The Pentagon has suspended shipments of critical air defense missiles to Ukraine amid concerns about depleted US stockpiles.

The timing is especially concerning: Russia just launched record-breaking missile and drone attacks last month.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga captured the stakes: Russian attacks killed 37% more civilians in the past six months, he noted, while emphasizing Ukraine’s willingness to “buy or borrow” air defense systems if needed.

Why this matters for Ukraine’s survival

How many missiles did Russia fire at Ukraine in June alone? Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha reported Russia launched over 330 missiles, including almost 80 ballistic missiles, plus over 5,000 attack drones and 5,000 KABs (guided bombs).

Now the US has halted 30 Patriot missiles, nearly 8,500 155mm artillery shells, and over 250 precision GMLRS missiles.

Ukraine loses its primary shield against Russian ballistic missiles without sustained Patriot resupply. But the vulnerabilities run deeper.

Ukraine’s defense architecture faces critical gaps

Defense Express analysis reveals how heavily Ukrainian air defense relies on American systems:

• Long-range protection: Patriot systems are Ukraine’s main shield against ballistic missiles—the fast-moving projectiles that can hit anywhere in the country. European alternatives? Ukraine operates French-Italian SAMP/T systems, but Ukrainian air defense expert Serhii Morfinov notes “the question of whether there are enough missiles for SAMP/T systems is very big.”
• Medium-range coverage: Norwegian NASAMS launchers fire American AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles to intercept aircraft and cruise missiles. Aging American HAWK systems also depend on US resupply.

• Precision strikes: American HIMARS rocket launchers lose their GMLRS guided missiles—the precision weapons that hit Russian supply lines and command posts up to 80 kilometers away.
• Close-range defense: Portable Stinger missiles and truck-mounted Avenger systems protect troops and installations from low-flying aircraft and drones.

What Ukraine can use without American support

Which air defense systems don’t depend on US supplies? Defense Express breaks down Ukraine’s non-American options:

• Short-range systems (up to 10km): Polish Piorun, French Mistral, Swedish RBS-70, and British Martlet missiles provide portable defense. German systems using FZ275 LGR missiles offer additional coverage. Ukraine also operates modified “Osa” systems converted to use R-73 missiles.
• Medium-range systems (up to 20km): German IRIS-T SLS and British Raven systems with ASRAAM missiles on SupaCat chassis. Spain’s Spada systems were promised in 2022 but haven’t appeared in combat.

• Long-range coverage: Only German IRIS-T SLM systems provide medium-range coverage without American missiles. The problem? Ukraine has far more Norwegian NASAMS systems, which depend entirely on US-supplied AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles.
• Soviet-era systems: If Ukraine still has missiles, aging S-125, “Tor,” and “Buk” systems remain operational. But Soviet ammunition became scarce years ago, forcing Ukraine to create “FrankenSAMs”—Soviet launchers modified to fire American AIM-7 missiles.

The critical gap? Anti-ballistic missile defense. France and Italy provided only two SAMP/T batteries compared to roughly 10 Patriot systems. SAMP/T missiles are also reportedly in short supply.

Suspension shows aid used as leverage

This marks the second major aid suspension under Trump. The first occurred in March 2025 after a heated 28 February Oval Office confrontation where Trump told Zelenskyy “you’re not winning this” and “you don’t have the cards right now.”

That March suspension reportedly pressured Ukraine into negotiations and signing a minerals deal. Within weeks of the aid cutoff, Ukraine had abandoned its victory plan and shifted to promoting ceasefire proposals.

This suspension, like the one in March, also came out of the blue. Ukrainian MP Fedir Venislavskyi told RBC-Ukraine that Kyiv had “worked out various scenarios” for such contingencies but confirmed the decision was “very unpleasant for us.”

How significant is this suspension? Russian responses provide the answer. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that “the less weapons are supplied to Ukraine the closer the end of the special military operation.” Moscow recognizes the strategic opportunity.

Explore further

The weapons Ukraine just lost to US aid freeze, explained

Ukraine’s growing vulnerabilities

Ballistic missile exposure becomes critical

What happens without PAC-3 interceptors? Ukraine becomes “very vulnerable to Russian ballistics,” Morfinov writes. Russia can systematically target:

• Aviation at airfields
• Command centers and military headquarters
• Defense production facilities
• Critical infrastructure and logistics hubs
• Air defense systems themselves during drone swarm attacks

The cascading effect threatens everything. Russian forces use drone swarms to locate Ukrainian air defense positions, then target them with ballistic missiles that depleted Patriot batteries cannot intercept.

Artillery ammunition shortage compounds frontline pressure

Can Ukraine maintain counter-battery fire with 8,500 fewer 155mm shells?

Morfinov explains this creates “weakening during the great summer offensive by the Russians along the entire front line.” Ukrainian production and alternative sources provide some mitigation, but gaps remain.

The loss of GMLRS precision rockets hits harder. Ukraine must rely more on F-16s carrying Storm Shadow missiles, which increases pilot risks.

Explore further

Can Europe fill in the gap if Trump abandons Ukraine?

Strategic implications extend beyond battlefield

Military analyst Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute warned that “this decision will cost Ukrainian lives and territory.” The psychological impact compounds material losses as Ukrainian forces and civilians question Western resolve.

NATO Chief Mark Rutte argued on Fox News that “Ukraine cannot do without all the support it can get” for ammunition and air defense. His framing challenges the administration’s logic: “It is also in the interests of the US for Ukraine not to lose this war.”

Rutte’s formula—”secure Europe means secure US”—positions Ukrainian victory as essential for American security, directly contradicting the “America First” rationale.

Pentagon justification reveals broader shift

Why suspend aid now? Defense policy chief Elbridge Colby stated the review ensures “US forces’ readiness for Administration defense priorities.” Translation: Pacific focus amid China concerns takes precedence.

The Pentagon cited recent Middle East operations, including Iran’s retaliatory attack on Qatar that prompted “the largest single engagement of Patriot air defense missiles in US history.” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly’s statement about putting “America’s interests first” suggests strategic repositioning rather than temporary inventory concerns.

