The news that a deal has been struck to resolve the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Oleshky has been welcomed as a cause for celebration – for Ukraine because it might bring an end to the inhumane treatment of its people, and for Washington because it might bring some much-needed positives to what so far looks to be a disastrous midterm campaign.

So, what does this deal involve, how realistic is it and how likely is it to bring a real result? And, more importantly, why would Russia, which has kept these people trapped for years, suddenly agree to let them go?

For Context...

Oleshky, a small town on the left bank of the Dnipro some eight kilometres from Kherson, with a pre-war population of around 24,000 and fewer than 2,000 left today, has been under Russian occupation from the first days of the full-scale invasion. When Kherson was liberated in November 2022, Russian troops retreated (critics following the situation closely at the time say they were allowed to retreat after the US administration pressured Ukraine not to destroy them for fear of antagonising Russia) to the other side of the river. The body of water prevented Ukrainian troops from liberating the towns across from Kherson, and the left bank presented a convenient foothold from which Russian forces could keep attacking people they previously called ‘their own’.

Then, in June 2023, Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam, causing one of the largest environmental catastrophes in living memory in Europe. The floods tore through large sections of the left bank, killing people and livestock alike, leaving behind disease and very little means of survival for the locals, who not only did not receive any support from the occupying force but were prevented from seeking any help from the Ukrainian side either. After the water subsided, the roads leading in and out of Oleshky were mined, preventing anybody from leaving. As a result, the area has had no centralised electricity, gas or running water for the past few years, no humanitarian aid has reached it since late May, and it is feared people will not survive much longer.

The Deal

We are told a localised ceasefire will be put in place, mines cleared, and residents allowed to evacuate. Impartial witnesses from the American press will be present.

The logistics of such an operation would be immensely complicated. Mine clearing alone, to open at least one lane out of the area, could take up to a week even in the most optimistic scenario, and proper clearance several months. Would the local ceasefire hold that long?

Then there is the matter of destination. For almost five years, these people have had to pretend that they are loyal Russian subjects and would never ever want to live in Ukraine or join their families there. How many of them would feel safe to openly admit they want to move to Ukrainian-controlled territory? For all they know, it might be a ruse to weed out a contingent eligible for the filtration camps. Come to think of it, for all we know, these people may be sent to filtration camps, as happened to those who used the so-called ‘humanitarian corridors’ out of Mariupol in 2022. Back then, Russia promised humane treatment to civilians and Mariupol defenders alike, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, together with the UN, acted as guarantor. Instead, some people were tortured to death, some executed in a staged explosion in Olenivka prison, and civilians were taken hostage. Many were never seen again.

Finally, there is the question of the impartial American media. Call me sceptical, but I cannot imagine a universe where anybody impartial from the outside world not controlled by the Kremlin would suddenly be let in. There is a reason why, apart from the IAEA at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which was not allowed to go where it wanted either, no aid agencies and no international bodies have been allowed into the Russian-occupied areas anywhere for the entire duration of the war. Almost all Ukrainian territories liberated in 2022 showed the same pattern of inhuman treatment, torture, and rape of the locals on top of utter poverty and destruction. Russians definitely do not need any witnesses to the horrors that the local population has gone through. And showing Oleshky to Americans, even if they have been hand-picked by Tucker Carlson or any other Putin apologist, might shock even them.

The Human Shield

Which brings us to the real reason why these people have been held there and not allowed to evacuate even to Russia proper. Quite simply, they are the Russian troops’ best defence against the Ukrainian army, as well as cover for the ‘human safari’ Russia conducts against civilians in Kherson and nearby areas.

After Russian troops retreated across the river behind the blown-up Antonivskyi bridge in 2022 and residents of Kherson finished celebrating, Russia started taking revenge on the city for not wanting to live under Russian rule of terror. Russian forces used civilians for target practice when learning to pilot drones and dropped explosives on ordinary people, including children, for sport. In order to protect Kherson, Ukrainian troops would need to push Russian forces further back from the Dnipro; however, with Russian troops hiding amongst Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories, the steps Ukraine can take are limited. It cannot wipe out one part of its population in order to protect the other. And Russia knows that. It has effectively held the people of Oleshky and nearby areas hostage all this time.

Furthermore, Oleshky is not just any town on the left bank. It sits directly opposite Kherson, just beyond the Antonivskyi bridge, the natural crossing point. If at the start Ukraine did not have the means to cross the river and retake the left bank (the Krynky bridgehead in 2023–24 was a limited operation), now, with the advances in drone development, the picture is very different. Ukraine has already demonstrated the use of air-dropped ground drones. So far it has been held back not least by the cost in civilian lives, which is something Russia does not concern itself with. An empty Oleshky would leave Russian positions exposed. Why would Russia deliberately make itself vulnerable?

Waiting for the Midterms

All things considered, unless Russia has suddenly grown a conscience (I know, preposterous!), allowing all residents to leave Oleshky goes against its interests, as does having any outside witnesses.

This is why the deal, as currently described, is highly unlikely to deliver what it promises. On the one hand, allowing all residents of Oleshky to die from hunger, cold and disease does not suit Russia’s goals either – it still needs a human shield. On the other, letting them go would be costlier and would give it nothing in return.

It is also telling that the evacuation is supposed to start just a week before the midterms. By dragging the event out for a few days, Russia will be able to see whether supporting Trump or his missus in this is likely to pay off, or whether an election loss will render Donald Trump and co. useless, making the deal not worth the effort.

As things stand, we cannot be sure that Russia intends to honour any part of the deal beyond a token gesture (some aid in, a few residents out, enough left behind to keep the shield in place), or that it does not intend to sabotage or weaponise it. If Trump loses, it gains nothing. Unless there are secret protocols to the deal we have not been told about, of course.

Almost a week has passed since Donald Trump unveiled his support package for Russia in its fight against Ukraine: a deal to buy Russian diesel, complete with a sanctions waiver. Having developed complete amnesia following the White House debacle of 28 February 2025, European leaders were predictably caught unawares yet again and appeared at least partially apoplectic, which was not unexpected. European leaders are not known for their courage, after all.

For a while, it was not quite clear how Ukraine would respond. So far, Zelenskyy had managed to walk a fine line. Like a hostage who has been caught trying to escape, learned his lesson, and now answers every ‘Do you want to go free?’ with ‘Never in a million years’ to keep up the ruse, Zelenskyy had been repeating that Trump is just and Trump is wise like a mantra for close to two years.

Zelenskyy has still shown restraint and has not exactly called a spade a spade, or Trump a tool, but it would seem that the time for public adulation is over. The Ukrainian president has publicly stated that Trump can exchange Russian refineries for a shipment of Patriot interceptors. However, unlike Trump, who either threatens and then does not follow through, at least when it comes to autocrats, or threatens and follows through regardless of the other side folding, when it comes to democracies, Ukraine simply resumed attacking Russian refineries in advance. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.

Some commentators call it a dangerous tactic. Others say enough is enough. So let’s see what is going on and who is right, shall we?

Out of Tune

In February 2025, after being thrown out of the White House without any pretence of common courtesy, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first stop on the way back was the United Kingdom, where he was warmly received by King Charles. A strategy of appeasement was jointly developed by European leaders: in all dealings with Donald Trump, they were to genuflect and behave as one does when handling the very badly behaved offspring of the boss everybody hated. The hope was that if Trump was made to feel like a popular teenager, he would not behave like a spoilt brat.

Despite Zelenskyy’s best efforts (he did, after all, comply with Washington’s request not to target Russian refineries), Washington appears to have withheld vital intelligence, failing to warn Ukraine of a Russian ballistic missile launch. While Kyiv conceded after the first incident that it could have been an accident, the same thing happened the following night. And then, of course, there was the throttling of the Starlink connection used, among other things, to bring down Russian drones over Ukrainian cities and towns. When an interceptor relies on being able to reach certain speeds to function properly, capping that speed does not just prevent active operations on the front line but also reduces the number of drones shot down by air defence over civilian neighbourhoods.

Russia, in the meantime, continued to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, trying to inflict as much damage as possible. Putin’s spokesman Peskov would not even confirm that any agreement on Russia halting the attacks had been reached.

It Was Good While It Lasted

It was clear that bending the knee no longer worked. Evidently, bullies cannot be talked into behaving. And this applies to both Putin and Trump. However, unlike Putin, Trump is very much temporary, and that makes all the difference.

History teaches us that appeasement does not work in the long term. That does not mean, however, that Europe made a mistake placating Trump when it did. ‘What-ifs’ do not really work in the real world, so we will never know for sure, but it is more than likely that Trump would have spent considerable energy trying to hurt Ukraine at the very least, if not other European countries. Oh, to have an ally like that, eh!?

Now, however, with the midterm elections approaching fast and Trump’s popularity nosediving, clinging to the same strategy is not prudent. Instead of winning (or ending, it was never entirely clear) eight or nine wars, Trump got bogged down in Iran, lost the tariff war with China, and was utterly disrespected by the current cohort of dictators, even Kim Jong Un. It is rather tragic, really, when you think about it. In his first term, Trump was laughed at by other world leaders, who did not accept him as one of them, and in his second term he is equally laughed at by the despots he has tried to befriend, who use him but never let him into the club.

This is why a change in strategy was very much in order. The old one was no longer working, much like an antibiotic to which the bacteria have grown resistant. And the timing is just right. Republicans are expected to lose the House spectacularly, which is nothing new at this stage in any presidency – most US presidents have a friendly Congress only for the first two years of their term. This time, however, there is talk of the Senate possibly passing into Democratic control. The fact that Kansas, which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, looks like a toss-up demonstrates how bad things are for Trump. And instead of turning towards Ukraine and scooping up moderate voters who support a values-based order, Trump did the opposite and all but joined the war on Russia’s side.

Jumping Ship

As vindictive and incapable of self-reflection as Trump is, like any bully he is more secure when he has the support of adoring supplicants. The impending fall from grace will thin the ranks of the fan club and of the enablers, who will no longer be as amenable to breaking the law to please Trump. The rats are already leaving the ship: six Republican senators have put their names to a letter demanding that Trump reverse the diesel deal, which they say runs counter to the 2022 ban on Russian energy imports, Susan Collins, who faces a tight re-election race next month, among them. And the exodus will continue. While the Supreme Court may have granted Trump broad immunity, there are plenty of officials who will have to figure out how to stay out of prison for their share of breaking the law while keeping Trump happy.

So, as much as Trump would like to continue terrorising Ukraine, he will not be able to do it for long, especially if it becomes linked to concrete casualty figures there. Administration members might want to distance themselves from it after the midterms, and some of them will want to show they did their best to do the right thing. While we do not expect Trump to change or learn, the rest of the administration will be tempted to swap sides at the first sign of discomfort.

Calling the Bluff

Although there is talk of some European leaders wanting to talk Zelenskyy down and get him to play nice with Trump again, this is no longer the right strategy. Trump has got weaker, while Zelenskyy has got stronger. As Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha put it, in less than two years Ukraine has gone from ‘having no cards’ to being told not to play its cards. Attacking Russian refineries has proved a powerful measure: by the end of August, around half of Russia’s refining capacity had been knocked out. As the leader of a nation at war, Zelenskyy is responsible not only for his people’s safety but also for his soldiers’ morale, and refusing to take abuse is not just a gesture. Knowing when to bend and when to stand firm is the mark of a true leader.

It is rather telling that, just as after the first spat with Trump, Zelenskyy again found support in the United Kingdom, where he was given the red-carpet treatment (literally) at No 10 Downing Street and had another audience with the King. In fact, since March 2025, Zelenskyy has been received by King Charles no fewer than five times. It would be surprising if, along with royal support, the UK had not been offering Ukraine valuable diplomatic advice for a while. And while the UK is no longer the global power it was a century ago, the one thing it has in spades is class, which it is willing to share.

One thing is sure – Trump will try to hurt Ukraine for refusing to capitulate when he demanded it. Ukraine has some difficult weeks ahead of it.

With the US mid-term elections and their inevitable repercussions for the Republicans approaching, the White House has once more tried to plead with Russia for any kind of concession that could pass for a result it might present to voters on the international scene. For argument’s sake, let’s pretend that exerting real pressure on Russia would be akin to science fiction technology light years ahead of anything known to humankind even in the foreseeable future. Yeah, I know… But let’s try.

In any event, Trump’s team of merry realtors begged Russia for an energy ceasefire, or at least a ceasefire on the Black Sea. Very predictably (although apparently not to the White House), Vladimir Putin uttered the equivalent of ‘Nah… I really can’t be arsed!’ Well, to be honest, he described the idea as preposterous while speaking on 1 October at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow, the Kremlin’s annual showcase for foreign experts. But you get the drift.

For Putin, this little exercise is just the latest power trip. For reasons we cannot yet fully pin down, Donald Trump is not just happy to play second fiddle to Vladimir Putin but finds it acceptable to be treated like a village idiot in front of the entire world.

Granted, there is a large portion of said world which, like Trump, believes Putin can be persuaded to conclude a deal. That he would agree to give up something he wants in exchange for receiving something… he wants? Come to think of it, so far Washington has tried to persuade the Kremlin to stop trying to take Donbas in exchange for handing it Donbas. And Putin still said ‘Nyet!’ If that does not make sense to you, imagine how Putin and co. are cracking up behind the scenes and behind Trump’s back. And that’s even before Putin demands the next bit of Ukraine.

Because to Putin (the ex-KGB man and current Russian Tsar), Donald Trump is both a mark (and an easy one at that) and a great big oaf.

A Man in Charge

One of the best ways to understand how Westerners are perceived in Russia is through the prism of Russian hospitality traditions or, to be more precise, trial by vodka. Although nowadays esteemed guests like Tucker Carlson are taken on organised trips to the Moscow metro or very large supermarkets, the traditional method of testing one’s mettle is to expose the guest to copious amounts of neat alcohol and enjoy the spectacle. Only those whose stomachs and heads survive the occasion better than their hosts’ are afforded respect. Everybody else is deemed a weakling. And drinking neat spirits has been a national pastime in Russia for centuries. So, if you do end up in Russia and are not taken hostage to be exchanged for sanctions relief, keep away from alcohol.

Of course, as a teetotaller, Trump is disqualified from this particular test. But that does not change how the Russian side views ‘soft targets’ from the West.

Putin has largely stayed in power as a result of his strongman persona. To the uninitiated, that might sound like a reference to his bare-chested horse-riding episodes. In reality, the strongman as we see him in the West could not be further from the Russian version, where the power of the man in charge is measured by his ability to inflict suffering.

This propensity for casual violence, along with running the country as a criminal enterprise, has been responsible for keeping Putin on the throne. His world works on mafia-style rules and everyday cruelty. Anybody who is weak automatically becomes prey. Anybody who does not understand that he is weak becomes a mark.

One Man’s Maturity, Another Man’s Weakness

Putin sees negotiations, the way democracies conduct them, as a sign of weakness. To him, democracies are weak precisely because they seek compromise. While democracies see compromise as a sign of maturity, the Kremlin sees it as fear. If you do not take what you want and instead negotiate for it, that means you lack either the means to acquire it or the balls. The absence of the latter is seen as the biggest weakness of all. Never ask for what you want – take it, and only then will you be respected and stay in power.

