Ukraine War: escalation, not stalemate,” Nigel Gould‑Davies, IISS, 02.25.26.

  • Gould‑Davies argues that the war’s apparent positional “stasis” actually rests on an unstable equilibrium: Russia still seeks to subordinate Ukraine and refuses to scale back its aims, so instead of compromising it is escalating a strategy of attrition—mobilizing more manpower (including criminals and foreigners) and intensifying infrastructure strikes and sabotage in Europe—while Ukraine and Europe respond with deeper sanctions, strikes on Russia’s energy and defense sectors, and rising defense spending.
  • He contends that Russia’s approach is constrained attrition: the Kremlin has mobilized only a fraction of its demographic and economic potential because it fears domestic backlash; battlefield losses now exceed recruitment, and Moscow will eventually face a stark choice between unpopular compulsory mobilization or accepting that it cannot win—just as Europe, with an economy and population several times larger than Russia’s, must decide how far to expand support that so far has been “enough to prevent Kyiv’s defeat, but not to defeat Russia.”
  • In his view, the war will not be settled by near‑term diplomacy—negotiations cannot succeed while Putin still believes in victory—but by three strategic choices over time: whether Russia dares a forced mass call‑up, whether European NATO members actually deliver on big defense‑spending pledges through tight budgets, and how far China deepens its economic and military backing for Moscow.

“4 Years Later: What Russia’s Aggression in Ukraine Has Cost It and What It’s Gained,” Simon Saradzhyan, Ivan Arreguín-Toft and Angelina Flood, RM, 02.24.26.

  • “Is Vladimir Putin a rational actor who weighs costs and gains before making a momentous decision, such as whether to invade another country? Multiple scholars of Putin assert he is. If so, the fourth anniversary of Putin’s announcement of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an appropriate opportunity for Russia Matters’ staff to revisit the costs and benefits of the ongoing invasion for the Russian dictator and the country he rules.”
  • “Before we do so, however, we must note that providing quantitative estimates of these costs and benefits is, predictably, very challenging; as it is difficult to find rigorous research that separates the impacts of the aggression on aspects such as, for instance, Russia’s economic output, from other factors that impact its GDP. It is also difficult to estimate the duration of many of these costs, given varying degrees of the Kremlin’s success at reducing them through, for instance, the evasion of sanctions imposed on Russia in the course of the invasion, which has already been underway longer than the Soviets’ war against Nazi Germany.”
  • “While trying to estimate the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of the invasion for Russia, we of course acknowledge the horrendous costs which have been endured by Ukraine and Ukrainians, many of which we refer to below.”

“4 Years Into Russia’s Invasion, Western Experts See Putin’s Aims Largely Unchanged, Prospects for Peace Dim,” Jack Lennon and Angelina Flood, RM, 02.23.26.

  • “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. Experts including George Beebe of the Quincy Institute believe that at that time, Putin was aiming to demonstrate to NATO and the West what Russia’s role in the European security order ‘ought to look like,’ while others, such as Angela Stent of the American Enterprise Institute believe that Putin’s 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. According to Max Bergmann and Maria Snegovaya of CSIS, however, Putin still believes that Russia is winning the war of attrition—and that, eventually, ‘it can overpower and outlast Ukraine.’ If this duo is correct in their assessment of Putin’s calculations, then that could explain why some of their fellow scholars believe Russia’s engagement in the negotiations with Ukraine is not genuine.”
  • “The University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer, writing this month, argues ‘there is no way you can negotiate a genuine peace settlement to this conflict,’ and calls the current peace negotiations ‘basically Kabuki Theater.’ The Economist’s Editorial Board is skeptical that any peace plan will ‘satisfy Russia.’ Last but not least, James Gilmore, former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said ‘the objectives of Russia and Ukraine are so diametrically opposed that it's not realistic to expect a breakthrough.’”

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

Military aid to Ukraine:

"Ukraine Depended on Western Weaponry. Now That Script Has Flipped," Yaroslav Trofimov and Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal, 03.01.26.

  • Europe is increasingly importing Ukrainian battlefield technology, with joint ventures such as the Linza drone factory near Munich fusing German manufacturing capacity with Ukrainian engineering.
  • The “Build With Ukraine” initiative channels European subsidies into partnerships that retool struggling industries, create jobs for Ukrainian refugees, and deliver more weapons to Kyiv paid for by European allies.
  • Germany alone has earmarked over €11 billion for Ukraine’s defense this year, including up to €2 billion to subsidize defense production in both Ukraine and Germany, and new AI‑drone projects.
  • Ukrainian firms bring war‑proven expertise in drones and missiles but face constant Russian attacks at home, prompting production to move partly to Europe where physical security is higher, but espionage risks remain.
  • The ventures aim to close NATO’s drone-technology gap, turning Ukraine’s role as a “testing range for new weapons systems” into a driver of Europe’s rearmament and long‑term defense industrial revival.

"Two big things Trump the wheedler misunderstands about Russia," George F. Will, Washington Post, 02.27.26.

  • The more blood and money Putin spends in Ukraine, the more he is driven to seek outright victory to redeem his blunder, making a quick, face‑saving compromise increasingly unlikely.
  • The best way for the West to reduce long‑term violence and costs is not to accept a Russian “win” and prepare for future conflicts, but to keep arming Ukraine so it can further weaken Russia’s army and economy now.

"Ukraine: Too little, too late," Ben Aris, bne IntelliNews (Substack), 02.24.26.

  • Aris contends that “four years on, and the Western support of Ukraine has always been too little, too late,” arguing that while aid has been “sufficient to keep Ukraine in the battle,” the prospect of victory “remains as far away as ever by design,” with EU sanctions “riddled with exceptions and carve outs” and early decisions to keep paying Russia for energy in 2022 having “handed Russia hundreds of billions of euros it desperately needed” so that “Russia has been able to almost entirely fund its war using just internal resources,” the author writes.
  • Criticizing what he calls the West’s “escalation management” strategy, Aris argues that support has been calibrated to provide “some, but not enough” for Ukraine to win, noting that after the “astonishingly successful Kharkiv offensive” in 2022, “the West dithered for a year before resupplying,” allowing Russia to build defenses that “rebuffed the 2023 summer offensive” and left the war in a costly stalemate, and charging that Western policy has “prolong[ed] the war as long as possible and maximise[d] the casualty rate, not minimise it,” in stark contrast to Western doctrines of “shock and awe,” according to the author.
  • On the economic front, Aris argues that Western policymakers are “focusing on the wrong tax,” insisting that “energy exports were key to the Russian economy at the start of the war, [but] that is no longer true,” since “some 80% of Russian budget revenue is now earned from non‑oil and gas exports,” with VAT now “go[ing] a long way to funding the expected budget deficit,” while Russia’s wartime economy has become “far more resilient than most commentators are prepared to admit,” meaning that “economic pressure” and incremental sanctions are unlikely “to end the war,” the author believes.

"Europe is helping Ukraine resist a US push for peace at any price," Jaroslava Barbieri, Chatham House, 02.24.26.

  • Barbieri writes that US‑brokered talks have reached “near‑consensus” on ceasefire monitoring but remain “deadlocked over the key issue of territory,” with Moscow demanding that Ukraine cede the entire Donbas “including territories Russia has failed to secure militarily,” while Kyiv insists a “comprehensive ceasefire must precede any peace agreement or elections,” and warns it cannot accept concessions the public would “never forgive,” according to the author.
  • Citing recent polls, Barbieri notes that 54 percent of Ukrainians “categorically reject” withdrawing troops from parts of Donbas still under Kyiv’s control, and 59 percent oppose holding elections before a peace deal, while Europe has “effectively replaced the US as Ukraine’s main donor,” with EU military aid up 67 percent in 2025, a €90 billion loan agreed for 2026–27, and a “coalition of the willing” (France, the UK, Poland) offering security guarantees including possible troop deployments, she writes.
  • Barbieri argues that European initiatives such as the SAFE defense fund, “Build in Ukraine” production hubs, and joint drone programs like the UK–Ukraine Project Octopus are both “Trump‑proofing” support and integrating Ukraine into Europe’s defense industrial base, but urges Europeans to go further by repurposing frozen Russian assets and scaling up contracts so that Ukraine’s defense industry—which reached a $35 billion capacity in 2025—can run at full tilt, “essential for a safe and resilient Europe,” the author concludes.