Ukraine scrambles for alternatives

How prepared was Ukraine for this scenario? Venislavskyi confirmed that “Ukraine has a certain reserve capacity” for such contingencies, while diplomatic efforts intensify to reverse the decision.

The suspension accelerates Ukraine’s pivot toward domestic production.

Previous reporting shows Ukraine produced over two million FPV drones in 2024 and developed long-range variants capable of 1,700-kilometer strikes.

But critical vulnerabilities remain in air defense and precision strike capabilities. European capacity constraints limit immediate alternatives—the EU faces supply shortages and slower production timelines. Frozen Russian asset proceeds provide funding, but cannot address immediate ammunition shortfalls.

The question facing Ukraine: Can domestic production and European alternatives fill the gaps before Russia exploits the opening?

Metropolitan Onufriy, leader of the Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC MP), has had his Ukrainian citizenship revoked, the Ukrainian Security Service announced.

The announcement comes amid growing tensions over the UOC MP’s allegiance in a war increasingly recognized to be driven by the quasi-religious ideology of the “Russian world,” promoted by the Moscow Patriarchy, which is still recognized as the mother church by many UOC MP faithful.

The Security Service (SBU) reported that Onufriy, birthname Orest Berezovskyi, had willingly received Russian citizenship in 2002, while still holding the status of a Ukrainian citizen.

At the time, dual citizenship was prohibited by Ukrainian law, and while a groundbreaking law allowing dual citizenship is pending approval by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, it still prohibits allegiance to “unfriendly states” like Russia for Ukrainian citizens.

Reportedly, Zelenskyy has signed the decree stripping Onufriy of citizenship, although it has not been published.

UOC MP denies everything, vows to fight back

A UOC MP spokesman rejected the claim that the UOC MP primate has a Russian passport and stated that Onufriy has only Ukrainian citizenship.

Metropolitan Onufriy of the UOC (MP) will also appeal the presidential decree and prove that he has no other citizenships than Ukrainian, the spokesman said in a comment to Suspilne.

The issue of Onufriy’s citizenship had already come up in 2023, when a media report found that he and 20 other UOC MP hierarchs had Russian passports.

After the publication, the UOC MP’s top hierarch decried Russia’s invasion and claimed that his Russian citizenship was extended by default from the time when he lived and studied in Moscow. Nevertheless, now he does not have a Russian passport now and considers himself only a Ukrainian citizen, he said without specifying when he stopped being a Russian citizen.

However, media reports from NV and Agenstvo have circulated scans of Onufriy’s allegedly valid passport, casting doubt on these refutations.

Can Ukraine actually strip its citizens of citizenship?

Ukraine’s Constitution prohibits stripping citizenship—but allows terminating it for those who voluntarily acquired foreign passports without resolving their Ukrainian status.

Parliament member Serhiy Vlasenko explained that Onufriy now automatically becomes a foreigner in Ukraine, losing all citizen rights. He must register as a foreign resident, obtain residence and work permits—”the same procedures as any Russian Federation citizen coming to Ukraine.”

The legal distinction matters. President Zelensky previously terminated citizenship for oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky, Viktor Medvedchuk, and businessman Hennadiy Korban using identical grounds: holding undeclared foreign passports.

Onufriy can challenge the decree in court. But if judges confirm he holds a Russian passport, the presidential decree stands. And renouncing Russian citizenship isn’t simple—it requires a “long, complex, bureaucratized procedure” involving personal participation in Russian consular processes.

The citizenship revocation transforms Ukraine’s top Moscow-aligned cleric into a legal foreigner in the country where he leads 8,000 parishes.

What will happen to Onufriy?

Ukrainian law technically gives stateless individuals three months to leave before facing deportation. But reality operates differently. As Archbishop Iona of the St. Iona Monastery casually noted on Facebook, many UOC bishops stripped of citizenship “continue to live and serve the church and people of Ukraine. Don’t panic.”

Namely, 13 UOC hierarchs lost their citizenship in January 2023. Five more followed in February 2023. None were deported. They remain in Ukraine, conducting services, managing parishes—functionally unchanged despite their legal limbo.

The SBU’s move creates a different kind of pressure. If Onufriy attempts international travel, he faces the fate of businessman Hennadiy Korban and others stripped of Ukrainian passports: denied re-entry, effectively trapped inside the country they call home.

But deportation? Unlikely. Ukraine lacks both political will and practical mechanisms to forcibly remove an 80-year-old religious leader whose 8,000 parishes still serve millions of faithful. The state has bigger battles, like the ongoing court proceedings under August 2024’s law banning Moscow-linked religious organizations.

The nine-month transition period for churches to prove independence has expired. The UOC MP now faces potential dissolution of its entire network—a far more existential threat than one prelate’s passport problems.

The citizenship revocation serves as legal theater while the real drama unfolds in courtrooms where the UOC MP’s survival hangs in the balance.

Does the law ban the UOC MP? Not so fast

“Not about banning.” Theologian unpacks Ukraine’s new anti-Russian church law

Is the UOC MP aligned with Moscow?

The status of the UOC MP in Ukraine became especially contentious after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The Moscow-aligned church, which enjoyed privileged status for years while promoting “Russian world” ideology, came under increased pressure to clarify its allegiance.

And while the UOC MP claimed to sever ties with its mother church, the Russian Orthodox Church, in May 2022, it did not walk the talk, a Ukrainian expert committee found in 2023.

Reportedly, there is a split within the church, with hardliner parishes ignoring the instructions to no longer pray for the Moscow Patriarch during liturgies.

As well, the alleged severance of ties is not followed up by recognition of the UOC MP as a separate entity in the Orthodox world’s constellation of independent churches. The UOC MP hierarchs are also, apparently, still part of the Moscow Patriarchy’s ruling structure—the Synode.

The Ukrainian state has attempted to curb the UOC MP’s influence—not only via the August 2024 law, but by opening 174 probes into the collaboration of separate church hierarchs with Russia, with 31 guilty sentences.

However, many UOC MP faithful insist they are patriots of Ukraine, with select church voices stressing that UOC MP faithful defend Ukraine in the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

Thus far, the UOC MP’s status is hybrid: while some leaders like Metropolitan Iona have flipped from “Russian world” advocate to self-declared Ukrainian patriot, leaflets promoting Russian chauvinistic and imperialistic views are still observed in other church centers.