Not many remember now that in the early days of Putin’s rule he seriously considered joining NATO. In later interviews he claimed he had been misled into believing it was a possibility when nobody ever intended to allow Russia to join. In reality, Putin genuinely believed that rules (like the rigorous list of requirements countries had to meet first, the rule of law for one) were meant for suckers, and that he, as the ruler of a great nation, would simply be accepted into the club. George Robertson, NATO Secretary General at the time, recalls Putin asking him when NATO was going to invite Russia to join. When Robertson explained that NATO does not invite countries, they apply, Putin replied: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’ The possibility that rules are for everybody simply did not occur to him. In his mind, he was cruelly spurned by the West instead of being welcomed into the fold as befitted his station.

Trump Has Blinked Once Too Often

When somebody who for all intents and purposes should be a ‘great ruler’ does nothing to achieve his goals but pitifully begs for them, as Trump has been doing over the past year and a half, Putin has nothing for him but contempt.

And let’s be honest, from the very start of his second term, Trump has done nothing but show weakness. He promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours by punishing whichever side refused to stop fighting. Not only did he fail to punish Russia as promised, but despite his best efforts he could not even fully punish Kyiv for refusing to lay down its weapons and capitulate to Russia. Although Trump really tried, Ukraine simply would not comply. So far, Trump has walked back almost all his threats, not just to Russia but to all his other adversaries. He ran away from Iran with his tail between his legs, and since then Tehran, too, has discovered how to play the great dealmaker.

And he keeps begging Putin for scraps of attention. For a man of his supposed importance, he has cut a truly pathetic figure in front of his so-called enemies.

By the Grace of China

Then we have to remember that, although Putin sees himself as a great statesman and heir to the vast Russian Empire, his current place in the pantheon of world leaders is considerably more modest than he would like to admit. Just as Russia would like to regain the land it previously held and was forced to give up after the end of the Cold War, China has similar designs on its own former territories, now part of the Russian Federation.

Almost all the goods that Russia does not produce (and the list is endless: at the start of the full-scale war, it turned out Russia did not even produce enough of its own bearings) are supplied by China. Only by the grace of China do Russians have any kind of choice in their shops, from car showrooms and household appliances to clothing.

A huge portion of Russia’s budget is filled courtesy of natural resources sold to China at well below market prices. If China stopped all exports to Russia, along with all energy and other purchases, the Russian economy would disintegrate in one fell swoop. And that is a serious dependency and a massive weakness. However, unlike Trump, Putin knows which side his bread is buttered on. He knows he is weak, and China is the only power he has to bow to. Not the rest of the world. Like a gambling addict, he keeps hoping that this time he will win and recover everything he has gambled away, including his independence from China. And hubris still prevents him from seeing his own position in the world entirely accurately. Which is why he is trying to insinuate himself into the upcoming meeting between Xi Jinping and Trump at the APEC summit in Shenzhen on 18–19 November, to present himself as the leader of a great nation. So, to Xi, he is just prey. But he is not a mark.

With Great Power...

That leads us to an uncomfortable question: if Trump is a mark to Putin and Putin is prey to Xi… then is Trump both mark and prey to Xi?

And although to Xi America is not a mark, Trump’s actions and record point to a divergence between the interests of the state and those of its president. While the state under the aegis of almost any other president would present a fearsome adversary to China, the president the US has at the moment does not. After all the promises to put China in its place, Trump rolled back tariffs like a good little boy the moment he realised China had been preparing for his actions and cornering the entire global rare earths market for just such an eventuality. And until the US returns to a coherent foreign policy and elects a presentable representative, Xi will enjoy watching Putin take Trump for a ride.

When the late Senator Lindsey Graham first championed what he called the ‘sanctions from hell bill’ in 2018, he could not have known that it would take eight years and his own death for his vision to finally clear both houses and the President’s desk. He probably could not have imagined how little resemblance the final bill bears to the initial draft. So much so that commentators do not seem to agree on what it can and cannot do and will or will not achieve. Some say it is so watered down that it will achieve nothing; others say that its biggest significance is not what it will allow the President to do but rather what it will not.

If that was not enough, the timing of the bill finally being passed is also raising some questions. All in all, by now we should not be surprised that not everything is as it seems and that both naysayers and supporters have a valid point. To a certain extent.

So, let’s look at what the Graham Act can do, or rather what it forces Donald Trump to do, what it prevents him from doing, and why it was finally passed now.

Trump and the Lists

First things first. You might have heard that in order to pass the law and sweeten the pot for Trump, provisions had to be added regarding Iran, and this was rumoured to be why some members of Congress were unhappy. Despite mentioning Iran in the title, the Graham Act does not give Trump any new authority regarding Iran. The law extends sanctions that have been in place since 1996 through 2031 instead of them running out at the end of this year. Two digits changed. I kid you not. All the fuss about something that would have been passed anyhow, just separately.

Now that we have Iran out of the way, let’s see what is what.

Contrary to what many opponents have said, this law is not really about giving Donald Trump the right to sanction Russia, its officials, or organisations. Neither is it about tasking him with sanctioning Russia. What it does is mandate him to make lists.

There is a set of initial obligations that Trump has to comply with within the first 30 days. He has to sanction several groups of entities. The trick is in the wording. The major Russian banks already on the sanctions list (Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank) are named in the law. They are already heavily sanctioned, but the Act does require at least two additional types of sanctions from a specific menu that have not yet been applied. Their choice is up to Trump and given that these banks are already cut off from the US financial system, the additions are unlikely to change the picture dramatically.

Everything else is provided as categories from which Trump has to find his targets: shadow fleet vessels, defence industrial base suppliers, persons involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children. There is no oversight, and the current Congress is subordinated to the president anyhow instead of keeping the executive in check. Trump can sanction anybody from these categories, or nobody. He can simply say he did not find anyone to sanction, and that is complia–nce with the law.

The only named entity requiring sanctions beyond what already exists is the Russian Central Bank. It is already sanctioned to some extent, but the law requires that at least two types of sanctions be applied from the available menu: asset freezes, transaction prohibitions, correspondent banking bans, and so on. Even here, while new sanctions must be imposed, the choice of which ones lies with the President, and the law allows him to pick the least disruptive options available.

Beyond the first 30 days, every 180 days Trump has to fish around and see who else he can slap with sanctions from the already named categories. Or not. As long as he reviews the list and finds nobody, he is doing exactly what the law says.

The Crux of the Matter

So why was the law even needed, you might ask? Donald Trump already does as he pleases, and he has yet to do anything that would materially affect Russia’s ability to prosecute this war.

This is where the law’s true value lies. Instead of forcing Trump into actions that he has avoided making all this time, it prevents him from actions he might be tempted to take. It is not about what he must do but about what he now cannot do.

The Graham Act codifies all existing sanctions. Which is to say, all sanctions targeting Russia that have been imposed through executive orders under previous administrations now become law. Only Congress can repeal laws. The President does not have that power.

The law expires after five years unless Congress extends it. However, considering that the next Congress is likely to be majority Democrat, by the time the five-year mark approaches, it can extend it pre-emptively. Therefore, we can more or less safely expect that it will stay in place for the next ten years at least.

What’s more, the only way the President can terminate the sanctions under the Graham Act is if, among other conditions, Russia and Ukraine sign a peace agreement and Ukraine is happy with it. A peace agreement. And Ukraine has to be happy with it. Ukraine is highly unlikely to sign a peace agreement with Russia for generations to come. Such an agreement would be possible only if under its terms all stolen territories were returned, war crimes prosecuted, and reparations paid. Any other agreement would legalise the results of Russia’s war of aggression and mean political suicide for any future President of Ukraine. This scenario would only happen if Russia fully renounced its imperial ambitions. It has not happened so far. Ever.

Consequently, the true benefit of this law is that Donald Trump cannot really lift the existing sanctions for the next roughly ten years, and neither can his successor. They can remove sanctions from separate people or entities using the waiver provision, which requires the President to certify in writing to Congress that each waiver serves the national interest. It is a public process, and politically very costly. Some members of Congress opposed the bill precisely because they considered even this threshold too lenient, and they may have a point. But for now, the political cost of publicly declaring that relieving Russian entities of sanctions is in the national interest remains the strongest safeguard this law has.

And political cost is likely why Donald Trump was forced to accept the passing of this law.

Timing, Kremlin, et al

With the mid-term elections just around the corner and Trump’s approval rating almost in the basement, the timing of the latest scandal linking his son Donald Trump Junior to Putin’s security service via Kremlev, who paid for some of Junior’s wedding celebrations, could not have been worse. Where ‘agent Krasnov’ jokes could not get through, Kremlin’s goon covering Trump Junior’s bills just might. Or at the very least, this could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Trump has been flailing for a while. Having started the year with the successful theft of not just Venezuelan president Maduro but also their entire oil fields, Trump got bogged down in Iran. With no resolution in sight in the Middle East, he has been trying to force Ukraine to capitulate, and when that predictably did not work, he tried to dangle business dealings with the US as the possible carrot for Moscow. Although Washington had insisted that any business deals are contingent on Russia first finishing the fighting in Ukraine, according to New York Times reports Trump had been thinking of going into business with the Russian side even before the end of hostilities.

When Kremlev’s scandal broke on 14 September, the Graham Act became the easiest peace offering available. Trump allowed it to be put to a vote, and the House passed it on 16 September. And the next day, on 17 September, Putin signed the paperwork seizing Western companies Nestlé, Auchan, Leroy Merlin, and FM Logistic. The timing was unlikely to be a coincidence, because having failed to stop the Graham Act, Putin showed Trump what he could do with his business deals which were now no longer possible – Washington would have to sanction itself if it did any business with the Russian Federation. And in the unlikely event that Trump finds a loophole and still somehow believes that he will be that one exception that Putin is not going to swindle, other business owners in the equation might feel less certain of a positive outcome.

All things considered, if you have to cover for your son due to corruption accusations, an obscure gas company in pre-war Ukraine with Russian links (say, Burisma) might have cost less politically.

Whether or not the ‘sanctions from hell bill’ finally came through due to the current administration’s incoherence, bowing to genuine pressure from political circles, or Trump’s desire to look like he is being tough with Moscow, Senator Graham’s legacy will ultimately ensure that the checks and balances constricting Trump and his hero-worship of Putin hold.

What a fine note for a final act.

The one gift that most seasoned and aspiring dictators have in abundance and employ freely is the ability to command a crowd. Yet we would be hard pressed to find a less charismatic and rhetorically formidable autocrat than the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. Having never participated in any political debates, or, in fact, faced any public personal scrutiny, Putin’s pronouncements or missives are never spontaneous or accidental. The one lone question put to him by a veteran member of the Kremlin’s ‘press’ corps in New Delhi on the eve of the BRICS summit, late on the night of 11 September 2026, should therefore be seen not as a casual or incidental remark but a staged delivery.

A short recap, for those who have better things to do (and you have my utmost envy for that) than listen to what might sound like the ravings of an imperial relic and his dyed eyebrows. Having declared he would not comment on internal issues following the historic win of the far-right AfD in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, in eastern Germany, Putin then proceeded to comment on the internal affairs of not just Germany, but the rest of Europe as well. He berated Europe for walking away from Russian gas (having completely forgotten it was Russia that turned off the tap in 2022). He resented Western support for separatists inside Russia (even though the West confined itself to protesting as Russia slaughtered its way through Chechnya) yet bristled with indignation when his invasion of Ukraine on behalf of separatists Russia itself had conjured up was met with pushback.

Then he suddenly remembered an all-but-dead-in-the-water initiative to send European troops to Ukraine after the end of the war (contingent, apparently, on Russia’s consent), and proceeded to threaten Europe with the usual untold consequences. In the same speech, he went on to ridicule European countries that presented Russia as a threat to them (what a preposterous idea, right?!)

On the face of it, it makes no sense. What European troops in Ukraine? Why now? Why is he still banging on about the gas? And his comments about the West wanting to renegotiate the post-war order when it is actually Russia who is doing it look very much like the ramblings of a disturbed man. And while he is indeed all of that, the Western (and non-Western) world allows him to operate more or less freely, so we should probably figure out what he is trying to say.

Who were his remarks addressed to? What did they mean? And should we believe him?

Who Was He Talking To?

Although it might look as if Putin was addressing the ‘so-called West’ (considering Ukraine in Russian foreign policy is often referred to as ‘so-called Ukraine’, the West has clearly moved up in the Kremlin’s threat assessments), the target was more specific and at the same time broad.

By invoking Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor of the reunification era, speaking about cheap gas and the errors of a ‘globalist’ agenda, Putin appealed to the time when life seemed simpler. When prices were lower. When we all had fewer problems and more hair. When we were younger. You know, before it all went to hell in a handbasket.

In other words — he was courting those voters who look back and do not look forward. Across Europe that voter comes from two different groups. The first came of age at the end of the Cold War, expecting the new order to hand them the life they were owed and turning bitter when it didn’t. The second enjoyed long years of prosperity now endangered as a result of various policies. Both groups would like to go back to simpler times. Who can blame them? And Putin is offering just that: a return to a world that no longer exists.

At the same time, the target is the politicians who will vie for the votes of those wanting to catch the last train into the past. The message is clear: you want power, and here is your electorate. (There are also the parties simply funded by the Kremlin, but those need no inducement.) Most importantly, the message reaches the politicians who may or may not believe Russia is a threat to Europe — or at least to the part of Europe that matters to them, since what happens to the countries bordering Russia is of little concern so long as their own stays comfortable. These are the ones who want to hold or take power at a moment when war looks likely, but who do not want to be honest with voters, and do not want to be the ones making the hard decisions when the time comes. Which is why they are happy to prepare for the past, not the future.

In truth, although Putin talks about the West, he is not talking to the West. Or rather, he is talking to that part of the West that does not want to be the West as we know it. And he is giving them the out.

What Did He Mean?

One of the most telling elements of his message was two entirely opposite claims — that any European troops on Ukrainian soil would mean war with Russia, and also that Russia poses no threat to Europe. Makes no sense, right?

Well, not if you remember the grievance he floated — that Europe et al are the ones supposedly demanding “changes,” even wanting to “revisit the results of WWII.” It is fairly obvious to anybody with half a decent understanding of basic legal principles and history that it is Russia that is trying to revise these results by redesigning European borders. Not according to Russia though. Because Russia sees Ukraine as its internal matter.

By supporting Ukraine in this war, other countries infringe on Russian domestic, sovereign issues. Should troops from other countries set foot on Ukrainian soil without Russian permission, Russia would see that as an attack on its sovereignty — despite the fact that the force in question would enter at Ukraine’s own invitation, and only once the fighting had stopped. Let’s not forget that Ukraine, as a sovereign country, has every right to invite any troops it wants. That Russia considers this an attack on itself shows that, to Russia, Ukraine is not an independent, sovereign country and nation. Instead, they see it as theirs, Russian, to do as they please.

By claiming ownership only of Ukraine (for the moment), Putin is saying that other countries are not the target. As long as they give up Ukraine.

With some very important elections in Europe coming up next year, Putin is hoping to reach the ear of the electorate and political parties that would be happy to sell out another nation as long as they are not bothered (and possibly paid off in the process).

And it really is not a hard sell. Whoever admits that Russia is a genuine threat also has to admit that war is possible. That is not what voters want to hear, so heading to the polls with a ‘Russians are coming’ message anywhere else than in countries where Russians will come through first, is not going to get many votes. The fact that many European countries are already struggling financially does not help. Despite professing to have well established values, Europe was all too happy to throw Central and Eastern Europe under the Russian communist bus, as long as it was left alone.

