Russia Analytical Report, June 1–8, 2026

5 Ideas to Explore

  1. A new report by CSIS calls for a “two-war planning construct” to “deter and defeat two major powers simultaneously: China in the Indo-Pacific and Russia in Europe,” prioritizing “the Indo-Pacific first and Europe second.” The CSIS authors urge a new offset strategy built around “air-sea battle in the Indo-Pacific and air-land battle in Europe” that mixes “advanced and lower-cost unmanned systems with long-range precision strike and nuclear modernization.” The new strategy would prioritize “the Indo-Pacific first and Europe second, as well as deterring and, if necessary, defeating two major powers simultaneously with significant allied and partner involvement,” according to the report.
  2. Given that the current stalemate at the front is costly for both Moscow and Kyiv, this may be “the best possible opportunity for peace” the war in Ukraine has yet offered, Michael Froman of CFR argues in a commentary entitled “A Turning Point in Ukraine.” Froman is echoed by Fareed Zakaria, who argues in WP that “in recent months, the tide has turned… in ways that make peace finally possible.” Zakaria explains how Ukraine is not “close to an easy victory,” while “Putin’s twin theories of victory… that Ukraine was weak and that the West would tire... have collapsed.” Given that and America’s leverage vis-à-vis the warring sides, “this is Trump’s opportunity” to co-broker a peace deal jointly with Europe that “deserves to be called historic,” according to Zakaria. In contrast, Angela Stent of the American Enterprise Institute does not presently appear to share Froman’s optimism. “We really haven't gotten any further in toward a negotiation,” she told PBS on June 5. Stent believes that Vladimir Putin’s decision to reject Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent call for direct peace talks—which the Ukrainian leader made in a letter to his Russian counterpart—is a signal that Putin “believes that Russia can still prevail.” Stent’s view of Putin’s vision for where the conflict is headed is close to Tatyana Stanovaya’s. In Putin’s view, as described by Stanovaya of CEIP and R. Politik, “The West is decaying, the United States is losing hegemony, Ukraine is falling apart, its army is disintegrating, Europe is in chaos, Russia is advancing on all fronts, victory is inevitable, the economy will hold out, the people will support [the government],” she writes in a commentary for CEIP.
  3. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb argues that “Europe should talk to Putin,” proposing a phased diplomatic process. “We have to do this together with the Americans, but at the same time ask ourselves whether American foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine is currently in Europe’s interest. If not—and in certain aspects it is not—then we must get involved. But in a coordinated way. Ideally, the first step would come from the European Union, and if that fails, from the E3, that is France, Germany, Great Britain, and if that too fails, we would have to find another format,” Stubb said in an interview with NZZ.
  4. The mobilization of 300,000–500,000 troops in Russia could become a turning point in the war, Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko warns in an interview with project "Zhovti Kedi with Yulia Borisko.” The war could also reach a turning point if Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons at the front, Kostenko claims, adding that such a scenario “cannot be ruled out.” The MP—who is the secretary of the parliament’s security, defense and intelligence committee and a member of Rada’s Holos faction—claims that Russia might employ tactical nukes “to break through the forward edge of defense.” While credible sources, such as former director of the CIA William Burns, assessed that there was a "genuine risk" that Russia might use nuclear weapons during the Russian forces’ Fall 2022 large-scale retreat, no such large-scale retreat has been recorded so far this year.*
  5. Russia’s recent dispute over Internet shutdowns was not an existential crisis, but a clash between bureaucratic groups defending their interests, according to Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Endowment. The security establishment ultimately prevailed in the clash, with online restrictions “normalized” as Putin instructed the Federal Security Service and the federal government to keep key online services operating, Prokopenko writes in a commentary entitled “Russia’s Elite Conflict Over Internet Restrictions Does Not Herald Regime Collapse.” Prokopenko describes how the recent Internet blackouts angered presidential administration officials and the propaganda bloc under Alexei Gromov, who rely on the Internet and Telegram to prepare for September elections to the Russian parliament. They pushed back through leaks and by weaponizing “Putin’s own approval rating,” as government-linked pollsters abruptly reported sharp drops in that approval, Prokopenko explains.  

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

Nuclear security and safety:

  • No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

“China and Russia are competing for influence over North Korea,” The Economist, 06.07.26.

  • The article notes that when Xi last visited North Korea in 2019, “international efforts to halt its nuclear weapons program were still under way” and Beijing still talked about “denuclearize[ing] the Korean peninsula.” Now, as Xi returns on June 8–9, “stopping North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program… appears to have fallen off China’s agenda,” with one main goal instead to “counterbalance Russian influence there” after Kim “sent troops to fight against Ukraine in 2024,” and to reassert China as Pyongyang’s “primary economic partner” in case Donald Trump resumes outreach.
  • Russia has, in effect, accepted North Korea as a nuclear state: in return for help in Ukraine, “the Kremlin has provided financial and other assistance” and upgraded ties via “a mutual-defense treaty,” while foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has called Pyongyang’s nuclear status “a ‘closed issue’.” Xi is unsettled, the piece argues, because although he shares worries about regime collapse and a unified pro‑Western Korea, “Mr. Putin does not appear to share Mr. Xi’s concern about North Korean aggression” or that its threats could push Japan and South Korea toward atomic weapons. Chinese experts say Xi now believes Beijing “cannot use its leverage to convince Mr. Kim to renounce his nuclear program without risking economic collapse there,” especially after Kim “doubled down” with ICBM tests and, on June 4, unveiled a nuclear‑materials plant, while Kim Yo Jong declared the North’s nuclear status “irreversible.”
  • The article points out that China’s tacit acceptance became visible when Xi’s 2025 meeting with Kim and recent summits with Trump and Putin dropped earlier language on denuclearization, and a joint statement with Russia said both opposed “sanctions and military pressure on North Korea.” Beijing now aims to “complicate American military planning,” exploit US–South Korea tensions and gain access via North Korea to the Sea of Japan, while betting it can manage the fallout—even tolerating, some Chinese scholars suggest, a nuclear‑armed South Korea if it weakened Seoul’s alliance with Washington. Against this backdrop, the piece asks what Trump can offer Kim: America now casually refers to North Korea as a “nuclear power,” its strategies downplay denuclearization, Kim demands that Washington explicitly drop that goal, and with more nuclear firepower plus backing from both Moscow and Beijing, “Mr. Kim’s bargaining position has never looked stronger.”

Iran and its nuclear program:

“The Gulf states and Ukraine need each other,” Bilal Saab, Financial Times, 06.04.26.

  • “President Donald Trump is expected to scrap security assistance for Ukraine in next year’s US defense budget. This provides a strategic opening for the Gulf states. They should replace decreasing US security assistance to Ukraine with funds of their own in return for Kyiv’s systematic help in counter-drone capabilities and training, which they desperately need,” Saab argues.
  • “While the US has some of the best missile defense systems in the world, which Gulf states have utilized quite effectively against Iranian attacks, it is not the most capable or experienced counter-drone operator; Ukraine is,” the author writes.
  • “The UAE has been hit the hardest, with nearly 3,000 Iranian drones and missiles launched at Emirati targets before a truce with Iran was agreed. … The answer to the Iranian drone challenge is not more interceptors. Iran has a considerable advantage; it can produce more low-cost drones faster than its opponents can make high-cost interceptors. Ukraine has avoided that trap by investing in capabilities that can detect, track, identify and ultimately defeat drones. Gulf governments should learn from Kyiv,” Saab writes.
  • “The Gulf states should not merely buy defense hardware from Ukraine. They also need Ukrainian operators to teach them how to produce, integrate, deploy and sustain counter-drone capabilities,” according to Saab. “Ukraine is currently overstretched and cannot send too many counter-drone operators abroad without the risk of endangering the home front. They need funding from the Gulf states. With it, Ukraine can scale and balance between security needs at home and export opportunities abroad.”

“The teenagers enlisted as agents of mayhem by Russia and Iran,” Helen Warrell and Christopher Miller, Financial Times, 06.04.26.

  • Russia and Iran have long enlisted proxies to perform hostile acts on European soil, but targeting minors represents a new twist on their subversive gig economy. The tactic first emerged in Ukraine, where teenagers have been recruited online for sabotage, espionage and to spread propaganda. Moscow has since sought underage foot soldiers west towards Poland, the Netherlands and the UK.
  • Ukrainian intelligence officials tell the FT that 21 per cent of those arrested for collaborating with Russia in 2025 were teenagers. The Kremlin widened its net after Ukrainians who might previously have had some Russian sympathies became alienated by the war. Enlisting young Ukrainians had the benefit of destabilizing the country internally, by co-opting the younger generation to subvert the national war effort.
  • Some state-backed agents, especially those working for Russia, invoke the mission format and "quest" mentality of online games to entice young people to move beyond the virtual battlefield to real-world action. The children had been unwittingly recruited by the FSB to collect intelligence under the guise of a "quest" game. Moscow later used this information to carry out air strikes on Kharkiv.
  • The youngest Ukrainians to have been recruited by Moscow were just 11. 
  • While Russia's domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, was masterminding the approaches to Ukrainian teenagers, the GRU and SVR are behind the operations to recruit minors further afield. Young people who are successfully drawn into Russia's sphere of influence are often challenged to recruit their peers, so the recruits themselves are force multipliers.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“When Russia Loses,” Maksym Beznosiuk and William Dixon, CEPA, 06.08.26.

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

“How Ukraine Has Turned the Tide”, Seth Stodder, Foreign Policy, 06.05.26.

  • Stodder argues that “Putin’s war is failing,” noting that Ukrainian air defenses now “regularly intercept 80 percent to 90 percent of the drones and missiles targeting cities.” Even so, “at least 238 civilians were killed and 1,404 injured in Ukraine in April alone, the highest monthly total since July 2025,” he writes—evidence that Ukraine is withstanding, not avoiding, Russia’s bombardment.
  • On the battlefield, he reports that in April “more than 35,000 Russian troops” were killed or seriously wounded, with losses in May “at the same pace,” and that Ukrainian officials say “more than 1.3 million Russian soldiers have been killed or seriously wounded since the invasion.” Russia has also lost “a half a trillion dollars’ worth of equipment, including more than 10,000 tanks, 25,000 armored vehicles, and 30,000 artillery systems,” Stodder writes.
  • Drones are central: Ukraine has raised production from “just 2,000 drones the year before Russia invaded to more than 4 million in 2025,” with a goal of “7 million drones in 2026,” according to Kamyshin, and has “recaptured more than 480 square kilometers (185 square miles) of territory since the end of January,” Stodder notes.

“Is Ukraine Now Winning the War Against Russia?” Michael Kofman interview in “The Long Game podcast with Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer, 06.03.26.