"Back to basics: Empower Ukraine, unpower Russia," Ondrej Ditrych, EU Institute for Security Studies, 02.24.26.

  • Ditrych writes that Russia’s “imperial war” has cost it up to 1.2 million troops and around 5 percent of GDP annually, yet Moscow is shifting from failed battlefield aims to “diplomatic and hybrid” warfare—seeking to push Kyiv into concessions “it cannot obtain on the ground” and targeting European societies to undermine Ukraine’s “defense complex,” so Europeans need clarity on “what Putin’s Russia wants, where Europe’s fundamental interests lie, and how they can succeed,” the author argues.
  • He notes that the EU and member states have already provided over €100 billion to support Ukraine’s resilience and more than €69 billion in military assistance, including an unprecedented €90 billion loan approved in December 2025, and contends that Europe must both “empower Ukraine” through a credible long‑term “prosperity package” and enlargement perspective, and “unpower Russia” by tightening sanctions—especially on the shadow fleet—at a time when Russia has entered a fiscal “death zone” with shrinking hydrocarbon revenues and little room for manoeuvre, Ditrych writes.

  • Finally, Ditrych urges the EU to “find a way to engage in the diplomatic process to halt the war,” helping design a ceasefire as part of a deterrence architecture from “Svalbard down to Odesa,” and to act as “partner of first and last resort” for Kyiv in a context where Ukraine “cannot rely on goodwill from either Russia or the United States,” insisting that a “free and independent Ukraine needs Europe on its side — and that a free and independent Europe needs Ukraine on its side, too,” the author concludes.

    "Ukraine and the new economics of war," Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, 02.26.26.

  • Sandbu argues that four years in, the Russia–Ukraine war is shaped as much by economics and technology as by troop movements: Valeriy Zaluzhnyi’s Chatham House speech highlights how drones and AI have created a transparent 25 km “kill zone,” made skilled soldiers the scarcest resource, and turned Ukraine’s energy grid into a “new front” that must be radically decentralized into distributed micro‑generation if the country is to survive sustained Russian strikes.
  • Despite enormous damage, Ukraine’s economy has proved surprisingly resilient and increasingly “Europeanized”: since 2022 it has generally outgrown Russia, shifted exports so the EU now takes 57 percent (up from 36 percent in 2021), and been kept afloat mainly by European, not U.S., financial support—leading Sandbu to argue that Europe and Ukraine together are in the stronger economic position and should both keep scaling up aid to Kyiv and tighten sanctions (including on Russian oil exports and frozen reserves) to raise the cost of war for Moscow.
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says war in Ukraine at ‘beginning of the end’. In an FT interview, Ukrainian president urges Trump to see through Russia’s ‘games,’” Christopher Miller, 02.23.26.

  • Zelenskyy told the FT that Russia and Ukraine are at “the beginning of the end” of Europe’s biggest war since World War II, but warned that “the Russians are playing games” in talks and “were not serious about bringing the war to a close,” urging Washington to see through Vladimir Putin’s negotiating “games,” according to the interview.
  • He cautioned that without firm Western security guarantees “Moscow would use a ceasefire to rebuild its forces for another assault,” insisting that “Ukraine needs a ceasefire — yesterday, today, tomorrow,” but “we don’t need a pause. We need the end of the war,” and rejected Putin’s claim that Kyiv would exploit a truce to regroup as “demagoguery and lies,” adding that Russia is mobilizing 40,000 troops a month and losing 35,000, Miller reports.
  • Zelenskyy argued that U.S. officials are wrong to believe the war will end if he cedes the Donbas, saying “I do not believe that this is all that Russia demands… you cannot trust them,” and urged Trump to “pressure Russia and stop Putin” by “stopping their shadow fleet… their ability to trade, to export energy resources… stopping sanctions evasion,” while stressing that he relies “primarily on Ukrainian citizens, our army, our production,” the author writes.

“These Ukrainians Don’t Want to Be Traded to Russia for Peace,” Andrew E. Kramer and Lynsey Addario, The New York Times, 02.24.26.

  • Kramer and Addario report from Sloviansk in Ukrainian‑held Donetsk, where residents such as salon owner Daria Bondareva recoil at U.S.-brokered proposals to hand the region to Russia in exchange for peace elsewhere, fearing Moscow would violate any deal and viewing the idea of being “given up” after years of resistance as an intolerable betrayal.
  • The article notes that current talks, led by the Trump administration, have narrowed to two core issues—control of Donetsk and postwar security guarantees for Ukraine—with some Western officials arguing Kyiv should trade territory it might “inevitably” lose militarily, while polls show roughly 40 percent of Ukrainians might accept ceding Donetsk if ironclad protections against a new Russian attack were in place.
  • On the ground, Sloviansk is a paradoxical “oasis” near the front: a fortified “fortress belt” city that still bustles with soldiers on leave, cafés, gyms, and children’s centers, even as residents endure regular bombardment and say they would either flee or resist rather than submit to Russian rule, which rights groups say has brought executions, torture, and disappearances in other occupied areas.
  • Militarily, Ukrainian commanders reject the notion of inevitable Russian victory in Donetsk, pointing to extensive minefields, trenches, razor wire, and a 12‑mile‑deep defensive zone saturated with drones; they argue that Russia’s current tactics—probing with single soldiers or tiny assault groups guided by drones—yield only incremental gains at enormous cost, with estimates of 225 Russian casualties per square mile captured in January and some 1.2 million Russians killed, wounded, or missing since 2022.
  • Many civilians interviewed—war‑weary medics, retired nurses, aid workers, and volunteers—say they feel “very tired” yet determined, insisting “they should not hand us over like cattle” and placing their hopes in the Ukrainian army and continued Western support rather than in a territorial deal that would uproot them or force them to live under an occupier they deeply distrust.

"Ukraine's Dilemma," Peter Rutland, Responsible Statecraft, 02.24.26.

  • Rutland states that “as the full-scale war enters its fifth year, Ukraine finds itself in an impossible position: keep fighting or accept defeat,” stressing that Kyiv has “managed to hold their own in peace talks in which Kyiv is being asked to cede valuable defensive positions and territory in the Donbas in return for questionable security assurances from Moscow,” even as Russia has “made it clear that it will never allow Western troops to enter Ukraine to monitor a future peace deal,” according to the author.
  • Setting out the “basic arithmetic behind the conflict,” Rutland notes that “the Russian population is four times larger than that of Ukraine” and “the Russian economy is 10 times larger,” so “in the long term, the odds are stacked in Russia’s favor,” but adds that the EU’s economy is “10 times that of Russia” and the U.S. economy “15 times larger,” meaning that “as long as Ukraine’s Western partners keep it supplied with money and weapons, Ukraine has a fighting chance,” even though Russia is producing “four times as much ammunition as NATO” and Ukraine’s main constraint is now “shortage of manpower,” with millions having emigrated, hundreds of thousands killed or wounded, and conscription enforcement growing “increasingly brutal,” the author writes.
  • Describing a grim war of attrition, Rutland cites veteran reporter Clarissa Ward’s portrayal of Ukrainian society as “broken,” “at breaking point,” and “desperate for an end,” and highlights polling that by July 2025 showed “69% of Ukrainians favored ‘a negotiated end’ whereas 24% wanted to ‘fight until victory,’” yet a December 2025 survey still found “75% oppose ceding the remainder of Donbas as part of a peace deal”; he concludes that “Ukrainians are losing so much — a true, fair negotiated peace will ensure they don't lose more,” since “four years into the war neither side has won, and both have all the incentive right now to stick with negotiations to end it,” the author argues.

