3 Ideas to Explore

1. In an interview with NV Radio, former foreign minister of Ukraine and Belfer Center senior fellow Dmytro Kuleba systematically dismantles what he sees as misleading narratives about the Russia-Ukraine war—above all the idea that the war has reached a turning point favoring Ukraine.¹ Against manifestations of optimism regarding this proposition in Western capitals and Kyiv, Kuleba warned, “People are racing ahead of reality… No turning point in any war has ever been recognized in real time… Of course not. That's nonsense. Turning points are identified retrospectively.” “Claims that Ukraine has achieved a decisive turning point and is now heading straight toward victory are largely nonsense,” he added. “In November, we'll probably return to discussing how to survive another winter,” he warned. Kuleba also said “there are really only two major unanswered questions in this war. First: Will Ukraine develop a ballistic missile capability that can genuinely threaten Moscow and other major Russian cities? Second: If that happens, will Putin be willing to use nuclear weapons in response?” During WP columnist David Igantius's Q&A, when asked by RM whether he thinks the war has or has not entered a turning point favoring Ukraine per Kuleba’s proposition, Ignatius responded, “I think Ukraine's brilliant use of technology… has allowed them to survive in this war—where survival is a kind of victory. But I think people should be careful about announcing a turning point or saying that Russia is finished. My hope is that Ukraine's technology mastery will force even Putin to see that this war is ‘unwinnable’—and change course. But I don't think he's there yet." Ignatius is not the first to describe how Ukraine’s survival can be framed as a victory. Former commander of the Ukrainian armed forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi did so earlier this year.*
2. In the view of The Economist’s staff, “Ukrainian strikes are inflicting pain deep inside Russia,” while Jack Clover writes in The Times of London that “Ukraine transforms war with mid-range drones that ‘destroy anything.’” These drones play a significant role in “really hurting the Russians,” Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general, told Marc Santora of NYT. In fact, “Ukraine is winning—for now at least,” Hal Brands of Bloomberg claims in his recent column. According to Balázs Jarábik of R. Politik, however, the battlefield is “mixed:” “Ukraine has stabilized parts of the front, slowed Russian momentum,” but “Russia continues advancing gradually; retains advantages in manpower, glide bombs, missiles and industrial capacity,” so “Ukraine recovered coherence not dominance.” Moreover, in the view of John J. Mearsheimer, “the Russians are winning on the battlefield.” “For sure, and not as quickly as I'm sure the Russian people and Russian leaders would like, but they are moving inexorably forward,” this professor claims in an interview with Andrew Napolitano. Mearsheimer also claims that “the Ukrainian military is in deep trouble [because] they're unable to raise large numbers of troops to replace those who are killed in battle” and “because the United States and a number of European countries are no longer able to provide as much weaponry to Ukraine as they have in the past.” Mearsheimer predicts that ultimately, “the Russians will end up capturing all of the territory in those four oblasts that they had formerly annexed.” To the extent that estimates of changes in territorial control are a useful criterion for determining whether and which side is winning (but not sufficient on their own), RM keeps track of such changes in its weekly Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. Citing data from Ukraine’s DeepState OSINT group, the June 10, 2026, issue of the card shows that during the four-week period of May 12–June 9, 2026, Russian forces saw a net loss of 1 square mile.² In the past year, Russia made a net total gain of 1,369 square miles, according to DeepState data, and Russia’s average monthly gains for the past 12 months were 120 square miles per month.
3. Fiona Hill argues in a research paper for Brookings that “Ukraine and Iran may prove the nemeses of Russian and American ambitions,” as both expose the limits of great‑power coercion. “Deadlock in Ukraine discredits Russia as a global military force,” while the Gulf standoff “undermines the United States and Trump,” pushing allies “to look beyond them at new regional security options.” Ukraine has inflicted “massive casualties” and “heavy costs,” on Russia and is now “the most competent military force in Europe,” according to Hill, who is member of the Harvard University Board of Overseers and an alumna of the Belfer Center. Both Hill and Neil MacFarquhar of NYT argue that Russia in Ukraine and the U.S. in Iran misread supposedly “second‑rate” adversaries, assuming quick capitulation. Meanwhile, David Ignatius argues in his recent WaPo column that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are “trapped in the power they created,” each having launched wars they “thought would be quick and decisive” but which “turned into quagmires.” 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“Ukraine, Iran, and the strains on Russian and American power,” Fiona Hill, Brookings Institution, 06.08.26.

• Fiona Hill argues that “Ukraine and Iran may prove the nemeses of Russian and American ambitions,” noting that “deadlock in Ukraine discredits Russia as a global military force” while the Gulf stalemate “undermines the United States and Trump.” She writes that “so‑called ‘second‑rate powers’ have diminished the standing of Putin and Trump,” leaving both with “fewer means to exert power and influence,” and pushing allies “to look beyond them at new regional security options, hastening the development of a more decentralized international order.”
• Hill contends that “Ukraine has essentially put Russia in a chokehold,” inflicting “massive casualties” and “heavy costs on the Russian economy,” just as “Iran has drawn America into a prolonged struggle.” Trump “has consistently failed to see how Ukraine has transformed its regional and international standing by bogging down a much larger military power,” she writes, and stresses that “peace in Ukraine…is not likely to be found through the Putin‑Trump nexus,” as Zelensky and Kyiv “are now moving away from their primary reliance on the United States’ (less than) good offices.”
• Looking ahead, Hill argues that “the wars in Ukraine and Iran demonstrate…the dangers of overreliance on single powerful actors for security,” meaning “neither country will be the decisive, even at times indispensable, country it was in the past.” She highlights new groupings like the Joint Expeditionary Force as models, insisting that “Ukraine is the most competent military force in Europe” and “will be an asset over the longer term for European security,” while “Ukraine and Europe are already entering a post‑American world, in terms of their mindsets.”

“Deadlocked Wars: How Major Powers Misread the Regions They Attacked,” Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 06.14.26.

• MacFarquhar argues that Russia in Ukraine and the United States in Iran have both been trapped in costly stalemates by underestimating weaker adversaries and projecting their own centralized political models onto them. Fiona Hill says both Putin and Trump “thought if they could decapitate the system it would fall,” but Putin “did not anticipate full-scale resistance from Ukraine,” and Trump ignored warnings that Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate heavily. As a result, “a weaker power has trapped a stronger one in a costly confrontation,” with Ukraine and Iran now openly defiant and negotiations focused more on face‑saving than decisive outcomes.
• In both cases, air power and coercion have failed to align ends and means. Ukraine has halted Russian advances and even retaken small amounts of territory by fielding next‑generation drones and anti‑drone defenses, while Russia remains unable to occupy fully even the provinces it claims despite an estimated 350,000 military dead. In Iran, the U.S.–Israeli bombing campaigns have not produced regime collapse or strategic capitulation; instead, Tehran has demonstrated it can close Hormuz, strike Israel and Gulf states, and survive economically, pushing Washington toward a limited framework deal that punts core issues such as the nuclear program and sanctions relief into the future.
• MacFarquhar stresses that both leaders have made sweeping, maximalist demands while offering little in return, prolonging the wars and eroding credibility. Putin still publicly insists “military operations… will end when we achieve our goals,” including demands for territory his army cannot seize; Trump repeatedly revises terms already agreed by mediators, prompting Iranian officials to complain of “contradictory messages” and “frequent changes in positions and demands.” Hill concludes that “deadlock in Ukraine discredits Russia as a global military force” and “undermines the United States and Trump” in the Gulf, accelerating a more decentralized international order in which great‑power “might” no longer reliably produces the outcomes its leaders expect.

“Trump Thanks China and Russia, Partners of Iran, for Diplomatic Help,” Edward Wong, New York Times, 06.15.26.

• Wong reports that after announcing an initial cease-fire agreement with Iran, Trump “praised two world leaders he has called his friends — Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,” saying they had “aided the Americans in sealing the deal” by not sending ships through the Strait of Hormuz to challenge the U.S. blockade. Of Xi, Trump said “he was a total gentleman,” adding “he didn’t send a tanker, along with 20 destroyers on each side of it, to try and break up the blockade.”
• The article contrasts Trump’s thanks with Beijing’s and Moscow’s actual conduct. China, “Iran’s most powerful partner and the biggest buyer of oil,” has prodded Tehran to keep negotiating but also, according to the State Department, seen Chinese‑linked entities try to ship “hundreds of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS)” to Iran, for which Washington just imposed sanctions. Russia has “hosted Iranian diplomats” and, U.S. officials say, provided “targeting information useful for attacks on American bases,” yet Trump “has made no mention” of these actions or of China’s recent arrest of American scholar U Min Zin, underscoring his focus on personal rapport with Xi and Putin while downplaying their parallel support for Iran.

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

• “A fragile Iran peace follows a war without victors,” Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 06.15.26.
• "The Strait of Hormuz is the only alternative," Pavel Katyukha, Russian International Affairs Council, 06.09.26. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“One Ukrainian City’s Agonizing Year as the Russian Army Closed In,” Jane Lytvynenko, James Marson, and Oksana Grytsenko, Wall Street Journal, 06.12.26.

• “The Russian army is grinding forward slowly, churning up everything in its path. In a band of towns and cities along the 800-mile front, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians face a daily question: When to drop everything and flee?” the authors write.
• “Druzhkivka, an industrial city once home to about 68,000 people, is one of them. It is among a handful of cities in eastern Ukraine that are Russia’s main target for 2026. Over the course of a year, The Wall Street Journal followed the town and its people wrestling with leaving their homes as the fabric of their lives is slowly, painfully torn apart,” according to the authors.
• “In February last year, the crump of artillery was still distant, but the factories had long since shut down as the city turned into a military camp with restaurants and barbers catering to soldiers. By July, the city began emptying out as explosive drones started to reach its streets, and fishermen were keeping hold of tiddlers they used to throw back. In December, the streets were deserted as a curfew allowed only four hours outside every day, and evacuation teams were overwhelmed with requests to run the gantlet of Russian drones and artillery on roads out of the city,” the authors write.
• “By winter, Druzhkivka was a ghost town. Its population halved again to 17,000. The government deemed it an “active combat zone,” urging all civilians to leave while they still can. … The authorities no longer bothered sounding the air-raid alarms as the Russian bombing was constant,” according to the authors. “There are now only 6,000 people left in the town, according to municipal authorities, less than one-tenth of the prewar number.”

“How Ukraine’s Drone Warfare Is Changing Battlefield Medicine,” David Kirichenko and Douglas Davis, The National Interest, 06.11.26.

• Kirichenko and Davis argue that Ukraine’s drone‑saturated battlefield has upended traditional “Golden Hour” assumptions, creating a “Lethal Triad” of drone‑driven mutilation, lengthening rescue times, and drug‑resistant “warbugs.” Constant FPV and loitering‑munition surveillance makes ambulances and medics prime targets: Russia uses “double‑tap” strikes against evacuation teams, medics are told to remove Red Cross markings, and wounded can be trapped for hours or days in trenches that vehicles can’t safely reach.
• In response, Ukrainian units are shifting to prolonged field care and improvised evacuation: medics keep casualties alive longer with blood transfusions, fluids, and infection control; unmanned ground vehicles and armored evacuation capsules move wounded under drone fire; hospital trains and drone‑delivered blood and IV kits substitute for largely unavailable helicopter medevac. Injury patterns are changing too—away from gunshots toward blast and FPV trauma to extremities, faces, necks, and internal organs—producing more complex multi‑limb injuries, widespread tourniquet syndrome (with high amputation and mortality rates), and a surge of multidrug‑resistant infections from contaminated wounds.
• The authors warn that NATO doctrine and medical planning have not caught up. Aerial medevac models honed in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly vulnerable on a drone‑dense battlefield where even helicopters can be hunted by cheap FPVs, and war‑driven “superbugs” such as Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, and Acinetobacter pose a growing biosecurity threat beyond Ukraine. They conclude that Ukraine is a “real-time stress test” of Western military medicine, and that care practices, infection control, and antimicrobial stewardship must be rethought end‑to‑end—because, as one former U.S. Reaper operator put it, “the only way we could ever put troops on the ground against Iran, without mass casualties, is if we master the FPV game.”