  •  Kofman tells Sullivan and Finer that “it’s fair to say it is Ukraine” that is now winning, arguing Ukraine is in its “best position… since summer of 2023.” He says “time has not been on Russia’s side” since late 2025 and that Moscow is now “increasingly unlikely” to achieve not only its maximalist aims but even its “most basic territorial war aims,” such as taking the rest of Donetsk. The balance of initiative and advantage, he contends, has shifted to Ukraine “for the first time in a long time.”
  • Kofman credits Ukraine’s 2025–26 reforms and innovation: organizing brigades into corps, stabilizing manpower, and massively scaling “middle‑strike” drones (30–300 km) that extend the “drone engagement zone” deep into Russian rear logistics. He describes how Ukraine moved from drone squads to platoons, companies, battalions, and full drone brigades, closely integrated with domestic defense start‑ups. This has allowed Kyiv to compensate partly for deficits in manpower and artillery by locking down roads, depots, and reserves far behind the front.
  • By contrast, Kofman says Russia has relied on small‑unit infiltration tactics and a conveyor belt of poorly trained assault troops, with unrecoverable losses of roughly 25,000–30,000 killed and seriously wounded per month—about equal to recruitment—leaving it unable to form meaningful reserves. He argues that Moscow “failed to adapt” its tactics in 2025, growing “lazy” as it assumed slow, costly gains would eventually deliver Donbas, and now faces compounding problems as those methods collide with a much denser Ukrainian drone and mine “kill zone.”
  • Sullivan and Finer push on what this means for escalation and Western policy. Sullivan highlights Russian “gray zone” drone incursions into NATO airspace and warns that as Russia’s ground options narrow it may turn more to strategic bombardment and pressure on NATO’s flanks; Finer notes that frontline allies already hesitate to invoke NATO consultations for fear of what “message they might get out of Washington.” Both hosts stress that Ukraine’s drone‑centric innovation has partly offset its manpower and munitions deficit—and that sustained Western air‑ and missile‑defense support, tech transfer and industrial investment will be decisive in turning Ukraine’s current advantage into an acceptable end to the war, even as Kofman cautions he does not expect a near‑term ceasefire “just because the United States or somebody else wants it.”

“Russia Is Showing Signs of Weakness in Ukraine. So It Hits Harder,” Lara Jakes, The New York Times, 06.02.26.

  • Jakes writes that “the display of force that Russia rained on Ukraine early Tuesday, with hundreds of drones and missiles, cannot mask the increasing signs of Moscow’s weakness,” noting Russia’s frontline advance “has slowed almost to a halt,” with coerced mobilization, “domestic discontent… growing,” and U.S.-brokered peace talks that “have all but ended.” “Ukraine’s position is much, much more formidable now than just a year ago,” Franz-Stefan Gady argued.
  • Jack Watling said Ukraine’s battlefield gains “have turned the tide in the war,” adding that while Russia’s airstrikes could continue “for a long period,” its “combat performance is waning,” creating “a growing optimism that Ukraine can fight Russia to a cease-fire,” Jakes reported. DeepState UA analysts found Russia “lost more territory in May than it had gained,” despite a 37.5 percent rise in attacks, and warned “it’s important for the Ukrainian state not to lose the initiative.”
  • Western officials estimate “nearly 500,000 Russian soldiers have been killed” since 2022, as Anne Keast-Butler stated, while Marco Rubio said Russia is losing “15,000 to 20,000 soldiers every month… dead,” Jakes wrote. Even so, Nikolai Sokov cautioned that “instead of accepting defeat, actually Moscow may choose escalation,” which “would be my concern.”

“Putin Has No Good Way Out of His War,” Michael Kimmage, The New York Times, 06.02.26.

  • Kimmage argues that since the full invasion of 2022, “Putinism… has arrived at what might seem an eerie equilibrium, but on a closer reading is a trap for all involved,” with Mr. Putin having “subordinated his state and his society to a war that is slowly sapping Russia’s strength, depleting the nation’s wealth and consuming the lives of its young people.” On the surface, “calm prevails,” he writes, yet “perpetuating a war is not the same as winning one.”
  • The author contends that Mr. Putin “has few escalatory tools left,” since involuntary mobilization would be “acutely unpopular” and nuclear use “would not guarantee victory” while risking a Western military response or a rupture with China. “Mr. Putin has maneuvered himself into a trap,” Kimmage writes, and “beyond himself, he has burdened the whole project of Putinism… with some version of this war in perpetuity.”
  • “If Mr. Putin does not have a way out of his war, ordinary Russians do not yet have a way out of Putinism,” Kimmage argues, describing “complacency and numb acceptance of dictatorship and forever wars.” He concludes that “the path to competent Russian leadership now appears to require an unraveling of Putinism,” warning that “when it comes, his exit could well shatter the stability he sought to impose.”

“The New Weapon Behind Ukraine’s Battlefield Success,” Sam Skove, Foreign Policy, 06.03.26.

  • Skove writes that Ukraine’s “mid-range attack drones” now hit “almost 100 miles behind Russian lines” and that Zelensky says strikes “12 miles or more from the front line have quadrupled since February,” calling this a “priority.” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced a plan to “boost strikes by offering cash to units that use them effectively,” expanding the military’s “e‑points” system and declaring, “We are launching a ‘logistics lockdown’ for the Russian army.”
  • Among the key systems, Skove highlights the Hornet drone: it carries a “10‑pound” payload, has “a range of over 62 miles,” and costs “as little as $6,000,” compared with the U.S. GMLRS missile at “$168,000” per shot. Perennial Autonomy (formerly Swift Beat) signed a 2025 deal to produce “hundreds of thousands of drones,” he notes. For heavier targets, “the FP‑2… can crash a payload of 440 pounds of explosives into a target over 200 miles away,” and Ukraine can build FP‑1/FP‑2 “at a collective rate of 200 per day,” with each FP‑2 costing “$50,000 per drone.”
  • Skove contrasts these with GMLRS rockets, which have a “range of around 40 miles and a payload of 200 pounds” but are “jammable,” production‑constrained, and cost $168,000 each, making the new mid‑range drones a far cheaper, more scalable way to hit deep logistics and “make it more difficult for Russia to advance.”

“Russia is relying on drones to bring it victory in Ukraine,” Lisa Haseldine, The Spectator, 06.04.26.

  • Haseldine reports that Russia launched one of its largest aerial assaults of the war, firing “73 missiles and 656 drones” overnight, and argues this reflects a “step change” in how Moscow is fighting. Citing Russian statistics, she notes the aircraft sector’s output rose 117% year‑on‑year in April, and Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi’s claim that Russia plans to produce 7.3 million FPV drones and 7.8 million warheads in 2026—about 20,000 drones a day if targets are met.
  • To employ this arsenal, Moscow created a dedicated Unmanned Systems Forces (VBS) branch in late 2025, already “estimated to number nearly 120,000 active personnel,” with leaked targets of roughly 160,000 by year’s end and 230,000 by 2030. Universities have reportedly been given quotas to recruit at least 2% of male students into the VBS, effectively press‑ganging tens of thousands of young men.
  • Yet Haseldine contends this drone pivot “appears symptomatic of wider problems”: a “cooling off” in the broader defense sector, acute labor shortages, unaffordable defense spending that officials warn will drive the deficit to “unmanageable levels,” and catastrophic manpower losses—nearly 500,000 killed since 2022 and some 30,000 a month at the front, according to Western intelligence.

“Mobilization in Russia of 300–500 thousand people could become a turning point in the war – MP,” Vladyslav Hryhoriev, UNIAN, 06.06.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliamentary committee on national security, defense and intelligence, told the program “Yellow Sneakers with Yuliya Borisko” that “if they (the Russians) announce mobilization of 300, 400 or 500 thousand people, this will be the turning point in this war. And definitely not in our favor,” UNIAN reports. He stressed that Russians “will by all means try to regain the initiative at the front.”
  • Kostenko also warned that Russia could use tactical nuclear weapons at the front, saying such a scenario “cannot be ruled out.” He suggested that Russia might employ tactical nukes “to break through the forward edge of defense” and that a nuclear strike could inflict damage over an area “5x5 or 10x10 km,” which “would be enough to bring enemy troops into the breakthrough,” as he put it.
  • According to Kostenko, “the Armed Forces of Ukraine must build their defense taking this threat into account.” In the same piece, UNIAN notes that Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi recently said Russia has concentrated “more than 140,000” troops on the hottest sectors of the southern front, including “more than 71,000” on the Aleksandriiske axis, while Ukraine “continues to build up its ability to strike the enemy, particularly at operational depth.”

“The Second Theatre of War: How and why the spring campaign against Russian infrastructure is shifting the balance of power in the Russia‑Ukraine conflict”, Re:Russia, 02.06.26.

  • Re:Russia calculates, from UNIAN and UNN reporting, that Ukrainian forces carried out 68 successful strikes on Russian oil infrastructure in the first five months of 2026, 55 of them in the last three months alone, plus 18 strikes on other industrial facilities. In 2025 they count 157 successful oil‑infrastructure strikes and 55 against other industry—about 17.7 successful deep strikes per month in 2025 versus 17.2 in 2026, but with peaks of 28.4 per month (Aug–Dec 2025) and 23.7 per month (Mar–May 2026). Oil targets made up 75% of deep strikes in 2025 and “almost 80%” in early 2026; attacks on offshore export terminals rose from 4% of strikes in 2025 (9 attacks) to over 20% in Jan–May 2026 (18 attacks), with 12 hits on Ust‑Luga, Primorsk and Novorossiysk between 22 March and 7 April, after which export‑terminal attacks paused—apparently at U.S. and EU request.
  • On damage, the article notes IEA data showing Russian oil output in Feb and Apr 2026 was about 5% below a year earlier and at only 92% of its OPEC+ quota in Feb–Apr. Rosstat figures cited show April 2026 petroleum‑product output 9% lower than April 2025. Reuters, as of 15 May, estimated 700,000 barrels per day of refining capacity at 16 refineries offline in 2026—roughly double the 2025 figure—with 35 primary distillation units shut (capacity 2.85 mbpd vs. 1.37 mbpd a year earlier. OilX, via Bloomberg, puts Russian refining at 4.58 mbpd in May 2026, 13% less than May 2025. In response, Moscow has banned petrol exports from 1 April and aviation‑fuel exports from 1 June, and domestic AI‑95 shortages were already visible on the commodities exchange in early May, Kommersant reports.
  • On drones, Re:Russia notes that heavy missile use remains limited: the Russian MoD claims >90 Storm Shadow launches in 2024 but only ~45 in 2025; analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko has verified nine Flamingo‑missile strikes in the first five months of 2026, and the article identifies six Storm Shadow/SCALP attacks in 2026. The improvement comes from Ukrainian drones: long‑range variants like FP‑1, Beaver, Sichen and upgraded Liutyi (warhead increased from 50 kg to 75 kg) now reach >1,500 km, with Zelensky saying they may soon reach 3,000 km. The share of successful strikes at >900 km depth rose from 2 of 32 (≈6%) in early 2025 to 25% in late 2025 and 45% in early 2026. FOM polling cited in the piece shows that since late April, “shelling of Russian territory” has become the most‑recalled news event, mentioned by 15–18% of respondents versus 5–6% earlier, indicating that these attacks are now dominating Russian public awareness.