If some European parties can be persuaded that all Putin wants is Ukraine, then the Kremlin can stay in the game long enough. As long as Europe believes (or pretends to believe) that Ukraine is all Russia wants, the Kremlin is free to act. And when the time comes to pinky-swear that Russia only wants the Baltics but not the rest of Europe, it will be time for new elections anyhow.

Should We Believe Him?

You will often hear two confusing and conflicting opinions on the subject – when a dictator tells you what he intends to do, believe him, and you cannot believe a word Putin says. Both are true, although they are not the same. It is important to be able to tell one from the other.

When Putin speaks about his plans, goals, and aspirations (the same aspirations Jared Kushner helpfully offered to fulfil at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kyiv), we should absolutely believe him. He laid out the worldview behind those ambitions in his Munich speech of 2007. Had the Western leaders believed him then, much of what followed in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine might have been averted, and countless lives saved by the time this is finally over.

However, global leaders missed their cue then, and they missed it again when Putin published his article in the summer of 2021, declaring that Ukraine is not really a separate people from the Russians, just very Russophobic in their misguided attempt to deny their common roots. The gusto with which Russians are slaughtering Ukrainians for not wanting to be Russians should have served as a warning. Has it, though?

On the other hand, we have Putin’s denials. He swore blind Russia had no designs on Crimea. Then he absolutely denied any Russian soldiers setting foot in Donbas. Or shooting down MH17. Or intending to invade Ukraine. That last one has aged particularly well.

When a dictator tells you what he wants – you should absolutely listen to him. When he tells you what he does not intend to do – you can bet your last shirt that there are detailed plans for just such an eventuality.

Putin is a talented opportunist, who makes his decisions at the last moment depending on many different factors. Usually that means all options are in play at the same time.

So, should we believe Putin when everything he says and does tells us he wants all of Ukraine? Definitely. Should we believe him when he says that if Europe gives up Ukraine, Russia will not go any further? Well, what do you think?

Impending mobilisation in Russia has become a much-discussed subject. Some say it will go ahead because, among other things, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin cannot hope to win the war without it, while others say it would be, not least, a nuclear option within Russian society that has the potential to backfire spectacularly. In truth, all these and many other arguments are valid at the same time. They exist in the same reality alongside Putin – the only person who will make the call.

Whether or not mobilisation goes ahead is less important than why it will or will not happen. What factors will affect this decision and what outcomes is Putin trying to avoid? After all, he could have declared mobilisation any time during the past four years after the initial wave. The fact that he has avoided making this call so far means the decision is not an easy one.

Why?

What Does It Have to Do with Elections?

A natural question for those not closely familiar with Russian realities would be why the president of a country that, as its opponents say, does not have free elections, has to wait for them to be over before making a wildly unpopular move. Surely, if the elections are a sham, then their outcome will not be affected by mobilisation. So why the pretence?

One of the main reasons why ‘elections’ are still held in Russia is that Putin likes the semblance of legitimacy, and the elections are seen as the ritual that bestows this legitimacy upon him. During the pre-war years elections were also needed to present a ‘democratic’ front to the Western ‘partners’. Now their aim is to persuade the people that they have given Putin a mandate to rule over them. Of course, eventually the Kremlin might pull a Daniel Ortega and abolish elections altogether, as was done in Nicaragua in July 2026, but we are far from that moment.

Another reason is that however rigged or imaginary the elections are, they maintain at least a tenuous link between the government message and the reality people can observe with their own eyes. The observable difference between narrative and reality was one of the things that brought down the Soviet state, and Putin, who watched it happen, knows not to repeat it.

So, what is the link between elections, as fake as they are, and mobilisation? Announcing mobilisation before the elections would, amongst other things, create cognitive dissonance when the government that just made such an unpopular move then wins the elections. Whereas a government that wins not a landslide but roughly half of all votes in parliamentary elections, which has been the usual tally so far and is unlikely to change, looks as if it has received a legitimate mandate. Even if most people did not vote for them, voters cannot easily complain about mobilisation as an expression of their will. Neat, right?

Elections do not give Putin genuine legitimacy, but they allow him to preserve the fiction that the war remains a choice made by the state rather than a burden imposed on society. Mobilisation would destroy that fiction.

Dictator is as Dictator Does

Dictators are a varied breed. Some, like Hitler, Mussolini, and Castro, made it to the top through sheer charisma. Others, like Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, were boring to the extreme. None of them, however, were as unremarkable as Putin. He was so nondescript that his KGB colleagues nicknamed him ‘pale moth’, or, less charitably, ‘cigarette butt’.

Lack of charisma is not the only thing Putin lacks. He is also an abysmal strategist, compensated, to some extent, by a talent for tactics. His true talent, though, lies in his ability to feel the mood of the nation that produced him and that he now abuses so mercilessly. He has a sixth sense for how far he can go before the population might become… let’s say difficult.

This gut instinct has so far prevented him from pursuing mobilisation, at least openly. When mobilisation was announced in the autumn of 2022, the population bolted for the borders en masse. And that was at the time when nobody even knew that most of them would be thrown into a meat grinder. When the initial wave was over, the populace was told there was no need for more conscripts. The state continued to draft males quietly, so only those directly affected were aware. Everybody else could pretend life went on as usual. Plausible deniability at its finest.

Military Advances in Advance

The debacle of the first wave of mobilisation in 2022 showed the system where it had failed. When 300,000 men were formally mobilised, almost a million, by some estimates, fled the country. That is without counting those who went into hiding.

By digitalising the draft notice system, the state made sure almost nobody can escape. Now, if a draft notice has been issued, people cannot leave the country, drive a vehicle, sell their property, get a loan, or, unless they want to be caught, go to work.

The state has everything in place to successfully mobilise several hundred thousand people. All it needs is a go-ahead from the Kremlin. It is only a political decision.

The military adds its own pressure, having requested additional troops for a while. Lately, their needs have increased, because fewer people are volunteering and more are dying, courtesy of Ukrainian unmanned systems. Fewer Russian males are recruited than buried.

At the same time, Putin is requesting faster advances while movement at the front line has almost entirely stopped. Fewer men will not succeed where more have failed.

It does not help that many advances the Russian military have reported to Putin exist only on their maps. Villages have been reported as taken that are still held by Ukrainian forces. It is like an advance payment. When the time comes to present the results, the money is long since gone. Russian generals now need to find troops to take areas they have already reported as taken.

Buying Time

What has so far allowed Putin to delay making the decision on mobilisation is ample help from Trump, who has made sure Washington has not put any pressure on Russia. The events in the Middle East, resulting in what seems to be the loss of the entire global arsenal of Western anti-ballistic interceptors, have been interpreted by the Kremlin as a positive sign that they are on the right track. Putin is clearly still hoping that by razing Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles, he might induce the Ukrainian population to demand that their government capitulate, without understanding that population and government are not two different things in this fight.

Impending changes in the European political landscape also give Putin the impetus to wait this out. The 2027 presidential election in France could hand power to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, a party with well-documented historical ties to Russian money and a track record of opposing support for Ukraine, potentially rewriting the entire European defence strategy. The possible deployment of 30 to 50 thousand North Korean troops to the front lines, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, compounds this even further.

The Loop

The reason mobilisation might be needed is that Putin has created a forever war. The consequences of his actions are so monumental and mistakes so egregious that eventually somebody will have to account for them. Impending economic doom, demographic catastrophe, subordination to China, and the sheer scale of loss of life will require a sacrificial payment. Possibly in blood. Putin understands this. His personal safety can only be ensured if he wins the war in Ukraine, which is no longer possible. The war was lost the moment Russia could not subdue Ukraine at the start of 2022.

The moment the war ends on any terms other than victory, Putin will have to answer for it. And the only way to continue the war is if the front keeps creeping forward. So fresh men are needed.

At the same time, unlike in 2022, when those dead set against going to the front could escape and only those who did not object too loudly were caught in the net, this time mobilisation would sweep up both those with limited understanding of the situation and those who will desperately try to avoid dying for the imperial dream of a murderous old relic. Nobody knows how they will react. Mobilisation would create millions of newly affected families with a direct material interest in the truth about the war. And an army full of people without a will to object might behave differently from one that has pockets of resistance and the ability to organise. Especially when forced together and starting to mingle.

This is what Putin, despite all his limitations, understands. Mobilising additional hundreds of thousands of men might bring closer the very moment of reckoning he is trying to outrun. Yet without mobilisation, that moment may arrive even sooner. Putin has backed himself into a trap of his own making.

Although many economists have cautioned about an impending banking crisis in Russia for a while, now the warnings are coming even from within government circles. In Russia, where the Kremlin frowns upon any admission of weakness, especially if it is related to banks, considering the nightmarish memories of the 1998 default, such a concession is very telling.

What does a banking crisis in Russia look like? How has it sprung into existence? How will it end? Can it be fixed?

Banking Principles. The Basics.

Banks are businesses. Their job is to make money by using other people’s. What banks do is take cash from people who have it and give it to people who need it. They charge the second lot a fee for lending them money, and this is how they pay the first lot for… well, lending them money. Without depositors, banks have nothing to lend. Without borrowers, banks have nothing to pay depositors with. It is a circle.

Problems start when either side of this arrangement breaks down. When depositors take their money out, banks lose the funds they need to lend and earn. When borrowers stop repaying their loans, banks cannot pay depositors back. Well, you get the idea.

What is happening in Russia is that the fish is rotting from both sides. People are withdrawing their money, so they are no longer lending to the banks. And those who owe money to the banks have stopped paying on their loans.

Another element of banking business is lending money to the government when it overspends. Normally, this is not the only avenue governments have. Countries routinely buy sovereign debt from each other in the form of government bonds and earn interest on them. You could say countries act as a bank to other countries.

Russia, however, no longer has access to foreign capital. Russia was already under certain sanctions pre-2022, but following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, foreign investment fell off a cliff. Before 2022, private foreign investors owned about 22% of Russian government securities. That figure has fallen to around 3%. Even China is not lending Russia any money. Beijing refused to let Russia sell government bonds on the Chinese market.

Since foreign funding is not available, Russia has been borrowing money from its banks. But with banks haemorrhaging money, they cannot afford to lend any funds to the government. In fact, they are hoping that the government will bail them out.

As you can imagine, this is not a normal situation. So, what caused it?

Missing Quarter Budget

The short answer is war. Before 2022, Russia did not have a budget deficit, quite the contrary — it was one of the rare countries with a budget surplus. Similar to other oil-rich countries, the surplus went into the Sovereign Wealth Fund which was used as a reserve for rainy days. When the rest of the world emptied their reserves to bail out economies during the Covid standstill, the Russian government held strong and did not pay anybody a dime. As a result, by the time the war started, they had around 8.9 trillion roubles (roughly $113 billion) in liquid reserves. Currently that sum stands at around 3.5 trillion roubles.

Although 3.5 trillion roubles (circa $43 billion) might sound like a lot to work with, the budget deficit for 2026 alone is almost double this already, and the year is nowhere near the end. By all accounts, when you calculate the expected final deficit, the shortfall in the Social Fund which pays state employees and pensioners, and the deficits run up by regional governments, the total black hole in Russian finances is expected to reach 10 to 11 trillion roubles ($122 to $134 billion). Considering the entire Russian budget is about 44 trillion roubles, we are talking about a quarter of the budget missing.

This was driven by expanding military spending which currently officially stands at around 30% of the entire budget. Add security services and it reaches 38%. Factor in adjacent war-related spending hidden in other budget lines and the figure is well over 50%. We should also consider that it will not be the military side that suffers from the shortage.

Let’s use an old Soviet joke to illustrate this. To a boy’s question if the increase in vodka prices means his dad would be drinking less, dad replies ‘No, son, it means you will be eating less’.

Unproductive Cycle

When the full-scale war started, Western companies pulled out and sanctions disrupted imports. Despite Russia trying to become more self-reliant following the first wave of sanctions in 2014 after the occupation of Crimea, as a kleptocracy it was not suited for independent economic development. As a result, over a very short period most of the products Russians used, from food and medicine to machinery and spare parts, first disappeared from the shops, and when they were gradually brought back courtesy of Chinese supply lines, their prices had increased severalfold. Fewer goods were available, and those that were cost more. And voilà! We have inflation.

On top of this, a mass of war-related money was injected into the economy. It was not used to perpetuate a productive cycle — in other words, it was not used to make goods and thus earn more money, which could pay for the production of the next lot of goods. The money went into making things that were destroyed in Ukraine and could not be sold. Instead of strengthening the economy, it fed inflation.

There are two main ways to combat inflation: raise interest rates to make borrowing expensive and slow spending or cut government spending to reduce the amount of money entering the economy. Essentially, it is like cancer — you need to starve it by cutting off whatever is feeding it.

Cutting spending was not an option. So, the Russian Central Bank raised the interest rates. This made borrowing very expensive for everybody. Including businesses. At the same time, military spending continued unabated. The productive side of the economy was starved of cash, while the side that only consumed and did not create any value was flooded with it. Inflation remained unaffected.

Non-payments

As the government was battling the budget deficit, it naturally raised taxes and reduced concessions. High interest rates which at one point reached 21% made business borrowing unaffordable. High inflation meant the population had less money for purchases. And this was even before Ukraine took the hammer to Russia’s fuel industry and retail sector.

Construction stagnated and all but collapsed after subsidised mortgage programs were withdrawn in 2024. Money that construction companies borrowed from the banks was locked in property that either nobody was buying or that could not be finished due to lack of funds. In 2026, the government refused to bail out Samolet — oddly named after the Russian word for airplane — the country’s largest construction company with a 19% market share.

The current fuel crisis might claim another victim come autumn. Agriculture runs on credit — farmers take out loans to buy expensive equipment and repay them from the harvest. Gas stations have at times imposed limits of 100 to 200 litres per customer, while a single combine harvester burns hundreds of litres per day. In desperation, the Agriculture Ministry has offered farmers furnace oil as a substitute for diesel — fuel with sulphur content 90 times higher than what they used last year.

Much of Russia’s agricultural fleet runs on Western-made equipment, predominantly John Deere, designed for clean fuel. Furnace oil destroys filters, fuel pumps and injectors. It can run Soviet-era tractors. It cannot run anything modern. Even if the harvest survives, farmers may not be able to sell it abroad. Ukraine has been targeting shipping in southern Russia, and dumping produce domestically at rock-bottom prices will not cover production costs, let alone repay the loans. That is the money that the banks do not get back to repay their own creditors.

Before the war, overdue payments between Russian businesses stood at roughly 3 trillion roubles. That figure has since tripled to 9 trillion — and that only covers companies large enough to be captured by official statistics.

Added to this, a massive contingent of small and medium business owners who invested funds into stock have just seen it go up in flames when Wildberries warehouses were hit. If online warehousing is now a military target, the entire e-commerce model in Russia becomes unviable. Trade will have to move back to local shops, with higher costs and slower turnover. And more tax avoidance opportunities.

And this is just a small cross section of businesses that are suffering as a result of the catastrophic situation in the economy, the root cause of which is the war.

In the Soviet planned economy, roughly 17% of enterprises operated at a loss but were kept alive because the state needed their output. Today, 34% of large Russian companies are loss-making — worse than the USSR.

Money Under the Mattress

Traditionally, when the economy is struggling and inflation is clearly observable, people stop spending and start saving. Not this time though.

First, people have noticed that money buys a lot less than it did before. And then, as any former inmate of the USSR will tell you — one of the most dreaded words in the universe is ‘deficit’. In the USSR that meant you had the money, but you had nothing to buy — there were no goods in the shops. Russians are well conditioned by their recent history — they are expecting to have no money and nothing to buy at the same time. As a result, they buy what they can now, because later it might not be possible.