“Who will pay for Ukraine’s rebuild?,” Ben Aris, bne IntelliNews Substack, 06.10.26.

• Aris argues that, despite talk of a turning point and EU‑led ceasefire plans, Ukraine is being “left in limbo” on reconstruction. The World Bank puts total needs at about 197bn in immediate physical damage plus roughly $90bn in occupied regions. By contrast, the EU’s post‑war plan for 2028–2034 “pencilled in” just €90bn, assuming a further ~€100bn will somehow come from private capital—a premise he calls highly questionable.
• He notes that the EU’s €90bn war‑time loan facility only covers about two‑thirds of expected needs over the next two years, with the rest to be scraped together from G7 members, and that the Trump administration’s Anchorage‑era promise of NATO‑style security guarantees has been abandoned. The EU, meanwhile, has made clear Ukraine won’t join for at least a decade, leaving no robust collective‑security umbrella—something veteran fund managers say is a precondition for serious private investment, even with “war insurance.”
• Aris stresses that investors also demand “root and branch” judicial reform and stronger property rights. Yet Brussels has warned it will dock some €600m from Ukraine Facility transfers over stalled anti‑corruption and judicial measures, while Zelensky faces a domestic crisis as parts of his own party resist painful reforms amid corruption scandals.
• He concludes that without real security guarantees and rule‑of‑law progress, reconstruction plans “are a fantasy”: the EU is not committing enough money, Kyiv is not delivering the reforms needed to unlock private capital or EU accession, and key partners are offering neither the funds nor the security architecture required. Instead of a concerted effort to “fix Ukraine,” he sees EU+UK leaders “flapping around the edges” with tough rhetoric toward Russia and inadequate aid, leaving the country stuck between war and an underfunded, uncertain peace.

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

“And everything Zelenskyy answered – Dmytro Kuleba,” Oleksii Tarasov interviews Dmytro Kuleba, NV Radio, 06.08.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views. Machine-transcribed and translated.

• When asked when he believed  “in the famous "Kremlin towers" theory—the idea that different factions inside the Kremlin compete with one another and sometimes act independently of Putin?” Kuleba said:  “No, I don't. The Kremlin towers exist about as much as Game of Thrones exists.”
• Kuleba said, “What will determine the future course of the war? The quantity and depth of Ukrainian strikes against Russian territory. And Ukraine's ability to defend itself against the quantity and depth of Russian strikes against Ukraine. Where is the key to solving that problem? It lies in laboratories developing navigation systems, guidance systems, propulsion systems, and in factories capable of producing those technologies at scale. A year ago we would probably have spoken only about the battlefield. But today Ukraine has reached a point where the influence of technology laboratories and production facilities is becoming just as important as events at the front. “
• Kuleba said, “The Russians don't say it publicly, but if you translate their position into plain language, they're essentially saying: "Give us Donbas and we'll stop." But everything we've experienced since 2014 tells us that they will not stop. So what rational person would abandon a fortified position, hand it over to an enemy, and expect the enemy to stop afterward?”
• When asked, “Last winter many people were asking whether Ukrainians could survive without electricity and heating. Now the narrative seems to be moving in the opposite direction. People say Ukraine is winning. That the war has reached a turning point. That Putin is running out of strength....When you see all these articles, what does your intuition tell you? Are journalists becoming too optimistic?”, Kuleba said: “What we're seeing is an information cascade. Everyone competes for attention. One person writes something dramatic, and another immediately writes the opposite in order to attract even more attention. We live in an attention economy. People are racing ahead of reality. I don't want to be the person who ruins everyone's optimism, but let's be honest. First, in November we'll probably return to discussing how to survive another winter. Second, no turning point in any war has ever been recognized in real time.”
  • “Did Marshal Zhukov walk into Stalin's office after Stalingrad and announce: "Comrade Stalin, we've reached the turning point of the war”? Did Field Marshal Manstein call Hitler and say: "By the way, a turning point has occurred. Berlin will fall in two years"? Of course not. That's nonsense. Turning points are identified retrospectively. Many wars don't even receive their final names until decades after they end. The First World War wasn't called the First World War by people living through it. So all these claims that Ukraine has achieved a decisive turning point and is now heading straight toward victory are largely nonsense. I understand that such stories may help people psychologically. If they make life easier, then fine—read them. But we should keep cool heads. We should think rationally.”
• When asked “Then what has actually changed?” Kuleba said, “Something important has changed. Ukraine has succeeded in stabilizing Russian pressure on Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine has found ways to increase pressure on Russia. That’s what has happened. Nothing more. Whether historians will later call this a turning point is impossible to know today. We may only be able to answer that question in one or two years. The situation is objectively better today than it was six months ago. That's true. But whether it will continue improving over the next six months remains an open question.”
• Kuleba said, “there are really only two major unanswered questions in this war. First: Will Ukraine develop a ballistic missile capability that can genuinely threaten Moscow and other major Russian cities? Second: If that happens, will Putin be willing to use nuclear weapons in response? Those are the two fundamental unanswered questions. If Ukraine develops a credible ballistic program capable of reaching deep into Russia, Putin will have to make a choice. What that choice will be—I don't know. But that is the next major strategic question.”
• Kuleba said, “For Putin, Europe isn't really a geopolitical subject. Europe is an object, just as Ukraine is. He despises Europe only slightly less than he despises Ukraine. You don't negotiate seriously with someone you fundamentally don't respect.”
• Kuleba said, “For twenty years Putin generously supported both far-right and far-left political movements throughout Europe. Why? Because he understood that the main obstacle to Russian influence came from centrist parties. The further politicians move toward the extremes, the more willing many become to cooperate with Moscow. So Russia invested in them. For years European centrists laughed this off. Now they're panicking because both the far left and the far right have grown stronger almost everywhere. The next phase of this story will involve investigations and revelations.”
• Kuleba said. “the idea that enemy leaders must always be captured and tried is actually a relatively recent one in human history. After World War I there was an attempt to put Kaiser Wilhelm II on trial, but it never happened because the Netherlands refused to extradite him... We live in an era where people instinctively think every dictator must end up in court. But history doesn't always work that way. Sometimes a ruler is simply removed. Historically, that often ended wars.”

 “Is this a ‘turning point’ in the Russia-Ukraine war? I answered your questions,” David Ignatius, Washington Post live chat, 06.15.26.

• Asked [by RM] if recent battlefield trends mark a “turning point” in Ukraine’s favor, Ignatius replied: “I think Ukraine's brilliant use of technology, which I have trying to chronicle since late 2022, has allowed them to survive in this war — where survival is a kind of victory. But I think people should be careful about announcing a turning point or saying that Russia is finished. Russia (regrettably) has proven to be a ‘learning army’ that sees the smartest Ukrainian innovations in drone warfare and EW and copies them. My hope is the Ukraine's technology mastery will force even Putin to see that this war is ‘unwinnable’ — and change course. But I don't think he's there yet.”
• Ignatius argues that Trump’s reluctance to arm Kyiv (“Trump doesn't like Zelensky; Trump doesn't like NATO… Trump truly wants to end the war and doesn't want to add to Kyiv's firepower”) is forcing adaptation: “the astonishing fact is that Ukraine and Europe are learning to do without U.S. direct military assistance and survive in this war of attrition.” He predicts the war will last “at least a year more,” even as Ukrainian mid‑range strikes “make Russia's position in Crimea more and more difficult.”
• On diplomacy, Ignatius says that if Putin is “smart, he will play his ‘Trump card’ while he has a chance,” but stresses that “Ukraine feels so much stronger that it will be hard to force a pro‑Putin deal down Zelensky's throat.” In his view, “once Putin gives up his hope of a neutral (pro‑Russian) Ukraine and accepts that it will be a European country in the E.U., the war is over, whatever the final line of control is,” and there are already “serious back channel talks” between Moscow and Kyiv.

“John Mearsheimer: Why Ukraine Will Lose,” Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom podcast, 06.09.26.

John J. Mearsheimer is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

• JN: “What kind of pressure is President Putin under to end the special military operation after nearly four and a half years?”
  • JM: “… I think the stories that you hear in the West about the pressure on Putin and the dissatisfaction with Putin are greatly exaggerated. My view of what's happening here, Judge, is that Ukraine is actually losing on the battlefield…
  • “… the Russians are winning on the battlefield. For sure, and not as quickly as I'm sure the Russian people and Russian leaders would like, but they are moving inexorably forward. And the Ukrainian military is in deep trouble. They're unable to raise large numbers of troops to replace those who are killed in battle. And furthermore, they have a huge problem with desertions. I would estimate that the Russians outnumber the Ukrainians in terms of combat forces on the front lines probably two to one. The Russians have an abundance of equipment or weaponry to use against Ukraine because of their massive industrial base. And because the United States and a number of European countries are no longer able to provide as much weaponry to Ukraine as they have in the past, the Ukrainians are having real trouble matching the Russians in terms of weaponry available on the battlefield. Yes, drones are helping the Ukrainians maintain the front lines somewhat on the front lines, but only up to a limited extent.” 
  • “And I think as we move forward… the Russians will end up capturing all of the territory in those four oblasts that they had formerly annexed. And by the way, they're close to having done that already. You know, they control 85% of Donetsk. They control all of Luhansk. I'd say they control about 75% of Zaporizhzhia and about 75% of Kherson. So they're in an excellent position. And very importantly, Ukraine is not in a position to ever join NATO, which was the principal goal of Russia from the beginning of this campaign.

“How Russia Could Escalate,” Sam Skove, Foreign Policy, 06.12.26.

• Skove writes that after “small military gains last year, Russia is now not only spinning its wheels in Ukraine but is actually worse off than before,” as Ukraine kills “more Russians than Moscow can recruit” and new mid‑range drones “chok[e] off Russian logistics.” With economic stagnation, internet repression, and frustration over stalled U.S.‑mediated talks, Moscow is “looking for ways they can regain escalatory initiative, if not the war initiative,” former NSC official Andrew Peek tells him.
• He outlines potential escalation paths: intensified ballistic‑missile strikes that Zelensky warned “you hope… will achieve for you what everything else has failed to achieve”; more theatrical attacks on Kyiv like the heavily telegraphed June 2 strike on the Podil district; and increased risk‑tolerant moves around NATO’s borders, such as the May 29 drone that slammed into a Romanian apartment block, which Max Bergmann interprets as “indicating to Europe that this could get worse.” Off the battlefield, Russia is already leaning into sabotage threats in Europe and overt influence operations targeting Western conservatives.
• At the same time, Skove notes, Russia’s room to escalate is limited. Peek argues that inside Ukraine “they don’t really have much more vertical escalation left to go,” with ballistic‑missile production capped at perhaps “50 to 70 strikes” a month. In Europe, Moscow can step up intimidation and political meddling, but recent elections in Armenia, Hungary, and Moldova all went against Kremlin‑backed forces, and Europe has “doubled down” with a $100‑billion‑plus loan to Kyiv. Russian outreach to U.S. right‑wing figures via SPIEF generated as much backlash as sympathy, while Zelensky in his open letter taunted Putin that “the world has not grown tired of Ukraine… but there is growing fatigue with Russia.”

Former CIA Director Bill Burns on Putin’s fixation on Ukraine, quoted in Clash Report, 06.13.26.

• Burns said: “I don't know that there was much that could be said ... conversations which would have changed Putin's fixation [on Ukraine] at that time. He had convinced himself that tactically there was a window here with the United States, you know, still recovering from COVID, you know, the economic challenges that were connected with that, you know, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, European leaders that Putin tended to have a fairly dim view of at that time.”
• Burns said of Putin: “He felt he had modernized the Russian military to the point where they would easily roll over the Ukrainians. And his view always was, in my experience with him, that Ukraine was not a real country, as he used to put it to me, and he would treat me like a particularly dim elementary school student who didn't understand that, you know, Ukraine is weak and divided. And his assumptions turned out to be profoundly flawed.”
• Burns said of the pre-war months: “I was convinced that the, you know, the Ukrainians were going to push back hard, even in the face of what on paper was the military superiority of Russia.”

“The terrifying new air war in Ukraine,” The Economist, 06.15.26.