Explore further

Anatomy of treason: how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church sold its soul to the “Russian world”

Growing church drama in Ukraine

The UOC MP’s precarious position is complicated by competition with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), granted independence by Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s nemesis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in 2018.

Both structures have roughly similar numbers of parishes (8,097 UOC MP vs 9,000 OCU). 687 parishes have ditched affiliation with the UOC MP to join the OCU since 2022. However, these transitions are increasingly marred by accusations of forceful takeovers amid state backing.

What is Moscow’s stake? The UOC MP represents a whopping 23% of the Russian Orthodox Church’s parishes worldwide, and is the largest concentration of parishes outside Russia itself.

The UOC MP remains Moscow’s sole surviving pillar of influence in a Ukraine that has otherwise severed all connections to Russia since 2022. Its ideological power runs deep: the fantasy of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as “Holy Rus” united against the “satanic West” forms the theological cornerstone of Putin’s war.

This, as well, as revocations of leases on historic churches in state property, has prompted the UOC MP to lead a campaign decrying alleged religious persecution in Ukraine. This messaging has had impressive success among American Republicans, largely due to the lobbying efforts of lawyer Robert Amsterdam.

The Ukrainian state would indeed prefer a single Orthodox Church, and public opinion increasingly backs decisive action.

A June 2025 SOCIS poll found 34.7% of Ukrainians support liquidating the UOC MP as a legal organization, while 10.8% favor forcing its merger with the OCU.

Combined, 45.5% want the state to act decisively.

Yet 31.7% believe the government shouldn’t interfere in religious affairs, revealing Ukraine’s deep ambivalence about using state power against a church that still claims millions of faithful.

The resistance of even Ukraine-oriented UOC MP parishes to joining the OCU structure hints at deeper issues beyond historical animosity between two competitors.

Clashing allegiances, models of religious life, and the OCU’s desire to occupy the privileged state-promoted status once held by Moscow’s church in Ukraine will continue to stir Ukraine’s religious life for many years ahead.

Explore further

Russian World: the heresy driving Putin’s war

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include the section “Can Ukraine actually strip its citizens of citizenship?”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry summoned the top US diplomat Wednesday to address concerns over military aid delays, warning that any slowdown would “encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror.”

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha requested the meeting with Chargé d’Affaires John Ginkel as the Pentagon suspends critical air defense shipments and precision munitions to Ukraine. The timing could not be worse—Russia is unleashing its heaviest bombardments on Ukrainian civilians in months while Washington halts the very weapons needed to protect them.

Ukrainian warnings on aid consequences

Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa expressed gratitude to the United States for support provided since Russia’s full-scale invasion began but emphasized the critical importance of continuing delivery of previously allocated defense packages, especially focusing on strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses.

“Any delay or slowing down in supporting Ukraine’s defense capabilities would only encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror, rather than seek peace,” Betsa told the American diplomat, according to the ministry statement.

The Ukrainian side emphasized that Russia not only rejects the full and unconditional ceasefire that Ukraine agreed to on 11 March, but also continues to escalate aerial attacks against Ukrainian cities and communities, killing civilians, and conducting battlefield assaults.

“In these circumstances, strengthening Ukraine’s defense capabilities and increasing coordinated transatlantic pressure on the aggressor are critically important,” Betsa said.

Pentagon cuts air defense amid Russian escalation

The Pentagon’s decision to halt air defense missiles and precision munitions shipments follows an internal review showing American arsenals had dropped to concerning levels. Officials justified the suspension as “putting America’s interests first,” even as Russia intensifies bombardments of Ukrainian cities.

The White House confirmed Wednesday that the Pentagon suspended deliveries due to concerns that US weapons stocks had been depleted. Ukrainian officials said they had not received official notification of the suspension or revision of delivery schedules for previously agreed defense assistance.

• Since February 2022, the US has provided $66.9 billion in military aid to Ukraine. The last package worth $500 million was announced by the Biden administration on 9 January, with the US not announcing new packages in the five months since Trump took office.
• The Trump administration suspended all military aid in March following a confrontational meeting, only to resume deliveries weeks later. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that Ukraine “cannot do without” US support as European allies cannot fill the gap.

North Korea plans to send an additional 25,000 to 30,000 troops to assist Russia against Ukraine, Ukrainian intelligence assessments reveal, tripling Pyongyang’s military commitment from the original 11,000 soldiers deployed in November 2024.

North Korean military build-up accelerates

The new troop deployment could arrive “in the coming months,” according to Ukrainian intelligence assessments reviewed by CNN. Russian defense ministry documents indicate Moscow can provide “needed equipment, weapons, and ammunition” to further integrate North Korean units into Russian combat operations.

Satellite imagery from the Open Source Centre shows a Russian personnel carrier arriving at Dunai port in May, matching patterns from last year’s initial North Korean deployments. Additional activity at North Korea’s Sunan airport in June revealed cargo planes, potentially IL-76 aircraft, consistent with troop transport operations.

“This appears to indicate the routes previously used to move D​PRK troops are active, and could be used in any large-scale future transfer of personnel,” Joe Byrne, senior analyst at the Open Source Centre, told CNN.

Heavy casualties fail to deter expansion

Around 4,000 of the original 11,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or injured in Kursk Oblast, according to Western officials. Yet rather than deterring further deployment, these losses have prompted deeper military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov warned Thursday that Kim Jong Un risks destabilizing his own government by exposing elite troops to high casualty rates. “Russia’s use of elite North Korean troops demonstrates not only a growing reliance on totalitarian regimes but also serious problems with its mobilization reserve,” Umerov said.

Russian media footage from the Kursk region reveals extensive North Korean military preparations, including dugout accommodations and translation materials for basic military Russian terms. Videos show North Korean and Russian troops conducting joint training exercises, marking greater integration than initially observed.

Strategic implications for Ukraine’s defense

The timing coincides with Russia amassing 110,000 troops near Pokrovsk, a strategic population center in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. This concentration suggests preparations for a major offensive against Ukrainian defensive positions.