What makes saving in the traditional sense unattractive is also the fact that several government officials have publicly floated the idea of confiscating private savings to replenish the state coffers. Since this is exactly what happened in January 1991 as the USSR drew its dying breath, people in Russia are naturally well trained when it comes to skullduggery like this. Money has been leaving banks in large quantities. No amount of promises, or even banks raising deposit interest rates while loan rates are being lowered, can persuade them to bring their cash back.

In the last six months alone, 2.5 trillion roubles have been withdrawn. It started when the Kremlin shut down cellular coverage to disrupt Ukrainian drone attacks, inadvertently cutting off the digital banking services most Russians rely on. People withdrew cash to pay for things. Then they kept withdrawing. Smaller businesses discovered that cash transactions were a convenient way to avoid taxes. Cash payment discounts are becoming popular. Businesses and ordinary people are excluding banks from as many transactions as possible. Unlike before, when money taken out of banks would eventually find its way back through deposits, now once it has left, it does not return.

There are also indications that large sums of money are leaving Russia via cryptocurrency.

How Does This End?

For the banks to continue providing services, they need funds — the money they make from borrowing from one side and lending to the other. When this gap narrows or disappears entirely, banks cannot function. The more obvious the problem becomes to the population, the closer Russia gets to a bank run — when everybody tries to withdraw their money at the same time. No bank holds enough cash to pay all depositors at once.

The government has three options: print money, rob the businesses, or freeze ordinary savers’ accounts. A normal country would not get into this predicament. Be that as it may, the Russian government does not have the money to bail out anybody. In fact, they are hoping that the banks will bail out the government.

Some form of all three has been happening throughout the war years already. Putin’s oligarchs have been regularly paying ransoms for the right not to be thrown into cells (or out of the window). Fortunes have changed hands, old alliances have been redrawn, and even Putin’s close friend Rotenberg appears to have fallen out of favour.

According to some economists, freezing savers’ accounts might eventually be unavoidable as a short-term measure. But none of this works long term or covers the budget deficit.

As for money printing, this has already happened. In January 2022, there were 65 trillion roubles in the Russian economy. That figure has since doubled to over 130 trillion. This is exactly what has fuelled the inflation. And yet this is the only recourse the Russian government has — they will have to print yet more money to bail out the banks. Eventually this might create hyperinflation. That is when you need a wheelbarrow to carry cash to the supermarket and hope that the prices have not gone up by the time you reach the cash register. Russians should remember this one from the 90s.

Can It Be Fixed?

As the Central Bank lends money to banks to bail them out, the banks lend to the government so the government can keep spending on the war. They keep bailing each other out. Each rotation creates more money, which again feeds inflation, which drives more non-payments and more withdrawals.

Ultimately, spending over half of the entire budget on trying to wipe out a neighbouring country is not a sound business model.

All dollar equivalents in this article are based on Russia’s official exchange rate, which is artificially managed through capital controls and restricted trading. The real dollar value of rouble-denominated figures is almost certainly lower.

A week ago, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon, Wildberries, was virtually unknown to anybody who was not familiar with the inner workings of either Russian business or everyday life. Just like a week earlier most people did not know much about the naval traffic in the Sea of Azov. And before that not many even well-informed commentators and readers knew just how many large oil refineries operated in European Russia.

Since then, courtesy of meticulous Ukrainian planning, a large portion of oil refineries in Russia are undergoing repairs, the Sea of Azov is mostly devoid of vessels, and the internet is following the developments on the Wildberries bingo cards.

None of these measures can stop the war in one fell swoop. What they do, however, is deliver the ‘death from a thousand cuts’.

Just like the attacks on the oil refineries and shipping in the Sea of Azov have both obvious and invisible benefits, targeting warehouses has its immediate rewards and concealed returns that are not random and form part of a strategic plan. What are they?

What is Wildberries?

Wildberries is Russia’s largest online marketplace, controlling roughly 45% of the country’s e-commerce. Hundreds of thousands of sellers trade through it. When Western brands pulled out of Russia after 2022, Wildberries became the main channel for parallel imports — goods sourced through Turkey, the UAE, and Central Asia that kept sanctioned products available on the Russian market. Everything from iPhones to designer clothing, to bulletproof vests and drone components. It accounts for about a fifth of all retail sales in Russia, and its logistics run through a network of enormous centralised fulfilment centres. They are the ones now burning.

Russia’s online retail market is dominated by three platforms: Wildberries, Ozon, and Yandex Market. Together, Wildberries and Ozon alone control 77% of the country’s e-commerce. This setup was not accidental. Smaller operators were squeezed out through legal changes and unviable commercial terms targeting independent online trading. The resulting market belongs to a select elite and controls the vast majority of goods, sellers, and logistics via a very small number of very large centres. Like the majority of business in Russia, the Kremlin consolidated its control over it, in the process creating a perfect target for Ukraine.

So far, one week of strikes has destroyed roughly $2-3 billion in goods and infrastructure. The goods losses fall primarily on the sellers; the rebuild costs on the company. But to grasp the scale: Wildberries made $2.2 billion in profit last year. The entire RWB group is valued at $12.6 billion. One week of strikes has generated losses comparable to a full year’s profit.

Why Wildberries?

The official justification is straightforward. According to Zelenskyy, the fulfilment centres were supplying the Russian military with drone components, navigation equipment, and sanctioned electronics. A search of the Wildberries website returns over 78,000 items marketed as military supplies, some labelled “tested in the SVO”, Russia’s official term for the war in Ukraine.

The immediate economic damage is equally obvious. Over 10% of Wildberries’ logistics capacity has been destroyed. For a company that handles a fifth of all retail sales in Russia, that is a significant blow. But what is more — it limits the funds that will make their way into the Russian budget.

However, the blow this deals to Russia as a party to the war is far more extensive.

The Damage Dealt Through Wildberries

This is where it gets interesting. According to reports, anywhere from half a million to eight hundred thousand sellers have been affected so far. And if the current pattern continues, we may only be halfway through the Ukrainian campaign against the retail sector in Russia.

These people have business loans to repay, mortgages to cover, employees to pay. Many of them will have to declare bankruptcy. According to industry estimates, only 5-7% of Wildberries sellers carry insurance — in a country where private property can be seized and redistributed at will, insuring it is essentially a pointless luxury. The decision on compensation to sellers is still being debated. Wildberries changed their T&C shortly before the attacks, renouncing any responsibility in case of drone strikes, and sellers indicated their consent by continuing to trade on the platform. While Wildberries has walked back on this and started paying out some compensation (although the sums are laughable so far), it does not have enough money to cover this kind of loss.

That will affect the banking sector, some of which is already on the verge of requesting a government bailout which is unlikely to come. According to Igor Lipsits, former head of the macroeconomics department at the Higher School of Economics, the link between market and economy in Russia has broken down so completely that in some cases the interest rates on deposits banks are offering exceed the interest rates on loans — a sign that banks are desperately trying to prevent depositors from withdrawing their money. Reduced cash flow under these circumstances comes at the worst time possible. In a functioning economy, losses like these would hurt but they would not cascade. In Russia’s current environment, they do.

What is more, even people whose wares have not been affected look likely to be hit — Wildberries is not allowing traders to withdraw their goods from the undamaged warehouses. As a result, traders who still have goods to sell might have to wait patiently until they no longer have anything to sell.

The Human Factor

The situation also presents a challenge to an entire layer of society.

Unlike ordinary folk, these are people who have the wherewithal to create their own business as well as provide employment for others. Some of them are high earners and skilled researchers in their chosen fields. They are not easily fooled into believing the claptrap the Russian government routinely spouts. But they are not interested in politics, and until now they have not been affected by them. Now they are. Their economic interests no longer align with the war. They do not have any power over it, but they join the ever-growing number of people who want the war to end. Yes, for now most of these people want the war to end with Ukraine finally defeated, but eventually they will want the war to just end. Remember — a thousand cuts. This is but one.

These people are also a source of income and livelihood to thousands of others they employ. When many of them are faced with cutbacks and closures, they will bring with them a wave of redundancies. This comes on top of an already difficult employment situation in Russia. Although it might sound counterintuitive, Russia has a catastrophic demographic situation and related workforce shortages, and at the same time high unemployment due to a collapsing economy. Many businesses are unable to pay wages due to cash flow problems, lack of access to investment due to sky-high interest rates and overall deterioration of the business climate. This will add to growing unemployment which according to Lipsits amounts to roughly 7% when both hidden and open unemployment are taken into account.

Will it Stop with Wildberries?

A short while ago Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy announced the 40-day campaign intended to force Russia to come to the negotiating table. The targeting of fulfilment centres falls well within that scope, as did the clearing of the Sea of Azov from the majority of Russian sea transport and the disabling of oil refineries before that.

At the same time, it is fairly obvious that Ukraine will need to continue with the ‘persuasion’ campaign beyond the 40-day limit. Nothing that the Kremlin has said or done indicates that it intends to call it a day.

We can also expect that once Russia has spent some time and funds on repairing the oil refineries, Ukraine will gladly revisit them. As it will visit the rebuilt fulfilment centres. In fact, this might become a regular service update. The more industries are affected this way, the more targets Ukraine has to choose from and the more pressure there is on the Kremlin to keep things from falling apart.

While we do not know what Ukraine’s next line of targets will be, we can be almost certain that come autumn, Russian energy infrastructure will be high on the list. Moscow alone with its ring of power stations on the outskirts of the capital is a choice morsel.

One might argue that Russia can start targeting Ukrainian industry in retaliation, except that Russia has been doing exactly that for over four years. Not hitting back has not been productive for Ukraine. And while responding in kind is unlikely to bring a direct and immediate result, it is but one more cut. And this time Ukraine is holding the knife.

The first news of the fuel crisis in Russia emerged in May. The country that the late US senator McCain famously dubbed a fuel station was running out of fuel courtesy of Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” and increased firepower.

Almost two months on, it is clear the reports of impending petrol doom were not exaggerated. Ukraine has just ticked off the last of its largest Russian oil refinery bingo cards – Omsk, situated some 2,500km from Ukraine and responsible for roughly a tenth of Russia’s gasoline and diesel output. Before Omsk was hit, an estimated 40-43% of fuel production was already affected; the total deficit may now reach 45%, even 50%. The largest country in the world is on its way to having only half the fuel it needs to keep its people mobile and supplied.

And that may be the optimistic scenario. According to Russian oil economist Mikhail Krutikhin, who now lives in exile, capacity could eventually be cut by up to 80%.

To understand where this is heading, we need to know what options Russia has and how likely each is to work. Russia could try to protect its refineries better, repair them faster, come up with alternative fuel production methods, redistribute existing fuel more effectively, import fuel, force Ukraine to stop attacking its refineries, reduce fuel consumption, or, and here is a novel idea – stop the war.

So Many Targets, Plenty of Drones

For the past couple of years, and especially within the last one, Ukraine has been systematically degrading Russia’s air defence. At first, Russia replaced destroyed units and radars easily; but the vast reserves inherited from the USSR, even supplemented by newer equipment, have since begun to dwindle.

Ukraine first targeted air defence in Crimea and other occupied territories, then widened the net as its reach extended deeper – eventually to Moscow, and now beyond the Urals. Nearly all available air defence units are now deployed around Moscow and a handful of other priority sites, leaving little for the front and nowhere near enough to cover Russia’s oil refineries, military facilities, and defence production sites. According to Vasyl Maliuk, Head of Ukraine’s Security Service, Ukraine destroyed nearly half of Russia’s entire Pantsir-S1 fleet – the main weapon against drones – in under a year, against a replacement rate of roughly 2.5 units a month. Each interceptor also costs several times as much as the drone it’s meant to destroy.

The other reason Russia cannot protect its refineries is simply size. If Ukraine – a fraction of Russia’s territory – cannot cover all its own infrastructure, Russia’s predicament is hopeless. There is not enough air defence in the whole world to protect a country that size. There is certainly not enough of it in Russia.

A Repair Too Much

Ukraine started targeting Russian oil industry in earnest in early to mid-2024, hitting what it could reach with drones far less powerful than today’s. Even so, the attacks caused real difficulties, especially layered on top of seasonal maintenance and agricultural demand.

On 28 June, in a fuel-security meeting, Vladimir Putin proposed faster repairs as one of the solutions aimed at combating the fuel crisis. Had this suggestion been offered in 2024, it could have been viable. Now, however, not so much – both the damage and Ukrainian know-how have accrued.

Russia’s refineries are Soviet relics at the core — the primary units, the towers that do the first split of crude oil into basic fractions, date to the original Soviet-era construction and are simple enough to repair in days. What actually produces modern, high-grade fuel is bolted on top: catalytic crackers, hydrocrackers, reformers, mostly Western-licensed kit installed from the 2000s onward. To start with, Ukraine targeted primary units, which were repaired easily. Now Ukraine is targeting secondary units. And this is where Russia has a problem – it has been under sanctions and cannot access spare parts for its secondary units since 2022. Any smuggled spares via Russia’s eastern borders fall well short of the volume needed. Furthermore, these aren’t generic components, they’re parts of a closed, licensed system, and no one — Chinese suppliers included — has reverse-engineered the specific proprietary designs involved at industrial scale and speed.

Additionally, refineries in Russia are run as commercial operations, whether under private owners or state-controlled companies. Even though the state is responsible for their current predicament, it is not liable for the consequences. As a result, owners have to cover the cost of repairs from their own pockets, with interest rates too high to make borrowing for it worthwhile. As the scale of Ukrainian attacks grows, repairs become impossible to sustain at more and more facilities.

Alternate Alternatives

One way to tackle the fuel shortage is to lower the quality bar. Russia has started allowing Euro-3 fuel instead of the usual Euro-5, meaning far more sulphur is allowed in the mix. But that sulphur has to go somewhere. Burned in an engine, it turns into acid rain in the air, and inside the car it eats away at the catalytic converter, corrodes the fuel system, and wears the engine out faster.

As an additional solution, Putin backed a plan to build a network of small refineries instead of relying on a few large ones. The idea was that small refineries are harder to knock out one by one than a handful of giant targets. But small refineries only have the most basic equipment, with no way to remove sulphur from the fuel, so what they produce is dirty by design, not by accident. And more refineries just means more targets. Ukraine isn’t running short of drones, quite the opposite.

Even those problems assume the small refineries get built at all. Each unit can cost anything from 100 to 400 million roubles, and a network large enough to matter runs into tens of billions. The state has not committed to funding it, and considering the budget deficit already exceeded 6 trillion roubles in the first five months of 2026, it is unlikely to. Corporate refinery operators have no access to investment, and loans available to them are at the commercially unviable rate of 18-19%.

Rational Rationing

When the crisis was only in its infancy, fuel from unaffected regions was moved to regions with fuel shortage. This was compounded by panic buying and stockpiling, since there are still plenty of people in Russia who remember Soviet time rationing.

What did not help was authorities taking a leaf from the communist rule book and applying a Soviet-era ration coupon system, using QR codes to control who could buy fuel and how much. Alongside this, in several regions officials and state employees have quietly been served ahead of everybody else.

This, naturally, created a black market. Resellers buy fuel at the officially set price and resell it privately at several times the cost — simply closing the gap between a state mandated price and what people were actually willing to pay. Fraud has followed close behind, with fake online sellers taking prepayment and disappearing. The state has responded by prosecuting resellers, thus moving further away from market economy and closer to state run economy. It did not do anything to solve the problem though.