“Is a Conflict-Ending Solution Even Possible in Ukraine?,” Eric Ciaramella, Aaron David Miller, Alexandra Prokopenko, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Carnegie Emissary, 02.27.26.

  • Andriy Zagorodnyuk explains Ukraine’s new theory of victory as “strategic neutralization,” saying that instead of annihilation or pure attrition, Kyiv is “build[ing] a defense that they [the Russians] cannot go through,” so that “despite their enormous resources, they still cannot achieve anything meaningful” and “over a period of time, Russia will simply run out of options to win.”
  • Alexandra Prokopenko argues that “for Putin, attrition is not a strategy, but it is his tactics,” and that he believes he can “outlast his adversaries,” noting that Russia’s apparent normality masks a reality in which “this normalcy is becoming increasingly expensive for the population” and “the economy is not at the point of imminent collapse, so he thinks that he can climb a little bit longer than others and then see.”
  • Eric Ciaramella criticizes the Trump administration’s approach as “decid[ing] that the easiest path to get a cessation of hostilities is to pressure the weaker party, which they assess to be Ukraine,” using U.S. leverage to “cut[] off support, bludgeon[] Ukraine publicly… while putting very minimal pressure on the Russians,” and warns that “to me, that is not a workable approach to achieve some sort of negotiated outcome.”
  • On what Russia really wants, Ciaramella stresses that “this was never a war about territory in the first place,” saying that on the Russian side it is “fundamentally… about gaining the ability to control Ukraine politically and to reabsorb Ukraine into the political orbit and sphere of Moscow,” and that any deal must start from the core U.S. interest that “Ukraine should be able to stand as a sovereign, independent country, regardless of what the ultimate territorial disposition is.”
  • Zagorodnyuk is blunt about the prospects for a real end to the conflict under Putin, saying “I don’t believe in a ceasefire,” because “Putin will be happy to poke at the results of any cessation in hostilities and then restart the war the next day,” while Ciaramella adds that this is “a structural confrontation that is going to last generations,” and that without “long-term security arrangements for Ukraine… it’s just paving the way for another war.”

“Can the Disparate Threads of Ukraine Peace Talks Be Woven Together?,” Alexander Baunov, Carnegie Politika, 02.26.26.

  • Baunov argues that the current peace process is fragmented into military, territorial, security, economic, and political “tracks” that don’t add up to a coherent deal: technical ceasefire talks are the most advanced, but mean little without agreement on territory (especially the remaining Ukrainian‑held parts of Donetsk) and on robust security guarantees for Kyiv that Moscow still rejects.
  • He writes that Russia insists it will take the rest of Donbas “by negotiations or by force,” while Ukraine is deeply divided internally over whether to withdraw from those areas, with some around Kyrylo Budanov arguing that patience is running out and others warning that voluntary retreat would demoralize society and the army; Kyiv is floating ideas such as a Western‑controlled special zone, which Moscow refuses, demanding full sovereignty and opposing any Western troops.
  • On the economic and political tracks, Baunov describes the Kremlin’s extravagant $14 trillion “mega‑deal” pitch to Trump—covering hydrocarbons, aviation, U.S. assets in Russia, even a Bering Strait bridge—as a fantasy meant to lure Washington into a broader grand bargain in which Russia would gain influence over Ukraine’s internal politics and European security, including a role as “guarantor” with de facto intervention rights.
  • He concludes that Putin is deliberately stalling—hoping either for a breakthrough at the front or a Trump‑brokered package that gives him “something more than Ukraine” in exchange for concessions on Ukraine—and warns that if neither materializes, the Kremlin may decide it is easier to hide failure by widening the conflict beyond Ukraine, especially if Trump, unable to deliver on his own promises, is also tempted to escalate.

"‘Time Is Not on Russia’s Side’: A Q & A With Michael Kofman," David French interviewing Michael Kofman, The New York Times, 02.26.26.

  • Kofman describes the war’s last two years as largely “positional and attritional”: Russia enjoys advantages in manpower and matériel but has only managed slow, grinding gains without operational breakthroughs, while Ukraine has adapted with technology and tactics to hold the line and prevent Russia from converting its advantages into decisive results.
  • Contrary to the common belief that “time favors Russia,” Kofman argues that by late 2025 Moscow was barely breaking even in recruitment versus unrecoverable losses, and that Russia’s economy is under increasing strain from low oil prices, export bottlenecks, and rising deficits—raising doubts about its ability to sustain current offensive intensity through 2026–27.
  • Ukraine’s position is also fragile: it faces severe manpower problems (AWOL and exhaustion), shrinking effective combat strength, and overstretched units with few operational reserves, but it has the easier strategic task—defense rather than offense—and is compensating with expanded drone forces and Western support, which, if maintained at 2025 levels, should allow Kyiv to prevent major Russian advances.
  • He explains how drones have transformed the battlefield into a “kill zone” roughly 20 kilometers deep on either side of the front, with both sides fighting a constant tug‑of‑war for drone dominance; casualties are now often higher among support elements (drone operators, logistics, artillery) than among front‑line infantry, and Russian advances rely on small infiltration groups and lightly motorized assaults guided by drones through porous Ukrainian lines at heavy human cost.
  • Politically, Kofman says Ukrainians are exhausted but not ready to accept Russia’s “onerous” demands—which go well beyond Donbas land grabs to national‑level constraints—because the battlefield situation is “not dire”: Russia lacks the capability to seize large cities or vast new territories, and remains far from achieving the decisive victory its maximalist negotiating position assumes, even as Putin clings to sunk‑cost bets that he can outlast Ukraine and the West.

"Trump has no idea what Putin really wants," Owen Matthews, The Telegraph, 02.24.26.

  • Matthews argues that Trump fundamentally misreads Putin by assuming Russia mostly wants “an extra sliver of Donbas,” when in fact the Kremlin’s core objective has always been political control over Ukraine: a legally enshrined veto over its language policy, media, church, historical narrative, and foreign alignments, and a permanent mechanism for interference and armed “guarantee” akin to Turkey’s 1960s rights in Cyprus.
    • He notes that Moscow has tried to bamboozle Trump into pressuring Kyiv to capitulate by dangling a fantastical $14 trillion minerals “mega‑deal,” but says this obscures the real goal of preventing Ukraine from ever becoming a fully independent, pro‑Western democracy—an aim that William Burns warned about as early as 2008, when he described Ukraine’s NATO aspirations as a “raw nerve” for Russia.
    • After four years of war, Matthews writes, Putin has actually destroyed any realistic prospect of a pro‑Moscow government in Kyiv and hardened Ukrainian identity, yet still clings to demands for de facto intervention rights that Ukraine will never accept—leaving negotiations as deadlocked as the front lines and making clear that as long as Putin refuses to tolerate a free, West‑leaning Ukraine, both the fighting and the talks will remain grinding and inconclusive.

"The war in Ukraine, four years later," Marc Filippino, Anne‑Sylvaine Chassany and Ben Hall, Financial Times, FT News Briefing podcast, 02.24.26.