Sergei Shoigu, a top Putin adviser, announced during his 17 June Pyongyang visit that 1,000 North Korean sappers and 5,000 military construction workers would join Russian forces to clear mines and “restore infrastructure destroyed by the occupiers” in Kursk Oblast.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service briefed lawmakers that North Korea has begun selecting personnel for overseas deployment as early as July or August, indicating the expansion could begin within weeks.

Explore further

North Korean forces may soon fight inside Ukraine, says Seoul

Weapons technology exchange deepens

Beyond manpower, North Korea has supplied Russia with extensive military hardware since 2023. Ukrainian intelligence documented 82 strikes by North Korean KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles, including a January 2024 attack that killed 11 civilians in Pokrovsk.

A UN member states report revealed North Korea sent at least 100 ballistic missiles and 9 million artillery shells to Russia in 2024. Training manuals for North Korean artillery, translated into Russian, demonstrate the increasing interoperability between the two militaries.

Jenny Town, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, suggested the assessment of 30,000 troops “sounds high… but they can certainly come up with that number.” She told CNN 10,000 to 20,000 troops might deploy in stages, with Russian generals potentially training forces inside North Korea.

Background

The expanding North Korean-Russian military partnership represents a significant shift in the war’s dynamics. Previous reporting revealed Russia’s plans to deploy North Korean troops to new offensives in eastern Ukraine, with forces expected to wear Russian uniforms while claiming to defend “Russian territory” in occupied Ukrainian oblasts.

Recent intelligence assessments indicate that more than 6,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed, wounded, or gone missing while fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, according to UK intelligence, representing over half of the estimated 11,000 troops initially deployed to the area.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he understands the US administration’s desire to prioritize its own interests, but at the same time calls for continued military support for Ukraine.

The statement, delivered after the White House confirmed the suspension of systems approved under President Biden, a move that raises alarm as Ukraine fights against ever-increasing Russian missile and drone attacks.

Speaking on Fox News, Rutte said he “fully understands” the US desire to ensure American security interests are met first.

“But when it comes to Ukraine, in the short term, Ukraine cannot do without all the support it can get when it comes to ammunition and air defense systems,” Rutte said.

The NATO secretary general referenced discussions between Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump during last week’s NATO summit, describing “a very good discussion, in particular focusing on air defense systems.”

The White House confirmed Wednesday that the Pentagon suspended deliveries of air defense missiles and precision-guided munitions to Ukraine due to concerns that US weapons stocks had been depleted.

“Yes, I understand that the US has to take care of its own weapons stockpiles. At the same time, we must allow for some flexibility,” Rutte said.

Ukrainian officials said they had not received official notification of the suspension or revision of delivery schedules for agreed defense assistance.

European limitations acknowledged

Rutte said European countries are increasing defense spending and aid to Ukraine, “but we cannot do without practical support from the US.”

“It is also in the interests of the US for Ukraine not to lose this war… And a secure Europe also means a secure US. This all is completely connected,” the NATO secretary general said.

Explore further

Politico: US cuts critical air defense shipments to Ukraine needed to protect civilians from Russian terror

Ukrainian prosecutors have documented 273 Ukrainian prisoners of war killed by Russian forces since the invasion began, but only two Russians face convictions for these systematic executions.

The Prosecutor General’s Office revealed these figures in response to a LIGA.net information request, exposing a massive accountability gap as Ukraine fights for survival while its captured soldiers face execution rather than protection under international law.

Russian executions surge while prosecutions stagnate

The numbers paint a stark picture. In the first six months of 2025 alone, prosecutors documented 22 separate killings involving 56 Ukrainian prisoners. Russian forces have accelerated their execution campaign while facing minimal consequences.

Seven Russian soldiers have been charged with these specific war crimes across 77 criminal cases. Only three cases reached trial. Two received convictions—though prosecutors won’t say if these were real trials or symbolic in absentia verdicts.

The latest case surfaced 1 July when Russian troops tied a Ukrainian prisoner to a motorcycle and dragged him through a field. Russian military bloggers filmed it. They celebrated it. They shared it online.

From “Glory to Ukraine” to mass executions

Each killing follows documented patterns that reveal systematic policy, not battlefield chaos.

March 2023: Russian soldiers executed Ukrainian sniper Oleksandr Matsievskyi after he said “Glory to Ukraine” while standing in a trench. They forced the 42-year-old to dig his own grave first.

Explore further

Ukrainian Army names POW who Russians executed for saying “Glory to Ukraine” (UPDATED)

February 2024: Russian forces promised to evacuate wounded Ukrainian defenders from Avdiivka’s Zenit plant for prisoner exchange. Instead, they shot six soldiers: Heorhii Pavlov, Andrii Dubnytskyi, Ivan Zhytnyk, Oleksandr Zinchuk, and Mykola Savosik. The execution videos appeared on Russian Telegram channels.

December 2023: Russian troops forced three Ukrainian prisoners to kneel before shooting them at close range near Robotyne. The same month, they killed two surrendering soldiers near Avdiivka after the Ukrainians emerged from bunkers with raised hands.

Russian commanders issue direct execution orders

Ukrainian intelligence has documented over 150 additional prisoner executions with evidence showing direct orders from Russian commanders.

“Prisoners are not needed—shoot them on the spot,” one Russian deputy brigade commander told troops, according to UN investigators who interviewed Russian deserters.

The Financial Times identified Russian soldiers posting execution videos online while their units received honors from Putin. Russia’s 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade earned “Guards” status in July 2024 despite documented involvement in prisoner executions.

Explore further

Russian forces executed over 150 POWs from Ukraine intelligence units as part of systematic policy

Torture, branding, and systematic dehumanization

For prisoners who survive initial capture, Russian facilities offer systematic torture. UN investigators found 95% of returned Ukrainian prisoners experienced torture including beatings, electric shocks, sexual abuse, and mock executions.

The brutality extends beyond beatings. A Ukrainian soldier recently revealed how a Russian surgeon burned “Glory to Russia” into his stomach while he was unconscious after surgery. Guards forced prisoners to memorize the Russian national anthem, beating those who failed “until they couldn’t get up.”