• The Economist reports that Russia’s June 15 barrage of “611 drones and 70 missiles” reflects a shift in the war’s “centre of gravity…from the trenches and towards the factories and supply lines.” Ukraine now intercepts “more than 90%” of drones and cruise missiles on an average night using domestically produced interceptor drones, but a shortage of Patriot‑class munitions means “roughly two‑thirds” of ballistic missiles get through, making ballistic strike the “main problem,” as Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat concedes.
• Russia is exploiting its “overwhelming missile superiority,” ramping output to an estimated “700 Iskander” ballistic missiles plus Kinzhal and Zircon systems this year, and has just hit Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra, an 11th‑century UNESCO cathedral — an attack Zelensky calls “one of Russia’s most serious crimes against Christian culture to date.”
• Ukraine counters with mass drone and mid‑range strikes that are “choking Moscow’s lifeline to Crimea,” producing severe fuel shortages and forcing traffic off the main “Novorossiya” corridor. Kyiv is racing to restore its own ballistic and advanced cruise‑missile production and field AI‑assisted air defenses, aiming to turn missile weakness into asymmetric strength even as Russia prepares jet‑powered Shaheds and heavier salvos that could make Ukraine’s cities “miserable indeed.”

“Ukrainian strikes are inflicting pain deep inside Russia,” The Economist, 06.09.26.

• The Economist finds that Ukrainian “deep strikes” (100km+ from the border) have more than doubled and are “more extensive, and more damaging” than generally assumed. Using ACLED data, it counts 335 such strikes in 2022–24 and 658 in 2025, with Ukraine on track for 800+ in 2026. An inventory of 6,351 Russian strategic sites shows that by 2025, 2,377 were within 5km of a deep strike, versus just 32 in 2022, including refineries, ports, drone plants, and other military‑industrial targets.
• To capture under‑reported attacks, the paper models fires near strategic sites using NASA FIRMS satellite data and internet‑disruption data from Monash IP Observatory, concluding that 2025 likely saw roughly three times as many strikes as ACLED recorded (though many were repeat hits on the same facilities). This pattern of repeated strikes, as seen at Tuapse and in St Petersburg, raises repair costs, forces Russia to divert capital—bank lending to refineries is growing at more than twice the civilian rate—and increasingly hits “secondary” refinery units that produce high‑value fuels.
• The article estimates that, after adjusting for Brent prices, Russia’s fossil‑fuel export revenues have fallen sharply below what would normally be expected since mid‑2025, with a shortfall of about $18bn (12%) in June–December 2025 and 34% in the first four months of 2026, reflecting the combined effect of strikes, a strong ruble, and tighter sanctions. It concludes that, while many Ukrainian drones carry small warheads and not every strike succeeds, the cumulative campaign is depriving Russia of billions and forcing it to defend, repair, and disperse assets once thought beyond reach—pressure that will only grow as Kyiv fields longer‑range cruise and ballistic missiles.

“Ukraine transforms war with mid-range drones that ‘destroy anything,’” Jack Clover, The Times (UK), 06.09.26.

• Clover reports that Ukraine’s rapid expansion of domestically powered mid‑range “middle‑strike” drones (30–150km) is beginning to “decide” the war by hammering Russian logistics. Senior Lt. Volodymyr Mirchuk of the Khartiia brigade says “no logistics, no missions,” and describes how Ukrainian producers moved from 20–30 imported‑engine drones a month to hundreds with Ukrainian engines, giving Kyiv a window of advantage before Russia adapts its air defenses.
• These drones, with payloads up to 150kg, now help dominate the highway from southern Russia via Mariupol to Crimea, and have struck key nodes such as the Chonhar bridge, forcing fuel convoys onto longer, riskier routes. Analyst Ruslan Mykula says middle‑strike capability is “slowly and gradually increasing its effect,” effectively calling the whole land corridor to Crimea “into question,” while long queues, fuel rationing, food limits, and power shortages in occupied Crimea and Donbas show how attacks on military supply chains are spilling over into civilian life.
• Clover notes that Russia is also evolving, fielding faster jet‑powered Shaheds and aggressive FPV drones that have turned the front into a “vast grey zone” and terrorized cities like Kherson and Kharkiv. Yet for now, he writes, Ukrainian officials and observers such as Nikolai Osychenko believe the logistics war is “definitely in our favor,” with some Russian units reduced to using soldiers as “mules” hauling fuel and water on foot to the front.

“A Twist in Ukraine’s Drone Campaign Is ‘Really Hurting the Russians,’” Marc Santora, The New York Times, 06.10.26.

• Santora reports that after saturating the 25‑mile “kill zone” along the front and striking deep into Russia, Ukraine has shifted to a systematic “logistics lockdown” targeting roads and railways 20–150 miles behind the lines. Using upgraded, domestically produced mid‑ and long‑range drones with better engines, batteries, Starlink links, and AI, Ukraine is now launching more than 5,000 mid‑ and deep‑range strikes a month, causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations, and reducing Russian activity at the front.
• May was the first month since 2023 in which Russia suffered a net territorial loss; Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky says Ukraine retook nearly 40 square miles more than it lost. Analysts such as Mick Ryan and the Institute for the Study of War say the ability “to disrupt Russian forces throughout their operational depth” has pushed the war into a new phase and created a “time‑constrained opportunity” for Ukrainian mechanized offensives, while Jack Watling calls it a turning point that could push Moscow toward a ceasefire.
• The campaign is most visible along the southern “land bridge” to Crimea, where exposed highways and the embattled Kerch Bridge leave Russian logistics vulnerable. Ukraine’s modified Hornet drones, jet‑powered Bars systems, and new domestic glide bombs are striking trucks, trains, depots, and refineries, with open‑source investigators geolocating at least 130 midrange hits in May alone. Santora notes, however, that Russia is still devastating Donbas cities and that Ukraine’s success depends on sustaining drone and weapons production and shoring up critical air defenses such as Patriot interceptors before another winter of Russian strikes.

“Ukraine is turning the tide against Putin. What happens next should terrify Europe,” Mike Martin, The Telegraph, 06.08.26.

• Martin argues that “the tide may be turning” as Ukraine’s “brilliantly ruthless twin‑track strategy” of drone‑enabled logistics war and deep strikes has left Russia “seriously imperiled, economically and politically.” He cites AI‑enabled Hornet drones costing about $6,000 that are suffocating Russian supply lines in Crimea and Kherson in what Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov calls a “logistics lockdown,” alongside missile and drone attacks on refineries, ports, and bridges that are “strangling the Russian economy.”
• He notes reports that Russia is losing more than 500,000 soldiers, that new estimates show Ukraine gaining some 45 square miles of territory a day, and that even Putin’s own officials warn of a spiraling fiscal crisis and a shrinking GDP. Yet Martin cautions that a Ukrainian “victory” carries grave risks: for Putin the war is existential, and a weakened, humiliated strongman—or a messy succession in a heavily armed nuclear state—could be profoundly destabilizing.
• Most alarmingly, he warns that a ceasefire “would not demobilize the Russian army. It would release it,” including hundreds of thousands of ex‑convicts brutalized by the war. Citing Estonia’s foreign minister, he suggests these men could be deployed against NATO’s eastern flank just as the UK and other allies remain under‑rearmed, arguing that every day Ukraine holds the line “buys the UK and its European allies time to rearm,” and asking bluntly, “What happens if it ends before we do?”

“Essential Ukraine #25: The Race Between Adaptation and Attrition,” Balázs Jarábik, X-account, 06.11.26.

• Balazs Jarábik writes that “the key conclusion” of his latest Essential Ukraine is that “everyone is preparing for an endgame. The endgame itself, however, has not started as both sides are still trying to shape the conditions.” He notes that “Ukraine enters summer 2026 in a better tactical position than end of last year” with “frontline density improved, tech adaptation accelerated, counter-assault activity increased,” yet cautions that “adaptation ≠ reversal.”
• According to the author, a “key development” is that “Ukraine has expanded ‘middle strikes’ 50–200 km behind Russian lines, targeting logistics, supply routes, and command infrastructure,” producing a “logistics lockdown” in which Crimea and the land corridor are “not cut off but sustaining it is more expensive, slower, harder to protect.” Jarábik argues that “systems matter more than platforms,” describing a “competition between learning systems” as Ukraine fields “Hornet drones, AI-assisted targeting, Starlink connectivity,” while “Russia adapts too: Rassvet, Rubicon, electronic warfare, mass production.”
• The battlefield is “mixed”: “Ukraine has stabilized parts of the front, slowed Russian momentum,” but “Russia continues advancing gradually; retains advantages in manpower, glide bombs, missiles, and industrial capacity,” so “Ukraine recovered coherence not dominance,” the author writes. Diplomatically, “the debate has moved from victory scenarios toward conditions of a future settlement,” with “talk w/ Russia…no longer taboo” and Ukraine and Europe “focus on a freeze,” while “the US, so far, is absent.”

“Zelensky & Putin Both Mention How a U.S.-Backed Drone Swarm Targeted Putin's Home and Family,” Matt Bivens, Substack, 06.08.26.

• Bivens revisits Russian claims that a swarm of more than 90 Ukrainian drones attempted to strike Vladimir Putin’s Valdai residence six months ago, when his partner Alina Kabayeva and their children may have been present. He notes that Putin phoned Donald Trump “early in the morning,” prompting Trump to say he was “very angry” and that “it’s another thing to attack his house,” before the CIA quickly assessed that no such attack had occurred and Trump publicly reversed himself, saying, “We don’t believe that happened.”
• The author argues the episode clearly did happen, pointing to Russian video of downed drones and Moscow’s formal handover of a recovered navigation chip to a U.S. military attaché, and highlighting that both Zelensky and Putin have recently referenced it. In an open letter, Zelensky taunted Putin over the security of his Valdai residence; in a press conference about a stray drone in Romania, Putin sarcastically recalled having given Washington drone fragments from “an attempted strike on one of the residences of the President of the Russian Federation.”
• Bivens contends this implies the CIA misled Trump and raises unanswered questions: Was it a U.S.-approved assassination attempt, or a rogue Ukrainian operation still using U.S. logistics and targeting support? He criticizes major media such as the New York Times for omitting Putin’s Valdai reference while devoting extensive coverage to a single stray drone in Romania, and urges Congress and journalists to press the intelligence community on whether it is giving “false briefings to the president” about escalatory operations that could have killed Putin’s family and triggered catastrophic retaliation.

“80% of the Effect, 2% of the Funding: The Most Important Equation of the War,” Kateryna Mykhalko, Ukrainska Pravda/Ekonomichna Pravda, 06.11.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views. Machine-translated.

• Mykhalko tells a Berlin defense conference that the debate over whether drones and autonomous systems can compete with tanks, artillery, aircraft and ships is “already over,” settled “not by think tanks or procurement committees” but “on the front line: in eastern Ukraine, in the sky over Kyiv, in the waters of the Black Sea.” Citing Ukrainian military data, she says “more than 80% of enemy targets on the battlefield today are destroyed by drones,” yet “roughly 2%” of European defense budgets go to new‑generation technologies, creating a “completely unrealistic” balance where systems delivering “80% of the result” get 2% of the money and legacy platforms get 98%.
• She skewers the notion that Ukrainian drone warfare is just a poor country’s improvisation, asking why, if drones are mere “toys,” “our common enemy is investing billions” in them “aggressively, at scale, without hesitation.” “The battlefield doesn’t care about the history of your procurement,” she says; it only cares “what really works.” Mykhalko stresses that she is “a young Ukrainian woman who four years ago did something completely different,” and that Ukrainian soldiers “do not think of Berlin” when they fight, but of “their city, their street, their children”—yet the fact that their fight also protects Europe proves “our values and our future are inseparably linked.”
• Her core warning is to Europeans: “Your strength is our survival.” If an aggressor looks at Europe and sees “a convincing, modern, technological power, he starts to count differently” and to understand “that Ukraine cannot be destroyed.” But if he sees a continent that “consciously or unconsciously weakens itself” by betting on “obsolete systems,” he looks for ways to continue. She imagines a 2032 invasion with “drone swarms” and systems that “think faster than a human can control them,” and asks bluntly whether today’s spending balance could stop such an attack. “We all know the answer,” she says.
• Mykhalko is careful not to claim that tanks or Patriot batteries are obsolete—Patriot and NASAMS “were critically important” alongside new interceptor drones in the latest massive attack on Kyiv—but insists the current allocation is “unrealistic” and “costs real human lives right now.” Democracies, she argues, should answer the value they place on human life not just by sending fewer people to the front, but by “creating systems that extend human capabilities far beyond human vulnerability” and “automate defense.” Europe’s real competition, she concludes, is not between firms in the room but “between two worlds”: “between a world that believes in democracy and values human life, and a world of tyranny that does not.” Her final plea: “We cannot win tomorrow’s wars with yesterday’s weapons. Change the balance—before the balance changes you.”