  • In the FT News Briefing, Hall tells Filippino that ceasefire negotiations “feel a little bit like they’ve stalled,” with talks still “stuck on the big issues of territorial concessions and security guarantees,” and “neither side really feels under sufficient pressure to make any major concessions,” even as the Trump administration pushes for a deal by summer, according to the transcript.
  • Hall notes that from Kyiv’s perspective “they feel a lot less dependent now on the Americans than they did a year ago,” since “the Americans are providing no financial support at all” and Europe and other G7 states have “stepped up,” but he stresses lingering “huge amount of mistrust” toward Trump, with fears he might “betray Ukraine and side with Russia” by pressuring it into “an unfavorable deal,” the authors report.
  • Reflecting on four years of war, Hall says that although the experience has been “terrible for Ukrainians” — from “tens of thousands” killed to an economy “20 per cent smaller” and “millions” displaced — “it is not an understatement to say that this full‑scale invasion has been the making of Ukraine, as a nation,” because Ukrainians have been “remarkably resilient” and “rallied Europe and other western countries to their side,” according to the transcript.

"Should Europe Start Talking to Russia?" Sir Laurie Bristow, RUSI, 02.24.26.

  • Bristow contends that there is “no negotiable final settlement” with Vladimir Putin while he remains in power, because his core aims—the elimination of Ukraine, a Russia‑dominated European security architecture, and recognition as a great power equal to the US and China—are incompatible with European security; at best, Europeans can seek a ceasefire that does not fatally compromise Ukraine’s statehood and bolsters deterrence for the long, unstable “neither war nor peace” likely to follow.
  • He warns that Putin is exploiting Donald Trump’s desire for a quick, transactional “deal,” dangling vast business opportunities so that Washington will force Kyiv into territorial concessions, while excluding Europeans from the room; any European envoy risks deepening Western divisions and being used to split NATO unless talks are framed strictly around clear signaling and risk‑management, not illusions of a grand bargain.
  • For dialogue to be worthwhile, Bristow argues, three conditions must take shape: Russia’s war economy must continue sliding into a “death zone,” making Putin’s goals harder to achieve; he must receive unmistakable proof he cannot win militarily; and he must see that he cannot win at the negotiating table either—outcomes that require a coordinated, long‑term strategy between Europe, the UK, and current and future US administrations, “with the Americans if possible; without them, if necessary.”

“Boris Johnson — Pressure on Putin is the price of peace," Gideon Rachman interviewing Boris Johnson, Financial Times, 02.26.26.

  • Johnson dismisses current U.S.-led peace talks as futile because “Putin has shown absolutely no sign whatever that he’s willing to engage in peace,” argues that asking Ukraine to cede more territory in the Donbas would simply be “pocketed” by Moscow, and insists that only “significantly” increasing military, economic, and sanctions pressure on Russia will create any incentive for real negotiations.
  • He criticizes both Washington’s “moral equivalence” between Russia and Ukraine and Europe’s half‑measures—continued purchases of Russian hydrocarbons, failure to ship long‑range missiles such as Taurus and Tomahawk, and inaction on seizing or leveraging frozen Russian assets—arguing that the West is exerting “about a tenth” of the pressure needed and warning that without a major step‑up Ukraine faces “years more of this conflict.”
  • Johnson calls for visibly binding Ukraine into the Western security architecture, including fast‑tracking EU and NATO prospects and even deploying a limited European (and possibly British) non‑combat force to Ukraine—for example to secure Lviv airport—as a symbolic “boots on the ground” signal that Ukraine’s long‑term place is in the West, contending that fears of “escalation” are misplaced and that every time the West has “gone harder and bigger, it’s Ukraine that benefits and Putin that loses.”

"Two big things Trump the wheedler misunderstands about Russia," George F. Will, Washington Post, 02.27.26.

  • Will contends Trump misunderstands that (1) the more blood and treasure Putin has sunk into Ukraine, the less likely he is to settle short of subjugating it, and (2) the cheapest way for the West to secure itself is not by accommodating Russia now but by helping Ukraine keep “bleeding Russia’s army and economy,” deepening Moscow’s long‑term military and economic exhaustion.
  • Citing huge Russian casualties, reliance on foreign mercenaries, and extravagant signing bonuses, Will argues that Russia is already paying an unsustainable price for marginal gains in Ukraine—and that any Trump‑brokered “face‑saving” deal would only hand the Kremlin a victory it has otherwise failed to earn.

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

"No, Zelensky: World War Three hasn’t started," Mark Galeotti, The Spectator, 02.23.26.

  • Galeotti argues that while it is “understandable” that Volodymyr Zelensky, facing devastation at home and dependence on European aid, wants to frame the conflict in “the most apocalyptic of terms” and keep Europe “sometimes inspired, and sometimes terrified,” he is wrong to claim that World War III has already begun, since Vladimir Putin’s ambitions center on Ukraine—seen as part of Russia’s “birthright”—rather than a broader war of conquest across Europe, according to the author.
  • Contrary to Zelensky’s assertion that “Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life,” Galeotti stresses that what stands out about Putin is “the lack of such a messianic ideology”: the Kremlin’s current mix of nationalism, Orthodox chauvinism, and social traditionalism is aimed at shoring up domestic legitimacy after the old prosperity‑for‑obedience social contract broke down, and “there is no serious sense that he wants to export this, just exploit the failures and fissures in our own systems for pragmatic reasons,” the author writes.
  • Galeotti cautions that loose talk of “war” and “World War Three” by Zelensky and Western leaders is dangerous, because “language matters”: if sanctions, cyber‑attacks, and disinformation are all labeled “war,” the term is cheapened and normalized, plays into Putin’s propaganda about a belligerent West, and leaves us with no vocabulary “when the missiles are flying”; instead, he argues, the West should recognize that it is in a conflict with Russia but avoid declaring itself “at war,” and focus on prudent rearmament and clearer, more careful language, the author believes.

"Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Has Already Changed the World," Marc Champion, Bloomberg Opinion, 02.24.26.

  • Champion writes that Russian aggression has “made” modern Ukraine: a once “frustrating” and corrupt state has, over 12 years of Kremlin pressure and four years of full‑scale war, become a “volunteer nation” whose sheer survival against a far stronger enemy is forging a powerful national myth—even as corruption, trauma, and future social divisions between those who fought and those who did not remain serious challenges.
  • By contrast, he argues, the war has pushed Russia back toward a Soviet‑style “resource economy attached to a war machine”: Putin has chosen a revanchist, militarized path that will be hard to reverse, leaving Russia dependent on China, steeped in propaganda about victimhood and destined glory, and facing the long‑term dangers of demobilizing brutalized soldiers and unwinding a war economy without a clear route to a prosperous, consumer‑driven future.
  • Europe, Champion contends, has been both exposed and transformed: the invasion revealed its military and political weakness and its dangerous dependence on the US, yet also produced an unexpectedly unified and sustained response—Germany emerging as Kyiv’s largest single arms supplier and the EU holding together on sanctions and funding despite spoilers like Viktor Orbán—while the US, under Trump, has turned the war into a transactional venture whose eventual “quick and dirty peace deal” could determine global views of American reliability and whether Russia sees force as a viable tool for future gains.

"Trump’s new interest in war will end badly," Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 02.23.26.

  • Rachman contrasts Trump’s 2025 pledge to judge success by “the wars we never get into,” with the rapid build-up of U.S. forces around Iran and a record of recent “quick wins” (against Iran’s nuclear facilities and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro) that, he argues, have fed the president’s “appetite” for further military action.
  • The author warns that the mooted Iran campaign has vague or maximalist aims — from halting the nuclear program to regime change and ending support for Hezbollah and Hamas — goals that cannot be achieved by limited strikes alone and therefore risk mission creep, prolonged conflict, and greater chances of Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces and regional allies, Rachman writes.
  • Drawing parallels with Iraq, Syria and Libya, Rachman argues that even the collapse of Iran’s clerical regime could produce “prolonged conflict, massive civilian death tolls” and regional chaos, and concludes that if another operation in Iran appears to succeed, it may only deepen Trump’s taste for “wars of choice,” making an eventual calamity more likely, according to the author.