At least 206 Ukrainian prisoners have died in Russian custody, according to Ukrainian government figures reported by the Associated Press. Forensic analysis of returned bodies shows untreated infections, missing organs, and extensive trauma, according to forensic expert Inna Padei.

Explore further

United24: Ukrainian soldier tells how Russian surgeon burnt Glory to Russia on his body while in captivity

Escalating execution methods target psychological impact

Recent cases show calculated cruelty designed for maximum psychological damage:

• Forced labor before death: Russian forces make wounded prisoners conduct dangerous demining work before execution.
• ISIS-style killings: Russian Telegram channels shared videos of Ukrainian soldiers being beheaded, with executioners wearing Russian military symbols.
• Mock evacuations: Russian commanders promise prisoner exchanges, then execute captured soldiers and film the results.
• Public degradation: Prisoners shot in legs for “not speaking clearly” before final execution shots to the back.

War crimes documentation outpaces accountability

Ukraine has opened 125,000 war crimes cases since February 2022. Prosecutors call prisoner executions their “priority number one.”

But documentation far exceeds accountability. Russian forces operate across multiple front sectors with apparent impunity. They film their crimes. They share them online. They receive military honors.

The Olenivka prison massacre alone killed 49 Ukrainian prisoners—more than the total number of Russians even charged with prisoner executions. Ukrainian prosecutors determined Russian forces used thermobaric weapons to kill prisoners and hide torture evidence.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian treatment of Russian prisoners follows international law. While some Russians faced mistreatment during initial capture, UN investigators confirmed abuse stopped once they reached official Ukrainian facilities.

Euromaidan Press, an independent English-language online media outlet covering Ukraine, is looking for a Fundraising Communications Manager to expand our funding channels and strengthen our Patreon community.

About Us:

We fight against Russian disinformation and bring the truth about Ukraine to the world. We value effective, meaningful actions and have no patience for the mere appearance of activity.

You’re the right fit if you can:

1. Increase media revenue through consistent and systematic fundraising efforts.
2. Create compelling ideas and messages, write fundraising content, design visuals, and publish on our website and social media.
3. Work with the leadership team to launch and evaluate the feasibility of commercial partnerships.
4. Identify, attract, and retain patrons and sponsors to support the media.
5. Grow and engage our Patreon community through strategic, ongoing campaigns.
6. Build and nurture relationships with donors, patrons, partners, and our community.
7. Continuously refine and enhance our fundraising strategy to maximize effectiveness.

Candidate requirements:

• Results-driven mindset with a focus on achieving tangible outcomes.
• Ability to quickly learn new skills and adapt to evolving tasks.
• Previous experience in fundraising, sales, partnership management, or related fields.
• Be able to convey the value of partnerships persuasively.
• Ability to run effective communication campaigns in collaboration with the team—from developing ideas and writing texts to setting up and analyzing website tracking (we’ll provide guidance and support).
• Creativity and initiative, consistently generating new ideas for fundraising.
• Strong self-organization skills, capable of developing, planning, and managing structured processes and projects from scratch.
• Good command of Ukrainian, proficiency in English (B2+), both written and spoken.

Bonus Points If You Have:

• Experience working in media.
• A track record of building engaged communities.

What we offer:

• Full-time remote position with a flexible schedule.
• 24 calendar days of paid vacation + 10 paid sick days.
• Competitive salary: fixed monthly rate + commission based on funds raised.
• A supportive, values-driven team.
• A chance to directly impact independent media growth and promote Ukraine’s global image.

Apply by sending your resume to euromaidanpress (a) gmail.com with the subject “Vacancy: Fundraiser.”

Менеджер з фандрейзнингових комунікацій

Euromaidan Press, незалежне англомовне онлайн видання про Україну, шукає Менеджера/ку з фандрейзингових комунікацій, що залучить додаткові канали фінансування для нашого медіа та посилить спільноту патронів. 

Про нас: боремо російську дезінформацію, доносимо світові правду про Україну. Любимо ефективні, осмислені дії, не любимо імітацію бурхливої діяльності. 

Ви наша людина, якщо зможете: 

1. Збільшити доходи медіа через постійний та системний фандрейзинг
2. Створювати ідеї та меседжі, які працюють, писати фандрейзингові тексти, робити картинки, постити це все на сайті та соцмережах
3. В співпраці з керівництвом медіа, запустити напрям комерційних партнерств та оцінити життєздатність цієї ідеї
4. Знайти та утримати меценатів для медіа
5. Наростити та розвинути спільноту патронів через систематичні кампанії 
6. Підтримувати та розвивати стосунки із донорами, меценатами, спільнотою та партнерами
7. Покращувати ефективність фандрейзингової стратегії 

Вимоги до кандидата/ки:

1. Працювати на результат
2. Швидко освоювати нові навички та задачі
3. Мати попередній досвід у фандрейзингу/продажах/управлінні партнерствами або зв’язаних сферах
4. Вміти переконливо доносити цінність партнерства
5. Могти проводити ефективні комунікаційні кампанії в співпраці із командою: від розробки ідей до написання текстів до налаштування та аналізу міток на сайті (все покажемо і пояснимо)
6. Бути креативним та ініціативним: постійно генерувати нові ідеї для залучення коштів 
7. Мати добру самоорганізацію: розробляти, планувати та управляти системними процесами та проектами з нуля
8. Мати добру англійську, як усну, так і письмову: В2 +

Буде перевагою: 

1. Досвід роботи в медіа 
2. Досвід розбудови спільнот 

Умови роботи:

• Повна зайнятість
• Дистанційна робота та гнучкий графік 
• Відпустка 24 к.д та 10 к.д. лікарняних
• Конкурентоспроможна заробітна плата: фіксована помісячна ставка + відсоток від залучених коштів
• Ціннісна та підтримуюча команда 
• Можливість прямого впливу на розвиток незалежних медіа та просування бренду України в світі 

Надсилайте резюме на адресу euromaidanpress (a) gmail.com з темою Vacancy: Fundraiser

Euromaidan Press, an independent English-language online media about Ukraine, is searching for a defense tech reporter who will inform our international readers about everything they need to know in the fast-evolving world of Ukrainian defense technology.