“The ghost of Versailles haunts Ukraine’s peace,” The Economist, 06.11.26.

• The Economist notes that as of June 11 the war in Ukraine has now lasted longer than World War I, with new technologies (drones rather than tanks and gas) but familiar patterns of trench stalemate and shattered towns. A long war, it warns, is no guarantee of a just peace; Versailles is remembered as “a prequel” to an even worse conflict, and its “ghost” should haunt those now thinking about how to end the Ukraine war.
• Any armistice will differ from 1919, the article argues: Russia will not be a totally defeated, occupied state forced to accept diktats, and there will be no sweeping reparations or mass trials. Instead, peace is likely to be a “messy, unsatisfying affair full of compromises” on territory and sanctions that neither side likes but both must tolerate. Yet, as in 1919, it will be embedded in a new European security architecture, with credible security guarantees for Ukraine—possibly through EU accession and a “coalition of the willing” ready to fight if Russia attacks again.
• A key lesson drawn from Versailles is that promises need enforcement. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations failed when the US Senate stayed out; today, the piece warns, if the EU holds out membership as Ukraine’s long‑term guarantee but then fails to deliver, Ukrainians could end up embittered “like the Germans of 1933.” Europe may ultimately have to lift sanctions, even return frozen Russian assets and normalize relations to secure peace—moves that will look like betrayal to some. The deeper lesson, the leader concludes, is that “the longing for retribution cannot be an end in itself”: however justified the desire to see Putin humbled, he—or his regime—may still have to be a partner in making peace.

“The War in Ukraine Has Now Gone On Longer Than World War I,” Constant Méheut, The New York Times, 06.11.26.

• Méheut notes that on June 11 the war in Ukraine reached 1,569 days, outlasting World War I’s duration and defying early expectations on all sides that it would be brief. He argues the conflict is likely to rank among Europe’s most consequential modern wars, reshaping alliances and driving a defense buildup, and in many ways is the contemporary war that “most closely resembles World War I” in its origins, attritional nature and use of new technology.
• The piece traces parallels: Russia’s failed dash for Kyiv echoes Germany’s 1914 rush toward Paris; both wars then settled into largely static fronts where artillery barrages and infantry assaults over a narrow no‑man’s‑land produced horrific casualties. But where WWI trench lines were a response to massed shellfire, Ukraine’s trenches and bunkers have been driven ever deeper and smaller by omnipresent drones, turning the front into a miles‑wide “kill zone” in which any movement draws precision strikes; tanks, once fearsome, are now rarely used because they are so easily spotted and hit.
• While casualty numbers are smaller in absolute terms than WWI, analysts and NATO’s transformation commander say drones have made the battlefield “lethal at levels comparable to World War I,” with Russia’s average advance in recent offensives slower even than the Battle of the Somme. Méheut closes by highlighting how Ukraine’s strategy—economic pressure via strikes on oil infrastructure plus relentless drone attrition against Russian forces—recalls the combination of blockade and offensive that ultimately broke Germany a century ago, leading one Ukrainian historian to describe the conflict as “World War I, but with drones.”

“In Latest Attacks, Russia Is Exploiting a Major Weakness for Ukraine,” Nicholas Kulish, Kim Barker, Siobhán O’Grady and Lara Jakes, New York Times, 06.13.26.

• “Russia’s ballistic-missile attacks against Ukraine have grown in ferocity and magnitude in recent weeks because Russian military planners are exploiting one of Ukraine’s greatest weaknesses: The Ukrainian military does not have enough Patriot missile interceptors to keep up with the barrages.”
• “Air-defense units around the country are stuck making impossible calculations. Salvos can now include more than 1,000 drones and dozens of missiles. Exhausted crew members who have at times spent 24 hours glued to their radars with little food or sleep are overwhelmed by the much faster ballistic missiles they must try to knock down with their remaining interceptors. That is, if they have any left in their launchers at all.”
• “ In interviews with Ukrainian military officials, Western diplomats, security experts and frontline air-defense officers, the message was the same. The deliveries of Patriot interceptors have not kept pace with the drastically rising number of Russian ballistic missiles.”
• “In addition to the Patriot system, Ukraine’s national air-defense network also includes interceptor drones, antiaircraft guns, helicopters and fighter jets. Ukraine has an array of less-sophisticated missile-defense systems as well, from Norway, France, Italy, Germany and elsewhere. The Patriot system loaded with PAC-3 interceptors is the most important because, with its advanced technology, it can shoot down ballistic missiles more reliably.”
• “Over the past three years since it acquired its first Patriot system, Ukraine has received more than 1,600 of the expensive, difficult-to-manufacture interceptors, said Colonel Ihnat, the Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, which includes both the PAC-3 and the previous generation PAC-2 missiles. They are not, however, keeping pace with the increasing attacks.”
• “The Ukrainian defense company Fire Point said it had tested a new missile-defense system, but whether it can perform at the level of the advanced PAC-3 remains to be seen.”

“How Ukraine’s Drone Innovation Reversed Russia’s Momentum,” Michael C. Horowitz, Erin D. Dumbacher, and Lauren Kahn, CFR, 06.13.26.

• The authors argue that Ukraine’s scaling and refinement of drone operations—especially mid‑range (30–100 km) and deep‑strike systems—has reversed the Russian momentum seen in 2025, enabling Kyiv to retake territory (e.g., 78 square miles in five days in February 2026), expand the kill zone, and systematically disrupt Russian command, logistics, and rear‑area infrastructure. Cheap, precise “mass systems” such as the Hornet and TFL‑1, aided by autonomy and fiber‑optic guidance, have raised drone‑caused casualties to 75–85% of the total and forced Russia to disperse and defend key nodes.
• They describe how Ukraine has built perhaps “the most robust and innovative defense industrial base in Europe” in under five years, shifting away from dependence on Chinese parts, dispersing production into workshops, and fusing “soldiers, startups, volunteers, and government agencies” into an ecosystem that moves from prototype to frontline in weeks. Russia has been unable to meaningfully degrade this drone launch and production capacity. With new EU financing—including up to €6 billion earmarked for drones—Ukraine could scale to tens of millions of systems a year, far outstripping current U.S. production under the Pentagon’s nascent “drone dominance” effort.
• Beyond the air domain, Ukraine has pioneered uncrewed surface vessels in the Black Sea—sinking the Moskva, shooting down helicopters and fighters with USV‑launched missiles, and striking ships at Novorossiysk—pushing the Russian fleet from Sevastopol yet still within range. These innovations have narrowed Russia’s naval options and helped keep Ukrainian grain exports flowing. The authors caution that operational gains alone may not bring a settlement so long as Putin refuses to negotiate, but conclude that Ukraine’s ability to field “precise mass” faster than Russia can counter “has opened a narrow but real window of opportunity” for sustainable defense and growing pressure on Moscow.

“Ukrainian drone campaign chokes Moscow’s lifeline to Crimea,” Anastasia Stognei and Fabrice Deprez, Financial Times, 06.15.26.

• Stognei and Deprez report that life in occupied Crimea “has narrowed to fuel,” with residents enduring hours‑long queues and rationing via QR codes generated on Max, Russia’s glitchy state messenger, just to buy 20 liters of petrol. The shortages, which began in early June, stem from Ukraine’s escalating drone campaign against the “Novorossiya” highway and key bridges at Chongar, Armyansk, and Henichesk—the land corridor that supplies both the peninsula and Russian forces in southern Ukraine. Open‑source analyst Clément Molin has verified at least 375 Ukrainian strikes on trucks and vehicles since May (over half on the highway), traffic has fallen by more than 40 percent, and imagery shows trucks diverted onto pontoon bridges under damaged spans. With Kerch rail traffic constrained by earlier attacks and Crimea lacking its own refining capacity, Carnegie’s Sergey Vakulenko notes the impact is immediate: the peninsula has always depended on fuel brought from the mainland.
• The article details how mid‑range drones such as US‑made Hornets and Ukrainian FP‑2s and Behemoths—often using Starlink and AI‑assisted targeting—are hammering fuel convoys, warehouses, and bridges, while Russian air defenses struggle to field small interceptors comparable to those Ukraine uses against Shaheds. Occupation authorities now describe conditions as a “siege,” with some days bringing no new fuel codes because “the fuel trucks were unable to reach the city,” and visible panic‑buying of staples. If Kyiv can sustain or increase the tempo through the summer, former Ukrainian air force lieutenant colonel Oleksiy Melnyk says, Crimea is “becoming an island” for Russia, adding that “the history of Crimea shows us that it is very easy to capture and very hard to keep.”

“Ukraine Is Winning — for Now at Least,” Hal Brands, Bloomberg, 06.12.26.

• Brands argues that “2026 has been different,” noting that “the rate of Russian advances is slower than in prior years, even as losses remain sky-high: perhaps 35,000 personnel killed, wounded or missing each month,” while “the Ukrainians have regained small spits of land through localized counterattacks.” He says “the momentum has shifted mostly because of Ukraine’s world-class drone capabilities,” with “Russian refinery output… 15% lower this spring than last spring, despite higher prices due to the American war on Iran,” and “Russia’s monthly battlefield losses now regularly match or exceed its recruitment rates,” leaving “the war economy… under growing strain” and “discontent among the Russian elite… rising.”
• He cautions that “none of this means victory is near: Ukraine still can’t liberate large parts of its land in the east now held by Moscow. Putin is still bent on further dismembering and politically neutering that country.” The best‑case, in his view, is that “if Ukraine keeps bleeding Putin’s armies and battering the Russian economy through the remainder of this year, perhaps it can exhaust even Putin’s willingness to accept such exorbitant costs. Conditions might then emerge for a ceasefire.” The key uncertainty is whether “Ukraine’s drone advantage is now structural or merely cyclical,” since “the Russian military remains a resilient, learning organization; Russian industry can churn out drones and other weaponry at scale,” while Ukraine “is still short on manpower” and faces renewed threats to its energy grid and cities from intensified Russian air attacks.
• On wider risks, Brands writes that “Putin isn’t preparing for World War III: His military can hardly handle the fight it’s in,” but “probably hopes that military intimidation will cause European states to attenuate their support for Ukraine or discourage it from striking Russian cities,” or that “the threat of escalation will bring a favorable diplomatic intervention from US President Donald Trump.” He notes that “some NATO officials even fear that Putin might stage a minor military conflict — an occupation and then a quick withdrawal from territory in Estonia, for example — as a way of discrediting NATO,” and concludes that “a conflict that is now going better for the good guys could become more dangerous before it ends.”