“‘Motherland, what are you doing? Why did you deceive us?’ Anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova on how front-line corruption affects the Russian army’s combat capability,” interview with Alexandra Arkhipova by Egor Senchin, Republic, 06.02.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Arkhipova analyzed around 7,000 complaints sent in 2025 by soldiers and relatives to then–human rights ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova (briefly left unsecured online and copied by journalists). She argues they reveal a fully formed “war economy” or “death‑onomics” in which much of the money the state allocates to contract soldiers is skimmed by commanders through systematic extortion: sign‑on bonuses, combat pay, and wound compensation are routinely taxed at informal rates, with roughly “60 percent” of the initial lump‑sum payment often disappearing into bribes and kickbacks.
  • From the letters she reconstructs a “price list”: 50,000 rubles every few days for “living in a dugout”; at least 150,000 rubles to postpone being sent “over the ribbon” into assault; 100,000–500,000 for temporary reassignment to safer rear duties; 165,000 for buying a drone to become a UAV operator; the cost of a pickup truck to become a driver; 300,000–400,000 rubles from each wound payment “for company needs”; up to 1–1.5 million rubles for discharge after a real, documented injury. Schemes include forced surrender of bank cards and PINs “for safekeeping,” with commanders or their men draining them, and even looting of the dead: phones are unlocked using the corpse’s face, cards taken, and payments and benefits siphoned off.
  • Arkhipova concludes this corruption directly undermines Russia’s offensive capability. Soldiers “do not want to die” and therefore pay to avoid storm units rather than to take ground; the system’s real incentive is to “milk” each man for as long as he lives, not to organize effective operations. She links this to what pro‑war bloggers now call “babkoselo” (a ruined, strategically pointless village fought over only to report success to higher command) and “flagovtyk” (a brief flag‑planting for video before retreat). In her view, the commercialization of every aspect of service—combined with indefinite contracts and non‑response to hundreds of complaints—helps explain why Russia is stuck in a costly positional stalemate and why, in new mobilizations, evasion and refusal are likely to soar.
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Military aid to Ukraine:

  • "Strategic Shift in NATO’s Support for Ukraine. A Study of NSATU and PURL Initiatives," Iryna KRASNOSHTAN, IFRI, 06.04.26.
    Krasnoshtan writes that the study “analyzes a significant transformation in NATO’s practical support to Ukraine, marked by the establishment of the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) mission and the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) funding mechanism.” She notes that “while NATO’s support to Ukraine in 2022 was largely limited to non-lethal assistance and capacity-building measures, in 2025 it assumed a direct role in the coordination and provision of military support to Ukraine,” a shift influenced “not least by the changing policy of the new US administration vis-à-vis Ukraine.”
  • According to the author, “NSATU currently coordinates more than 80% of all military support to Ukraine,” and PURL “became a key mechanism for the provision of critical air-defense capabilities—supplying 75% of all missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot systems and 90% of the missiles used in other air-defense systems.” Krasnoshtan explains that the first section “looks at the origins of the establishment” of NSATU and “its interconnection with other pre-existing coordination formats,” and “examines NSATU’s core functions, such as the coordination and delivery of equipment, and the coordination of training and force development.”
  • The author writes that the second section “focuses on the PURL mechanism and analyzes the dynamics of its implementation since its establishment in August 2025,” assessing “key issues related to the sustainable funding of the initiatives, as well as burden-sharing among the Allies and political dynamics shaping participation.” While “highlighting the successes of NSATU and PURL in improving the coordination, predictability, and effectiveness of support to Ukraine,” Krasnoshtan argues that “the long-term sustainability of these initiatives may be undermined by funding shortfalls, unequal burden-sharing and industrial capacity constraints,” and warns that “growing political divisions between the United States and its European Allies represent another key source of vulnerability.”

“Under False Flag: Russia’s Shadow Fleet as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare,” Julian Pawlak and Janis Kluge, SWP Podcast 2026/P 14, 06.04.26. Machine-translated.

  • Pawlak and Kluge argue that, despite sanctions, “Moscow continues to earn billions from oil exports,” relying on a “Russian shadow fleet” of tankers operating under foreign or obscure flags to move crude mainly to India and China. They contend this fleet is not just an economic workaround but “a tool of hybrid warfare” that helps Russia evade Western measures while creating risks for European security.
  • The authors explain that these old, poorly regulated, often under‑insured tankers use deceptive practices such as AIS spoofing and ship‑to‑ship transfers, raising the risk of accidents and oil spills in European waters and undermining sanctions and price‑cap enforcement. By exploiting loopholes in maritime law and flag‑of‑convenience regimes, Russia keeps critical war revenues flowing while testing Western regulatory capacity.
  • Pawlak and Kluge say Europe can respond by tightening control over flags of convenience, strengthening port‑state and insurance rules, improving tracking and information‑sharing on high‑risk vessels, and coordinating with partners. Without such steps, they warn, the shadow fleet will continue to undercut both European security and the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia’s energy exports.
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

“A Turning Point in Ukraine”, Michael Froman, CFR, 06.05.26.

  • Froman calls this an inflection point because, for the first time, a cease-fire is “now a realistic possibility”: Russia’s monthly casualties “now above thirty thousand” have exceeded recruitment every month since December 2025, with Western intelligence judging that in January 2026 Russia suffered roughly 9,000 more battlefield losses than it could replace. Yet ISW data show its rate of advance has halved—from 9.76 km²/day in the first four months of 2025 to 4.6 km²/day this year—and on a net basis Russia may end 2026 with “little to no new territory,” while Ukraine has achieved tactical drone superiority (about 1.3 strike drones per Russian one) and opened a sustained deep‑strike campaign beyond 1,000 km into Russia.
  • At the same time, both economies are under mounting strain. Putin has directed nearly 40 percent of the federal budget (about $238 billion) to defense and security, but war spending is on track to overshoot by at least $28 billion, the deficit hit 5.9 trillion rubles (~2.5 percent of GDP) in four months, and growth is forecast at just 0.4 percent. Ukraine devotes 27 percent of GDP to defense, relies on foreign aid for nearly half of government spending, faces 8.6 percent inflation, and sees public debt heading above 122 percent of GDP amid severe demographic losses.
  • Looking ahead, Froman argues these same dynamics can either soften Putin’s negotiating posture or drive him to double down, especially as Ukraine’s air defenses against ballistic missiles erode (the United States produces only 60–65 Patriot interceptors per month and new German‑financed stocks will not arrive before 2028). The core of his argument is that negotiations are hardest when one side believes time is on its side; because the current stalemate is now costly for both Moscow and Kyiv, he contends this may be “the best possible opportunity for peace” the war has yet offered, despite those in Europe who argue it is premature to push talks just as Ukraine is gaining an upper hand.

“Ukraine could be a big win for Trump,” Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, 06.05.26.

  • Zakaria argues that because Ukraine has stalled Russia and Europe has largely filled the U.S. aid gap, Putin is weakened—and this creates “Trump’s opportunity.” Trump, he contends, squandered leverage by berating Zelensky and signaling that Kyiv must concede, but still “has tools no European leader possesses”: he could threaten to restart major U.S. military aid to Ukraine, tighten sanctions on Russian oil and its “shadow fleet,” and speed weapons sales to NATO states for transfer to Kyiv.
  • With that pressure in place, Zakaria says, Trump could “offer Putin an exit ramp in the form of a peace deal,” exploiting the fact that Russia has lost “somewhere between 350,000 and 500,000 soldiers” in a now‑unpopular war. Trump’s “pro‑Russian bias ironically positions him well” because Putin knows he is “skeptical of Kyiv and indulgent toward Moscow,” making any deal he brokers more credible in Russian eyes.
  • For this to be a “big win,” Zakaria insists, the deal must be serious enough for Ukrainians and Europeans: Ukraine “should be willing to concede territory,” but its new borders must be defensible and backed by “real security guarantees that anchor Ukraine in the West.” If Trump uses U.S. leverage this way and secures a settlement that keeps Ukraine sovereign and deters a revanchist Russia, Zakaria argues, he would genuinely “help end the worst war in Europe since World War II” and achieve a historic, not cosmetic, diplomatic success.

“Washington steps back from Russia-Ukraine mediation, and it’s not a bad thing,” Steven Pifer, The Hill, 05.28.26.

  • Pifer writes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled the U.S. would “step back” from mediation and that “President Trump’s mediation effort has failed,” which “should not come as a surprise.” He argues the administration “mishandled the negotiations,” noting that Trump in February 2025 said Ukraine could not recover all its territory or join NATO, thereby “embrac[ing] key Russian demands before the parties had even agreed to talk,” and that Trump “refuses to back his diplomacy with pressure on the recalcitrant party, the Kremlin.”
  • The author contends that “nothing suggests that Moscow has made any significant change in its bargaining position,” saying “it simply wants Ukraine to capitulate,” while Kyiv has shown readiness for a “balanced settlement.” He criticizes chief negotiator Steven Witkoff as reflecting “pro-Russia bias,” pointing out that he has “visited Moscow eight times but has yet to travel to Kyiv” and even said after a Russian denial on Iran, “we can take them at their word.”
  • “A pause in, or end to, U.S. mediation will cost Kyiv little, if anything,” Pifer concludes, since it “has made no apparent progress” and generated “one-sided concessions.” When the Kremlin eventually seeks “a genuine settlement,” he argues, “a mediator could then prove useful. But it need not be an American.” Europeans “almost certainly would provide a less-biased mediation effort,” he believes, and would “send [their] chief negotiator to Kyiv as well as Moscow.”

“Europe isn’t serious about peace in Ukraine,” Anatol Lieven, UnHerd, 06.04.26.

  • Lieven argues that Ukraine’s successful drone strike on a St. Petersburg oil terminal highlights mounting damage to Russia’s economy and growing “war weariness” inside Russia, with establishment figures openly split between those wanting to continue the “special military operation” and those who fear “an endless special operation.” He notes that as the Trump administration, distracted by its war with Iran, “appears to be walking away from talks,” the EU has an opening to assume a larger role but is discussing a negotiator “with nothing like the urgency that is required.”
  • In his view, Europe can only play a useful role by putting “concrete incentives” on the table: sanctions relief, normalization of relations, and even a “limited resumption of energy purchases” to reduce Moscow’s dependence on China. Instead, he criticizes European leaders for insisting on an unconditional ceasefire before serious talks, a demand Moscow has “categorically rejected,” warning that this risks an open‑ended war or a “semi‑frozen conflict” akin to Kashmir, which would block Ukraine’s reconstruction and entrench militarization and U.S. dependence in Europe.

“Finland’s President Stubb: Europe Should Talk to Putin,” Robert Sundman, NZZ, 06.07.26. Machine-translated.

  • Stubb argues that negotiations with Russia must start from a position of strength, saying “we should talk to Putin,” but that “you can only negotiate with the Russians when they are not in a position of strength.” He insists that moment is approaching, claiming “Ukraine is in a better position on the battlefield than ever before since the beginning of the war,” and that this assessment is based on “facts” and “mathematics” rather than sentiment.
  • On diplomacy, Stubb says this changing balance is precisely why Europe “must do this together with the Americans,” but also why Europeans need to ask “whether American foreign policy towards Russia and Ukraine is currently in Europe’s interest.” He proposes a phased diplomatic architecture in which “the first step would come from the European Union,” and “if that fails, from the E3, that is France, Germany, Great Britain,” with any individual mediator, including himself, relegated to a possible “back office” role. Looking beyond a ceasefire, he stresses that “there must be a relationship with Russia” because Finland has “a border of over 1300 kilometers with Russia,” but that relations “will probably not be the same as before the attack on Ukraine.”
  • Stubb also says that in the past six months “the Ukrainians have killed or wounded about 35,000 Russian soldiers each month,” while “the Russians can recruit about 27,000 men per month – so there is a shortage.” He adds that casualty ratios have shifted from “one to three – one Ukrainian to three Russians; now it is one to eight.” According to Stubb, there is a 20–40 kilometer “killing zone” on the eastern and southern fronts where the “mortality rate is almost 95 percent” for those who enter, with Russia “sending one to seven soldiers in” while “the Ukrainians do not.” He further notes that in March “the Ukrainians for the first time fired more rockets and drones at Russia than the Russians could intercept” and that Ukraine “is able to produce 10 million drones in a year,” while in April “Ukraine for the first time recaptured more territory than it lost to Russia.”