Reversing the Flow

Russia could, in theory, import the fuel and offset the shortages. In practice it is not that simple.

The current Russian fuel crisis is happening on the tail end of Middle Eastern conflict. Countries usually exporting petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel have had to deal with limited crude oil availability. It is not that there is not enough fuel in other countries that Russia could buy, it is more that most of that fuel has been spoken for, tied up in long-term contracts and existing relationships. The last time Russia needed to import fuel was over 30 years ago as a result of economic chaos which ensued following the collapse of the USSR. Nobody has factored in the lack of fuel in… well, a fuel station.

Russian stated additional fuel needs are roughly 400,000 tons of petrol a month, although some calculations place it closer to 750,000 in summer months. Belarus, Russia’s stalwart sidekick, can supply roughly 150,000 to 170,000 tonnes a month – and June’s deliveries already came close to that ceiling. Kazakhstan, instead of oil shipments, has installed border controls to deter fuel migrants, and while India is reported to have shipped 60,000 to 80,000 tonnes so far, it is clearly insufficient. The cost is also an issue. At a time when the cost of crude oil has largely returned to the pre-Iran war level, the profits from the sale of oil in Russia have also dematerialised.

At the same time, fuel in Russia is subsidised. So the Kremlin would be getting less for the oil it sells, while having to pay substantially more for the fuel it needs to buy in – with no windfall from high oil prices left over to cover the difference. The alternative is passing that cost on to the population instead, which the Kremlin will want to avoid ahead of September’s Duma elections – the first since the war began, and falsified results only work if the gap with popular sentiment isn’t too obvious.

And last, but not least – all that fuel has to be delivered to Russia. If fuel came from, say, India or China, it would be either transported to one of the Black Sea ports or via the Baltic Sea. Russia no longer has the Black Sea Fleet - its remnants are hiding in various ports and do not dare to venture out for fear of being struck by Ukrainian naval drones. A fuel tanker heading for a Russia controlled port would not survive the Black Sea, especially since fuel burns more easily than crude oil. The Baltic route carries a different risk — not the tanker itself, but the port. Ust-Luga and Primorsk have been struck repeatedly this year: Ust-Luga alone was hit five times in ten days in March. Rail, the remaining route, cannot carry the volumes required — cross-border capacity and tank car supply are already committed to existing trade and military logistics.

An unverified claim holds that India asked Ukraine not to strike a Russia-bound fuel tanker, framing it as humanitarian cargo – and was met, allegedly, with a request for targeting coordinates instead. True or not, it captures the problem: the more fuel shipments try to reach Russian ports, the more targets Ukraine gets to choose from.

The Ship That Has Sailed

Hoping that having finally found the Russian Achilles heel, Ukraine would scale back the attacks is not a realistic course of action. Kyiv has offered Moscow to halt its air raids if the Kremlin limited its attacks only on areas of active fighting in Ukraine. Putin rejected these offers as recently as 3 July. The ability to hurt Ukrainians seems to be more important to him than the functioning of his own kingdom – and Russia has targeted civilians throughout the war regardless, so nothing short of capitulation would have stopped it anyway.

Russia could have tried to reach an agreement with Ukraine that would see neither side target specifically the other’s refineries and oil production sites. Except that Russia destroyed all Ukraine’s oil and fuel production infrastructure already at the start of the full-scale war. All fuel in Ukraine arrives from abroad, and its distribution is not centralised, unlike in Russia. So the principle of reciprocity in this case would not work.

With the ‘spirit of Anchorage’ all but gone, the Kremlin can no longer bank on Trump forcing Kyiv’s hand. Ukraine has earned its agency, paying for it in the blood of its people. Sidelining it is no longer an option.

Neither is taking out Ukrainian drone production an option. Like the entire Ukrainian society, it is thoroughly decentralised and located across several countries. Destroying a few sites in Ukraine will not touch the whole. It will not stop – and soon will be joined by home-grown ballistics.

Mobility Is Overrated

Another possibility for Russia would be to reduce its fuel consumption. Although, as things stand, this would not be a measure or a choice but rather the consequences of failing the measures even partially.

The production of diesel in Russia far exceeds the production of petrol, a legacy of Soviet planning: almost half of Soviet diesel output was earmarked for export, since most of the domestic economy – haulage, agriculture, trains – ran on it, while personal car ownership was deliberately kept low. That ratio did not really change after communism fell, even as demand for petrol grew rapidly alongside car ownership.

Initially, the sector hit most by the fuel shortage was the general public. Cities have public transport to fall back on; rural areas and smaller centres often do not, leaving private transport the only option.

Long-haul freight relies on diesel, but last-mile, shop-to-shop delivery runs on a mixed petrol/diesel fleet – so the petrol shortage reaches local goods delivery too.

Traditionally, almost all military needs were covered by diesel – tanks, armoured vehicles, delivery lorries ran on it. This war has changed that: tanks and lorries are now the first things drones hunt down, so smaller, more agile transport – civilian cars, motorbikes – increasingly does the job instead. And that runs on petrol.

The needs of the army will come first, so the decrease in consumption will have to come from ordinary people. Petrol went first, but diesel is not far behind: farmers in Krasnodar are already sleeping at petrol stations waiting for deliveries, several regions have banned selling fuel into canisters to stop small farms bypassing the queue, and the 2026 harvest is running at a fraction of last year’s pace.

Price is doing the rest of the work rationing doesn’t. In occupied Sevastopol, the official price hit $1.66 a litre by late June, up 30% in a single week – and resellers were charging as much as $5.13, more than three times the official rate. Those who cannot pay will end up paying anyhow through price increases on everyday products due to delivery costs.

The Simplest Solution

The above measures could bring some relief to the system under stress, even if they succeeded only partially. However, that would work only in a scenario where the damage was already final and not ongoing. Refineries can be repaired, fuel can be rerouted, domestic supply can be supplemented for a while with some imports. But not if it is a Groundhog Day.

Because none of the measures available account for the independent variable – Ukraine. It does not intend to stop its attacks on refineries, nor will it stop its campaign against oil tankers on the seas or the port infrastructure. People in Russia will have to learn to live locally and have fewer choices. And authorities in Russia will have to persuade them that it is for their own good.

Of course, the Kremlin can always use the magic wand it has – the moment they end the war all the attacks on its oil infrastructure stop. Just like that.

Just as increased violence is not going to persuade Ukraine to capitulate, so will the fuel crisis on its own not force Putin to halt the war. But it will increase the internal pressure and reduce the resources the Kremlin needs to continue the war. Eventually, one of these will break the dam.

This past week has seen a flurry of activity from Vladimir Putin. On 28 June, he spoke to the United Russia party congress, to the heads of Russia’s largest oil companies, and appeared in an interview with state TV propagandist Pavel Zarubin while visibly reading from a teleprompter. On 3 July, he participated in the recording of a staged visit to what was presented as a military command post. And on 4 July, he spoke to Donald Trump on the phone, which was publicised by Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of a severe fuel crisis and the unravelling economic catastrophe the likes of which Russia has not seen for decades. For somebody who has a habit of disappearing from public life at the first sign of any trouble (as he did when the submarine Kursk went down), Putin has suddenly become extremely active. This does look like a bog-standard damage limitation campaign; however, this time it is obviously not working. Because this time it is not only his adversaries who are noticing that the reality and Putin’s version of events are not just diverging but essentially located in completely different universes. This time the mismatch is visible across his entire kingdom.

The Disappearing Act

The first serious signs of the impending crisis were in early June, when Ukraine played with Russia like cat and mouse, hitting targets in St Petersburg on 3 and 4 June, on the eve of Putin’s appearance at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. His appearance there on 5 June, during which he completely ignored the mayhem Ukraine had caused in his native city, was his last public appearance for almost three weeks. He did not react to attacks on oil refineries and storage tanks, nor to the burning 15th Naval Arsenal near St Petersburg. There was no comment from him after the largest drone attack on Moscow of the entire full-scale war on 18 June. By the time he felt capable of facing the public on 28 June, only two of Russia’s ten largest refineries were left untouched, and only because both of them were beyond the Urals.

In the meantime, even before the fuel crisis, discontent had been brewing on many levels.

In mid-March, Ilya Remeslo, a pro-Kremlin blogger and lawyer, posted a call for Putin to face trial and labelled the war a “dead end”. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital in St Petersburg the following day but was later released and is still posting what would normally amount to “discrediting the armed forces” and would earn anybody else a one-way ticket to a Russian penal colony.

Victoria Bonya, a Russian beauty influencer living in Monaco with 13 million Instagram followers, posted a video in April addressed directly to Putin, complaining about catastrophic flooding, internet blackouts, livestock culls and economic pressure. The Kremlin uncharacteristically acknowledged the video, and the story died down.

While Bonya was contained and Remeslo, despite piping up from time to time, was seen as more of a product of mental illness due to his stint in a psychiatric hospital, what both of these individuals did and what the Kremlin could not stop was that they put a name to the problem. Both named Vladimir Putin as the person responsible. And both are still alive and unmolested.

The Floodgates

This seemed to open the floodgates. Suddenly, it was fine to admit that the budget deficit, unrelenting inflation and sky-high interest rates were the result of the war that would not end.

The massive losses of military personnel, coupled with slowing or even reversing advances of the Russian army and regressive management methods in the army, were dragged into daylight when a Russian combat veteran named Alexander Lunin posted a video on 25 June demanding a live meeting with Putin, threatening that the army would “turn its weapons against the Kremlin” if ignored. This happened almost exactly three years after Prigozhin’s mutiny. The video reached 12 million views within 24 hours. Lunin was arrested two days later, but he is no longer an anomaly.

All this, coupled with internet blackouts orchestrated by the FSB and now fuel supply collapse, created a situation where multiple problems all had one culprit: the Kremlin, aka Putin. Public figures from within the system were no longer staying silent – German Gref, the head of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, said on state television that he did not know a single person “who isn’t concerned about anything other than a rapid end of hostilities.”

And if that was not enough, the fuel shortages created the very situation the Kremlin had been trying to avoid since the start of 2022. In a country where any public meetings and manifestations are still banned, citing reasons ranging from tree inspections to, yes, still-active COVID restrictions, many people are now congregating in the same spots looking for fuel. And although for now they seem to be more interested in fighting each other for any fuel scraps thrown their way, eventually their collective mood might swing in the direction of those responsible for the debacle.

Matching Reality

While the overall consensus is that the USSR collapsed mostly due to catastrophic economic failures, one of the major contributing factors most people disregard was the stark disparity between reality and the public message from the ruling class. Empty shelves at the shops and claims of economic superiority over the West did not land the desired message.

This is why in a repressive state like Russia the message the state sends to its subjects cannot diverge sharply from what these subjects can observe with their own eyes. After local governments took the “fuel shortage was created by panic buying” line as far as they could, the Kremlin had to acknowledge the problem to some extent. However, Putin’s plan, according to the teleprompter interview, was not to stop the war. Quite the opposite: he assured everybody that Russia would continue fighting until all goals were met, not that anybody knows what those goals are.

As a solution, Putin demanded increased production of air defence systems and fuel, and later, at what was presented as a military command post on 3 July, he ordered the creation of a buffer zone in Ukraine as a way to decrease attacks on Russia. As if ordering increased production of fuel and the creation of a buffer zone could magic them into existence and stop Ukrainian attacks. Putin has been ordering the creation of a buffer zone for a few years now, and the buffer zone has not complied.

It is becoming clear that Russia cannot stop Ukraine from attacking its oil infrastructure and military targets. While the size of the Russian Federation is a particular source of pride for Russians, this is where they might have wished they had not absorbed quite so many neighbours. Ukraine, well over twenty times smaller than Russia, has a job maintaining adequate air defence, and it has all of NATO to help it. Russia is virtually unprotectable in this sense. The situation is going to get worse.

Traditionally, when autocrats face domestic problems, they tend to look for an external outlet to let off steam. When Russia seized Crimea in 2014, it was an exercise intended to increase Putin’s popularity at home, as was the case with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, launched partly to shore up the Tsar’s flagging domestic standing.

So it is no wonder that in his speech on 3 July, Putin tasked his general staff with determining which countries were preventing Ukraine from capitulating and coming up with an appropriate course of action.

Deflecting the Problem

In the light of this, the US warning to Poland, which became public on 3 July, about a possible Russian armed provocation designed to test NATO’s resolve and pressure Kyiv’s partners into suspending aid to Ukraine, as well as the Latvian intelligence service’s warning of 23 June that Russia is preparing hybrid attacks against the Baltic states or Poland including drone and missile strikes, should not be taken lightly. Russia is also doubling down on its claim that the Baltic states have opened their airspace for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia, which functions as a ready-made pretext for retaliation. The domestic pressure Putin is facing is growing. He needs to show he is still a predator, especially to his own people. As he did before, and as many have done before him, Putin might deflect the problem by moving it elsewhere, even if just for a while.

As long as he believes NATO will not respond, or that the response will not be painful enough to affect him personally, he might deploy a limited test or two against one of the neighbouring states, although it is highly unlikely to be a direct military aggression at this time.

However, none of this means the end is near.

The deal between the US and Iran, we are told, is all but agreed on and will be signed this Friday. Will the US and Iran reach an agreement, how will that affect the rest of us, and what does the situation tell us so far?

There is very little information available on the possible terms of the agreement, and that in itself is very telling.

First, the document that is rumoured to be signed is a Memorandum of Understanding. Effectively, it is an agreement on the agreement to reach an agreement. Basically, they agreed to talk. And yet the terms of what they will discuss are already in play.

So far, the terms of the MoU have been leaked mostly by the Iranian side. Bloomberg claims to have seen a version of the document from somebody on the US side, while Reuters has reported on several conditions potentially presented by an Iranian source. What all of these versions have in common is that Iran’s wishlist is almost complete, while US interests are notably absent.

The Iranian Wishlist Galore

From what we understand based on the collective terms of all these leaks taken together, Iran will have oil sanctions lifted, allowing it to sell oil again, it will get its assets released, naval blockade lifted, ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon. Iran also gets to keep its ballistic programme. A full US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf region is also on the list, as is the reconstruction programme worth minimum $300 billion, funded by US and “regional partners”. It might or might not be contingent on further talks, but these are effectively reparations. From the US. To Iran.

For that, Iran will consent to open the Strait of Hormuz, supposedly free of charge but under the control of Iran (and Oman) nevertheless. And it will pinky promise not to pursue nuclear weapons for an x number of years, although it will still continue enriching uranium. But it will allow in IAEA inspectors… because it worked the last time.

What these leaks and, in fact, the actual lack of information tells us is that the terms agreed are nothing to be proud of, at least when it comes to the US. While Iran seems to be happy to publicise them, the achievement the US is touting is the signing of the MoU, not the terms under which it will be (if at all) signed. That bad, eh?

This actually indicates that the deal might be struck. Since the goals of both parties are completely opposite — Iran needs its nuclear programme to maintain regional hegemony, influence over its terror proxies and continue its fight against Israel, while the United States wants to make sure Iran cannot do it — in order for the agreement to be reached, one side has to give up its goals. If even half of these terms are accurate, Iran seems to be getting a complete bucket list.

We might hope that not all of Iran’s wishes will be granted, however, the silence from Washington and Trump’s desperation for a deal might work in Iran’s favour here.

The Dues that Will Be Due

What does it mean for the rest of us? The ones who do not get the vote but still have to live with the consequences of the choice the US voters make. As usual, there are good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good news.