Vladimir Putin’s “Meeting with servicemen – participants in the Special Military Operation,” Kremlin.ru, 06.12.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• On the nature of the war and the West: “Russia is practically alone opposing the entire so‑called collective West in the form of the well‑known North Atlantic bloc… all NATO countries, without exception, are doing everything possible to organize actions hostile to Russia and to bring, as they think, to their victorious end the war that has been unleashed against Russia.” “It is they who unleashed this war.”
• On how he justifies the invasion: “We did not begin hostilities with the start of the special military operation. No, they carried out a coup d’état in Ukraine… then they unleashed war… We tried to persuade them for eight years… Then it became clear that this was impossible… We had to defend our interests and the people living there by other means.”
• On the impossibility of Russia’s defeat: “They did not manage and will never manage to achieve any strategic, final defeat of Russia. No one has ever succeeded in achieving a strategic, final defeat of Russia, because our multiethnic, united people understand their responsibility before future generations.”
• On the contest with NATO: “We must not simply respond to the challenges they formulate for us, but be one step ahead. There are many of them – a whole pack – and we are one, but a united multiethnic people… Step by step, not as quickly as we would like, but we are still moving, every day, gradually bringing our territories under control.”
• On Russia’s answer to Starlink: “‘Bureau 1440’… is engaged in this low‑orbit satellite constellation; it is in no way inferior to Starlink, and perhaps even in some respects surpasses it. The question is building up this constellation… but the main thing is that the problem has been solved technologically and intellectually.”
• On Ukrainian long‑range drone strikes: “The enemy is expanding the use of this equipment mainly to solve one task, and that task is to sow division in Russian society, inflict moral and psychological damage on us, spread confusion among Russian citizens, and inflict economic damage. Nothing will come of it.” He adds that Russia will “strengthen the country’s air defense system” and “increase our strikes on the enemy’s infrastructure so as to knock out their desire to attack our civilian targets.”
• On negotiations and deterrence: “We must not simply respond to the challenges they formulate before us, but be one step ahead… We are gradually, step by step, bringing our territories under control. That is how it will be; there can be no doubt about it.” “We can give our adversaries only one piece of advice: do not fight with Russia, never try to do this. Let us live in friendship and resolve all issues through negotiations. But these must be negotiations, not ultimatums addressed to us.”
• “No one needs Russia but us; only we are capable of defending and strengthening it, and creating the conditions for its confident development,” Putin said.

Vladimir Putin’s remarks at “Meeting on the Development of the Reunified Subjects of the Russian Federation,” Kremlin.ru, 06.13.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• Putin presents the war as a success that must be locked in, telling officials that in the “reunified” regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson) “our Armed Forces have achieved strategic advantages” and that Russian troops are “moving forward, step by step expanding the territory under our control.” He insists that “the people who live there have made their choice, and this choice must be reliably protected,” framing continued military operations and integration efforts as the fulfillment of a historic mandate.
• He characterizes Ukrainian tactics as “openly terrorist methods,” claiming that “the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot withstand the onslaught of Russian troops and therefore resort to strikes on civilian infrastructure, residential areas, social facilities” in the annexed regions. According to Putin, these attacks are intended “to intimidate people and disrupt the restoration of peaceful life,” but “will not stop us from integrating these historical territories into a single legal, economic and cultural space of Russia,” and from “restoring normal life and creating conditions for development.”
• Looking ahead, Putin links the battlefield to long‑term plans, arguing that “the task is not only to ensure security, but also to achieve a real breakthrough in the quality of life” in the occupied areas. He tells regional leaders that, despite “attempts by the enemy to derail our efforts,” Russia will “continue the special military operation until its goals are fully achieved,” including “the reliable protection of our people and the strengthening of Russia’s sovereignty.”

“Offensive Lockdown: Ukraine’s growing air superiority threatens the collapse of the Russian front within the next few months,” RE: Russia, 06.09.26.

• Russia’s 2026 offensive has effectively stalled: territorial gains since January are the smallest in three years despite intense fighting and severe Russian losses. Recruitment is no longer offsetting casualties, and Russia’s troop numbers may have fallen by about 40,000 in five months. Ukraine, meanwhile, has gained growing air superiority through mass production of drones—especially the long‑range, AI‑enabled Hornet, co‑developed with Western partners and funded by a surge in allied investment. These systems systematically strike Russian air defenses, logistics, railways, depots, and key highways deep in the rear, sharply raising Russian casualties per square kilometer gained to around 200. Kyiv’s emerging doctrine is a “logistical lockdown”: using thousands of medium‑range drone sorties daily to cut front‑line units off from supplies, turning the war into a “reverse attrition” in which Russia, not Ukraine, bleeds faster than it can replace troops. If Moscow cannot adapt, this “could create a genuine risk of collapse across at least some sectors of the Russian front within the next three to six months.”

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

• "Russia to borrow more for spiraling war costs," Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 06.12.26.
• “The Mysterious Woman Behind the Nord Stream Explosion,” Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal, 06.12.26.
• "Russia’s overwhelming manpower advantage against Ukraine is starting to wane," Lauren Kent, CNN, 06.14.26.

Military aid to Ukraine:

“Ukraine is winning the drone war. Now it needs to win over Trump,” Felicia Schwartz, Megan Messerly and Nicholas Vinocur, Politico, 06.14.26.

• The authors write that “Ukraine is running out of Patriot interceptors, its power grid is heading into summer crippled and President Donald Trump is consumed by Iran. But for the first time in years, Kyiv is gaining ground.” Thanks to drones that are “cutting Russian supply lines and stretching its military and economy thin,” “the frontline has largely stabilized” and “for the first time since 2023, [Kyiv has] retaken more territory than it has lost,” buying Ukraine “something it hasn’t had in a while: time.”
• European diplomats see the G7 as “a rare opening” to push Trump to refocus on Ukraine, even as “Europeans today are taking on almost 100 percent of the aid,” one EU diplomat says. Kyiv wants “at least €20 billion more to double down on its battlefield successes,” and Zelenskyy is asking Washington to let Ukraine manufacture Patriot interceptors while seeking German missiles, because Ukraine uses “60 to 70 interceptor missiles per month,” more than Raytheon now produces.
• The article notes that a U.S.–Ukraine drone deal stalled because “the president doesn’t want to be seen as giving Zelenskyy a win,” but Ukraine has signed major industrial agreements with the U.K., Germany and Canada, including British firms set to deliver “120,000 drones” this year. While the EU adopted its 20th Russia sanctions package, Washington has granted Russia “a series of 30‑day oil waivers” amid the Iran war. Keeping Trump “interested in Ukraine’s fight” at G7, and then at the NATO summit in Ankara, is portrayed as a key near‑term goal for Kyiv and its European backers.

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

“From Pyongyang to Primorsk: When Sanctions Evasion Becomes System Design,” Olivia Vassalotti, War on the Rocks, 06.09.26.

• Vassalotti argues that Russia did not invent the “shadow fleet” playbook but industrialized one pioneered by North Korea, exploiting the same structural gaps in global shipping: name and flag laundering, flags of convenience, outsourced and even fraudulent registries, and weak due diligence. North Korea’s decades-long evasion program used permissive flags (Panama, Sierra Leone, Cambodia), bogus registries (like a fictitious Fijian registry), and intermediaries such as Singapore’s Sovereign Ventures to keep hundreds of vessels trading despite UN sanctions.
• Russia, far wealthier and deeply integrated into global trade, rapidly scaled those tactics after 2022 to preserve oil-export revenues and finance the war in Ukraine, assembling a shadow fleet of 600–1,000+ tankers within two years. Drawing on private, open registries in places like Gabon, Palau, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, and Oman, Russian-linked vessels hopped flags and names, used fraudulent registries identified by the IMO, and reflagged to Russia itself when pushed out—mirroring North Korean patterns but on a much larger, faster timeline and backed by an estimated $10 billion in investment.
• The core problem, she writes, is that sanctions “rarely penalize the institutions that enable” these fleets. As long as registries and service providers face stronger incentives to register ships than to scrutinize them, evasive networks will thrive. Vassalotti urges targeting registries that keep flagging shadow vessels even after designation—using sanctions, dollar-clearing leverage, and reputational costs—to raise the price of noncompliance, alongside incentives for better due diligence. Without structural changes to registry incentives and enforcement, she warns, shadow fleets will continue to grow and “the effectiveness of sanctions remains limited.”

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

“Inside Ukraine’s campaign to force Putin to the negotiating table by fall 2026,” Ukrainska Pravda/Meduza, 06.11.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views. Machine-translated.

• UP’s sources describe a coordinated “military‑diplomatic campaign” linking the June 3 drone strikes on St. Petersburg and Zelensky’s open letter to Putin. A source in Zelensky’s office says, “Putin shows no sign of wanting to move quickly toward negotiations. But there are many indirect signals and hints from major world powers that by fall the situation could change in a way that gives him no choice. Our task now is to do everything we can to ensure that Putin is left with no other path.”
• After the U.S.–Iran war, the Trump‑mediated Anchorage process is seen in Kyiv as “all but dead. It’s frozen and going nowhere,” a member of Zelensky’s diplomatic team tells UP. The presidential office is now trying to “refocus American attention on negotiations, engage European governments in the process, and consolidate its own bargaining position,” which Kyiv sees as resting on “escalation of long‑range strikes on Russia, the denial of Starlink… and a breakthrough in medium‑range drones.” One senior military source promises, “Wait until July and you will see what Ukrainian strength is,” referring to an “operational drone blockade” turning the Rostov–Simferopol highway into a “road of death” and aiming to sever the land corridor to Crimea.
• Zelensky has also stepped up direct pressure on Putin. UP reports that in May, Roman Abramovich visited Kyiv “to find out what compromises Kyiv was prepared to make”; Zelensky told him that “Ukraine had no intention of ceding Donbas to Russia” and proposed a direct meeting with Putin, attaching an “addendum” from his team that warned Russian commanders are misleading Putin and “they won’t capture all of Donbas — not by late summer or fall.” Zelensky’s public letter, while calling for talks, was meant mainly “to press Russia on Ukraine’s terms and recapture international attention,” and Bankova “did not expect Putin to agree on the spot.”
• Inside Zelensky’s circle, another date “keeps surfacing”—“October–November.” A member of his diplomatic team says, “That’s when everything comes together — all the military, diplomatic, and international factors — and a window of opportunity for talks might open. Somewhere before the American elections and after the Russian Duma elections.” By late fall, they hope there will be a chance to “lock in the new balance of forces on the battlefield, at least through diplomatic means,” and are using the coming months to strengthen Ukraine’s military and diplomatic hand ahead of any potential negotiations.

“Trump negotiators to visit Moscow after birthday call with Putin,” Henry Samuel, The Telegraph, 06.14.26.

• Samuel reports that, according to the Kremlin, “Donald Trump’s top negotiators will travel to Moscow” after Vladimir Putin phoned him on his 80th birthday. Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected “to return to Russia ‘soon’,” claiming their call “focused on the situation surrounding the memorandum of understanding being drafted between the United States and Iran,” with Trump saying “an agreement is close,” and that they also discussed Ukraine.
• The article casts this as a Kremlin “charm offensive” just before the G7 summit in Évian, where Trump will join a working session on Ukraine with Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky wrote that they had “quite a detailed discussion about many key things – peace, surely, was among them,” said he briefed Trump on “how our position has strengthened,” and promised to discuss “good ideas that could help advance peace and protect lives” at the summit.
• Samuel notes that Trump has “angered Kyiv and European allies” by urging Ukrainian concessions, while “Putin…has continued to pursue direct channels to the White House,” signaling Moscow still has access to Trump’s inner circle.

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

• Podcast: “Vladimir Putin Says ‘Nyet’ to Ukraine’s Peace Talks Offer,” Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday, The National Interest, 06.10.26.
• "Negotiating With the Antichrist," Nina L. Khrushcheva, Project Syndicate, 06.10.26.
• "How Trump's multi-front pressure is shrinking Putin's operating space," Tanvi Ratna, Fox News, 06.13.26.
• "From the Spirit of Tilsit to the Spirit of Anchorage: The Genealogy of a Diplomatic Metaphor," Maria Maiofis and Ilya Kukulin, The Moscow Times, 06.13.26. (In Russian.)

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

“The World’s Great Powers Are Learning They Have Limits,” Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, 06.09.26.

• Trofimov argues that recent wars show “the strong can’t really do what they want,” as technological change and societal resilience have sharply limited great‑power coercion. Despite massive strikes that killed much of Iran’s leadership and expended large stocks of munitions, the U.S. has failed to secure a strategic victory: Tehran still blockades the Strait of Hormuz and can fire missiles at Israel and Gulf states. Ukraine, cut off from U.S. aid and pressured to cede Donetsk under the 2025 Anchorage understanding, has nonetheless “turned the tide,” holding the front and inflicting painful strikes on Russia.
• Military leaders and officials tell him that regime‑change‑by‑invasion is now “almost impossible” when a population is determined to resist and drone and missile technology narrows traditional air‑power advantages. Russia has been unable to take Kyiv; the U.S. will not risk a ground thrust to Tehran; even Israel struggles to crush Hamas “in practically just one city.” Trofimov notes that middle and small powers—from Ukraine and Iran to Taiwan, Singapore, and the Philippines—retain real agency, especially when they are willing to fight and cooperate with one another, and that “middle powers united” can constrain great powers more than classical Thucydidean fatalism allows.