“The Inertia of Russia’s War: Why Putin Can’t End the Conflict,” Jeremy Morris, Foreign Affairs, 06.03.26.

  • Jeremy Morris argues that Russia’s war in Ukraine has created a self-reinforcing war economy and social order that now constrains Vladimir Putin himself, explaining why he “can’t” easily end the conflict. Over four years, the Kremlin has reorganized fiscal policy, industry, labor markets, and regional budgets around military spending: defense and security now take around 40 percent of federal expenditure, the military-industrial complex has tripled in size, and millions of workers in poor, isolated cities depend on war-related jobs. A large gray economy of sanctions evasion and smuggling keeps consumer goods flowing and enriches new intermediary elites who benefit from continued isolation.
  • Most Russians gain little: wage increases are modest, inequality is extreme, and higher consumption taxes hit the poor hardest. Shutting down the war economy would risk mass unemployment, regional crises, austerity, and potential debt problems. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of veterans—politically courted as a “new elite” but often unemployed and socially distrusted—must have their material interests and sacrifices upheld, which pushes against any compromise peace. With education, media, and politics recast around an existential struggle, Morris concludes that Putin cannot end the war without triggering economic collapse, social upheaval, and a legitimacy crisis.

“Why U.S. Presidents Misjudge Putin,” Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal, 06.05.26.

  • Swaim argues U.S. leaders wrongly assume Putin will seek to end the war on “Western notions of interest,” noting that Trump claimed the war could end “almost immediately” if Ukraine ceded Crimea and dropped NATO ambitions. According to Swaim’s reading of Beatrice de Graaf’s research, Putin instead sees himself as “the latest, and perhaps greatest, in a centuries-long line of Russian autocrats” and has embraced a “more eschatological, a more apocalyptic and violent vision,” casting Russia as a “beacon of light” fighting “evil.”
  • De Graaf says Putin has allowed allies to describe him as katechon—“restrainer” of the satanic “man of lawlessness”—and that for him “the war in Ukraine really is a holy war.” In that worldview, Swaim implies, ending the war through compromise isn’t a matter of cutting losses but of fulfilling a sacred role: “if he sees the number of square kilometers… as something that has bearing on his status internationally, for him it’s rational to expand his borders.”
  • Swaim concludes it is “folly” to call Putin a rational actor in the Western sense or to expect him to “acknowledg[e] battlefield realities and look for ways to cut his losses and save face.” A leader who sees himself as “empowered by God to restrain evil and protect Russia from satanic influence,” he warns, “probably won’t conform to expectations” about negotiations and war termination.

“European capitals push for talks but Putin remains unmoved,” Henry Foy, Financial Times, 06.08.26.

  • Foy reports that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met the leaders of France, Germany and the UK “to discuss ongoing support for Kyiv and explore ways to bring Putin’s war to an end,” saying beforehand that “the main focus is our defense in the war . . . and our shared view of diplomatic prospects” and that “Europe must be part of the negotiations and must be strong.” EU capitals, he notes, are debating “a possible shared envoy to engage in any talks,” while defense ministers meet in Cyprus to discuss “how to support Kyiv.”
  •  According to the author, attempted US‑brokered talks “have stalled, with few outcomes,” and Zelenskyy even invited “Kremlin‑connected oligarch Roman Abramovich… for talks in Kyiv” as a gesture of seriousness, but “Putin rebuffed the invitation” and called Zelenskyy’s open letter “somewhat rude.” Putin has instead “vowed that Russia’s superior resources will eventually wear down Ukraine’s resistance,” despite four years of war leaving his forces in control of “around just one‑fifth of the country.”
  •  European capitals are pushing “harder for peace talks amid concerns that Russia is seeking to escalate the conflict,” Foy writes, citing a Russian drone strike on “a storage site for spent nuclear fuel near the former Chornobyl power plant,” which Zelenskyy called “deliberate.” Yet “convincing Putin to sit down and talk about a ceasefire seems remote,” as the Russian president said, “I honestly just don’t see or understand how Russia could trust people who have been talking about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia for years.” 

“‘You can stop your war’: Zelenskyy’s open letter to Putin – in full”, The Guardian, 06.05.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

  • Zelensky frames the war as “your personal choice – a war without a real cause,” but insists “we in Ukraine do not want a permanent war. We know very well that life without war is infinitely better. And we want to achieve that.” He tells Putin, “Do not be afraid to take the path out of this war. That is the main thing that is required of you now,” while warning that if Putin refuses, “Ukraine will continue fighting for its existence.”
  • On negotiations, Zelensky writes: “Ukraine proposes to end this war. This must be done honestly, with dignity, and with guarantees that the war will not be reignited.” He calls for “direct engagement between us – and you,” adding, “I am proposing a meeting” in a neutral country such as Switzerland, Türkiye, or an Arab state, and argues that “it would be logical to involve” Europe and that “the United States must be part of the process.”
  • Zelensky says “the frontline today is the line from which diplomacy must begin,” declaring that “Ukraine is ready for a full ceasefire for the duration of the negotiations” and “ready for an all-for-all exchange of prisoners of war,” alongside “serious steps” to return deported civilians and children. He closes, “You can stop your war.”

“Zelensky’s Pen Pal Diplomacy”, Alexandra Sharp, Foreign Policy, 06.05.26.

  • Sharp reports that Volodymyr Zelensky published “an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin… offering to hold in-person negotiations,” writing, “Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us—and you. I am proposing a meeting.” Arguing that “the United States is fully focused on the issue of Iran,” Zelensky warned “it would be wrong to simply wait until the war in Europe returns to the center of its attention,” the author notes.
  • The letter mixed outreach and ridicule: Zelensky mocked that “after 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll,” told Putin that “fatigue with you will only grow,” and charged that “you are the first ruler of Russia to turn to Pyongyang for assistance,” Sharp writes. He also warned, “You will not have enough money or political capital to keep buying the loyalty of Russians the way you have for the past 26 years.”
  • Putin replied in St. Petersburg that “I don’t see the point in meeting,” accusing Kyiv of seeking talks to “prevent the further advancement of Russian troops,” according to Sharp. Trump, by contrast, said “it would be very good if they met. They should get it done,” while France announced trilateral talks with Zelensky in London.

“A Question Swirling Around Putin’s Big Conference: Could the War End?” Ivan Nechepurenko, The New York Times, 06.05.26.

  • Nechepurenko writes that, despite Putin recently saying the war is “moving toward its conclusion” and “coming to an end,” Russia’s elite at the St. Petersburg economic forum see a crossroads: either “halt the conflict” or “prolong and escalate” it, which would “require many more sacrifices… including more intense economic pain and an unpopular military mobilization.” A leading government economist says that ending the war and its huge spending “would cause a depression,” while continuing it would mean “resorting to aspects of Soviet‑style state planning.”
  • Putin’s own signals point toward a hard line. He told news agencies that “Russian troops are advancing along the entire line of contact” and that it is up to Ukraine to accept terms he claims were agreed with Trump in Alaska, including leaving Donbas—terms Kyiv rejects. He dismissed Zelensky’s open letter proposing a cease‑fire and direct talks as “creating an environment where it’s impossible to hold any personal meetings at all.”
  • The forum exposed a sharpening split between technocrats and hawks. Some, like state banker Igor Shuvalov, warn that “technological leadership is built on freedom, not on total state control” and caution against “a return to Soviet‑style economic planning.” By contrast, former spy Andrei Bezrukov urges Russia to “recognize that in the coming years, perhaps two decades, we will be at war” and to “build our state system and our economy” for permanent conflict, while moderator Konstantin Malofeev raised the prospect of using nuclear weapons to avoid “colonization” by the West.

"What Putin's rejection of Ukraine's call for talks means for efforts to end Russia's war," Nick Schifrin with comments from Angela Stent, PBS News Hour, 06.05.26.

  • “He wants to showcase Russia as a country that you want to invest in. And yet, if you see all these other things going on, you have to wonder what it means to invest in a country which is being hit by Ukrainian drones,” Angela Stent said.
  • “Putin's line on this has always been, I'm not going to meet Zelenskyy until we have signed all the agreements, and the subtext is, until Donald Trump has persuaded Zelenskyy to give up all this territory. So, we really haven't gotten any further in towards a negotiation,” Stent said.
  • “Putin [is] signaling that he believes that Russia can still prevail. And the Ukrainians are -- certainly, they have momentum, both with all the drone strikes and the fact that they have been taking back territory from the Russians. So they are doing better, but they haven't won yet either, and this could be -- still go on for a very long time,” Stent said.

“As Russia fails to achieve war aims in Ukraine, Putin needs a way out”, Catherine Belton, The Washington Post, 06.02.26.

  • Belton reports that “pressure is mounting on Russian President Vladimir Putin over how to end his war in Ukraine as Moscow’s battlefield offensive stalls, financial resources dwindle and more frequent Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia exacerbate growing public dissatisfaction.” A Russian academic close to senior diplomats said, “We can only speak of stagnation,” while Tatiana Stanovaya argued that “Russia’s military advantage is beginning to dissipate” and that “to a great degree, escalation is the only way to respond to a situation which you can’t control.”
  • Belton writes Russian analysts and one of the European officials said Moscow could be using the threat of escalation to try to coax the United States into resuming peace talks, in which the Kremlin is counting on the Trump administration to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into withdrawing forces from the heavily fortified Donetsk region. “But this isn’t going to happen,” Stanovaya told Beltom. “I can’t imagine it will.”

“In the Smoke of SPIEF: How Putin Drove Himself into the Anchorage Trap,” Tatyana Stanovaya, Carnegie Politika, 06.08.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated,

  • “Putin’s position remains unchanged: there is no alternative to Anchorage. Ukraine must withdraw its troops from Donbas, and only then will the war stop, creating an opportunity to discuss a “lasting peace,” which should be finalized in a “document of historic significance.” Russia does not need a ceasefire, since Moscow sees it only as a way to halt the Russian offensive and buy time for Kyiv. Putin will not meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, and in general the ruling circles in Ukraine do not want peace, from which follows the necessity of a change of power.”
  • According to Stanovaya “Russia is ready to acknowledge Europe’s participation in negotiations as a mediator only if the Europeans act “within the framework of the Anchorage agreements.” That is, European capitals must start persuading Kyiv to withdraw its troops from Donbas.”
  • As a result, Stanovaya writes, “Putin is getting ever more deeply bogged down in the “Anchorage trap” — an imaginary deal is becoming the only option for the Kremlin and at the same time is growing less and less realistic.”
  • “All this refutes the notion that Putin, aware of mounting difficulties, is now looking for a way out of the critical situation and only needs help in finding it. In reality, the Russian president does not consider his position critical at all and sincerely believes in inevitable victory. He is prepared to pursue it both by military and diplomatic means, but in any case only on Moscow’s terms,” according to Stanovaya.
  • In Putin’s view, as described by Stanovaya, “The West is decaying, the United States is losing hegemony, Ukraine is falling apart, its army is disintegrating, Europe is in chaos, Russia is advancing on all fronts, victory is inevitable, the economy will hold out, the people will support [the government]. Under such conditions, no concessions should be expected from Putin, no matter how much the situation might worsen in the future. The Russian president is convinced that there will always be enough resources, and if patience runs out, this will be followed not by a softening, but by a new escalation.”