“President Donald Trump’s SOTU,” NYT, 02.24.26.

  • "We’re working very hard to end the ninth war, the killing and slaughter between Russia and Ukraine, where 25,000 soldiers are dying each and every month." Trump said. “Think of that, 25,000 soldiers dying a month. A war which would never have happened if I were president, would never have happened." Trump said.
  • "And getting that 5 percent [of NATO countries’ spending on defense] was something which everyone said would never be done, could not happen, we got it really easily in one meeting, and a big difference between 2 percent that’s not paid, we were paying [inaudible] many of them, very few were paid up, now 5 percent then they’re paid, and everything we send over to Ukraine is sent through NATO, and they pay us in full. They pay us totally in full, every branch of our armed forces is setting records for recruitment. This is so exciting, and every service member recently —" Trump said.
  • “My preference — my preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon, can’t let that happen,” Trump said with regard to Iran.

"Arctic Hot Takes Need a Cold Reality Check," Ryan Burke, War on the Rocks, 02.24.226.

  • Burke argues that much of today’s Arctic security debate “does not” start from the reality that at –40°F “cold is not a condition simply to be managed. It is a constraint that governs everything,” and criticizes strategies and commentaries that talk “with breezy confidence” about persistent presence and year‑round operations while treating people as “interchangeable components” and logistics as assumed, instead of recognizing that in the Arctic “the environment is the first enemy, and everything else is secondary.”
  • He notes that official U.S. Arctic strategies acknowledge harsh conditions but largely fail to integrate “the predictable and cumulative effects of human performance and equipment degradation” into force design, producing “conceptually ambitious and operationally detached” goals such as the Army’s call to “Regain Arctic Dominance” and the Navy’s push for “enhanced and persistent maritime presence,” even though, he writes, “sustained surface presence in the Arctic is an episodic event at best” and human limits at high‑latitude bases are treated as an afterthought.
  • As an alternative, Burke urges a shift from equating persistence with seriousness toward “short, deliberate, recurring Arctic deployments” and regionally aligned forces, arguing that “Arctic military capabilities should not be measured in permanence, but rather in how reliably a unit can arrive, operate and accomplish its mission, and egress with intact force posture,” and insists that responsible strategy must treat “duration and exposure time” as primary variables, explicitly anchoring plans in physiological and psychological metrics rather than “mission ambition alone,” because in the Arctic “withdrawing and reconstituting is not a failure of will — it is often an expression of necessity and discipline.”

"How to make NATO great again," Paula J. Dobriansky and Paul J. Saunders, Washington Post, 02.26.26.

  • Dobriansky and Saunders say the Ukraine war and China’s rise are forcing a reset: under what they call “NATO 3.0,” Europe must assume “primary responsibility for its own conventional defense,” while the U.S. focuses on China and uses arms sales and co‑production to rebuild its defense industrial base and reward allies that invest seriously in their own militaries.
  • They argue that Trump’s “America First Arms Transfer Strategy”—prioritizing deliveries to frontline European states that spend heavily on defense and can in turn arm Ukraine—could make the alliance more sustainable if Europeans stop pining for the old order and instead match U.S. demands with their own ambition to deter Russia without assuming endless U.S. largesse.

"How war stopped working," Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 02.26.26.

  • Ganesh argues that in the nuclear age, fear of escalation severely constrains how far major powers are willing to go, helping explain why recent large land wars—from Vietnam and Afghanistan to Iraq and now Ukraine—have produced stalemates, quagmires, or fragile outcomes rather than clear-cut victories like World War II or even Desert Storm.
  • He notes that the spread of relatively cheap military technologies (drones, guerrilla tactics, “porcupine” defenses) has empowered weaker actors, making “wars amongst the people” with no decisive battles the norm and highlighting the “increasing ineffectiveness of war” as a tool of policy for both democracies and autocracies.
  • This persistent record of frustration, he warns, may not make war rarer: instead it could fuel public cynicism in democracies, undercutting support for defense even as authoritarian states keep building up their forces—so that the old slogan “there are no winners in war” now reads less as moralism than as “a descriptive sentence.”

"Russia’s Shadow War With Europe," The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 02.24.26.

  • Citing a new report by the International Centre for Counter‑Terrorism, the editorial says the Kremlin has conducted at least 151 acts of aggression in Europe since February 2022—sabotage, arson, bombing attempts, plots against dissidents, and provocations such as desecrating religious sites—amounting to a “shadow war” designed to intimidate Ukraine’s allies and destabilize European societies.
  • Examples include Russian agents convicted of sabotage in Estonia, alleged rail disruption in Poland, incendiary parcels routed through courier services, a foiled plot to assassinate dissident Vladimir Osechkin in France, paid vandalism of mosques and Jewish sites, and hundreds of suspected sabotage attempts in Germany, alongside a wider pattern of drone incursions, GPS jamming, cyberattacks, and underwater infrastructure threats.
  • The board warns that this campaign exposes how vulnerable Europe remains to Russian subversion and argues that a “bad peace” in Ukraine would only embolden Putin, who still aims to subdue Ukraine and then pressure Moldova and the Baltics; recognizing the hot war in Ukraine and the cold war with the rest of Europe as one continuum, it urges European leaders to level with their publics and strengthen deterrence rather than hope the threat stops at Ukraine’s borders.

"The Great Capitulation Is Over. What Will Take Its Place?," Chrystia Freeland, The New York Times, 02.25.26.

  • Freeland argues that 2025 was “the year of the great capitulation,” when many governments, companies, universities, and media outlets appeased an increasingly illiberal United States, misreading Trump’s narrow 2024 win and other elections as a permanent populist shift rather than a broad “graveyard of incumbents” driven by post‑Covid inflation and anger over the cost of living.
  •  She contends that liberal democrats have been paralyzed by a crisis of confidence—doubting both their electoral viability and their ability to deliver economic security—yet points to recent center‑left and progressive wins, and insists 2026 must be the year “liberal democracy fights back,” starting with hard support for a Ukrainian victory as a precondition for Europe to move from fearful “vassal” to potential “leader of the free world.
  •  Looking ahead, Freeland says liberal democracy faces two central tests: resisting authoritarian efforts (led by Russia with China’s backing) to overturn the rules‑based order, and reforming market democracy so growth “pulls the social cart” and works for working people in an age of plutocracy and AI—tasks that are difficult but, she insists, cannot be answered by “xenophobic, misogynist authoritarianism” and therefore demand a confident, non‑capitulatory center‑left.

"What India Wants From BRICS," Chietigj Bajpaee, Foreign Policy, 02.25.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

Missile defense:

  • No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

Counterterrorism:

  • No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

  • No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

"How to Adapt in an Era of Algorithm Warfare," Anne Neuberger, Foreign Policy, 02.26.26.

  • Neuberger uses the Russia‑Ukraine war to show how cheap commercial tech has upended the cost balance of war: Ukrainian forces use $500–$1,000 quadcopters and low‑cost sea drones to disable multi‑million‑dollar Russian tanks and warships, while both sides rely on hobbyist radios, commercial EW gear (e.g., HackRF), and private satellite services such as Starlink and commercial imagery to sense, target, and jam in what has become a constantly observed, AI‑driven “battle of algorithms.”
  • Because Russia and Ukraine can rapidly iterate drone designs and EW tactics with off‑the‑shelf components and frontline feedback, Neuberger argues that traditional, slow Western procurement and static air‑defense concepts (e.g., firing million‑dollar missiles at cheap drones) are unsustainable; she calls for modular, software‑first, low‑cost interceptors and modernized electronic warfare, plus AI‑driven supply‑chain monitoring to track dual‑use components that are now flowing into Russian (and Ukrainian) systems via global commercial channels.