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

• “Top U.S. NATO Commander Contradicts European Claims of Russian Aggression,” Stewart Battle, EIR, 06.12.26.
• “Don’t Give Up on Global Order,” Philip H. Gordon, Foreign Affairs, 06.09.26.
• “How America Lost Command of the Commons,” Isaac Kardon, Foreign Affairs, 06.09.26.
• “Home alone: Europeans are ready to defend themselves,” Jana Kobzová and Paweł Zerka, ECFR Policy Brief, 06.10.26.
• "The NATO Ankara Summit: “NATO 3.0” in Practice," Jonathan Burchell, CSIS, 06.09.26.
• “The Real Problem With Global Trade,” Brad Setser and Shahin Vallée, Foreign Affairs, 06.11.26.
• “It Was Meant to Unify. Now the G7 Is Dogged by Chaos and Divided by Trump,” Mark Landler, The New York Times, 06.14.26. 
• Podcast: “What the World Cup Reveals About Global Politics (w/ Franklin Foer),” The Long Game podcast, with Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer, 06.12.26. 
• "Russia Is the Test of Europe's Strategic Autonomy," Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 06.14.26.
• "Are New Russian Troop Deployments the Latest Scheme to Break Up NATO?" Peter Suciu, The National Interest, 06.13.26.
• “Arson targeting Keir Starmer properties originated in Russia,” Miles Johnson, Helen Warrell and Elizabeth Bratton, Financial Times, 06.15.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“How China Is Using the Ukraine War to Set the Stage for Taiwan,” Mike Kuiken and Randy Schriver, The National Interest, 06.10.26.

• Kuiken and Schriver argue Beijing is deliberately keeping Russia’s war going at a manageable level because it yields priceless data and rehearsals for a future conflict over Taiwan. Chinese‑made components dominate downed Russian drones and missiles; “nine out of ten” sanctioned technologies Russia imports now come via China; and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has privately signaled that China “cannot accept a Russian defeat” because it would free Washington to focus on China.
• They contend that what matters is not just what China can build but what it learns from what it ships: every Chinese chip or guidance unit recovered from Ukraine or Red Sea attacks is a live‑fire test of Chinese kit against Western defenses, subsidizing PLA doctrine and “setting the theater” for the Pacific. North Korean troops blooded in Ukraine and Xi’s renewed embrace of Pyongyang are cast as part of a two‑front strategy to pin U.S. forces in Korea while moving on Taiwan, with 2027 as the key readiness date.
• The authors urge the United States to stop asking Beijing for help on Ukraine or Iran and instead sanction Chinese firms fueling Russia’s and Iran’s war machines, expose China’s role as the war’s “decisive enabler,” step up support to Taiwan, and recognize that “a Russian defeat is exactly what Beijing says it cannot accept”—therefore something Washington should empower Kyiv to deliver.

“On the ideology and political practice of modern China,” Andrey Kokoshin, Russian International Affairs Council, 06.10.26. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.) Clues from Russian Views.

• Kokoshin argues that China’s rise rests on a distinctive ideological synthesis: “socialism with Chinese characteristics” that blends Marxism‑Leninism and Xi Jinping’s thought with revived Confucian and other classical traditions. He emphasizes that modern China is “one of the most ideologized societies in the world,” yet its high level of ideological control has not produced Soviet‑style economic dogmatism; instead, it coexists with a powerful market economy, a huge private sector and sophisticated macro‑planning through five‑year plans.
• Drawing heavily on a new collective volume by top Russian Sinologists, he highlights how Xi’s era has brought a re‑ideologization of virtually all spheres: law (a fusion of “legalist” harshness and Confucian moral governance), economics (party leadership over an innovative, globally integrated economy aimed at “common prosperity”), foreign policy (civilizational self‑assertion, rejection of U.S. hegemony without seeking to copy it) and the military (return of strong party control, “military‑civil fusion,” and rapid nuclear and high‑tech buildup). Nationalist, left‑patriotic and culturally conservative currents have gained ground, while liberal and pro‑Western currents are “marginalized,” even if not eliminated.
• Kokoshin underlines that this ideological framework underpins China’s domestic stability and its bid for global leadership, and that it shapes Beijing’s relationships with both Washington and Moscow. He presents Sino‑Russian ties as “unprecedentedly high,” rooted not just in convergent interests but in compatible worldviews, and argues that understanding the ideological foundations of Xi’s China—its use of Confucian values, party supremacy, anti‑corruption as a legitimacy tool, and linkage of economic modernization to growing military power—is essential for Russian strategic planning and for anyone trying to grasp the emerging world order.

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

• "25 Years of the SCO: Creating a Common Security Space on the Continent," Dmitry Trenin, Russian International Affairs Council, 06.15.26. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)
• "Competition between Russia, the U.S., China, and the EU in the market for critical minerals for the ICT sector," Roman Shamraev and Andrey Ignatiev, Russian International Affairs Council, 06.10.26. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“The Strange Defeat of Nuclear Deterrence: And the Coming Crisis in Strategic Stability,” Rose Gottemoeller, Foreign Affairs, 06.12.26.

• Gottemoeller argues that recent wars show “nuclear deterrence is not working” as traditionally conceived. She highlights Ukraine’s 2025 “Operation Spider’s Web,” in which cheap drones destroyed Russian strategic bombers and command‑and‑control aircraft on bases Moscow had said were protected by its nuclear doctrine, and notes that Russia answered with conventional strikes, not nuclear escalation. Similarly, Israel’s presumed arsenal has not deterred Iranian, Hezbollah, or Houthi missile and drone attacks—including a strike on the Dimona reactor—while India and Pakistan have waged serious conventional clashes despite both being nuclear powers.
• In her view, nuclear weapons still constrain direct great‑power war (for example between NATO and Russia), but they no longer deter determined adversaries from conventional and hybrid attacks. That weakens “deterrence by punishment” and elevates the importance of “deterrence by denial:” resilient bases, cheap and layered air‑ and missile‑defense against drones and short‑range missiles, and hardened, mobile nuclear systems. She argues that pouring money into ever‑larger arsenals and platform modernization may be less useful than investing in survivability and integrated defenses that can protect nuclear infrastructure against conventional strikes.
• Gottemoeller warns that more states going nuclear will not solve the problem—Russian and Israeli examples show the bomb “does not shield a large state from a small one”—and would instead increase risks of accident, miscalculation, and terrorist acquisition. She urges nuclear and non‑nuclear states alike to strengthen norms by pledging not to attack nuclear power plants or military nuclear facilities even with conventional weapons, effectively extending the nuclear taboo to conventional targeting. In this “confused nuclear moment,” she concludes, the answer is not more warheads but adapting to a world in which cheap drones and missiles can bypass traditional deterrence, while using norms and defenses to keep nuclear weapons’ role limited to deterring other nuclear powers and preventing catastrophic escalation.

Video: “John Mearsheimer & Sergey Karaganov: Nuclear Strike on Europe to Restore Deterrence,” interviewed by Glenn Diesel, June 13, 2026. Quotes are auto-transcribed.

John Mearsheimer

• Mearsheimer recalls that during the Cold War “everybody came to realize that a nuclear war would be catastrophic,” so “lots of red lines were drawn… we all understood those red lines and we didn’t cross them.”
• He contrasts this with today, saying “I have been amazed at the extent to which people in the West seem to have forgotten that we live in a very dangerous world because of the presence of nuclear weapons,” and that “those red lines… seem to have disappeared.”
• He argues that Western behavior in Ukraine shows “the West thinks that it can push the Russians around and that there are no serious red lines there,” even though “you’re threatening the survival of a country that has many, many nuclear weapons.”
• On nuclear war, Mearsheimer insists “it’s impossible to win a nuclear war if you’re talking about both sides engaging in an all‑out fight… we all end up getting vaporized.”
• He interprets Karaganov’s concept as using “a handful of nuclear weapons…all for the purpose of signaling just how serious Russia was about reestablishing deterrence,” so that “the mere use of nuclear weapons… would scare the living daylights out of everybody in Europe” and make the West back off.
• Mearsheimer says he “thinks you’re correct” that if Russia used limited nuclear strikes in Europe “the United States would not use nuclear weapons to retaliate against Russia… and certainly the Europeans wouldn’t either.”
• He repeatedly cautions that Western escalation risks disaster, saying “it’s very dangerous to provoke the Russians,” and expresses hope that “more and more attention is paid to Sergey’s argument… so that we avoid catastrophe.”

Sergey Karaganov

• Karaganov warns that “about 15 to 17 years ago the world has moved… into a most dangerous period in its history,” and that “we are at the beginning of the world war.”
• He argues that “we have to restore the fear… which have kept us from warring with each other for about 70 years,” insisting that “we have to restore the fear of nuclear weapons… that is fear of God.”
• On Russia’s options, he says, “if Russia uses…nuclear weapons in Europe…we would win the war. But that would be a terrible moral disaster,” and “that is the main reason… President Putin… are refraining from using nuclear weapons.”
• Karaganov maintains that “nuclear war is winnable, but God forbids,” and warns that if Russia used nukes and “we win… everybody in the world… will be using them and we will get into an absolutely different world.”
• He calls Europe “the embodiment and the source of all major wars” and claims “Europe has been the source of most of the evil things in history of human society,” saying “Europe should be pushed aside from the world scene.”
• On Germany, he asserts that “Germany… is the worst threat for the world in human history,” and that if it seeks nuclear weapons “Germany will be… evaporated from the face of the earth,” adding “Germany should never even get close” to such arms.
• For Russia’s long‑term strategy, he says, “my recipe for my country is go east, south and north, develop Siberia… our future wealth and our moral and political might,” while managing inevitable conflicts in Europe.

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

• "The NPT after New York: worrying trends and remaining hopeful signs," Emmanuelle Maitre, European Leadership Network (ELN), 06.11.26.

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

“How Ukraine Uses A.I. to Knock Deadly Russian Drones Out of the Skies,” Maria Varenikova, New York Times, 06.15.26.

• Varenikova reports that the P1‑Sun Long is “one of Ukraine’s first interceptor drones powered by artificial intelligence,” reflecting “both the Ukrainian military’s embrace of A.I. and the rapid evolution of its defenses against Shaheds,” which Russia launches “in relentless daily waves, destroying infrastructure, killing civilians and sowing terror.” SkyFall, a major Ukrainian drone maker, says its interceptors “have made dozens of A.I.-assisted strikes on Shahed-type drones since November, among thousands of interceptions overall,” after training its system on “more than 10,000 videos of interceptions of Shaheds.”

“How the FSB cut Russia off from the internet,” Anastasia Stognei and Max Seddon, Financial Times, 06.11.26.

• Stognei and Seddon report that since mid‑2025 the FSB’s domestic arm has effectively seized the “main switch” of Russia’s internet, triggering intermittent but sweeping mobile‑internet shutdowns and crippling Telegram and WhatsApp across the country. What began as localized outages to counter Ukrainian drone operations—by shutting down cell towers that guide drones—has evolved into a broader power grab justified by fears that foreign intelligence services and domestic opposition use foreign‑based messengers to plan attacks and protests.
• The authors describe how everyday life has regressed: cash use is rising, card‑only “golden toilets” and point‑of‑sale systems fail, navigation apps die, and people resort to paper maps, email, or even pet‑camera hacks to talk to family. VPN downloads have “exploded,” but there is now a rolling “cyber war” between censors and providers, while businesses such as Yandex and Ozon list outages as major risks and banks improvise by processing card payments offline.
• Politically, they say, the shutdowns reflect a quiet transfer of authority from civilian regulators to the FSB’s Second Service under Alexei Sedov, with Putin ordering only that “critical” services be whitelisted during blackouts. Telegram founder Pavel Durov warns that the crackdown is driving out the very engineers Russia would need for a sovereign digital ecosystem.
• In place of an open internet, the Kremlin is building a “sovereign Runet” on a whitelist model: only state‑approved services continue to work during outages, including Max, a WeChat‑style messenger effectively controlled by Putin ally Yuri Kovalchuk. State employees are being pushed onto Max, which lacks end‑to‑end encryption and auto‑subscribes users to propaganda channels, and many Russians now carry a second phone just for state apps. Analysts quoted in the piece argue that Russia’s improvised, repressive model is neither China’s carefully engineered system nor Iran’s low‑penetration internet, but a uniquely chaotic attempt to bolt “Chinese internet”–style control onto a highly connected society at great economic and social cost.