“Plenary session of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum” with Vladimir Putin, Kremlin, 06.05.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Putin said, “Does Kiev not know that, since April 1 of this year, the Lugansk People’s Republic has been fully under the control of the Russian Federation and Russian forces, while less than 15 percent of the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic remains under Kiev’s control? We are steadily and confidently moving toward achieving these tasks, and there is no doubt we will accomplish this.” “The same applies to other goals that we intend to achieve through negotiations – and I am talking about denazification.”
  • Asked about Zelensky’s open letter proposing talks, Putin mocked references to his age and time in power, said a business envoy had recently relayed Zelensky’s private request for a meeting but that he saw “no merit in such a meeting,” and argued the letter’s “rudeness” and simultaneous attacks made talks “virtually impossible.” He insisted any future summit should only “attend the signing” of agreements worked out by specialists and that key issues “must ultimately be resolved between Russia and Ukraine,” with outside powers only as guarantors.

Vladimir Putin’s “Meeting with heads of international news agencies”, Kremlin, 06.04.26. Clues from Russian Views

  • On the war, Putin said “Russian troops are advancing along the entire line of contact” adding that there is “not a single place where Russian troops are not advancing.” He gave specific numbers: Russian-controlled territory now includes “100 percent” of the Luhansk “People’s Republic,” “over 85 percent” of Donetsk, and “80 percent” of the Zaporizhzhia region, with a recent net gain of “2,440 square kilometers.” He asserted Ukraine has a “disastrous shortage of personnel,” citing monthly losses of “around 40,000” versus “15,000–16,000” newly mobilized, “about 14,000” returning from hospital, and “around 20,000” deserters each month, and said over “200,000 criminal cases” for desertion had been opened.
  • On negotiations, Putin repeatedly referenced a U.S.-brokered framework from the Anchorage meeting with Trump, saying Washington had asked if Russia would accept certain compromises and that “Russia agrees to the compromises discussed in Anchorage.” He argued a deal now depends on Kyiv, claiming Ukraine’s leadership “is not interested in stopping the hostilities” for domestic political reasons and that peace would trigger “internal political strife and the struggle for power.” He also addressed Zelensky’s open letter indirectly, questioning his constitutional legitimacy once a peace treaty is at stake and saying any agreement must be signed by someone “fully legitimate,” while stressing that talks do not require a cease-fire: “Negotiations can take place while military actions continue.”

“Anchorage Has Lost Its Spirit: International Diplomacy on Ukraine Hits a Dead End,” Sergei Strokan, Kommersant, 06.07.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Strokan reports that President Donald Trump, speaking on Air Force One, said that Russia and Ukraine should “sort it out themselves,” adding that he had “already helped” them reach this point, and that while “we will all be involved” later — including Special Envoy Witkoff and Vice President J.D. Vance — he is now “not against” a direct Putin–Zelensky meeting. He contrasts this with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s testimony to Congress that the US is “not a neutral mediator” but supports Kyiv while pressuring Russia, and that the invasion has become for Moscow “a strategic catastrophe” in which Russia “will definitely not achieve the goals they set on the first day.”
  • Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov calls Rubio’s assessment “very strange,” insisting that in Anchorage “the proposal made by the Americans was accepted by the president of Russia,” that it was “not one hundred per cent what we want” but a first step to cease hostilities, and that Moscow was ready to discuss the US side’s “27‑point” document. He argues that Rubio’s admission that Washington supports Ukraine means that “Biden’s war has become Trump’s war,” adding that after such statements “there is no difference, essentially, between the US approach and that of Europe.”
  • With US leadership in mediation “lost,” Strokan writes, Europeans have begun talking about negotiations while still issuing “ultimatums to Russia.” He notes that Germany’s chancellor says it is “natural” Europeans sit at the table but that “what is lacking is President Putin’s readiness to enter into negotiations,” while Emmanuel Macron speaks of “building a dialogue with Russia” on security and Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Putin is “open to dialogue” and that Europeans “need only pick up the phone,” yet Strokan concludes that “the window of diplomacy remains closed,” pointing to Zelensky’s open letter to Putin, which the Russian president called “boorish” and said urged him “not to follow the agreements reached in Anchorage” and to “seek real guarantors… in Europe.”

Alexander Dugin on Why Negotiations Are Stalled, via @ejdailyru, 06.08.26.

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

“Six security threats to the Black Sea region,” Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Interfax-Ukraine, 05.31.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

  • The first threat identified by Zaluzhnyi is the “lack of NATO strategy in the Black Sea region.” By continuing to treat the Black Sea as “an ‘inland lake of Russia,’ NATO is actually making it possible to expand Russia’s combat capabilities,” he writes, arguing that a long‑standing focus on “cooperation and dialogue rather than containment and defense” opened space for Russian expansion into the North Caucasus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
  • Second, he calls the EU’s Black Sea approach ineffective: the 2025 strategy and White Paper‑2030 “remain declarative and ineffective, and therefore only encourage Russia to take more active actions.” Without “a body with real powers of influence and… a real response mechanism,” even ideas such as a Black Sea Maritime Security Center stay on paper, leaving critical maritime infrastructure exposed and tempting a postwar push to “restore interaction with Russia” that could fracture Euro‑Atlantic unity.
  • The third threat is “the possibility of reopening the strait to the passage of Russian warships” after a cease-fire. Turkey’s strict application of the Montreux Convention has so far “prevented Russia from strengthening its fleet,” but a political settlement without firm constraints would let Moscow “regain control over trade flows,” threaten Ukraine’s economic viability, and “restore its naval power in the Black Sea and prepare for the next stage of the conflict.”
  • Fourth, Zaluzhnyi warns of “the growth of China’s influence.” Beijing is “gradually and cautiously expanding its presence,” mainly through attractive economic projects that could “lead to a completely different geopolitical formation in the region” and eventually “the loss of critical infrastructure first, and then fundamental allies and institutions.” He stresses that “it is thanks to China that Russia still has the ability to kill Ukrainians and support its own economy while circumventing the sanctions pressure.”
  • Fifth, he identifies “Russia’s desire to dominate the Black Sea” as the main destabilizing factor. For Moscow, the Black Sea is “a strategic platform necessary for its global ambitions,” and its intervention in littoral states’ affairs—via political, informational, and economic manipulation, exploiting “social, ethnic, and economic vulnerabilities” and cultivating local intermediaries—poses “an absolute threat to the formation of a security environment,” as Ukraine’s experience has shown.
  • Sixth, Zaluzhnyi highlights the “wide availability of modern weapons and technology,” especially cheap naval and air drones whose cost is “hundreds of times less than the cost of an interceptor missile and thousands of times less than the cost of a damaged vessel,” creating “the problem of economic exhaustion.” In compact seas and coastal zones, even limited use of robotic systems can match or exceed a classical fleet, and with 90% of world trade moving by sea, he argues, securing sea lanes and ports—and preventing Russia from dominating the Azov–Black Sea region—must become a “direct strategic priority.”

“Against Russia, Europe needs a peace-through-strength strategy,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, The Economist, 06.07.26.

China-Russia: Allied. or aligned?

“Wartime Footing: A Two-Front Strategy to Confront China and Russia,” Seth G. Jones, Seamus P. Daniels, Riley McCabe, Daniel Byman, CSIS, 06.08.26.

  • The authors argue that the United States faces “a serious and growing threat from an authoritarian axis led by China and Russia” and that “the U.S. military has lost ‘overmatch’” against China. Xi Jinping has ordered the PLA “to be ready to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan by 2027,” while Russia “continues to wage an aggressive war in Ukraine and a sabotage campaign across Europe.” They contend that “without urgent and rapid changes, the United States risks losing the ability to deter major conflict—especially in the Indo-Pacific—and to fight and win a protracted war in one or more regions.”
  • The report calls for a “two-war planning construct” to “deter and defeat two major powers simultaneously: China in the Indo-Pacific and Russia in Europe,” prioritizing “the Indo-Pacific first and Europe second.” This requires the United States to “expand and modernize its force structure,” “adopt a posture prioritizing dispersed, mobile, and survivable U.S. forces,” and shift the defense industrial base “to a wartime footing,” warning that in CSIS wargames the United States “runs out of some critical long-range precision munitions after roughly a week of a conflict with China.”
  • They urge a new offset strategy built around “Air-Sea Battle in the Indo-Pacific and Air-Land Battle in Europe” that mixes “advanced and lower-cost unmanned systems with long-range precision strike and nuclear modernization,” and identify five industrial priorities: “a high-low mix of undersea capabilities,” “a high-low mix of air capabilities,” “long-range precision strike systems,” “air defense systems to counter missiles and UASs,” and enabling technologies in AI, quantum, space and cyber. Echoing historical warnings, the authors conclude that “peace is secured only through strength” and that “delays will only raise the costs and risks” as China and Russia arm.

“The Russia-China Partnership Was Make in America, Ted Galen Carpenter, The American Conservative, 06.07.26.

  • Carpenter contends that today’s deepening Russia–China strategic partnership—highlighted by a recent summit where Putin and Xi signed “over 40 cooperation agreements”—is “largely made in America,” the product of “clumsy and inept” U.S. policies that pushed Moscow into Beijing’s arms. He traces the drift to NATO expansion despite earlier assurances, the 2014 Ukraine crisis, and the 2022 invasion turning into a “full‑on U.S.-led proxy war,” followed by a global U.S. campaign to isolate Russia that most of the Global South rejected.
  • Beijing responded not by joining sanctions but by boosting Russian energy imports and expanding security cooperation, including frequent joint exercises, thereby “sabotag[ing]” Western economic‑strangulation efforts. At the same time, Washington’s increasingly hard line on China—over Taiwan, trade, and other disputes—has convinced both Moscow and Beijing that “the United States represents the principal threat.”
  • Carpenter argues that a “smart U.S. foreign policy team” would have eased pressure on Russia, since China is the more serious long‑term challenger. Instead, Washington has created a situation in which Russia accepts a junior role in a partnership “directed against it,” and must now try, belatedly, to weaken that axis.