Main responsibilities:

• Identify important topics about defense technology and its impact on the war and regularly cover them. Formats include interviews, adaptations of Ukrainian materials, news, and analysis.
• Create engaging and compelling multimedia content about Ukrainian defense startups.
• Lead the development of our defense tech coverage project in a way that will be most meaningful for Ukraine’s defense scene, ensuring its success for both our media and the defense sector.

Candidate requirements:

• Advanced understanding of military topics and technology.
• A good network of contacts in defense circles.
• Well-versed in the political, social, economic, and military situation in Ukraine and abroad.
• Experience in English-language journalism and international communication.
• English level C1 or higher, good knowledge of Ukrainian/Russian.
• Ability to quickly and efficiently write, adapt, translate, and edit English-language texts.
• Proficiency in cross-cultural communication.
• Ability to confidently use social networks and have a general understanding of digital trends.

Working conditions:

• Full-time employment.
• Remote work and flexible schedule.
• 24 calendar days of vacation and 10 calendar days of sick leave.
• Competitive salary.
• Value-driven and supportive team.
• Opportunity to directly influence the development of independent media and promote Ukraine’s brand in the world.

Please submit your CV, motivation letter, and examples of prior work to euromaidanpress (a) gmail.com with the subject: Vacancy: Defense tech reporter

EuromaidanPress.com, an independent English-language media about Ukraine, is searching for a journalist to deliver the most interesting and relevant news to our curious global readers on our website and social media.

We fight against Russian disinformation and bring the truth about Ukraine to the world. We value effective, meaningful actions and have no patience for the mere appearance of activity.

What we require:

• Excellent English (starting from C1) and Ukrainian.
• Experience in journalism and communicating with international audiences.
• Knowledge of journalistic standards.
• A good memory and erudition.
• The skills of writing and editing texts and expressing thoughts quickly and easily.
• Fact-checking and critical thinking as a reflex.
• The skill of separating the wheat from the chaff.
• Good knowledge of the political/military/media situation in and around Ukraine.
• Experience in SMM.
• Knowledge of SEO is a plus.

What we offer:

• Remote job.
• Flexible schedule.
• Corporate training.
• Competitive salary.
• Friendly team.
• Growth opportunities.
• Creative freedom and an outlet with genuine editorial freedom.
• A chance to defend Ukraine with the pen (no less important than with the sword).

As we expand our team, you will have the opportunity to take on other journalistic formats, not only news.

We are looking for a member who will become part of the team and plans to stick around. Please do not apply if you are looking for a temporary job before moving on.

Please send your motivation letter, CV with examples of prior work to euromaidanpress@gmail.com.

Ukrainian drones struck the electrical substation at Russia’s Kushchevskaya military airfield overnight on 24-25 June, damaging power infrastructure at the base that houses combat aircraft attacking Ukrainian positions, ASTRA reported citing its sources in Russian emergency services.

Ukraine’s long-range drone program continues chipping away at Russian military capacities as Ukraine’s western allies still hesitate on helping strike targets inside Russia.

The power strike reflects Ukraine’s shift toward disabling airfield operations rather than just destroying aircraft. Without electricity, Russian forces cannot fuel planes, run maintenance equipment, or operate defensive systems effectively.

Third strike on the same target

This marks the third Ukrainian attack on Kushchevskaya (Kushchovskaya) in 14 months. In April 2024, Ukrainian strikes damaged military aircraft at the base. A month later, Ukraine hit a Russian Su-27 fighter and additional infrastructure at the same airfield.

The airfield hosts Su-34 fighter-bombers, Su-25 ground attack aircraft, Su-27 fighters, and MiG-29 interceptors that Russia uses against Ukrainian defensive positions.

Russian emergency services confirmed at least one drone penetrated the airfield perimeter and struck the electrical installation. No casualties were reported, though the operational impact remains unclear.

Forcing dispersal

Ukraine’s repeated strikes on Krasnodar airbases have forced Russia to scatter aircraft across multiple locations, increasing operational burdens according to UK intelligence. The dispersal protects aircraft but spreads maintenance resources thin and complicates mission planning.

Previous Ukrainian disruption of Russian tactical aviation has compelled Moscow to further spread its aircraft fleet, creating logistical challenges that reduce combat readiness.

Why does power infrastructure matter? Modern airbases need consistent electricity for fuel pumps, communications, maintenance equipment, and electronic warfare systems. Damage to power systems forces Russia to conduct repairs under combat conditions or operate with reduced capabilities.

Recent strikes escalate

The Kushchevskaya attack follows Ukraine’s most ambitious airfield operation to date. On 1 June, Ukrainian intelligence executed Operation Spiderweb—coordinated drone strikes on five Russian airbases from Murmansk to Siberia. The operation destroyed at least 13 strategic bombers and caused an estimated $7 billion in damage.

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Nine days later, Ukrainian drones struck the VNIIR-Progress facility in Cheboksary, which produces antenna systems for Russian Shahed drones and guided bombs. The attack triggered massive fires and halted production.

Each strike forces Russia to divert resources from offensive operations to airbase defense and infrastructure repairs.

Ukraine’s air defenses are losing the drone war. Russian engineers have made their Shaheds fly twice as high and much faster while Ukrainian cities rely on systems that can’t keep up.

The numbers are getting ugly. Ukrainian missile systems track 20 targets maximum. Russia launches dozens at once and plans to send hundreds simultaneously, according to Ukrainian outlet Texty. Ukrainian officials failed to prepare adequate countermeasures despite having the groundwork for years.

Russian upgrades are working

Original Shaheds flew low and slow — easy targets for Ukrainian mobile teams with machine guns. Not anymore.

Russians removed restrictions on Iranian engines. Current Shaheds cruise at 2,500-2,800 meters altitude hitting 200-210 km/h. Some new jet-powered variants reach 550-600 km/h.

Higher altitude puts them beyond machine gun range. Faster speeds make helicopter chases nearly pointless — choppers max out around 250 km/h, forcing 5-10 minute pursuits of individual drones while swarms pass through.

Electronic warfare used to save Ukrainian cities. Operators would spoof GPS signals, sending Shaheds into empty fields instead of apartment buildings.