The Strait of Hormuz should be open at least for a while. Eventually, the Middle East will learn to diversify its shipping routes and the oil, fuel, and liquefied gas will reach the consumers without going through the Gulf. That might gradually reduce the influence Iran has achieved as a result of this war. However, that might take a while.

Now to the bad news. If the agreement is signed and if it is then kept, the US will have lost its influence in the Middle East. From now on, the power in the region will belong to Iran and its allies. Washington might think it still has a say, but after it presided over a debacle that resulted in Dubai losing the status of a desirable destination for the rich and powerful, cut down the Gulf state income and left Middle Eastern countries to fend for their own defence, Trump will not be getting any more airplanes or golden trinkets as bribes.

Iran will continue work on its ballistic programme. Considering that the current one posed a danger to the entire Middle East and painted a target over Europe, we are most likely not going to enjoy the new and improved one either.

As to the nuclear programme… Yeah, of course they will not pursue it. Why should they?

Support for Islamic terrorist organisations like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis will remain. As will their collective fight against Israel, who will inevitably retaliate. Looking weak in the Middle East is tantamount to putting a bounty on one’s own head. Not a good idea for either of the sides.

On a larger scale, if Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has not taught the world the importance of having nuclear weapons, then the demise of the US hegemony in the region and Iran’s new-found influence should do the trick.

Same Problems, Larger Scale

Based on what we think we know, Iran has ample reasons to sign the deal. Even if the terms of the agreement are less favourable to Iran than reported, as long as it dangles the final agreement in front of Washington, it can extract concessions from the US and does not have to give up anything it is not willing to part with.

Whether or not an agreement is reached (and then adhered to), the threat Iran posed before the United States attacked it in February has not been removed. If anything, Iran is now stronger than ever, while Washington’s influence in the region is reduced to a bare minimum, leaving its one-time allies vulnerable. Iran has shown that a smaller actor can terrorise an entire region, get away with it and walk away with the prize. The oil might start flowing again, but the increased fuel supply and reduced prices might end up being a poor substitute for global stability.

When Donald Trump returned to the White House, he promised to end the war in Ukraine by negotiating a deal between the warring parties, applying pressure on the party resisting the peace effort. We will never find out what would have happened had Washington actually tried to apply any pressure on anybody other than Ukraine. After Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the peace process had stalled and Washington was done waiting for results, many parties exhaled in relief. Not because they did not want peace but because the path chosen by Washington was never going to lead to peace.

Six days later, the EU, having mulled over the idea of appointing their own negotiator for talks with Russia, withdrew from the idea — and demonstrated how pointless they considered any negotiations with Russia by allowing EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas to revert to form. She declared that before any talks could begin, Russia would first have to agree to an unconditional ceasefire, withdraw its troops from Moldova and Georgia, reduce its armed forces, and cease its sabotage operations, cyber-attacks, and airspace violations across Europe. There was finally no need to pretend that anybody believed Russia in its current state could be reasoned with.

Then there was Zelenskyy’s letter to Putin, in which he invited Putin to a face-to-face meeting (for an umpteenth time), called on him to end the war, and (the real reason the letter was sent) warned that Russian history does not favour rulers who do not know how to get out of sticky situations.

Why, if Trump no longer needs appeasing, is Ukraine still pretending that Russia can be reasoned with?

A Message Worth Looking Into

When Ukraine’s officials issue a statement, it usually has a very specific purpose. We might not see that purpose for a while, but most of the time it becomes clear eventually. In this case, the important parts are the message and who it is addressed to.

The message Ukraine is sending is not that it expects Russia to come to its senses. It is that Ukraine intends to force Russia to see the reality in a new light. Looking at Ukraine’s long-term plans that are finally coming to fruition, it is becoming clear that Kyiv is not talking of diplomacy at all. It is talking of negotiations where one side is being hammered from several different directions at once — directions it did not see coming — until giving up its goals in Ukraine no longer looks quite so unattractive.

Several events are converging at the moment. Following a personnel change at the start of the year, the new Minister of Defence Mykhailo Fedorov declared a new direction in the fight against Russia — Russian troop targets. If more men could be eliminated by Ukraine than can be recruited by Russia, Russian fighting capabilities would start shrinking.

In addition to this strategy, the middle-strikes programme finally came into its own earlier this year. The kill zone — the area around the front line reachable by drones — has extended from around 20 km to 150 km, and in some cases 200 km. Crucially, this reach applies to Ukrainian middle-strike drones, not Russian ones. Suddenly, Ukraine is capable of taking out equipment and manpower supply routes deep in the enemy’s rear, while Russia does not have the same options.

This has compounded the loss of manpower and supplies to such an extent that Russia has virtually stopped advancing. According to the Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, May 2026 marked the first month since 2023 in which Russia lost more territory than it gained; the Institute for the Study of War, using a different measure, dates the previous net loss to Ukraine’s Kursk incursion in 2024. Either way, the direction is the same — a reversal that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

In addition to this, the campaign against the Russian energy industry is finally coming together. Having struck ports, fuel production facilities, and pumping stations, Ukraine has simultaneously forced Russia to reduce oil production — hitting the Russian budget — and driven it into a serious fuel crisis. There are fuel shortages across most of European Russia, and attacks on pumping stations are blocking deliveries from Western Siberia, while the insufficiently developed rail and road infrastructure provides no meaningful relief.

If that were not enough, the same fuel crisis in tandem with middle-strike drones is affecting Crimea especially hard. Following repeated attacks on the Kerch Bridge connecting mainland Russia with occupied Crimea, Russia stopped using it to transport fuel and ammunition — afraid of another strike turning any flammable cargo into the weapon itself. Ukraine then systematically picked off the ferries Russia had been using to supply the peninsula across the Kerch Strait instead, disabling the last of them in April 2026.

With supply by water now impossible, and rail routes through the occupied territories within reach of Ukrainian attack drones, Russia is left with an unwelcome choice: use the bridge to resupply the peninsula and risk exactly the kind of spectacular strike Ukraine has been waiting for, or leave Crimea without adequate supplies. If I were a betting woman, I would put a lot of money on Ukraine waiting patiently for a sufficiently explosive cargo to cross the bridge before finishing the job for good.

At the start of the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin touted the establishment of the land corridor to Crimea via the newly occupied territories as a palpable result of the invasion, sold to their own population as success. This land corridor is so vulnerable now that it is effectively gone, turning Crimea from an asset into a sitting duck.

These are the negotiations that Ukraine is conducting at the moment. And it seems that they expect the first realisation of the impending disaster to hit the Russian side just before winter. Hence the assessment of possible end of hostilities by winter.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

This was the answer to the question of what message the Ukrainian side is sending. Now, who is the message intended for?

It cannot be intended for Europe — Europe knows the score all too well without any outside direction. The message can therefore be meant for the US or Russia. While the US would appreciate the chance to take ownership of at least one war properly finished under its ministrations, by the time the measures instituted by Ukraine finally come to a head, the midterm elections will be over and Trump will most likely have lost the Republican majority in Congress.

Which is why this message is most likely intended for Russia. Even Zelenskyy’s letter to Putin. Not for the population, which has no mechanism and no history of acting, but for the small circle around Putin who can. The ones who risk losing their fortunes, lifestyles and access to power, and who will eventually have to calculate whether hastening his demise is less dangerous than riding the war down with him. There is no way to know how deep their pain threshold runs. It would seem that Ukraine expects them to get the first hint by the end of this year.How many hints it will take before the message finally sinks in, is anybody’s question.

On Thursday, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that due to Poland having elected a president he liked (although that happened over a year ago, but Trump is almost 80, so let’s not be too harsh) 5,000 American troops would be deployed to Poland as a contribution to the security of NATO’s eastern flank. This seemingly contradicted earlier plans announced by the Pentagon not to return 5,000 troops to Poland after their rotation.

The timing around the confusion about the lost or returned American troops however was telling — it happened just on the eve of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Helsingborg, Sweden. The last time a meeting like this happened was December 2025, and back then Secretary of State Marco Rubio was conspicuously absent — he sent a deputy. This time Rubio was present. It would seem Washington had an agenda, and placating Europeans with an additional troop deployment was necessary to advance it.

What was missing in December was not just American interest in NATO, but also war in the Middle East. In December, Washington did not yet need anything from Europe. Having got stuck in Iran, Washington has been trying to engage Europe in unblocking the Strait of Hormuz to no avail. Rubio was dispatched to try to change their minds.

Withdrawing troops from Europe as a punishment and then sending them there again fits Washington’s transactional approach to ‘close allied relationships’. Earlier this month, Trump, having taken umbrage at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, declared the reduction of American troops in Germany by 5,000 men. Around the same time, a further deployment of several hundred troops was cancelled along with the long-awaited deployment of long-range missiles to Germany.

With this in mind, the newly declared deployment of 5,000 troops to Poland might seem like a positive development — until we factor in Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski’s statement that after the new deployment Poland will host roughly the same number of US troops as before. In other words, nothing really changed.

So what was this virtual troop movement all about?

Officially the US was to discuss an increase in defence spending, unblocking the Strait of Hormuz, and the use of European air bases for American operations in the Middle East. Even before the meeting, other NATO foreign ministers stated that their countries were going to get involved in securing the Strait of Hormuz… once conditions allowed.

Rubio was obviously shipped off to Helsingborg to try to strongarm Europe into helping the US in the Middle East. While the earlier decision on the troop withdrawal from Germany looks like a bog-standard display of Trump’s wrath at Europe, and the cancellation of the missile deployment might be the result of the US war in Iran (the Pentagon may need them elsewhere), the refusal to rotate troops in Poland and then their miraculous deployment seems like a carrot and stick intended, if not exactly to bring Europe to heel (Washington is beginning to realise that pushing Europe around does not elicit the right response) then at least to get it much closer to the US position.

While the withdrawal of troops can hurt Europe to a certain extent, it is not the number that matters — it is the show of support from Washington, and sadly it is not forthcoming. The White House seems hell-bent on demonstrating its indifference to all things European. In this light, the deployment of Tomahawks to Germany was going to be the next best thing — if Europe cannot rely on Washington, it can at least rely on the hardware to hit choice targets in Russia if push came to shove. Even that option is now under threat.

With both political and military support by the US withdrawn from Europe, Rubio’s trip to Sweden seems very naïve. Washington was genuinely hoping to blackmail Europe into helping the US with Iran. It expects Europe not to notice that US support vis-à-vis Russia has been withdrawn, and any promises can be cancelled by a single post on Truth Social. Yet Washington seems to believe that it can talk or force Europe into engaging with the Middle Eastern crisis while at the same time hoping to hoodwink Europe on security. Or maybe Washington has taken a leaf out of Russia’s book and thought to offer thin air in exchange for European actions.

Although Europe is still balancing between outright opposition to Washington and the need for defensive technologies, it is no longer playing the sycophantic game with Trump. It knows full well Trump’s America is not an ally, and it will not get involved in Trump’s problems, since Trump is not interested in Europe’s problems. And dragging a few thousand US troops around Europe virtually or physically is not going to change that.

The killing of 24 people by Russia in a Kyiv apartment complex, along with other civilians elsewhere in Ukraine, following the 9 May ‘ceasefire’, has been presented by many commentators as Putin’s revenge for the humiliation he suffered at the hands of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the permission to hold the military parade Zelenskyy granted.

This argument for some reason assumes that Russia would not have targeted a block of flats unless severely insulted. As if executing random civilians, although objectionable in itself, is nevertheless a reasonable course of action under specific circumstances. It also ignores the several hundred similar attacks Russia has perpetrated over the past four years, which the international community has accepted as a given.

What most of the commentators have missed though is that Russia has created a closed-loop demonstration of what happens when it wants to get something from the adversary and how its behaviour changes once it has got it. In essence, this is a perfect specimen of Russia’s approach to diplomatic processes: they demand something, threaten violence should they not get it, receive what they demanded in exchange for not perpetrating that violence, and then commit it anyway.

Although for many people familiar with Russia’s behaviour this is not new, the significance of the latest performance stems from the fact that the Kremlin managed to create a complete, observable and irrefutable argument short enough to be presented to the most ardent followers of the ‘we can negotiate peace with Russia’ camp.

Members of this camp have managed to ignore the late lamented Budapest Memorandum. They have disregarded that Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, breaks the UN Charter daily. They have set aside the fact that Russia has violated every Geneva Convention — in other words, the entire corpus of international law governing the coexistence of nations. In their view, the war in Ukraine can be negotiated to an end because this time Russia would not break the agreement.

All the Russian rule-breaking has happened over a long period or has been muddied by disinformation campaigns implanting fake facts into real stories. As a result, even those who were present at the events are often not believed by those determined not to believe them.

This time is different. Russia demanded a ceasefire for 9 May, threatened Kyiv with annihilation should Ukraine not comply, enjoyed the ceasefire Donald Trump brokered, and then attacked Kyiv with everything it had once the ceasefire was over. All in the space of a few short days, and not just in full view of the entire world but, most importantly, under the watchful eye of both President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian nation. Russia has created a perfect demonstration of cause and effect, an ‘if – then’ exercise: if Ukraine negotiates with Russia and fulfils its part of the agreement, then Russia will take what it was given and attack anyway.

Ukraine has had to publicly go along with the idea that peace can be magically achieved if only Russia can be persuaded to be happy. The mere existence of this sequence releases Kyiv from the obligation to pretend that peace with Russia can be negotiated as long as the Ukrainian side tries hard enough. This is also the point where any supporters of non-escalation lose the fig-leaf they have employed to ignore the argument, made by anybody who has ever been on the receiving end of Russian aggression, that Russia cannot be negotiated with.

Russia has effectively spent the last agreement it was ever going to get from Ukraine. After this, there will be no popular support for any agreement with Russia unless Russia can be forced to comply, and even then the force would have to be exercised only by Ukraine, nobody else. The only agreements Ukraine will ever sign with Russia are the ones it signs with a proverbial gun to Russia’s head.

When Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued a decree on 8 May authorising Russia to hold the military parade on Red Square on 9 May from 10am Kyiv time, many took it as a brilliant publicity stunt and masterful trolling. In reality, Zelenskyy was dead serious. He did authorise the parade. From this year onwards until the end of the war, come May, the Kremlin will need to seek Kyiv’s permission to hold the parade in front of the mausoleum holding Lenin’s corpse, because the expectation will be that Kyiv will otherwise gatecrash it. Putin knows it. Putin’s elites know it. This bell cannot be unrung.

Pathetic Spectacle by the Mausoleum

In hindsight, it might have been more prudent for Putin to chance the Ukrainian long-range drones and Flamingo missiles. It is highly likely that Kyiv would not have struck Moscow anyhow — the countless rings of air defence around Moscow left other targets wide open, and Ukraine might have considered those juicier. Putin could have framed any attacks as proof of righteous war. It would have been a weak response, but he might have looked more like a man and less like Gollum during his brief speech at the parade. Instead, he decided to believe Ukraine would crash his party, and paid for it by looking pitiful.

A popular joke in Russia suggested that Russians should persuade Zelenskyy to authorise the return of mobile internet, blocked on and off for the past few months. Another joke spoke of popular surprise at seeing a president who allows things instead of banning them.

In a system where authority is derived entirely from the appearance of strength, any sign of weakness is treated as a cause to question that authority. This is especially true in Russia. Russians accept ruthless leaders, they do not accept weak ones.