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

• "Ukraine’s Drones Can Now Kill Without a Human in the Loop," Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 06.12.26.
• “Beyond the Benchmarks: A Systemic View of U.S.-China AI Competition,” Center for Geopolitics, JPMorgan Chase, 05.2026.

Energy exports from CIS:

“Europe Plans to Crack Down on Russia—but for Real This Time,” Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy, 06.10.26.

• Johnson reports that the EU has proposed its 21st Russia sanctions package, this time squarely targeting energy to “bring the Russian war economy to heel” just as Moscow enjoys a windfall from Trump’s Iran war and eased U.S. sanctions. The package would tighten curbs on Russian oil earnings, add more “shadow fleet” tankers to the blacklist, sanction ports and refineries trafficking in Russian crude and products, restrict future sales of specialized LNG tankers, hit additional banks and dual‑use trade, and ban from Europe any Russian who has taken part in the “special military operation.”
• He notes that Russia’s fossil‑fuel revenues are at two‑year highs—about €726 million per day in May—thanks to higher prices and U.S. waivers that cleared stranded tankers, prompting one analyst to say “the Trump administration has basically dealt Putin a blank check.” Experts quoted in the piece are skeptical that tweaks to the oil price cap will matter—calling it “dead in the water”—but see promise in enforcing sanctions on refineries and ports and expanding the shadow‑fleet blacklist, especially if the United States joins in.
• A glaring gap, Johnson writes, is LNG: EU imports of Russian Arctic LNG are up nearly 18% this year, even as Brussels talks of a full ban by 2027. Plans to bar new LNG tanker sales to Russia are undermined by reports that Novatek is negotiating to buy up to ten ice‑class ships from Japanese and South Korean yards. After four years and 20 incremental packages watered down by Hungary and others, he says this “moment of truth”—the first round without Viktor Orbán at the table—will test whether the EU is finally willing to move beyond half‑measures and impose sanctions that materially constrain Russia’s warmaking capacity.

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

• "Russia’s fuel crisis," Sergei Smirnov, The Bell, 06.09.26.

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

"Why Trump and Putin can’t escape their mistakes,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 06.11.26.

• Ignatius argues that Trump and Putin are trapped in parallel “power traps” of their own making: both assumed Iran and Ukraine would capitulate in weeks, ignored warnings that victory would be hard, and now cannot admit error or find a path to genuine success. Trump, visibly frustrated and “snarling” in interviews, insists he doesn’t even “consider” the Strait of Hormuz standoff a war while lurching between threats to “extinguish” Iran and offers of generous terms; Putin still calls Ukraine a “special military operation” and believes he can dictate terms even as his army suffers more than 30,000 casualties a month and fails to break through.
• Quoting Tatiana Stanovaya, Ignatius notes that in Moscow “no one can afford to express doubts to Putin,” while a growing cadre of Russian analysts—such as Vasily Kashin, who calls “liquidating the anti‑Russian regime” in Kyiv “technically impossible” without a full occupation—publicly question the war’s aims. Trump faces similar dissent at home: his Iran campaign is likely to end in a deal that resembles the 2015 nuclear accord he scrapped, making the war a costly exercise that “achieved very little,” and U.S. politics is already beginning to correct course in ways that could undercut him.
• Both leaders, Ignatius writes, double down rather than adjust: they live on flattery, disdain soft power, and attack the press—Putin by “tighten[ing] controls on the internet and suppress[ing] the app Telegram,” Trump by railing daily at “the fake dirty press, the crooked press.” Yet there are limits: Trump cannot actually stop critical reporting, and Putin risks a backlash if he “chokes the internet too hard.” Ignatius concludes that the Iran and Ukraine wars will likely be remembered as “epic mistakes” akin to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and that while democracies can eventually correct such errors, Russia is “a boiling pot with a tight lid” and Putin has probably missed his best chance—via a Trump‑brokered Ukraine deal—to escape the consequences of his own hubris.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Elite Without Agency: Russia’s Ruling Stratum and the Logic of Loyalty,” Alexandra Prokopenko, 06.09.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• “In Russia in 2022 this group retained access to the attributes of power and to resource‑distribution networks, but it lost elite subjectivity.”
• “We are no longer dealing with an ‘elite’ in the classical sense, but with nobiles… a narrow circle of high‑ranking officials and businessmen who possess recognized ‘insider’ status and access to strategic decisions and the personal trust of the country’s leadership—but not political agency.”
• “Nobiles fully possess the agency of adaptation—the ability to survive, optimize, and find solutions within given coordinates. But they are structurally deprived of the agency of change—the ability to redefine the system’s coordinates themselves, to question its goals, to offer an alternative. This is not personal weakness or cowardice. It is the systemic result of a quarter‑century of depoliticization.”
• “The entire meaning of the governance‑system reform was to eliminate or subordinate to the Kremlin any alternative centers of power.”
• “The annexation of Crimea revealed an important trait of the depoliticized system—its capacity for rapid normalization.”
• “The February 21, 2022, Security Council meeting looked not like a scene of political struggle, but as an illustration of depoliticization in action: people occupying the highest state posts were present at the formalization of a decision they did not make.”
• “Twenty years of depoliticization formed a group for whom public dissent is structurally inaccessible.”
• “Conformity in Russia’s ruling stratum is not an aberration and not an individual characteristic, but a structural result of institutional design.”
• “The modern ruling layer in Russia is not a political class, but a managerial community removed from competition and public accountability. The state in this form does not possess its own will or strategy—it becomes an operational apparatus without internal autonomy.”
• “After Putin’s departure this system will face a critical deficit of agency: the ruling stratum has no experience of strategic thinking, no practice of public discussion, and no skills for working with alternatives.”
• “For a Western observer only one conclusion follows: Russia after Putin will not automatically become a ‘different Russia.’”

“Vladimir Putin denies economic stagnation after four years of war,” Michael Corbin, Responsible Statecraft, 06.09.26.

• Corbin writes that at SPIEF 2026 Putin brushed off questions about a “stagnating economy,” paraphrasing Mark Twain that “rumors of my death [i.e., the Russian economy] have been greatly exaggerated” and insisting he did not “foresee any immediate dangers,” claiming Russia has simply returned to the same “baseline” growth as the eurozone. This contrasts with his Economy Ministry, which cut its 2026 growth forecast from 1.3% to 0.4%, and with warnings from the Finance Ministry and central bank that war spending is on an “unaffordable path.”
• Officials tried to soothe concerns: Finance Minister Anton Siluanov pointed to nearly 1 trillion extra rubles in revenue from the Strait of Hormuz crisis; Putin cited Russia’s 2.6% deficit as better than the EU’s 3.1% and America’s 5.9%; and aide Maxim Oreshkin claimed there are “no gaps” in the economy and boasted that Russia’s GDP has grown 10% over three years versus 3% for Europe. At the same time, the central bank’s Elvira Nabiullina was conspicuously absent after reportedly calling in sick.
• Corbin argues SPIEF’s real purpose was not to clarify Russia’s economic health but to showcase “sovereignty and multipolarity,” rebranding the forum from a Western‑oriented investment fair into a BRICS/Global South showcase. With Western delegations minimal and only far‑right German AfD lawmakers in attendance, Moscow courted Saudi Arabia as guest country and highlighted that 79% of its trade is now with the Global South, while Putin used his keynote to claim BRICS accounts for 49% of recent global growth versus 18% for the G7 and to frame Russia as an architect of a new multipolar economic order.

“SPIEF 2026 Was A Tragicomic Encapsulation of Russia's Economic Quagmire,” Tatyana Rybakova, The Moscow Times, 06.10.26. Machine-translated. Clues from Russian Views.

• Rybakova portrays SPIEF 2026 as a surreal blend of denial and farce, opening under “clouds of black smoke” from Ukrainian drone strikes on a St. Petersburg oil terminal while state TV breathlessly touted “foreign delegations” that in reality amounted to a Trump ballroom architect, Steven Seagal, and Candace Owens. On stage, Konstantin Malofeyev and Alexander Dugin sketched futures in which Russia prospers only by “killing and defeating and robbing its enemies,” and collapse follows any end to the war—positions the Kremlin can later dismiss as marginal, she notes, even as they set the tone.
• The economic substance was no less bleak. Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina’s conspicuous no‑show—explained first by a funeral, then by illness—hung over panels where Finance Minister Anton Siluanov admitted there is “not enough money in the budget” and that things won’t improve before 2029, while insisting war spending will keep rising and tax hikes “haven’t gone too far.” Deputy chief of staff Maxim Oreshkin recycled talking points about BRICS providing “50% of global growth,” without anyone asking how much of that was actually China.
• Putin eventually appeared, boasting that Russia had seized enough territory to “conquer Ukraine four times over” (a gaffe later scrubbed from the transcript) and that Russia’s GDP and debt compare favorably to Europe’s, casting isolation as a spur to innovation. He promised to move state‑company headquarters to the regions and to freeze the VAT threshold at 20 million rubles, concessions Rybakova suggests will do little in an environment where Rosstat reports fixed‑investment at a 16‑year low and small businesses are already pushed into the shadows.
• Around the halls, she writes, domestically produced robot footballers and Chinese robots in sarafans toppled over, Russian cars looked like “poor copies” of Chinese models, and a Donetsk separatist stand hawked perfumes called “The Resilience of Metal” and “Steppe Wind” as the real “fragrance” was the “Smoky Spoil Tips” of burning oil over the Neva. Political scientists around the world, she concludes, can “see the obvious quagmire that Russia continues to deny it’s in,” even as SPIEF tries to project business as usual.

Russian Communist MP Vyacheslav Markhaev’s post in his Telegram channel, 06.11.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• “Dear fellow citizens! Amidst the ceaseless attacks by Ukrainian forces on our cities, the authorities recently held the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum; on its opening day, the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal—one of the largest in the Baltic region—came under attack. Yet, the very arguments previously cited to justify cancelling the May 9th Victory Parade were not deemed sufficient to call off the forum. One gets the impression that the primary goal of such events is to project an image of illusory prosperity, masking a lack of real achievements—save for the personal enrichment of the elites.”
• “Meanwhile, the pockets of government officials and their inner circles remain full. According to 2026 Forbes data, the number of Russian billionaires hit a record high of 155, with a combined net worth of nearly $700 billion—a figure one and a half times the size of the federal budget. Multi-billion-ruble embezzlement, the arrest of officials at all levels, and the seizure of assets worth a trillion rubles annually—this is the reality. This trajectory is largely a legacy of the 1990s, when the country saw the wholesale plundering of state assets.”
• “What would a foreign enemy do if it conquered Russia? It would appropriate resources, loot the industrial sector, hike up tariffs, and build itself lavish mansions. Yet no invasion occurred; the authorities accomplished this themselves, more effectively than any aggressor. Not a single successful reform has been implemented in 35 years, while the ranks of the super-rich continue to swell—even five years into the "Special Military Operation."
• “Turning to the subject of the Special Military Operation—a topic I long avoided—I am compelled to note that corruption scandals are compounded by the ongoing loss of the most active and reproductive segments of the population, a consequence of incompetent leadership. Attacks on our cities continue and are spreading geographically; the West is ramping up drone supplies, yet we are forced to endure it. Officials within the Presidential Administration are already signaling that the goals of "denazification" and "demilitarization" of Ukraine have effectively been reduced to securing specific new territories rather than transforming the entire country.”
• “If this situation persists, a social explosion and ensuing chaos become increasingly likely. The West would inevitably exploit this to finish off the remnants of the Russian state. The same team has helmed the political system for a quarter of a century, yet appears to have largely lost touch with the people's needs. Modern Russia has already existed for half as long as the Soviet Union did, yet the only ones who can boast of progress are the oligarchs and their inner circle—less than 5% of the population. I call upon the ruling authorities to come to their senses! We demand an end to the unjustified rise in utility tariffs and the restoration of a fair pricing system. Officials must be held truly accountable for failing to comply with laws and the President’s direct orders. We need a clear, public plan for concluding the Special Military Operation, based on Russia’s national interests. We demand an end to the practice of holding performative forums that yield no real results, and insist on a focus on solving citizens' pressing problems. The time for illusions has passed. The country is on the verge of a social explosion, and the entire responsibility for this will rest with the entrenched ruling authorities.”