“Relations in the Triangle,” Ivan Timofeev, RIAC/Kommersant, 02.06.26. Clues from Russian Views. (RIAC is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Timofeev argues that the Moscow–Beijing–Washington triangle “forms the foundation of the contemporary world order,” but is “clearly asymmetric:” “the United States and Russia are in a state of confrontation, whose nerve is defined by the Ukrainian conflict;” “the United States and China are economically interdependent, yet view each other as long‑term rivals;” and “relations between Russia and China, by contrast, are friendly,” with a “truly unprecedented level of partnership.”
  • He writes that China is “critically important for Russia as a source of industrial imports and a market for Russian raw‑material and technological exports under Western sanctions,” while “Russia is needed by China as a reliable rear area amid a possible future confrontation with Washington.” In this configuration, “China’s position is the strongest:” it “deepens partnership with Moscow” but “is in no hurry to escalate with Washington,” instead “effectively countering U.S. attempts to impose its rules of the game.”
  • Timofeev contends that Putin’s recent visit showed that “Russia and China are groping toward a new philosophy of international relations,” and that their joint declaration on “a multipolar world and a new type of international relations” marks “a step toward a systemic alternative” to U.S.-centric order. Trump’s China visit, he argues, showed a U.S. shift from frontal attack to a “more flexible line,” accepting détente as “the best scenario,” but “the basic configuration of the triangle remains the same,” with Beijing still “in the most advantageous position.”

“Russian‑-Chinese Dialogue: Functional and Regional Dimensions,” Russian International Affairs Council & Fudan University Institute of International Studies, 05.27.26 (Conclusion section). Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (RIAC is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • The authors argue that by the mid‑2020s relations have entered a “stabilization phase,” marked by “slowing growth of quantitative indicators of co‑operation” and a need for “qualitative transformation.” Despite sanctions, low commodity prices and weakening global institutions, “China’s position as Russia’s key trading partner is indisputable,” while energy co‑operation remains “the strategic foundation” of the relationship, with Russia retaining “leading positions on the Chinese oil and gas market” and expanding into “carbon‑neutral energy, high technologies and applied research.”
  • In finance, they highlight “significant progress” in “settlements in national currencies,” a rising share of the yuan on Russia’s FX market and “the desire of the parties to build a more autonomous financial infrastructure,” but caution that “instability of payment channels, asymmetry of financial integration and the immaturity of risk‑hedging instruments” sharply limit deeper integration. Politically, they say bilateral co‑operation in 2024–25 was “unprecedented,” yet still produces relatively few concrete regional projects, and will “inevitably” be shaped by U.S. policy, requiring both sides to “counteract the negative manifestations of American foreign policy.”
  • Regionally, the report stresses that Russia and China often move in parallel rather than jointly. On the EU, it notes that Russia faces “steadily increasing restrictions” and exclusion of key exports, whereas China–EU ties mix “limited forms of co‑operation” with rising competition. With India, Russia’s ties show “stable growth” while Sino‑Indian tensions act as a “constant irritant” requiring a “more flexible and pragmatic approach.” In the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, Moscow and Beijing “pursue close political goals” but with divergent methods: China emphasizing trade, infrastructure and high tech, Russia focusing on security, energy and “tactical, often reactive” engagement. The authors conclude that if both are “interested in a qualitative transformation of the partnership,” they must move “from joint declarations to joint actions” and from mere similarity of positions to their “diffusion on an equal and mutually beneficial basis.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Missile defense:

Nuclear arms:

"Russia’s Nuclear Signaling in 2026 and Implications for European Security," Aylin Matlé and András Rácz, German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), 06.03.26.

  • The authors write that “in May 2026, Russia took a series of nuclear signaling steps toward both Ukraine and the West,” and that these “measures strongly correlated with negative developments for Russia in its war against Ukraine.” They note that Russia’s May 12 RS‑28 Sarmat ICBM test “was technically not directly connected to developments in Ukraine,” yet “the way the Kremlin communicated it was most certainly nuclear signaling,” as Putin used the successful launch to make “lengthy remarks about Russia’s nuclear capabilities being superior to the ones of the West,” according to the authors.
  • Matlé and Rácz argue that the sudden May 19–21 strategic nuclear exercise, involving “64,000 soldiers, 200 various missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 surface vessels, and 13 submarines, of which eight were strategic nuclear missile carriers,” again followed “detrimental developments for Russia in its war against Ukraine,” including Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow and the disruption of the May 9 Victory Day parade. They state that “participating forces were composed of the Strategic Missile Forces, both the Northern and Pacific Fleets, the Command of the Long-Range Aviation, and units from the Leningrad and Central military districts,” and conclude that “taken together, the ICBM test, the exercises, and the combined strike of May 24… constitute clear signaling steps from Moscow… about the Kremlin’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if seriously threatened,” even though “the likelihood of the most recent exercise serving as a pretense for a nuclear escalation against Ukraine was relatively low.”
  • Looking to European security, the authors contend that Russia’s “doctrine of ‘escalating to de-escalate’ should prompt several policy responses,” warning that this doctrine “even allows for the potential use of nuclear weapons in the case of a conventional attack if such an assault were to ‘endanger the very existence of the Russian Federation.’” They argue that “Germany, together with its European allies, must invest more rapidly in NATO’s conventional deterrence posture,” calling above all for “heavy investment in deep-precision-strike capabilities” and lamenting that “Germany lacks sufficient nuclear expertise across politics, bureaucracy, and the wider strategic community.” Matlé and Rácz say that Europe’s debate on deterrence “can no longer remain purely conceptual but increasingly requires actionable answers,” including “regular French nuclear consultation formats,” “joint scenario-based exercises,” and “visible peacetime deployments of French nuclear-capable aircraft,” to signal that “nuclear coercion against Europe could not only trigger an American response, but could also entail a European nuclear dimension.”

“Escalate to Survive?: Nuclear First Use in Contemporary Great Power Conflict,” Fiona S. Cunningham and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, International Security, May 2026.

  • Cunningham and Ven Bruusgaard ask “why do great powers believe it is necessary to have nuclear first-use options?” and “what explains the different types of first-use options in the nuclear force postures of Russia and the United States?” They write that “existing literature… does not fully explain variation in first-use options” and argue instead that “China, Russia, and the United States seek (or refrain from seeking) nuclear first-use options for divergent reasons that correspond with differences in their security environments.”
  • “Acute conventional and geographic vulnerabilities explain Russia's first-use options, which are optimized for state survival,” the authors contend, while “China has weak reasons” to adopt first use because it “prefers non-nuclear means” and “has not developed a clear first-use option.” By contrast, “the United States maintains options for first use, largely because of its extended deterrence commitments to allies and beliefs about damage limitation,” according to the authors.
  • The authors warn that “these differences in great power nuclear strategy show that the security dilemma and ‘mirror imaging’… are more pernicious sources of escalation risk than the existing literature recognizes,” revealing a “gap between one great power's expectations about another great power's nuclear threshold and the best evidence available,” which “might lead to catastrophic results in a crisis.”

“The ‘Karaganov Debate:’ How Policy Entrepreneurs Shape Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine”, Alexander Graef and Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernandez, Global Studies Quarterly, 04.24.26.

  • “The authors argue that [in the debate on whether to liberalize Russia’s nuclear doctrine] bureaucratic insiders leveraged the efforts of outsiders [such as Karaganov] to highlight the failures of Russia’s deterrence posture and bring the issue to the attention of key decision-makers. In turn, these outsiders amplified internal signals and assumed roles useful to both the military bureaucracy and the Kremlin. This dynamic served three functions:”
    • “it allowed the military to indirectly introduce contentious concepts into the policy-process;”
    • “it offered the Kremlin insight into elite preferences;”
    • “it enabled societal actors to contribute to foreign policymaking under conditions of personalist authoritarianism.” This was not the first time such enabling occurred. Using his (now expired) seat in the science board of Russia’s Security Council, Karaganov had participated in debating provisions of earlier strategic documents.
  • “By analyzing the “Karaganov debate,” we have demonstrated that agenda-setting can emerge through such interactions rather than solely through top-down administrative processes [in a personalist autocracy that Putin’s Russia is]. The “Karaganov debate” thus illustrates a form of policy co-production in which public interventions shape how problems are framed, prioritized, and sequenced, even though ultimate decision-making authority remains firmly concentrated in the presidency and the wider bureaucracy.” The article’s conclusions are drawn from examination of a single case in a single country. Thus, it cannot have external validity and, therefore, any inference of cross-country theoretical assumptions from it should be contested.

“‘Orthodox oligarch’ Konstantin Malofeev presented scenarios for Russia’s future at SPIEF. The ‘good’ scenario includes a nuclear strike,” Meduza, 06.04.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Meduza reports that Konstantin Malofeev, founder of the Tsargrad TV channel, unveiled a report on Russia’s future at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, produced by the Tsargrad Institute with “experts” including ideologue Alexander Dugin and Vologda governor Georgy Filimonov. The report sets out three scenarios to 2036 and 2050: an inertial track (“Everything goes as it goes”), a “bad” scenario (“Russia’s enemies have implemented their strategy”), and a “good” scenario (“We are doing everything in the best possible way”).
  • In the inertial scenario, by 2036 the war with Ukraine is frozen, there is “no precondition for a quick victory,” and a new arms race is under way; by 2050, the authors predict US or Chinese hegemony, NATO’s collapse, “technological control” by Western AI, and a rising risk of Russia’s destruction in war. In the “bad” scenario, by 2036 Russia loses the war, Ukraine joins NATO, and new wars erupt in South Ossetia and Transnistria, with only “regional sovereignty” remaining; by 2050, Russia is “colonized,” loses all sovereignty, and faces a unipolar world with a military bloc built on the EU.
  • The “good” scenario, however, explicitly foresees “the use of nuclear weapons” by 2036, the breakup of the EU, seizure of Kyiv and Odesa, and the “complete subordination of Ukraine” via annexation, buffer status, or a new East Slavic state on its territory. By 2050, this path supposedly leads to Russia guaranteeing “world security and justice,” forming its own Eurasian macro‑region and a “tri-unity of the Russian people.” Malofeev told the audience that nuclear use “is not an inertial scenario, we consider it a good one,” and he and his co‑authors propose a 10‑point program to reach it, including “de‑Westernization,” autocracy, a family cult, depopulating cities, and a new constitution.
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Counterterrorism:

  • No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

  • No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

“New AI espionage powers trigger Putin camera scare,” Mehul Srivastava and Christopher Miller, Financial Times, 06.08.26.

  • The authors report that Russia’s security services “shut parts of a special surveillance system protecting President Vladimir Putin and his closest aides” after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination showed how AI‑driven analysis of traffic cameras could be weaponized. Alexander Bortnikov warned regional security chiefs that Russia’s “vast surveillance apparatus had become a vulnerability,” saying “the recent elimination of senior Iranian officials… is a clear warning sign” and that their locations were identified “through software ‘backdoors’ in Tehran’s video surveillance systems,” according to the article.
  • Srivastava and Miller describe a “nascent technological leap:” AI systems that can “parse through millions of hours of video, collected by thousands of cameras, in order to find and surveil targets.” A European official calls this “the holy grail of surveillance,” saying, “We are able to look for behavior, not objects,” while Conntour CEO Matan Goldner explains it is “the first time in history that we can communicate using language with computers about what they see.”
  • The authors write that officials in multiple countries are “alarmed” that CCTV networks have become a “keyhole through which their adversaries can scan vast cities,” even as Russia already faced “major concerns about Putin’s personal safety” from Ukrainian hacks of traffic cameras. A Five Eyes security official is quoted saying of China’s massive camera build‑out, “They’re the ones putting the cameras up—all we have to do is find a way in. And there is always a way in.”
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Energy exports from CIS:

Climate change:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Russia Rails Against the West but Welcomes Candace Owens and Andrew Tate,” Ivan Nechepurenko, New York Times, 06.05.26.

  • Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has used the economic forum to show how it can withstand the pressure of Western sanctions by relying more on internal resources and by pivoting toward countries in the Middle East and Asia. And yet Russia is still going out of its way to welcome some Americans, although U.S. sanctions remain in place and Moscow has yet to persuade the Trump administration to get back to business.
  • During this year’s economic forum, a session on Russian-American cultural ties was headlined by the first U.S. official to attend the event since 2018. The official, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., holds a relatively little known role, as chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts. He is advising the White House on projects that include the ballroom expansion and the proposed triumphal arch in Washington. The conference was also attended by Candace Owens, an American right-wing podcaster and commentator. Both Mr. Cook and Ms. Owens were met with great fanfare in St. Petersburg. 
  • Attendees concluded that it was time to restore cultural ties between Moscow and Washington. Panelists suggested that a renewal could be inaugurated with a performance by Mr. Gergiev in Mr. Trump’s new White House ballroom or under the proposed triumphal arch, depending on which project was completed first.
  • Beyond the economic conference, Russia has rolled out the red carpet for… Andrew Tate, a British American social media personality. Mr. Tate, a notorious figure in the toxic online space known as the “manosphere,” is facing multiple criminal and legal proceedings, including charges of human trafficking. 
  • Speaking about Mr. Tate’s arrival, Roman Antonovsky, a Russian right-wing blogger, wrote on his Telegram channel, “We are supposedly ridding ourselves of worshiping the West, yet we continue to grovel before some Western clowns.”
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Russia’s Elite Is Souring on the War. Putin Doesn’t Seem to Care,” Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, 06.03.26.

  • “Russia’s inability to break through the stalemate in Ukraine is becoming so evident that significant voices in the Russian establishment have publicly started to call for an end to the conflict… So far, there is no sign that, in the fifth year of Europe’s bloodiest conflict in generations, he [Putin] is ready to climb down from the original objectives of his ‘special military operation.’ But that could change if the tide of war turns further in Kyiv’s favor,” Trofimov writes.
  • “Some of Russia’s best-known hawks have also become much more open in expressing a belief that Moscow simply doesn’t have the capacity to achieve an outright victory against Ukraine,” according to the author.
  • “One of those is Oleg Tsaryov, a former Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia in 2014… In a Telegram post last month, Tsaryov warned that Russian propaganda had fostered a dangerous illusion about an inevitable victory against Ukraine,” Trofimov reports.
  • “Another hard-liner, historian and former Kremlin official Aleksey Chadaev, who runs the Ushkuynik drone-warfare research center, noted that pursuing the current course of war ‘is not just a path to ‘non-victory,’ but to a full-scale defeat.’ He has called for a pause so that Russia can reorganize itself for the next round,” the author writes.
  • “Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, last month published a widely discussed piece in Russia’s foremost foreign-policy journal. He argued that Ukraine will inevitably remain an anti-Russian, pro-Western country, especially after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or maimed in the war. He said the goal of installing a friendly regime in Kyiv—one of Putin’s original war objectives—is no longer realistic,” Trofimov reports.
  • “On Monday, the Telegram account of retired general Andrey Gurulyov, a prominent member of the Russian parliament, posted a bitter treatise about the stalemate in Ukraine and about the unwarranted optimism of Russian commanders wearing ‘rose-colored glasses.’ Hours later, Gurulyov went on Max, the new Russian social messenger, to say his Telegram account had been hacked. That was met with widespread disbelief by other Russian commentators, who suggested that the retired general had been forced to censor the inconvenient truth,” Trofimov writes.

“Russia’s Elite Conflict Over Internet Restrictions Does Not Herald Regime Collapse,” Alexandra Prokopenko, Carnegie Politika, 06.05.26.

  • Prokopenko argues that the much‑discussed dispute over Internet shutdowns “was not an existential crisis” but “a clash between two groups of bureaucrats seeking to protect their interests,” stressing that “it was not a fight for freedom, nor an attempt to seize power.” The security establishment “came out on top,” she writes, with online restrictions “normalized” as the FSB and government are told to keep key functions running while cuts are imposed.
  • She notes that Moscow’s 19‑day March blackout angered “officials in the presidential administration who need the internet (and the messaging app Telegram) to prepare for September parliamentary elections,” as well as the propaganda bloc under Alexei Gromov. These actors used leaks and even “Putin’s own approval rating” as leverage, with government‑linked pollsters suddenly reporting sharp drops that Prokopenko calls “a bureaucratic decision” rather than pure public‑opinion data.
  • Putin’s April order to ensure “uninterrupted operation of critical services… when the internet was ‘restricted’” did not end shutdowns but “institutionalized” the conflict, assigning it to both Prime Minister Mishustin and FSB chief Bortnikov. “The security establishment has prevailed,” she concludes, while their civilian opponents received only a delay to VPN‑traffic fees and “the frustration of millions… was just fuel for a bureaucratic struggle.”

“In Russia, Rage Is Boiling Over,” Andrei Zakharov, The New York Times, 06.08.26.

  • Zakharov reports that Russian authorities are blocking major messaging apps and pushing citizens onto MAX, “a new state-endorsed messenger platform” whose traffic is “presumed to be fully accessible to the F.S.B.,” while imposing frequent regional internet shutdowns. These moves, combined with rising war costs and record Ukrainian drone strikes, mean that “these internet restrictions have left everybody angry, and the rage is boiling over,” including “the core of people who favored the war against Ukraine.”
  • He writes that “restricting Telegram seems to have been a bridge too far,” since it had become “the top Russian media app” and “a central means of communication for Russian soldiers,” and notes that even pro‑war users now call Putin “grandpa,” a previously opposition-only slur. With “roughly 60 million Russians” familiar with VPNs and about “40% of internet users” relying on one, Zakharov argues that by breaking the tacit deal to stay out of private life, “Mr. Putin… was destroying a central foundation of his own power.”

“Vladimir Putin’s Second-Biggest Headache,” Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy, 06.04.26.

  • Caryl argues that “another problem brewing in the background” besides the failing war in Ukraine is “a potentially explosive succession crisis in Chechnya,” where Ramzan Kadyrov, “49, is suffering from a serious illness, probably terminal, that could remove him from the scene at any moment.” Kadyrov’s chosen heir, “his 18-year-old son Adam, is too young to assume the throne,” the author notes, in a region with “deeply ingrained blood feud traditions” and exiled rivals “patiently waiting to even the score.”
  • The author stresses the scale of Putin’s Chechen bet: “The Kremlin transfers $3.8 billion to the republic each year, making up around 92% of its total budget,” funding Kadyrov’s “33,000”‑strong personal security forces. Yet “recent statistics show that Chechnya has suffered the lowest war casualty rate of any province in the Russian Federation,” which, Michael P. Dennis told Caryl, shows “just how much slack Putin is willing to give his minion.”
  • Caryl concludes that “it is hard to imagine” Moscow believes a post‑Kadyrov transition “can be smoothly managed,” recalling that even with his father’s preparation Ramzan “needed at least five years to subdue his enemies,” and warns that “the potential for serious volatility in Putin’s Russia is growing by the day.”

"What’s Eating ‘Putin’s Brain’?" Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 06.06.26.

  • “No Russian thinker has worked harder than Aleksandr Dugin to rationalize the invasion of Ukraine… Dugin came up with a whole philosophical system, known as “neo-Eurasianism,” to explain why Russia, the country with the largest landmass in the world, would need to steal land from its neighbors and kill many thousands of people in the process.” 
  • “By law, Russians are prohibited from publicly calling the war a war rather than a “special military operation,” and Putin has urged them to believe that Ukraine started it. Still, the national capacity for self-deception has its limits, and recent developments suggest that Putin has found them.”
  • “Ukrainian drones now pummel industrial targets across Russia nightly, shutting down oil refineries, snarling logistics, and forcing airports to close for days at a time. More than 1 million Russians have been killed or badly wounded in the war, a toll too great to hide—almost every family has been affected. The gap between what Russians know to be true about the war and what the Kremlin says about it has grown so wide that even warmongers like Dugin struggle to bridge it. “It shows that everyone is beyond exhausted,” Mikhail Zygar… told me. “There is no one left who wants the war to continue, with the possible exception of Putin and Dugin.””
  • “But the consequences of the war, at least in terms of Russia’s isolation, are impossible for Putin to hide. Before the 2022 invasion, the St. Petersburg forum often attracted the leaders of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful countries, including China, France, Germany, India, and Japan. This year, Putin shared the stage with the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania, the only heads of state who’d deigned to come. It was not the image of power and influence Russia wanted to project. But in the fifth year of his forever war, it seems to be the best that Putin can do.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Defense and aerospace:

  • See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

  • No significant developments.

     

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

“Erdogan and Putin, the End of an Unlikely Partnership,” Gonul Tol, The New York Times, 06.07.26.

  • Tol writes that the Syria war “helped to forge an unlikely partnership” in which Turkey and Russia “tolerated and reinforced the other’s presence,” noting that when Turkey invaded northern Syria in 2016, “it was able to do so only because Russia… allowed it,” while Ankara in turn “imposed limits on its help to the rebels.” For Putin, she argues, the benefit was Turkish acquiescence to “Russia asserting its power in Syria,” and for Erdogan, a powerful partner “when his relations with NATO were strained.”
  • The war in Ukraine “has shifted the balance,” Tol contends: “Isolated by the West, Mr. Putin increasingly relied on the Turkish president,” as “Turkey became a hub for Russian trade, investment and energy flows.” The “real turning point,” she writes, came when Assad was ousted in late 2024 and “Russia, bogged down in Ukraine, did not come to his rescue,” leaving Moscow “in the position of negotiating with a government staffed with people it had bombed relentlessly for years,” while Turkey, which backed the rebels, “emerged newly dominant.”
  • Tol notes that Erdogan is now “helping Ukraine to establish a foothold” in the region. Zelenskyy, flying on a Turkish state aircraft, made his first visit to Syria to discuss “military and energy cooperation,” as Turkey helps rebuild the Syrian army “into a modern force that can move beyond decades of Soviet-style influence” and Ukraine exports its expertise in “military production and drone warfare.” Ankara is “no longer balancing between Moscow and NATO,” she concludes, but “tilting the field against Mr. Putin,” and “Ukraine is the beneficiary.”
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Ukraine:

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Russian Annexation of Belarus: Contingency Planning Memorandum,” Thomas Graham, CFR, June 2026.