If this was not enough, earlier Moscow had tried to threaten Kyiv with the usual end of the world to get its way on the parade front. The Kremlin declared a unilateral ceasefire from midnight on 8 May and, as a way to enforce it, told embassies in Kyiv to evacuate and warned of a massive missile strike on the city centre. The fear of the attack was supposed to ensure Kyiv’s compliance. This time nobody was scared. Kyiv ignored the threat completely, continuing to strike defence industry and oil infrastructure deep inside Russia. Russia issued threats it could not back up with actions and had to retreat. Ukraine did not even issue threats, but Russia had to seek protection from Donald Trump, and the only way Trump could deliver Ukrainian compliance was by meeting Kyiv’s price — a prisoner exchange.

The humiliation this brought was unrivalled and very public. Putin now has to act — except that his options are very limited, each worse than the last.

Kneejerk Threats

The initial reaction was taken straight from the standard Kremlin rulebook. At a press conference following bilateral meetings in the Kremlin on 9 May, Putin tried to inflate Russian significance and present Russia as a major player in the South Caucasus by suggesting Armenia put its EU aspirations to a public vote via referendum — as if Russia had any say in Armenia’s future. He also issued a thinly veiled threat by reminding his audience that the current situation in Ukraine was a consequence of Ukraine’s EU bid.

This, of course, was the direct result of the Western leader summit (sans US) in Yerevan showing the Kremlin’s diminishing reach in the region. In truth, the longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the further Armenia moves from Russia. Additionally, Armenian integration in the EU is in Azerbaijan’s interests — the last thing Baku wants is for Russia to renew its destabilisation attempts in the region. Short of removing the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, by force, there is not much Russia can do to change Armenia’s course while Russia is otherwise occupied. Russia is slowly learning that its threats can no longer change outcomes.

In the same speech, Putin stated that he was amenable to meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy even outside Moscow, which is where he had previously insisted the meeting should happen. This was supposed to show his flexibility — however, he immediately walked that back by insisting that any such meeting was to be held only to sign the final agreement. Considering that his presidential aide Yuri Ushakov had reaffirmed on 10 May that Moscow would only start negotiating in earnest once Ukraine had walked out of Donbas, Putin clearly meant the meeting was intended to accept Zelenskyy’s capitulation. Russia’s position has not changed one bit — they still want control over as much of Ukraine as they can get, even if they cannot take it by force.

And finally, Putin tried to walk back on the prisoner exchange — the price Russia was supposed to pay for the humiliation on Red Square. President Zelenskyy did not even deign to grant Putin any agency in this matter — he announced that the US was in charge of the prisoner swap. Putin could try to weasel out of it, but he would be punishing the US as the guarantor of the agreement, not Ukraine as the beneficiary.

All the traditional Kremlin tactics have stopped working. And yet a response is required. Putin must prove to his elites that he has not lost control, grip, and influence over the country and the situation.

Three Doors, No Exit

At this point, Putin has three choices available to him.

He can push forward with military action and try to take the remainder of Donbas to show he has not been throwing around empty threats. In current circumstances this would be almost impossible to achieve — with the Russian offensive coming to a virtual standstill, Russia might soon be walking backwards instead of forwards. Ukraine’s mid-range drones — known among Ukrainian engineers as “middle-strikes” — have extended the kill zone, a term popularised by former commander-in-chief Zaluzhny to describe territory controlled by enemy drones where all movement stops, to up to 250km behind Russian lines, effectively collapsing logistics and supply chains.

Ukraine’s plan to kill more troops than Russia can recruit is slowly showing results. With current recruitment levels Russia cannot sustain traditional offensives. More manpower is needed, but the number of men willing to die for Putin’s goals is dwindling. A new mobilisation is needed, and yet Putin does not dare call one. The grumbling in Russia has increased. Russians stayed largely uninvolved when Ukraine was invaded in their name, remained aloof when some of their compatriots were scooped off the streets and sent to the frontline meat-grinder, or when their opposition leader was murdered in prison. However, taking away their mobile internet connection turned out to be the rallying cause. And then, of course, there are the regions hosting oil processing plants which suddenly discovered that when you attack your neighbour, that neighbour can hit back. In other words, there is a palpable air of displeasure in Russia. It is not a sign of impending revolution — Russian people have abdicated any agency long ago. However, it is enough for Putin to fear the consequences of wider mobilisation, including individual non-compliance from the conscripts who might not want to die. And that leads to loss of control.

Putin can also stop yanking everybody’s chain and give diplomacy a real chance. This, however, leaves him vulnerable to a different kind of reality — the one where millions of men who are used to killing, raping, and pillaging, plus getting paid handsomely for it, are released into wider society alongside former criminals recruited from prisons, and expected to come to terms with the fact that all that blood and violence has effectively bought them barely 1% of Ukraine’s territory per year.

Between the promises of stability Putin gave his subjects and the chaos a demobilisation would unleash, the wild 90s, when criminal gangs created by chaos and violent elements returning from colonial wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya controlled Russian streets, will seem like a fond childhood memory.

Even the last argument — nuclear weapons — is a card that can never be played. Once used, you can no longer control the reaction of your adversaries, and dropping a nuclear bomb on Ukraine would not give Putin control over it. Putin is a coward (literally, according to the Russian opposition) and would never choose an option that can cost him everything and still not create a favourable outcome.

And this leaves Putin with door No 3. He can do nothing. This, however, will not mean that things will stay the same. Quite the opposite — they will only get worse.

The state of the Russian economy is such that according to almost all economists, including Russian ones in exile, even a miracle cannot save it. It is going down, and one day it will hit rock bottom. Time is the only variable. And it is capable of inflicting untold pain in the process even before it expires completely.

The other element is the stagnating (indeed, reversing) frontline. In April 2026, for the first time since Ukraine’s Kursk incursion, Russia suffered a net loss of controlled territory. A year ago, it was gaining an average of 171 square miles a month. The loss of internet connection and overall quality of life were supposed to be offset by the glory of wiping out yet another village in Ukraine nobody in Russia had ever heard of before. Living much worse and not getting the glory people were promised can create the kind of cognitive dissonance that snowballs.

And then, of course, there is the ever-growing impact of Ukrainian attacks on Russian industrial targets. Most of the oil industry and defence sector has been built within city limits. When oil starts to rain from the sky or burn through streets to the accompaniment of air raid sirens, and the population increasingly has to search for shelters that do not exist, doing nothing no longer looks like a winning strategy.

The Cornered Rat

Putin has no good moves left. Every single action he takes brings him closer to an outcome he is trying to avoid. And so does inaction. In chess terms this is called zugzwang — a position where the obligation to move is itself the problem, because every available move makes things worse.

As a very gifted tactician and abysmal strategist, Putin can nonetheless employ moves that would temporarily correct the course of action. He did so in the autumn of 2022 when Russian defeat seemed unavoidable. The mobilisation and deployment of Iranian drones stalled the Ukrainian counter-offensive and stretched the war by several years. None of it changed the overall outcome — Russia will not be able to control Ukraine. What it did was drag other countries into the agony of the eventual collapse of Putin’s power.

In his fight for relevance, Putin can still inflict untold suffering not only on Ukraine but on other neighbouring countries. After all, he is not constrained by the welfare of his subjects or even by sustaining minimum life-preserving conditions. For Putin, the goal is his own physical survival and that of his immediate family. The loss of power threatens that survival, so holding on to power is all that matters. Yet all the options available to him lead to loss of power, making him the proverbial cornered rat. This cornered rat has no plan but still has plenty of moves it can throw at us without worrying about consequences.

Donald Trump’s and Vladimir Putin’s last week’s phone call last reignited discussions about a possible ceasefire in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Could a ceasefire finally happen? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? The answer to this was an obvious no and no. This was never about peace or even a ceasefire.

Putin is so terrified that his military parade on 9 May will be rained on by Ukrainian drones and possibly even missiles that he ran to Trump, complaining about Ukraine, and manoeuvred him into fronting a ceasefire request on the parade day. And then according to Zelenskyy Trump went and forgot to discuss any ceasefire with Ukraine.

Having failed to secure Ukraine’s compliance via Trump, Russia unilaterally declared ceasefire from 8–9 May, threatening Ukraine with hell, retribution, annihilation — the usual. The Russian Defence Ministry even threatened European embassies in Kyiv, telling them to evacuate before the 9th of May. Ukraine answered by unilaterally declaring a regime of silence starting at midnight on the night of 5–6 May, which Russia promptly ignored. Consequently, Ukraine can now disregard Russian ceasefire.

So why is the parade so important and what does it symbolise?

A Parade in Want of Protection

The Kremlin’s fear of Ukrainian disruption on the 9th of May festivities is hardly irrational. Ukraine has recently increased its attacks on Russian oil processing and export hubs. Additionally, at the end of February, Ukraine hit a missile assembly factory in Votkinsk some 1,400km from Ukraine using its FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. It can hit Moscow – even if all missiles were shot down, the debris alone would wreak havoc for days. Even if Ukraine does not attack Moscow on the day of the parade, Moscow knows it has the means to do it; the fear and uncertainty alone are enough to set the Kremlin’s nerves on edge.

Most of Russia’s available air defence has already been redeployed around Moscow, leaving many oil processing plants open to Ukrainian long-range sanctions — Ukraine’s own term for strikes that achieve what international sanctions have not. However, no air defence can guarantee complete safety.

As a result, Russia must either cancel its parade or secure Ukraine’s agreement to the parade via other means.

Russia has already downsized the parade considerably. All military equipment has been excluded, although the planes might still be on the agenda. Cadets and other military students will be absent this year as well.

We should remember that the last few military parades held in Moscow have been equally thin and vulnerable. The downsizing started in 2022, when the flyover was cancelled at the last moment. Bad weather was cited. It was sunny that day in Moscow. At the time, Ukraine had no weapons that could reach Moscow. So why did they cancel the flyover? They feared their own. The short military operation Putin had planned did not go as expected. People were still allowed to grumble a bit. And the first reports of serious casualties were coming in. The leadership was seriously scared its own military could take revenge.

This fear materialised a year later in Prigozhin’s march to Moscow on 24 June 2023. When the Kremlin dropped Prigozhin’s plane two months later, the window of opportunity for any violent revolt closed. Everybody who had reasons and means to harm the leadership was at the front. And fear of their return is one of the reasons Putin is not finishing the war. Having allowed convicted murderers and rapists into the army to bolster recruitment figures and then mistreated them and allowed them to mistreat each other, the Kremlin lost any claim on their future allegiance.

Since then, the equipment portion of the parade has dwindled every year in line with meagre reserves, and most years saw no foreign dignitaries. Except for the parade of 2025, which marked 80 years since the end of WWII, and was attended by Xi Jinping, Aleksandar Vučić, and Nicolas Maduro, among others. Xi’s presence in particular ensured that Ukraine would not gate-crash — open warfare with China has never been in Ukraine’s interests.

This year there are no live hostages for Putin to hide behind. Although Slovak PM Fico attempted to arrange safe passage to Moscow, the Baltic states declared: he shall not pass. Reports suggest Fico intends to travel to Moscow via Belarus by train to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and meet with Putin, though he has said he will not participate in the parade.

The Myth, the Lies, and the Long Con

Most countries have a special day they celebrate — independence day. The three Baltic states even have two of them — the day of independence and the day independence was restored following the end of the Russian occupation. Russia does not have an independence day — it has no one to be independent from. Many countries do celebrate their independence from Russia, however.

During Soviet times, there were two days that were treated as sacred — the 9th of May, or Victory Day, and the 7th of November, which celebrated the communist coup of 1917. After the fall of the USSR, the communist coup ceased to be a happy memory, and only the 9th of May remained.

The reason Russia has always celebrated the end of WWII on the 9th of May, rather than the 8th like the rest of the world, has to do with Joseph Stalin. When the first capitulation of Nazi Germany was signed on the 7th of May 1945 in Reims, the representative of the Soviet Union signed it without having full authorisation from the ‘dear leader’. The documents were signed for the second time on the 8th of May in Berlin. However, by the time the signing ceremony was finished, it was already past midnight in Moscow. Additionally, Stalin wanted to stress the importance of the USSR, so the Soviets uncoupled their Victory Day from everybody else’s.

There was also another reason. While the rest of the world commemorated a war that lasted six years, the war the Soviets fought lasted only four — from 1941 to 1945. During the first two years of the war, from 1939 to 1941, Soviet Russia was allied with Hitler. In 1941, just over a month before the invasion of the USSR, Nazi officers were honoured guests at the May Day parade on Red Square.

It is worth noting that WWII started in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland from the West and the Soviets invaded from the East. The USSR’s war was different from everyone else’s, and therefore so was its Victory Day. Additionally, while for the rest of Europe WWII ended in 1945, for Eastern European countries occupied by Soviet Russia it only ended nearly half a century later.

A Trump in the Pocket

Although the current parade has already been cut to the bone, it is still supposed to be a symbol of Russia’s reach and ability to ‘crush enemies’ (or as it is - neighbours). Being throttled on this day in front of all and sundry would put a serious damper on the narrative of almighty Russia winning its war against tiny Ukraine that the locals are supposed to follow.

Additionally, the image of the strongman that Putin presents to his subjects depends on the visibility of that strength. Should anything unexpected happen on the 9th of May, that will expose the myth that Putin has built around him — the Russian ruler who ‘raised Russia from its knees’. If Russia cannot protect Moscow on its most important day, then what did the million or so dead soldiers die for in Ukraine?

All in all, the fact that Putin is scrambling to find anybody capable of reining in Ukraine is rather ironic when we consider that four years ago on the 9th of May in 2022, Ukraine was seriously expecting to be hit by a nuclear missile in retaliation for having defeated Russia under Kyiv.

It is quite remarkable how the situation has turned around. Last year, Zelenskyy trolled the Kremlin, announcing that Ukraine could not ensure the security of the Victory Day parade in Moscow. This year, Ukraine’s capability alone is enough to send Putin whining to Trump and even Europe as a last resort.

While Ukraine, having countered the Kremlin’s bogus ceasefire with its own, now has its hands untied and ready to either strike Moscow at will or simply troll it mercilessly and watch it squirm.

The war in Iran has just claimed its first victim: OPEC. The UAE’s exit on Saturday leaves Saudi Arabia as the only member able to move prices by raising or lowering output. The producers who actually pump the most oil (the US, Canada, Brazil, Guyana) were never inside the cartel. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, most Gulf members cannot get their oil out anyway, and the UAE has an alternative pipeline that bypasses the Strait — options other OPEC members do not have. OPEC is done.

Institutional failure

If leaving OPEC was not enough, Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s long-time presidential diplomatic adviser, had signalled that the UAE would “scrutinise” its regional and international relationships. On Monday he named the GCC and the Arab League directly, calling their response to the attack on the UAE specifically “the weakest position in history”.

Although an anonymous UAE official then told Reuters on Wednesday that any further withdrawals are not yet planned, the direction in which the UAE has been moving indicates that this is the beginning of a parting of the ways in the Persian Gulf and across the Arab world.

The UAE’s reaction is not based simply on hurt feelings. It has been the country Iran attacked most heavily this time. Over the course of the war, Iran fired some 550 ballistic and cruise missiles and more than 2,200 drones at the UAE, more than at any other country, including Israel. Yet any attempts the UAE made to muster a united Arab front in response to Iran’s indiscriminate attacks were rejected. In fact, on 8 April, hours after a US-brokered ceasefire was supposed to take effect, an Iranian refinery on Lavan Island was struck — Iranian sources and open-source analysts attributed the attack to UAE Mirage 2000 jets. On the same day, the Saudis were co-sponsoring a ceasefire framework.