“Future Technologies Forum plenary session,” Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru, 02.25.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • In a keynote on the “bioeconomy,” Putin casts biotechnology, AI, and digital platforms as pillars of Russia’s long‑term “industrial and technological sovereignty,” explicitly tying a new national bioeconomy project and mid‑century strategy to reducing dependence on foreign inputs and replacing import substitution with genuinely “globally competitive” Russian platforms, equipment, and bioproducts.
  • He frames bio‑R&D and manufacturing (from vaccines and pharmaceuticals to bioenergy, agriculture, and environmental tech) as cross‑cutting tools to strengthen public health, food and “bio‑security,” and regional development, and urges stronger state support: more funding, tax incentives, export promotion, protection of the domestic market, and a dense network of engineering centers to speed the path from lab to industry.
  • Putin repeatedly links biosciences with AI and “platform” technologies, calling for experimental legal regimes in life sciences similar to those used for unmanned systems and AI, and announces that the next Future Technologies Forum will focus on digital platforms that use data and algorithms to coordinate research, deliver public services (such as AI‑assisted emergency medicine), and integrate citizens into a “platform economy” where Russian‑built software and AI systems are presented as world‑class solutions to be shared with “all humanity.”
  • See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Energy exports from CIS:

  •  No significant developments.

Climate change:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Has the Trump US-Russia Reset Run Its Course?,” Maria Snegovaya, Russia.Post, 02.25.26.

  • Snegovaya argues that Trump’s second‑term outreach to Putin has largely failed for the same reason past U.S. “resets” did: Trump treats peacemaking as a transactional land‑swap, while the Kremlin wages an ideological, revanchist war aimed at controlling Ukraine’s foreign policy and revising the entire post‑Cold War European security order, not just trading territory.
  • Over the past year, she notes, Washington has been forced back toward a harder line despite Trump’s instincts—tightening sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil and slapping tariffs on Indian goods over Russian oil purchases—yet cutting arms deliveries has made this phase “far more painful for Ukraine,” echoing Trump’s first term when initial reset efforts ended with the U.S. sending Javelins to Kyiv.
  • Snegovaya contends that Russia’s ruling class—largely late‑Soviet nomenklatura and their successors—still sees the West as an enemy, believes military power decides everything, and views NATO enlargement and Ukrainian sovereignty as theft of Russia’s “rightful” sphere; in that mindset, the war will continue until Moscow either gets the rollback it seeks or exhausts its resources, because domestic public opinion and elite discontent are too weak and tightly controlled to change Kremlin policy.

"How Trump Is Undermining Putin," Thomas Graham, The National Interest, 02.26.26.

  • Graham argues that, despite accusations that Trump is Putin’s “puppet,” the U.S. president has in practice “markedly eroded Russia’s geopolitical position and tarnished its reputation as a great power,” writing that Trump’s assertive foreign policy “reflect[s] a calculation that, on issues of utmost importance to Trump, Russia does not matter all that much.”
  • In the Middle East, he notes that Putin had spent two decades building ties with “all the key regional powers—Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey,” but that Trump “acted as if Russia did not matter,” ignoring Moscow’s interests as he worked “closely with Israel to weaken Iran,” and when he bombed Tehran’s nuclear sites in 2025 “Moscow provided little diplomatic or material support” and was then brusquely dismissed when Putin offered to mediate.
  • Graham points out that Trump “has paid no heed to Russia’s interests” in Latin America, where he “deposed Putin’s partner, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, in a flawlessly executed, complex military operation that Russia cannot hope to replicate,” and that “for all practical purposes, Washington has now taken control of Venezuela’s oil sector,” potentially restoring exports in a way that “would put downward pressure on world oil prices, to Russia’s detriment.”
  • He stresses that even where Trump appears to help Moscow—by fracturing transatlantic relations—the effect could backfire on Russia: “The rupture in transatlantic relations—an enduring Russian dream—is not leading to a weaker Europe but to one more determined to develop its own hard-power capabilities and exercise strategic autonomy,” which “could eventually consolidate Europe as a geopolitical actor that would dwarf Russia in population, wealth, and usable power.”
  • On arms control, Graham writes that Washington “never responded to Putin’s proposal to adhere to the ceilings on warheads and delivery vehicles after the expiration of the New START agreement,” and instead Trump “has not ruled out a nuclear arms race—which Russia has long sought to avoid and cannot win—and he is pressing ahead with the Golden Dome missile defense system,” concluding that while Putin is “single-mindedly pursu[ing] his objectives in Ukraine, Trump is vigorously advancing US goals worldwide at Russia’s expense,” so that in Lenin’s kto kogo? question, “So far, it’s Trump.”

"What Russia Really Thinks About Trump," Alexey Kovalev, Foreign Policy, 02.25.26.

  • Kovalev shows that while Donald Trump claims Putin “respects” him and that only he can end the war in Ukraine, Russian state TV routinely mocks him as malleable and unserious, with hosts like Vladimir Solovyov boasting on air that Russia “can destroy all of them with nuclear weapons” and treating Trump’s cease-fire “deadlines” and threats as empty bluster.
  • In Kremlin-controlled talk shows—essentially “nightly strategic briefings disguised as infotainment”—panelists openly discuss “forcing” Trump into decisions that weaken the United States, praising him when his Ukraine proposals align with Russian aims and immediately reverting to nuclear saber-rattling and contempt when he appears to push back.
  • The real message to Russian audiences, Kovalev argues, is that Trump is a useful accelerant of U.S. decline and a negotiator who can be goaded, bribed, or bullied into serving Moscow’s interests, not a feared or respected statesman—so any “peace” he might strike over Ukraine would largely be written in Moscow, with Americans “the last to know.”
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Russia, Like Its Foe, Has Experienced a Winter of Outages,” Nataliya Vasilyeva, The New York Times, 03.01.26.

  • Vasilyeva reports that since December “a dozen major blackouts and central heating cutoffs across Russia, from the Murmansk region in the European Arctic to the Pacific Coast, have left hundreds of thousands of Russians with no electricity or heat for days during an unusually brutal winter,” including an outage in Murmansk and Severomorsk in which “at least 73,000 people struggled without electricity for five days after power pylons collapsed,” and a breakdown in Bodaybo, eastern Siberia, that left “over 1,300 people… without heat or running water” in temperatures around –30°C (–22°F).
  • She notes that Russia’s utilities “suffer from chronic underfunding, made worse by resources being diverted to the war,” writing that Putin said Russia “needed to spend 4.5 trillion rubles (about $59 billion) by 2030 on upgrading utilities—less than half of what his government advised,” that the 2024 federal budget allotted only 150 billion rubles (under $2 billion) and “only one-third of that had been allocated,” and that Minister Irek Faizullin told Parliament “40 percent of the country’s utilities were in serious disrepair,” while economist Vladimir Milov says “the money that was promised to upgrade the utilities network has gone to fund the war.”

“The Kremlin Is Destroying Its Own System of Coerced Voting,” Andrey Pertsev, Carnegie Politika, 02.27.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Pertsev argues that Putin’s “corporate mobilization” system—using administrative pressure, digitized dependency lists, and messaging apps to force public‑sector workers and employees of loyal firms to vote—has begun to break down as inflation, wage delays, layoffs, and “optimization” make state jobs less attractive and shrink the pool of voters willing to comply.
  • At the same time, he notes, the Kremlin is undercutting its own tools: abolition of first‑tier municipalities removes local brokers of turnout; WhatsApp and Viber are blocked and Telegram throttled, crippling the chat‑based coordination used to track and push voters; and war‑related internet shutdowns have stalled the expansion of remote electronic voting—leaving the regime facing a choice in the September 2026 Duma elections between lowering its inflated turnout/loyalty KPIs or resorting to unprecedented falsification, with attendant protest risks.