That’s over. Modern Shaheds pack 12-channel “Comet” navigation systems. Where one jamming device worked before, now you need 12+ working simultaneously. The drones resist jamming from below and horizontal angles — you can only affect them from above. Good luck with that.

“We’re lucky because Russians still have problems with launchers,” notes the Texty analysis. “They can’t launch more than four drones per time unit. When they get more Shahed launchers, then we’ll be sad.”

Air defense mathematics don’t work

Each Ukrainian air defense system handles 10, 15, maybe 20 targets at once. Period. Doesn’t matter how many systems you have — launch enough drones and some get through.

Add decoy drones to the mix, and things get worse. Russia launches real Shaheds alongside “Parody” foam decoys designed to look like transport planes on radar. Operators waste ammunition on fakes while real threats slip past.

Systems need reloading time. During those minutes, drones penetrate defense perimeters unopposed. Russia currently attacks with dozens of platforms. Soon it’ll be hundreds targeting individual cities.

Germany’s Skynex system works well against low-altitude drone swarms clustered in small areas. Its 35mm programmable rounds cost $500 each and detonate near targets.

But at 2,000+ meter altitude with decoys mixed in? Effectiveness drops sharply. Shaheds get through.

Mobile teams becoming irrelevant

Ukraine’s mobile anti-aircraft groups used to be the most cost-effective drone killers. Teams with machine guns mounted on pickup trucks would hunt down low-flying Shaheds.

Current drone tactics make this nearly impossible. Shaheds approach at 2,000-2,500 meters then dive almost vertically onto targets. Mobile groups can only engage old models still flying low profiles.

Practice from recent raids shows destroying diving drones is extremely difficult. Hitting Shaheds on high-altitude routes? Nearly impossible.

Bucha Witches may be soon losing against Shaheds

“Bucha Witches” take down the drones that once hunted them

Solutions exist but production lags

Anti-Shahed interceptor drones could work. Ukraine’s been talking about them for over a year. Volunteer organizations actually use them.

“Come Back Alive” fund reports shooting down 17 Shaheds and 30 “Gerber” decoys since March. That’s it—a drop in the ocean.

The state has “significantly more capabilities than large volunteer funds” but hasn’t established industrial production. Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi reported successful drone-on-drone kills in February. Then came military bureaucracy, Defense Ministry delays, and Sukharevskyi’s dismissal. Nothing scaled.

Ukrainian forces test laser systems. They work faster than conventional weapons but need time to focus on targets. If drones approach in wide formations, even high-speed lasers can’t react everywhere simultaneously. Plus they’re expensive and mostly unavailable.

Threat keeps escalating

Russia isn’t standing still. New Shaheds carry 90-kg warheads—double the original payload. Weekly launches increased from 200 to over 1,000 by March 2025.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently warned that Russian weapons contain technology from 12 nations, including the US. Captured Shaheds reveal more than 30 Western-manufactured components—American servo drives, Japanese batteries, Canadian antennas.

Meanwhile, the US redirected 20,000 promised air defense missiles from Ukraine to the Middle East.

Texty concludes Ukraine will eventually organize new anti-Shahed defenses. Question is whether adaptation comes fast enough to protect cities from increasingly sophisticated attacks.

The drone war is becoming a race between Russian engineering improvements and Ukrainian defensive innovation. Right now, Russia’s winning.

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Why Russian Shahed explosive drones increasingly evade Ukrainian air defenses and reach Kyiv (updated)

Western sanctions designed to paralyze Russian aviation have “failed miserably,” with aircraft parts worth at least €1 billion reaching Russia since February 2022, according to an extensive investigation by Finnish broadcaster YLE.

The investigation reveals that Russia has created a vast smuggling network spanning over 360 companies worldwide to acquire critical aircraft components from Boeing and Airbus, including engines, radar systems, and flight computers suitable for military use.

YLE’s analysis of Russian customs data shows Airbus parts worth almost €600 million and Boeing parts worth nearly €400 million have entered Russia through intermediary companies, primarily in Dubai, Türkiye, and China.

The scale of sanctions evasion

How extensive is Russia’s aircraft parts smuggling operation? YLE found approximately 4,000 shipments containing Boeing or Airbus components between February 2022 and September 2024.

The network involves companies from dozens of countries, with some individual firms making hundreds of deliveries to Russia. Nearly 100 companies operating from the United Arab Emirates alone have supplied aircraft parts to Russia, according to YLE’s investigation.

Dubai has emerged as the central hub for sanctions evasion, with almost one-third of all aircraft parts shipments to Russia originating from the UAE, typically through Dubai, YLE reported.

Russia’s desperate need drives the trade

Why does Russia go to such lengths to acquire these components? YLE found that Russia has approximately 500 Western-leased aircraft that it effectively “stole” when Western companies demanded their return after the invasion began.

Without access to original parts, these aircraft face severe maintenance challenges. YLE reported that Russia has been forced to manufacture cheaper copies of original components and purchase old aircraft for spare parts, significantly weakening aviation safety.

Professor Stephen Wright from Dublin Institute of Technology told YLE that Russia sees this elaborate smuggling operation as necessary because it lacks capabilities it once possessed.

“Russia was an aviation technology pioneer before the Soviet Union collapsed, but has since lost its expertise,” Wright explained to YLE. “The West has taken leadership in civilian aircraft while Russia focused on military aviation.”

Companies claim compliance while parts flow continues

How do major manufacturers respond to evidence that their parts reach Russia? Both Airbus and Boeing refused YLE’s interview requests, instead providing brief statements claiming full compliance with sanctions.

Airbus told YLE it “complies with all applicable laws and sanctions related to Russia” and can track genuine parts, but acknowledged having “no means to control the use of non-genuine parts.”

Boeing’s statement to YLE was even shorter, saying only that the company suspended spare parts and support for Russian customers in early 2022 and continues following US sanctions.

YLE noted that both companies failed to answer specific questions about how they prevent their parts from reaching Russia through intermediaries.

The Dubai connection

Dubai’s role in sanctions evasion extends far beyond aircraft parts, according to YLE’s findings. The investigation shows dozens of Dubai-based companies began supplying Russia only after February 2022, with one firm making at least 35 deliveries since the invasion began.