  • Graham warns that “heightened security concerns over the war in Ukraine, uncertainty about Lukashenko’s succession, and warming ties between the United States and Belarus could lead the Kremlin to conclude that Russia’s security requires formally annexing Belarus within the next two years.” He identifies two contingencies: “creeping, nonconfrontational annexation” as “the logical endpoint of the current trajectory,” and “abrupt, coercive annexation,” which would be “far more destabilizing” and could trigger “popular resistance,” “a major humanitarian exodus,” and “a swifter Russian military buildup on NATO’s borders.”
  • Geography, he argues, is decisive: “A Belarusian buffer helps reduce the risk of direct military confrontation,” so “eliminating it would have far-reaching consequences for the military and strategic landscape in Europe.” Annexation would “increase the direct threat to Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland,” worsen Ukraine’s security, “eliminate Belarus as a buffer” and meeting place, and “send shock waves through the former Soviet space,” pushing states such as Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova toward the West and “complicating U.S. efforts to decrease its military engagement in Europe.”
  • Graham contends that “the challenge for the United States is to pursue its goal without provoking Russia’s annexation of Belarus—put differently, to challenge Russia’s position in Belarus without appearing to do so.” He urges a policy of “creeping independence” for Minsk—“preserving the delicate balance… that sustains the country’s role as a buffer state”—while “begin[ning] formal contingency planning for both the creeping and abrupt annexation of Belarus.” Even if annexation occurs, he writes, Washington should “enhanc[e] NATO’s deterrent posture,” help Ukraine fortify its new border, and still “maintain diplomatic and other channels of communication” with Moscow.

“Is Belarus Really Set to Return to the Ukraine War?,” Artyom Shraibman, Carnegie Politika, 06.02.26.

  • Shraibman notes that while Ukrainian officials warn of a new offensive from Belarus, “military experts and monitoring groups insist there are no indications that Belarus is preparing for a repeat invasion.” He writes that only “about 2,000 Russian troops are permanently stationed in Belarus,” and that any real attack would require “tens of thousands of soldiers and hardware,” which would be “very difficult to do without anyone noticing” and would weaken Russia’s stalled Donbas offensive. Given mines, fortifications, and drones, he argues, “there would be no point in Moscow sending in infantry and tanks to march on Kyiv again.”
  • The author stresses that deeper Belarusian involvement would “untie Kyiv’s hands,” since Belarusian territory “would be a convenient target for Ukrainian drones,” including “military infrastructure and defense industry enterprises” and “two major oil refineries” now serving as a key fuel reserve for European Russia. He believes the more “logical explanation” for Kyiv’s rhetoric is political: Ukraine is “expressing its disapproval of the developing dialogue between Minsk and Washington” and views U.S. sanctions easing and pressure to move Belarusian potash via EU ports as “a travesty of justice.”
  • “By loudly reminding the world that Lukashenko is a military satellite of Putin and a threat to NATO and Ukraine,” Shraibman writes, Kyiv seeks to show “why the Belarusian regime needs to be contained, rather than rewarded,” and to be “the most hawkish country in Europe on Belarus.” He argues Ukraine now feels “incomparably stronger than Belarus,” while Lukashenko, who now offers talks and promises to fight only if attacked, “fears that the current verbal escalation may indeed be a prelude to getting dragged into the war—not by Russia, but by Ukraine.”

“U.S.-Europe split on Belarus is a gift to Putin,” Tatsiana Kulakevich, Asia Times, 06.05.26.

  • Kulakevich argues that the Trump administration’s “dual approach” to Belarus—renewing the national emergency and sanctions framework while easing sanctions in exchange for the release of 250 political prisoners—clashes with the EU’s harder, sanctions‑first line and “gives Lukashenko more room to bargain.” Europe wants sanctions to constrain Belarus “as part of the threat emanating from Russia,” while Washington wants sanctions “flexible enough to produce visible deals,” she writes.
  • The EU’s April 2026 package tightens Belarus‑related measures and links them to Russia sanctions, reflecting fears about Belarus as a sanctions‑evading logistics hub and a “springboard” for Russian attacks. Frontline states like Lithuania and Poland also see Belarus as a border‑security problem, investing in projects such as Poland’s East Shield and the Baltic Defense Line.
  • Kulakevich notes that years of Western pressure have pushed Belarus trade toward Russia and China, making Minsk more dependent on non‑Western partners. In this context, U.S. requests to reopen potash transit and its prisoner‑for‑sanctions‑relief bargaining undercut Europe’s pressure strategy, she concludes, turning political prisoners into leverage with Washington while Lukashenko uses security risks and his role in Russia’s war machine to gain clout with Europe.

“The incredible shrinking influence of Putin’s Russia,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 06.08.26.

  • The FT editors write that Nikol Pashinyan’s “decisive win” in Armenia’s election is “another sign of Russia’s shrinking global influence” since Putin’s “disastrous full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” They say the vote was a “plebiscite” on peace with Azerbaijan and on Pashinyan’s Western tilt, and note that despite Moscow closing Armenian imports, threatening “Ukraine‑style intervention” and deploying disinformation, “it failed.”
  • The FT editors contend that Putin’s attempt to restore “imperial great power status” has instead “turned supposed Ukrainian brothers into unyielding enemies,” weakened Russian positions in Syria, Venezuela, and Mali, and exposed the “no limits” partnership with China as one of growing Russian dependency. Armenia’s defeats over Nagorno‑Karabakh, and Russia’s refusal to intervene despite treaty obligations, “broke” Moscow’s grip and voters “have not forgiven” the betrayal.
  • The FT editors credit Pashinyan for “making a virtue out of bitter defeat” by recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and pursuing peace, but warns Moscow still has levers — trade, gas, bases, infrastructure — and that Georgia’s backsliding is a cautionary tale. They urge the US and EU to stay “fully engaged,” pressing Baku and Ankara to open borders, advancing EU visa liberalization, and deepening trade and investment so Armenians see tangible benefits from turning away from Russia.

“Armenia’s election: A welcome win for Pashinyan, but a difficult road lies ahead,” Ondrej Ditrych, EUISS, 06.08.26.

  • Ditrych writes that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan “won a convincing victory in Sunday’s parliamentary election, which validated his vision of a ‘real Armenia’: democratic, secure and independent within its current borders.” He notes that Civil Contract “received 49.8 % of the popular vote, and likely 64 seats in the new parliament,” calling this “a comfortable majority,” but warns that it “falls just short of the constitutional majority required to call a referendum on a new constitution, which Azerbaijan has made a precondition for signing a peace treaty,” so “the risk persists that the peace process could still stall or even collapse altogether.”
  • The author argues that “the EU has reason to be satisfied: it has consistently supported Pashinyan’s vision,” citing the first EU–Armenia summit in Yerevan, a “hybrid response team” sent “to help safeguard the integrity of the vote,” plans to deploy “EUPM Armenia, a new CSDP mission… to help the country counter foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), illicit finance, and cyber threats,” and a €50 million package plus “practical measures to shield Armenia from economic pressure by Moscow.” At the same time, he stresses that “any sense of EU complacency now that the election is over would be misplaced,” because Russia turned the vote into “a geopolitical battlefield,” using embargoes, gas threats, FIMI tools and NGOs such as “Evrazia” to “remind” Armenians of “existing economic dependencies” and to “spoil the peace process.”
  • Looking ahead, Ditrych says that the loss of seats “should not be seen as a defeat for Civil Contract,” but that without a constitutional majority “Pashinyan may seek to enlist potential defectors from the opposition… or call a snap election once the draft constitution is ready,” while “securing approval in the referendum may be more challenging than securing an electoral victory.” He cautions that “the failure of the peace process could have grave consequences,” including “a new outbreak of conflict and potentially the occupation of Armenia’s Syunik province,” and urges the EU to focus on “three areas”: insisting on “a consolidated and robust democracy” and avoiding “populist and polarizing ‘savior’ politics,” “increas[ing] its support for peace efforts” and connectivity instead of relying on the “unlikely” Trump Road (TRIPP), and “help[ing] Armenia to further reduce its dependencies on Russia” so that Pashinyan’s constrained balancing act can “gradually” expand.

Nezygar’s Telegram post on Armenia, CSTO, and Russia’s 2022 decision on Karabakh, 06.06.26.

  • It’s astonishing that the Kremlin’s strategic mistake in refusing to help Armenia during the fighting in Karabakh in 2022 has still not been properly acknowledged.
  • Let us recall that this strategic mistake has specific names attached to it: Alexander Lukashenko (a proxy force for the Aliyev family), Sergei Shoigu, and Sergei Naryshkin. In September 2022, Armenia officially requested CSTO assistance in connection with the escalation of the conflict in Karabakh, but thanks to Russia and Belarus, the issue was never even put on the agenda.
  • What’s more, Russia actually began to create favorable conditions for the Azerbaijani side instead—the story with the Lachin corridor became the pinnacle of Russia’s refusal to fulfill its allied functions. All this was happening against the backdrop of Azerbaijan’s promise to organize the sale of Russian gas to Germany via Ukraine. Moscow and Minsk were then openly pressuring Pashinyan to join the Union State so that “Russia could fulfill its allied duty.”
  • Yerevan perceived this as outright blackmail, especially against the backdrop of the Karabakh faction’s attempt to carry out a coup and replace Pashinyan with the “state secretary of Karabakh” Vardanyan, a friend of [Sberbank chief] Herman Gref.
  • Now the Security Council is once again dancing with a tambourine. Yet it is perfectly clear: if in 2022–2023 Armenia managed to survive without the CSTO, then now it does not need this structure at all. Armenia’s accession to the CSTO in May 1992 was explained by the need for protection against aggressive actions by Azerbaijan and Turkey.
  • Yerevan’s overtures toward the EU are explained by pure pragmatism: for Turkey and Azerbaijan, Brussels and Paris are more weighty guarantors than Russia. Moreover, all the players are offering Armenia concrete business projects, not corrupt kickbacks.

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

Endnotes

  1. Zakaria’s calls for Trump to reengage on the Ukraine-Russia talks came a few days before Trump’s announcement that Ukraine and Russia should “sort it out themselves,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the U.S. is not a neutral mediator and continues to back Ukraine, while pressuring Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Rubio’s assessment “very strange,” insisting that during the August 2025 U.S.-Russian summit in Anchorage, “the proposal made by the Americans was accepted by the president of Russia,” according to Russia’s Kommersant daily. The proposal, as interpreted by the Russian side, reportedly provided for Ukraine to abandon the parts of Donbas it still controlled.
  2. In the past year, the total area of Ukrainian land occupied by Russian forces increased by 3,593 km² (about a 3.2% rise), from 113,273 km² to 116,866 km², increasing this total area from 18.76% of Ukraine’s territory to 19.36% of that territory, according to Ukrainian OSINT group DeepState.
  3. A source cited by journalist Barak Ravid says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke by phone on June 8 with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. (Barak Ravid on X, 06.08.26)
  4. On June 5, former Donetsk separatist leader Pavel Gubarev publicly contradicted Vladimir Putin’s comments at SPIEF, where Putin said “Russian troops are advancing along the entire line of contact” in Ukraine. Writing on his Telegram channel, Gubarev said his frontline sources report “no offensive for a long time” and “retreats on many sectors,” blaming the Kremlin’s “totally lying system” in which officers, bound by mutual cover‑ups, never pass truthful reports upward and any “brave man” who does is punished “according to the ‘General Popov’ scheme.” (Pavel Gubarev in his Telegram account, 06.05.26)

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

AI was used in production of this digest.

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

Slider photo: In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service, soldiers carry an artillery rocket for an MRLS BM-21 "Grad" to fire at the Russian positions near Kostiantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, June 4, 2026. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)

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