"Telegram, Pavel Durov and the shaky future for tech’s libertarian princelings," Hannah Murphy and Adrienne Klasa, Financial Times, 02.27.26.

Defense and aerospace:

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:

“Once Neutral on the Ukraine War, Arab States Increasingly Favor Moscow,” Ruslan Suleymanov, Carnegie Politika, 02.24.26.

  • Suleymanov argues that many Arab governments have shifted from cautious neutrality on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to a posture increasingly sympathetic to Moscow, driven above all by anger at Western “double standards” highlighted by strong U.S.–EU backing for Israel’s Gaza campaign versus far weaker responses to wars in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and to earlier refugee flows from the Middle East.
  • This disenchantment has coincided with Russia’s need for new partners under sanctions: trade with states such as the UAE and Egypt has surged (grain, poultry, nuclear cooperation, arms), Arab capitals have hosted U.S.–Russia and three‑way talks, and some—like the UAE’s condemnation of an alleged Ukrainian drone strike on Putin’s residence—now publicly criticize Kyiv, while by December 2025 not a single Arab state backed a new UN resolution condemning Russian aggression.

“Corridors of Opportunity and Risk: The ‘North–South’ Transport Corridor in the Geopolitics of Greater Eurasia,” Dmitry Efremenko, Sergey Karaganov, Ilya Kozylov, Russia in Global Affairs, 03.01.26. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • The authors say Russia is at a historic turning point and that “the fork in the road will be the concrete circumstances of ending the special military operation in Ukraine or at least ending active hostilities,” predicting that the war “is unlikely to end in an unconditional victory for Russia,” so Moscow will still “feel the threat from the western flank” even after the guns fall silent.
  • In one scenario, they suggest Russia may “take advantage of a window of opportunity” and, “paying tribute (though without illusions) to Donald Trump’s peacemaking aspirations,” conclude a “big deal” with Washington by 2029, gaining a pause with the United States while “Brussels will continue to grow an armed ‘steel porcupine’ out of Ukraine,” creating a relationship “roughly in the mode in which India and Pakistan coexist.”
  • They argue that the International North–South Transport Corridor (NSTC) can become a key north‑south “axis” of a Eurasian transport “frame,” but only if it is embedded in a broader “geostrategy” of spatial, industrial, scientific, and cultural development, insisting that “economic calculations are necessary, but the most important criterion is security and long‑term development factors,” with “big logistics” the “prerogative and obligation of states.”
  • A central theme is “siberization”: moving Russia’s “spiritual, cultural and economic center” east of the Urals by shifting corporate headquarters and eventually “some capital functions, corporations and ministries, possibly even one of the branches of power” to Siberia, so that the country’s development focus and elite formation relocate to the northern part of Central Eurasia rather than remaining in European Russia.
  • They link this to a post‑Ukraine‑war vision of Greater Eurasia in which Russia builds meridional corridors to India and Iran, revives Arctic and transpolar routes, and even explores future connections through the Bering Strait to North America, arguing that only by completing the North–South corridors and an Arctic east‑west axis, and by anchoring a “Siberian capital,” can Russia secure its long‑term “security, prosperity and global influence” in a world where Western‑centric orders are fading and Ukraine has become a hardened, Western‑armed frontier state.
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Ukraine:

"Why Ukraine Is Still Standing," Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy, 02.24.26.

  • Hockenos writes that after “another long night of thundering bombardment,” Kyivites are “exhausted, shaky, and seething with anger,” yet “then we get back to work,” as “young volunteers from civic initiatives like Kyiv Bats, Repair Together, and the all-women Velyke Divnytstvo are first to arrive at the sites of destruction,” sweeping up glass, clearing debris, and boarding shattered windows in a display of “civic resistance” by “millions of ordinary Ukrainians” who “supply the front with weaponry and kit, tend to injured veterans, outfit and staff tactical medical units, integrate refugees, and fortify democracy in a time of martial law,” the author reports.
  • Describing a deep-rooted ethic of self-organization, Hockenos notes that “Ukraine’s ethic of self-organization reaches back deeply into history” and that “even today, 34 years after independence, Ukrainians do not tend to trust their authorities or expect very much from them,” citing examples such as Odesa volunteers who, seeing that “Ukraine’s post-Soviet military lacked adequate front-line medical care in 2014,” simply “trained themselves” using U.S. Red Cross materials and “since then… have schooled more than 34,000 military personnel” and now “administer blood transfusion programs on the front,” while “tens of thousands of nonprofits” born from the Maidan era “fight corruption, combat Russian disinformation, and empower women,” according to the author.
  • Hockenos argues that this broad civic engagement “helps assuage the deficits caused by martial law” and underpins a de facto “participatory democracy,” as seen when Ukrainians defied a ban on public assemblies during the 2025 “cardboard revolution” to protest efforts to bring anti-corruption agencies under government control—brandishing signs such as “My brother didn’t die for this” until President Volodymyr Zelensky rescinded the move the next day—and concludes that “missiles be damned, Ukrainians seem to say, they will live a civilized life with their heads held high,” convinced that “if ordinary Ukrainians have pulled off this extraordinary feat thus far, then they’re certain that they can see the struggle to a virtuous end,” the author writes.

“Securing Ukraine’s Future: Adapting to New Realities After Four Years of War,” CFR experts, 02.24.26.

  • Heidi Crebo‑Rediker argues that Ukraine’s defense‑industrial base has become “a core pillar of Europe’s future security and Ukraine’s postwar economy,” noting that Ukrainian firms now produce “millions of drones annually” and that co‑production deals in Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, and the UK both “embed Ukrainian designs in European supply chains” and create domestic stakeholders “invested in Ukraine’s success.”
  • Liana Fix and Benjamin Harris warn that as peace talks drag on, Russia could “step out of the ‘gray zone’ of hybrid warfare activities toward more overt attacks” on European states, and urge Europe to “prepare to manage such a crisis on its own” by projecting unity, developing its own menu of responses, upgrading decision‑making and anti‑drone/air‑defense capabilities, and establishing European “military‑to‑military channels with Russia to reduce the risk of accidental escalation.”
  • Thomas Graham cautions Europeans not to “overestimate Russia,” writing that although vigilance is warranted, Russia faces “serious domestic and foreign challenges,” from rebuilding seized Ukrainian territories to reducing over‑reliance on China, and that Europe’s Russia policy should rest on “two pillars: deterrence and dialogue” to avoid miscalculation while consolidating “a competitive, uneasy, but stable coexistence with Russia.”
  • Paul Stares argues that even a settlement “will not diminish Russia’s threat to the continent,” predicting that Moscow will rebuild its forces, continue hybrid attacks, and possibly “test NATO’s resolve through limited incursions,” and calls for a new Harmel‑style strategy of “deterrence and conditioned engagement,” revitalizing the OSCE, and coordinated G7 policy to manage a long post‑war confrontation over Ukraine.
  • Sam Vigersky notes that after four years of war “3.7 million Ukrainians are internally displaced and 10.9 million are in need of humanitarian assistance,” while intensified Russian attacks produced a “30 percent increase in civilian casualties in 2025” and a “21 percent increase in damage or destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” and urges creation of a new fast, flexible grant mechanism that can move money and expertise to Ukrainian NGOs and local authorities as front lines and reconstruction needs shift.

“The Path for Ukraine to Full Membership in the E.U. Is Long and Tortuous,” Jeanna Smialek, The New York Times, 02.26.26.