Disagreement in the Making

However, the misalignment between the UAE and the other Gulf and Arab states was not caused by the war in Iran. The disagreements run deeper than that, and the war has only brought to a head a conflict that had been building for a while.

When Saudi Arabia signed a defence agreement with Pakistan in 2025, the UAE was unhappy – the UAE was deepening its ties with India, which is in an almost permanent state of conflict with Pakistan. On top of that, Pakistan’s economy is structurally dependent on China, and the majority of its military technology is Chinese-made.

At the start of 2026, the UAE refused to extend its $3.45 billion loan facility, despite Pakistan asking for a two-year extension at a reduced interest rate. The loan was repaid in tranches in April, with the final payment on 23 April. Just two weeks earlier, on 11 April, Pakistan had deployed JF-17 fighter jets and military personnel to King Abdulaziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia under the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed between the two countries in September 2025. Saudi Arabia replaced the UAE facility with $3 billion in fresh deposits to Pakistan’s central bank and a year-long extension on $5 billion of existing loans.

So when Pakistan took the middle ground in the conflict instead of condemning the Iranian attacks on the UAE and other Gulf states, this was thought to have caused the Emirati ire. In fact, the UAE had been disengaging from Pakistan well before the US-Iran war began.

An Unlikely Ally

During the same period, the UAE was deepening ties with an unlikely regional ally — Israel. The UAE was one of the first countries to sign the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020. This quickly led to a free trade agreement, intelligence and defence-industrial cooperation, and joint military operations.

In the early weeks of the war, as Iran was firing missiles and drones at the UAE in unprecedented numbers, Israel sent an Iron Dome battery, along with a contingent of IDF personnel to operate it, following a call between Netanyahu and Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed. This was even as Israel itself was under attack from Iran. It marked the first time an Iron Dome battery was deployed outside Israel and the US.

In an article for the Arab Gulf States Institute, Tareq al-Otaiba, a former official at the UAE’s National Security Council, wrote that the United States and Israel had “proved to be true allies by offering support through extensive military aid, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic backing.” A senior Emirati official quoted by Axios was blunter: it was “a real eye-opening moment, to see who our real friends are.” That list, the official said, also included France, the UK, Italy, and Australia. No GCC member appeared on it.

Going West

The differences go beyond military alliances. The UAE has been at odds with Qatar for over a decade over Doha’s hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE designates as a terror group. That dispute now extends to the UK, where the Brotherhood remains perfectly legal and Qatari money is a major source of funding for British universities. The UAE has recently banned its students from attending UK universities — Emirati students, it seems, were coming home radicalised, and the UAE was unhappy about it.

The UAE is no longer prepared to wait for either Arab or Western consensus to catch up to its own position on political Islam.

While the Saudis aligned with Pakistan and by extension with China, the UAE aligned with Israel, the US, and the wider West. And leaving OPEC is only the first step in what looks to be the parting of the ways across the Arab world.

The state of the Russian economy has been discussed in the news from all sides. There are predictions of both its imminent demise and relative immortality. There are calculations on how the Strait of Hormuz oil crisis affects it, and just recently there was an excellent report from Swedish military intelligence on artificial inflation of Russian economic prowess.

All of these view the collapse of the Russian economy as the final desirable outcome, and even Russian economists in exile are not rooting for Russian economic deliverance. The consensus is that it is going to collapse eventually, and nobody really knows when.

But What Do We Expect Such Collapse to Achieve?

It is generally accepted that wars end when parties change their goals or have exhausted their physical, military, and economic potential for continuing them. While waiting for Russia to change its mind on wanting to conquer neighbouring states might take a few lifetimes, the economic collapse is quite reasonably expected to serve as an objective limiting factor in its expansionist agenda. When people are starving, even hardened regimes have to turn inwards. By mapping the impending economic doom, we should be able to anticipate how long Russia can continue the war in Ukraine and plan our own actions.

However, these arguments discount the real variable in the equation — the Russian people. There is not much point in commenting on the health (or lack thereof) of the Russian economy if its people react in a completely different way than they would in countries where human life is a value.

And because of this variable, even when the Russian economy finally collapses, we may not notice — because collapse in Russia is unlikely to produce the visible markers the West is trained to read. It will not arrive as mass protest or regime fracture. It will arrive as degradation, absorbed by society and redirected into the war effort.

In a word, we are watching for the wrong metric. In a country where the pain threshold is close to that experienced in Europe in the Middle Ages, economic data on paper does not translate into results as expected.

Train Wreck Already in Progress

Generally, an economic collapse is marked by currency collapse, bank runs, default, hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and societal unrest. Some of these have already happened, and some are well on the way there.

The rouble has been maintained artificially since 2022. The Russian Central Bank effectively sacrificed it and the Russian economy at the start of the war by taking steps that were meant to retain the appearance of stability, instead of actually stabilising the situation. As most investment was withdrawn from the Russian economy (and no, China does not bring in investment, it extracts resources — even in Russia), Russia had to battle the mixture of cash shortage and post-Covid inflation with the only means possible — high interest rates. This has had a negative effect on the already battered economy and caused a loop where economic medicine effectively kills the patient — the economy. Caught between the inflation caused by printing money and the business collapse caused by high interest rates, the Central Bank is simultaneously administering both remedies, each of which makes the other necessary. The war budget cannot be cut, oil revenues are falling, and the deficit is being financed by money printing that the high interest rates cannot fully offset — the balance is holding only because it has not yet broken.

Some version of the signals of collapse have already happened. The currency is maintained artificially. The ordinary population attempted to withdraw their foreign currency deposits in 2022 and was blocked, capped at $10,000 in cash, with any remaining balance only accessible in roubles at the Central Bank’s rate, restrictions that remain in force today. There is a form of bank run happening at the moment in response to the blocking of internet services — if the only way to pay for services is cash, since the card machines do not work, then keeping money in the bank is useless. This is evidenced by $19.7 billion withdrawn in cash in January alone. Technical default has already happened in June 2022. Each of these would register as a crisis signal anywhere else. In Russia, they are absorbed as the new normal.

Curiously enough, mass unemployment is happening alongside mass worker shortages — there are areas, especially rural ones, where no work can be found, and areas where companies cannot find enough workers. Mobilisation and the wartime defence industry have stripped labour from civilian sectors, creating acute shortages in some regions while the collapse of import-dependent manufacturing and retail has left others with nothing to employ people in.

Unrest That Is Not Happening

The only element we have not seen and it seems will not see is societal unrest, which should be the culmination of descent through the ranks and the sign of changes to come.

Unlike the situation in Iran, where economic hardship can potentially cause the change of regime because people there are unhappy and have agency, people in Russia are usually unhappy but they have no agency. Russians historically have high tolerance for pain and abuse, and the current generation is not very different. They are used to decisions being made for them, not by them.

These are people who can be press-ganged into military, can be tortured by their commanders, abused, and then sent on suicide missions on the front, and instead of turning their weapons against their torturers, they follow the orders and die.

These are also the same people who already experienced the collapse of the economy in the 90s following the disintegration of the USSR. The common response was to organise a criminal gang and survive by robbing others. They are now effectively doing the same — killing and robbing their neighbours in hopes that it will serve as a reprieve for them.

Total Pressure on Totalitarian State

Russia has almost completed the transition from authoritarian state to totalitarian, achieving a form of control the Soviet Union itself did not fully reach, one that extends into private life, private relationships, and private thought. The totality of the government’s control is very close to what it used to be in the Soviet Union. The only two differences — there is some semblance of private property in modern Russia, and people are allowed to leave. All other aspects of human life come under complete control of the state. In the absence of any grassroots movements and the complete absence of any horizontal societal bonds, these people will learn to live in the conditions of a collapsed economy just as they have learned to live with sending their loved ones to die in another country in exchange for generous compensation packages.

However, this is not an argument against applying economic pressure on Russia. Quite the opposite. Extreme sanctions are needed to elicit even a modicum of reaction from the people who are used to very brutish life, as well as elites, who have no power but will follow anybody who has finally had enough. The security apparatus is the last to notice and the last to care — repression offers its own rewards that a salary cannot fully explain.

Just recently, Gennady Zyuganov, leader of Russia’s Communist Party and a derivative of the system, warned the Russian State Duma that without urgent action to improve the economy ‘a repeat of what happened in 1917 awaits us.’ Apart from the irony of a communist warning about the imminent approach of a communist ‘revolution’, this serves as the indication that the system, far from collapsing, is still allowing its loyal fixtures to let off steam. Albeit with consent.

The metric worth watching is not economic. In a totalitarian state, the real signal of systemic fracture is escalating repression. A stable regime does not need to resort to additional punishment to stave off dissent, it only does so when the existing level of control is no longer sufficient. And when the system runs out of real enemies and starts consuming its own (loyalists, collaborators, true believers – Zyuganovs, in other words), we can expect change. Watch for that, not GDP.

The reason many people follow the US-Iran war events is the uncertainty around oil prices and their effect on the global economy and by extension the household bills. We want to know how long this is going to last, mostly to figure out how bad it is going to get. Following the Washington administration’s logic is no easy task, however, oil markets seem to have made up their mind about what lies ahead. What do current oil prices tell us about the direction of the conflict and the economic pain it will inflict globally?

Tactical and strategic

First things first. There are two types of oil prices – futures and spot prices.

As the name indicates, futures relate to deals for the sale of barrels of oil in the future. Generally, a few months down the line. The oil sold this way usually has not been loaded on a ship yet; what’s more, it might still be in the ground. The energy market factors in the difficulties associated with extraction, loading, and transportation. Essentially, this is the price the market has determined oil will be worth by the time it is ready for delivery, accounting for everything that might affect supply between now and then.

Spot prices, on the other hand, apply to oil not only extracted, but already loaded on a ship, and in some cases even delivered. It is the price the buyer pays for the specific boatload of oil on the spot – hence the name, as “spot” means immediate, on-the-spot delivery. Oil sold this way can sell for a lot more or a lot less than futures because its price is affected by the global and economic events of the day. On days when there is plenty of oil on the market, an additional discount might be needed to offload it, and during shortage periods any additional geopolitical events can send it sky high.

In simple terms, futures define the long-term, strategic outlook on the overall state of the global economy as it pertains to oil. Spot prices reflect only current events, without taking into account how they will develop past a certain point in time and are mostly an opportunistic indicator.

The bigger the crisis, the calmer the market?

Since comprehensive oil price records began in 1988, the world has seen three most comparable supply-shock crises – in 2008, 2022, and now in 2026.

At the height of the 2008 crisis, futures prices peaked at $146.08, and spot prices tracked almost identically, reaching $143.95 (see the graph). This crisis was not caused by a supply disruption. It was demand-driven and speculation-amplified as a result of the swift growth of the Chinese economy.

The 2022 crisis was closer in nature to the current one. It was based on a shortage of oil, albeit a virtual shortage – the oil had not left the market. However, markets reacted in anticipation to what would happen if that oil was removed from the market. Futures prices reached $127.98, while the spot prices went slightly higher – $133.18.

The current crisis so far has also been caused by a virtual shortage of oil. It is worth noting that an oil shortage only starts from the moment deliveries no longer arrive at their destination, not from the moment they no longer ship — meaning we have not yet experienced the full physical impact of the Hormuz closure. Futures prices peaked at $119.50. Spot prices, unlike before, have jumped far higher, reaching $138.21.

What does that tell us?

Speculative trade in 2008 created more pain for consumers than real physical shortages that are already materialising in 2026.

Despite the possibility of a real oil deficit, the markets are less worried about its impact than they were in 2022 when the withdrawal of roughly 12% of globally traded crude oil (Russia’s share at the time) was contemplated, compared to the 20% of globally traded crude oil currently locked up in the Persian Gulf.

What is remarkable though, is that while spot prices are yo-yoing and seemingly following Donald Trump’s tweets rather closely, futures markets appear to be ignoring them entirely and holding what looks like a pre-determined course. They hover steadily around a $105 median.

This tells us that the markets are expecting to ride out the current crisis and do not currently expect disruption beyond what has already occurred. There are various reasons for this – they might genuinely believe that the US and Iran have already done their worst; they can bank on the ability of free market economies to adapt to most circumstances, or they might remember that mid-term elections in the US are coming up, and Donald Trump should (one might think) want to put this conflict to rest by then.

Therefore, if we are to believe the oil markets, they expect more of the same for now, and most probably no serious change until closer to the US mid-term elections. Which is probably more stability (albeit at a higher price than we would like) than we have seen these last couple of months.

Now that the political event of the year - Hungarian elections are over to the overall satisfaction of non-Russia aligned Europeans, we can be absolutely sure of two things.

First, this is the third election that Russia has poured its soul and money into… and lost spectacularly. According to various reports, Russia invested approximately €200 million into vote buying and other subversion operations in elections in Moldova (which according to the Moldovan PM represented 1% of Moldovan GDP). That did not pan out. And then, of course, there was their attempt to install a completely unknown candidate as president in Romania (Calin Georgescu, a fringe ultranationalist who had polled in single digits until days before the vote) which was thwarted by cancelling the result and redoing the entire election from scratch.

And now this. Russia is definitely losing its touch. I would say that perhaps Europe is getting smarter, but Slovakia did elect Fico, and Czechia did elect Babiš. They, however, are a different story – these parts of Eastern Europe are still full of older generation voters who remember cheap rents and forget the empty supermarket shelves and Russian tanks. This too shall pass.

And second - the US Vice President, JD Vance, has all the appeal of a wet squid. When he insulted Europeans at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, the attraction of his eyeliner-traced eyes shrank considerably. Now, he cost Viktor Orbán some of his already limited votes. Perhaps we can rent him next time there is a difficult political decision to make in Europe?

Vance’s boss, Donald Trump, had a similar effect on events. The Canadian Conservative Party was set to win its April 2025 election by a comfortable margin – until Trump inserted himself into the situation. Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, attempted to distance himself from MAGA, but the damage was done by simple association.

So what can the elections in Hungary tell us about the general state of affairs of the right-wing parties in the Western world and their potential fortunes?

Hungarian elections were widely treated as a test case showing what Trump will do when his time to vacate the White House comes. If Orbán walked away without putting up a fight, the consensus was that Trump might follow suit. Considering Orbán has conceded defeat, Trump would have to set that precedent all alone.

As to matters on the European continent, the next elections where the far right can take over power and where the US dream team can be ‘helpful’ are in France, Italy, and Poland in 2027. Considering that the Trump and MAGA effect has brought the opposite effect, the right-wing actors in Europe, at least those with electoral ambitions beyond their own base, should make obvious conclusions and avoid them like the plague.

They might also go for a less pro-Russian and more straightforward conservative approach. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (and her replacement Jordan Bardella, since she cannot run for the post of President of France as a result of a fund embezzlement conviction) has considerably toned down its pro-Russia leanings and is starting to look almost sane. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia, who are up for re-election in 2027, have been one of the most stable supporters of European defence and unity. Meloni, whatever her origins, has turned out to be something the European right rarely produces — a reliable ally.

All in all, it seems that despite the entirely understandable animosity Europeans feel toward the Washington duo, we should be, in an odd way, rather grateful to them. By making themselves so unlikable and anti-European, they inadvertently might have cured at least some of Europe of their particular brand of populism without Europe having to go through the disease itself. Or so we can hope.