“Will the Ukraine war bring regime change to Russia?,” Jennifer Mathers, Asia Times, 06.10.26.

• Mathers notes that Zelenskyy’s line “when Russia grows tired, change comes” has historical backing: in the last century, Russian regimes have fallen or been transformed after major military failures or foreign‑policy blunders—1905 after the Russo‑Japanese War, 1917 after World War I, Khrushchev’s ouster after the Cuban missile crisis, and the USSR’s collapse shortly after the Afghanistan debacle. In each case, public humiliation plus real hardship and elite grievance created space for challengers to organize.
• She argues today’s war is becoming a similar humiliation. Russia’s “special military operation” has failed to take Kyiv and is struggling even to hold gains in Donbas; leaked documents suggest the Kremlin is already planning propaganda to spin unfulfilled war aims. At the same time, drones have brought the war home with fuel shortages and rationing, and a Levada poll shows 62% of Russians want the war to end—remarkable given the pressure to give “patriotic” answers.
• Yet Mathers sees little prospect of mass protest under draconian laws against “discrediting” the army and in the absence of any legal opposition: leading critics are jailed or in exile, and “foreign agent” and “undesirable organization” labels neutralize dissent. That makes elite action the likeliest vector for change, as in 1964, but she stresses Putin has worked hard to prevent this—refusing to name a successor, keeping factions divided, and binding security services to him personally. Still, if he continues to reject any concessions to end the war, those around him may eventually decide their interests are best served by removing him.

“Putin can no longer shield ordinary Russians from the war he unleashed,” Peter Dickinson, Atlantic Council UkraineAlert, 06.11.26.

• Dickinson argues that June’s Ukrainian drone strikes on St. Petersburg—black smoke over SPIEF and a scaled‑down Victory Day parade after Putin begged Trump for a ceasefire—are the clearest sign yet that the war is now “increasingly being fought inside Russia itself” and that Putin’s four‑year effort to insulate Moscow and St. Petersburg from the invasion’s costs is breaking down.
• Beyond the psychology, he notes, repeated hits on refineries are triggering fuel shortages and rationing across regions, disrupting domestic air travel, and forcing ordinary Russians to confront the war in their daily lives. At the same time, sweeping new internet restrictions—justified as necessary to stop Ukrainian drones using Russian networks—are angering citizens and further eroding the “wartime social contract” that traded apathy for stability.
• Dickinson predicts the Kremlin will respond with more repression at home (expanded mobile‑internet shutdowns, higher spending on internal security) and escalation abroad (intensified strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, more aggressive hybrid operations in Europe) to restore deterrence. Ukrainian drones alone, he writes, will not win the war or topple Putin, but they are imposing “significant military, economic, political, and psychological costs” and are making it much harder for the Kremlin to maintain the illusion that Russians can wage war next door without paying a price.

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

• "Putin is nervous, but continues to drag out the war," Sergey Shelin, The Moscow Times, 06.12.26. (In Russian.)
• "SPIEF 2026: The economic forum that avoided the subject," Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 06.10.26.
• “How Best to Look at Russian History,” Tim Brinkhof, Foreign Policy, 06.12.26.
• “Russia, Land of the Unpredictable Past,” Alexey Kovalev, Foreign Policy, 06.12.26.

Defense and aerospace:

“The Military Economy Has Contracted Dutch Disease: Rising oil prices and economic revenues are leading to ‘reverse import substitution’,” Re:Russia, 06.09.26.

• The authors show how the Strait of Hormuz crisis has driven Russian Urals prices near $95/barrel, boosting March–April oil export revenues by 85% versus January–February (to $38.3 billion) despite flat or lower export volumes. The resulting rouble appreciation (back to its pre‑war 71–75/$ range and now the “world’s best‑performing” currency) is fueling a “reverse import substitution”: January–March 2026 goods imports rose 6% year‑on‑year, with machinery, equipment, and vehicles up 12%.
• Almost all of that import growth comes from China, whose exports to Russia jumped 22% in Q1, raising its share of Russian imports from 36% to 42% and cementing near‑exclusive control over Russia’s high‑tech and transport equipment supply. Some EU pharma exports have also quietly grown. Yet civilian manufacturing is stagnating or contracting: while headline industrial output rose ~2%, detailed estimates show growth concentrated in war‑related sectors (metal products, transport equipment, electronics, pharma), with civilian manufacturing flat or falling.
• The shift by Rosstat to a 2023 base year for industrial indices boosts the statistical weight of military industries, meaning continued arms production can mask weakness in civilian sectors. Re:Russia warns this “normalizes” a militarized structure and risks deeper imbalances: as long as oil revenues stay high, Russia can cover domestic shortfalls with imports, but under less favorable conditions, consumers could face shortages and inflation as an overweighted war economy crowds out civilian supply.
• 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:

• No significant developments.

Ukraine:

• “Ukraine Is About to Take a Big Step on a Long Road Toward the European Union,” Jeanna Smialek, New York Times, 06.15.26.
• “Podcast: The EU should fully embrace Ukraine,” The Economist, 06.09.26.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Russia Has Lost Its ‘Near Abroad’,” Casey Michel, Wall Street Journal, 06.12.26.

• Michel argues that years into Putin’s failed war in Ukraine, Russia’s dream of great‑power status has collapsed to the point that it is “no longer even a primary regional power” in the very “near abroad” it once dominated. Ukraine is the clearest case: Kyiv is “gaining ground on the battlefield and pressing a decisive advantage with long-range drone strikes,” strangling Russia’s hold on Crimea and exposing how unrealistic Putin’s goal of conquering the rest of Donbas has become.
• He points to broader erosion of Russian influence across the ex‑Soviet space: Transnistria is economically collapsing and more open to reintegration with Moldova; Armenia is hosting EU summits and ignoring Putin’s “Ukrainian scenario” threats; and Central Asian states, increasingly tied to China, are recasting Russian and Soviet rule as colonialism, with scholars in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan openly rejecting Moscow’s historical narratives. With Belarus as the lone clear ally left, Michel contends Russia’s regional hegemony has “buckled alongside its military fortunes in Ukraine,” and urges Washington to accelerate this process by backing Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova, and others to reveal Russia as “not a global power—and now… no longer even a regional one.”

“Armenia’s election is a setback for Vladimir Putin,” The Economist, 06.08.26.

• The article argues that Nikol Pashinyan’s near‑50% win and parliamentary majority, despite Moscow’s bans on Armenian exports, disinformation, and threats, is a clear rebuff to Russia’s efforts to keep Armenia in its orbit. Voters backed his promise of “regional prosperity and co‑operation” and a Western‑leaning peace with Azerbaijan over the opposition’s offer of a return to failed partnership with Russia and “reheated nationalism.”
• Western leaders welcomed the result; the EU helped Armenia weather Russian trade pressure and has announced a €50 million aid package with more to come. The piece notes that normalization with Turkey and finalizing the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity—linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan via southern Armenia—now look more plausible, though Pashinyan’s party fell short of the two‑thirds majority needed to amend the constitution on Nagorno‑Karabakh, a key Azerbaijani demand for a peace treaty.
• The Economist warns that Russia can still “cause trouble” via gas pricing, trade, and its military base, and that pro‑Russian forces performed better than polls suggested. Yet it concludes that Civil Contract’s win “vindicates Armenia’s efforts to pursue its own course,” shows “Russia’s dirty tricks” are failing, and fits a broader pattern of Kremlin‑friendly forces losing at the ballot box in Europe.

“Armenia’s Election: A Win for Pashinyan, Yet the Kremlin Long Game Persists,” Callum Fraser, Natia Seskuria, and Sophie Williams‑Dunning, RUSI, 06.12.26.

• The authors argue that while Pashinyan’s June 7 victory is rightly seen in Europe as a setback for Moscow, it is “less than the resounding victory that European commentators have presented it as.” Civil Contract kept a majority but lost its constitutional super‑majority and seven seats, leaving it six short of the two‑thirds needed to amend the constitution; Samvel Karapetyan’s pro‑Russian Strong Armenia, aided by a year‑long Kremlin influence campaign, took 23.2%—about double polling expectations—creating the substantial pro‑Russian bloc the Kremlin wanted to “speak for” it in Yerevan.
• They describe Russia’s “hybrid electoral interference” as a mix of economic coercion (trade and gas threats via the EAEU), cultivation of multiple elites and parties rather than a single proxy, and sustained information operations. Narrative‑intelligence data from LetsData shows nearly 1,000 malign posts in two months accusing the EU and West of “interference” and framing Pashinyan as a corrupt Western puppet, content that generated about 4.6 million views and helped “seed narratives of illegitimacy” even though independent observers judged the vote free and fair.
• Losing a constitutional majority, the authors warn, complicates Pashinyan’s peace and EU agendas: Baku has tied a treaty to Armenia dropping constitutional claims to Nagorno‑Karabakh, something now much harder to deliver, raising the risk of renewed conflict and slowing Yerevan’s cautious security pivot from Moscow and connectivity projects like the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. They conclude that Armenia is “the latest iteration of a playbook under revision,” showing how Russia uses elections to entrench long‑term leverage, and argue that the same tactics—long‑running information ops, economic pressure, and elite cultivation—are “exportable” to Western democracies, underscoring the need for permanent national capabilities against foreign interference between, not just during, election cycles.

“Why Georgia’s Rulers Are Not America’s Friends,” Nika Gvaramia and Nicholas Chkhaidze, The National Interest, 06.11.26.

• The authors argue the Trump administration should not “reset” with Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party while it deepens ties with Russia, China, and Iran and undermines democracy at home. They note GD’s “reset” is a PR exercise—phone calls, State Department visits, a Trump‑branded skyscraper in Tbilisi—without releasing political prisoners, repealing the “foreign agent” law, or holding free elections.
• They highlight GD’s cancellation of the U.S.‑backed Anaklia deep‑water port, its handoff of the project to a Chinese state firm under U.S. sanctions, and its upgrade of ties with Beijing to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” as structural sabotage of the Trump International Route for Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), which needs a Western‑controlled Black Sea exit via Anaklia. Normalizing with GD, they warn, would undercut U.S. credibility with Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have just signed a U.S.‑brokered peace deal, and reward a government whose de facto leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, remains under U.S. sanctions.
• Instead, they urge Washington to keep Ivanishvili on the SDN list, withhold high‑level engagement until democratic norms are restored, pass the MEGOBARI Act and new oversight mandates on Russian/Chinese influence in Georgia, and back the “Opposition Alliance,” which they describe as the natural U.S. partner that built earlier U.S.–Georgia strategic projects and is calling for free elections, repeal of the foreign‑agent law, and release of political prisoners.

Endnotes

1. For claims that the war in Ukraine is reaching a turning point (or that the tide has turned), see:

   “Ukraine is turning the tide against Putin. What happens next should terrify Europe,” Mike Martin, The Telegraph, 06.08.26.

   “A Twist in Ukraine’s Drone Campaign Is ‘Really Hurting the Russians’,” Marc Santora, The New York Times, 06.10.26.

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

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

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

   “Ukraine Turns the Tide: Why a Cease-Fire Is Now a Real Possibility,” Jack Watling, Foreign Affairs, 06.01.26.

   “How Ukraine’s Drone Innovation Reversed Russia’s Momentum,” Michael C. Horowitz, Erin D. Dumbacher, and Lauren Kahn, CFR, 06.13.26.

2. In contrast, RM’s analysis of ISW’s data for the past four weeks (May 12–June 9, 2026), indicates that Russia lost a net of 91 square miles of Ukraine’s territory.

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: An explosion of a Russian drone is seen on the horizon in front of the Ukrainian Motherland Monument during an attack on Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)