  • Smialek explains that Ukraine has made rapid E.U. accession a core demand in peace talks with Russia, framing membership as a security guarantee and a trigger for postwar investment. But under existing rules, accession takes on average nine years and requires deep reforms on corruption, rule of law, and democratic governance—making the oft‑floated 2027 date essentially impossible without changing the process itself.
  • Because Ukraine is large, poor, and a major agricultural exporter, full and immediate membership would strain the E.U. budget, roil labor markets, and sharpen competition for farmers in countries like France, while unanimous approval is already blocked by Hungary. As a result, Brussels is debating “light” or phased‑in membership—gradual access to the single market, subsidies, and possibly limited voting rights—solutions that could keep Kyiv anchored to Europe but risk creating a two‑tier union and moving the goalposts for other candidates such as Albania, Moldova, and Montenegro.
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“The U.S. Attack on Iran Is Ending an Era in the South Caucasus,” Igor Seleznyov, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 03.01.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Seleznyov reports that leaders in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia have voiced concern over the U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran, preparing to receive refugees and calling for diplomacy, while regional experts warn that the attack on Tehran “may lead to serious changes in the South Caucasus,” where for centuries the balance of power has depended on a triangle of Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
  • Caucasus specialist Vadim Mukhanov says this “geopolitical triangle” has already been shifting in the 21st century as “Russia’s influence has weakened,” Turkey has been “building up its influence” in tandem with Azerbaijan and trying to form a trilateral bloc with Georgia, and both the United States and China have been expanding their roles—Beijing via investment and trade, Washington “via military‑political methods”—especially since the war in Ukraine.
  • Mukhanov argues that the impact on Iran’s regional position depends on how the war unfolds: if U.S. strikes last “a few days, then nothing terrible will happen for Iran,” but if they are prolonged and “supplemented by a ground operation, the consequences could be catastrophic,” including a major refugee influx into Armenia and Azerbaijan and the risk that Iran could strike Azerbaijan if it suspects Baku of helping the U.S., while Armenia, heavily reliant on Iran to bypass the Turkish‑Azerbaijani blockade, would suffer severely.
  • Farid Shafiyev, head of Azerbaijan’s Center of Analysis of International Relations, stresses that the flare‑up on Iran’s border “causes concern in Baku” but that Azerbaijan “in no way participates in the conflict,” pointing to a 2005 non‑aggression agreement with Tehran and the absence of U.S. or Israeli bases, yet he notes that against the backdrop of Russia’s weakened influence after its war in Ukraine, “the United States is returning to the South Caucasus,” as shown by Vice President J.D. Vance’s visits to Yerevan and Baku and Turkey’s strengthened role alongside Azerbaijan.
  • Armenian analyst Grant Mikaelyan warns that an Iranian defeat—defined as regime overthrow or loss of territorial control—would put Armenia “in an extremely unpleasant situation,” because Iran has played a “crucial balancing role” by restraining Azerbaijan and providing an economic lifeline, and argues that if Tehran loses and turns inward, “Turkey will be left without competitors in the South Caucasus,” forcing a weakened Armenia, itself destabilized by the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, to become an American satellite, with Washington largely “acting in the region through Turkey.”

"The ‘Don’t Lose Lukashenko’ Approach: Kyiv’s (Non-) Strategic Ambiguity Toward the Belarusian Opposition," Boris Ginzburg, PONARS Eurasia, 02.23.26.

  • Ginzburg argues that despite Belarus’s role as a co‑aggressor in Russia’s war, Kyiv has long pursued a “Don’t Lose Lukashenko” approach: maintaining channels to Minsk, avoiding a full break in diplomatic relations, and hesitating to openly embrace Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and the exiled opposition, in order not to push Alyaksandr Lukashenko fully into Moscow’s arms or risk a Russian “absorption” of Belarus.
  • He shows that, until mid‑2024, Kyiv effectively prioritized the armed Kastus Kalinouski Regiment (KKR) and tried to give it a “democratic veneer” via HUR‑organized conferences, while keeping Tsikhanouskaya at arm’s length, a stance shaped by Ukrainian distrust of Belarusian opposition figures’ earlier ambiguity toward Russia and Crimea as well as by Kyiv’s own history of successful mass uprisings.
  • Ginzburg concludes that Kyiv’s current dualism—simultaneously keeping lines to Lukashenko open, facilitating prisoner releases via Ukrainian territory, and cautiously warming to Tsikhanouskaya—reflects realpolitik but “is not a strategy”: it leaves Ukraine exposed to Kremlin leverage in any post‑Lukashenko transition, where Moscow’s entrenched influence over Belarusian security elites could shape the new regime to Ukraine’s detriment.

“How the White House Is Keeping Russia out of the South Caucasus,” Dmitriy Shapiro and Keti Korkiya, The National Interest, 02.27.26.

  • Shapiro and Korkiya argue that Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent trip to Armenia and Azerbaijan is “an integral part of the Trump administration’s concerted effort to cement US influence and box out Russia in a region where Moscow was long the dominant player,” noting that the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace pact and the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) are designed to create “a trade route between Central Asia and Europe that bypasses Russia and Iran.”
  • They highlight that in Yerevan, “Vance and Pashinyan signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement that includes $5 billion to replace Armenia’s Soviet nuclear power infrastructure and $4 billion in fuel and maintenance contracts,” a deal that “undercut a last-ditch cooperation offer by Russia’s state-owned nuclear concern Rosatom,” and that in Baku Vance concluded “a strategic partnership agreement encompassing economic and security cooperation,” including “defense sales, cooperation in artificial intelligence, energy security, and counterterrorism efforts.”
  • By contrast, the authors stress that Vance “refused to dignify Georgia, the region’s third nation, with a visit,” warning that the country “is drifting closer to Russia and China,” with the Anaklia Deep Sea Port handed to a Chinese‑Singaporean consortium and “Russia retain[ing] leverage through political, intelligence, and coercive influence operations,” and urging Washington to use “a blend of incentive and threat” so that Georgia does not become “a durable platform for Russian and Chinese leverage on the Black Sea.”

"The United States Has Grand Plans in the Caucasus," Eugene Chausovsky, Foreign Policy, 02.24.26.

  • Chausovsky describes how, amid turmoil in Iran and wars elsewhere, the Trump administration has quietly deepened its role in the South Caucasus, brokering a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan and backing the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP)—a road/rail/pipeline corridor across Armenian territory linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave, with the United States taking a 74 percent stake in the development company.
  • He argues that this 26‑mile corridor could have outsized geopolitical impact by strengthening non‑Russian east‑west energy and trade links from the Caspian through Turkey to Europe, offering a shorter route for Central Asian hydrocarbons and critical minerals while competing with China’s “Middle Corridor” ambitions.
  • The project faces serious risks, he notes: Armenia’s domestic politics could still derail normalization with Baku; Russia and Iran oppose U.S.-backed connectivity that undercuts their transit roles and may act as spoilers; but if Armenia’s June elections consolidate the peace agenda and Iran’s trajectory breaks Moscow–Tehran alignment, the TRIPP could become a model for how Washington manages crises and great‑power competition in other regions.

Podcast: “How the South Caucasus Is Navigating a Turbulent World,” Carnegie Politika Podcast, 02.26.26. 

  • Host Alexander Gabuev speaks with Zaur Shiriyev and Philip Gamaghelyan about the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace process after the 2025 Washington “TRIPP” deal, arguing that U.S. activism and the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity are steadily reducing Russia’s role as regional hegemon even as key obstacles—border demarcation, security guarantees, domestic politics in Yerevan and Baku—still threaten to derail a final treaty.
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

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: Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) fires a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile during operations in support of Operation Epic Fury, Feb. 28, 2026. (U.S. Navy Photo)

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  2. I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
    1. Nuclear security and safety:
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  4. III. Russia’s relations with other countries
    1. Russia’s external policies, including  relations with “far abroad” countries:
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