Before the war, this same company had zero shipments to Russia, YLE reported.

Many Dubai companies involved in the trade have been added to EU or US sanctions lists, but YLE found that when one company faces sanctions, multiple replacement firms are quickly established.

The UAE has not imposed sanctions against Russia, making the business legal under local laws, though YLE noted it’s possible that Russians themselves or their hired proxies control many of these operations.

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Military implications

YLE’s investigation found that Russia has acquired components suitable for military use, including radar systems and flight computers, alongside standard civilian aircraft parts.

However, Professor Wright told YLE that Russia likely doesn’t use foreign-acquired aviation technology for military purposes, as “Russian military technology is highly developed compared to civilian aircraft.”

The greater concern, Wright indicated to YLE, is the impact on aviation safety as Russia struggles to maintain its civilian fleet with smuggled and copied components.

Broader sanctions evasion patterns

The aircraft parts smuggling network represents just one facet of Russia’s systematic sanctions evasion efforts. Previous investigations have documented how foreign microchips reach Russian military equipment through similar intermediary schemes.

Russia has employed numerous methods to circumvent restrictions, including routing critical components through Chinese suppliers that continue providing dual-use technologies despite export controls.

The systematic nature of these evasion schemes has enabled Russia to maintain military production capabilities despite international restrictions designed to cripple its defense industry.

Bomber factory expansion

YLE: Russia expands factory producing bombers Ukraine just destroyed in Operation Spiderweb

Russia is dramatically expanding its only strategic bomber production facility, but the billion-euro investment will not solve the problems plaguing its aviation industry, according to a new investigation by Finnish broadcaster YLE.

Satellite imagery analyzed by YLE shows massive construction at the Kazan Aviation Plant has added 19,000 square meters of production space since winter—equivalent to three football fields. The expansion is part of approximately €1 billion in modernization investment, according to YLE’s analysis.

But the new hangars won’t fix underlying problems. Former Finnish intelligence officer Marko Eklund, who analyzed the satellite imagery for YLE, concluded the expansion “will not solve the problems of the aviation industry and the industry as a whole.”

The production constraints

Why won’t bigger hangars solve the problems? YLE’s investigation revealed multiple constraints beyond factory space.

Kazan delivered just four bombers in 2024: two modernized Tu-160M aircraft and two new Tu-160M2 models, according to YLE’s reporting. The plant faces what YLE described as “constraints beyond factory space”—sanctions limiting access to Western components, workforce shortages, and disrupted Soviet-era supply chains.

YLE reported that Russia cannot manufacture these aircraft from scratch, instead relying on decades-old components stored at the facility. Production lags behind planned schedules due to sanctions and labor shortages.

Ukraine targets the aircraft

The Kazan facility produces the Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 bombers that Russia uses for cruise missile strikes against Ukrainian cities. Ukraine has systematically targeted these aircraft types in operations across Russian territory.

Ukraine’s June Operation Spiderweb destroyed aircraft that experts say cannot be easily replaced. Many of the targeted aircraft types went out of production when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The scale of the challenge becomes clear when comparing production to destruction. YLE found that Kazan delivered just four bombers in 2024, while Operation Spiderweb destroyed at least 10 strategic aircraft in one night using 117 drones across five airfields.

Ukrainian officials claimed 41 aircraft were hit total, representing approximately 34% of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet—nearly a decade’s worth of Kazan’s current production output eliminated in hours.

Ukraine has also directly targeted the Kazan plant itself, with drone strikes hitting the facility in January 2025.

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Drones target Russian military aircraft plant in Kazan

Civilian aircraft struggles mirror military problems

YLE found that Russia’s aviation difficulties extend beyond military production. The plant’s civilian Tu-214 program illustrates similar constraints.

Kazan received orders for 23 Tu-214 passenger jets but has delivered only one aircraft in 2025, YLE reported. Delays became so severe that Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot threatened to cancel orders, though analysts believe cancellation unlikely given substantial state investment.

YLE noted that sanctions created demand for domestic aircraft while simultaneously limiting the capacity to produce them.

Expansion addresses symptoms, not causes

YLE’s analysis suggests the €1 billion expansion focuses on production capacity while underlying problems persist.

The facility expansion includes new assembly halls and modernized equipment, according to YLE’s satellite analysis. However, the broadcaster noted that sanctions and workforce issues continue to hamper actual production output.

As YLE’s investigation concludes, Russia’s massive factory expansion may not address the fundamental constraints that limit aviation production—component availability, skilled workers, and disrupted supply chains that larger hangars cannot solve.

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Georgia broke a longstanding tradition Saturday by failing to send an honor guard to meet the coffin of Vano Nadiradze, a 55-year-old volunteer who died defending Ukraine. For the first time, Georgia did not greet a soldier who defended Ukraine with a guard of honor, according to Echo of the Caucasus newspaper.

The decision marks a stark departure from previous protocol as Georgia’s government aligns increasingly with Russian interests while over 80 Georgian volunteers have died fighting Putin’s forces in Ukraine.

Nadiradze’s body arrived in Tbilisi on Saturday after he died last weekend, reportedly from a heart attack. Nadiradze is said to have defended Ukraine in the ranks of the SBU unit since the beginning of the full-scale war and was a media figure who actively informed Georgian audiences about the war.

The volunteer was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for “mercenary” by Russia, marking him as a target of Putin’s regime. His coffin was met only by family, friends, and concerned citizens who knew him, while the Defense Ministry has not commented on the unprecedented protocol breach.

Georgia’s Russian turn

The government’s decision comes as Georgia undergoes what critics call a complete capture by Russian influence. Since 2022, the rhetoric of the Georgian government towards the West made a hostile turn since the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, with officials echoing Russian propaganda narratives.

Georgia’s ruling party, now dubbed “Russian Dream” by opposition figures, announced it would halt the country’s EU integration process until 2028, sparking some of the largest demonstrations on record. The decision mirrors Viktor Yanukovych’s 2013 rejection of EU association in Ukraine, which triggered the Euromaidan revolution.

Candid confession

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Mounting pressure on Ukrainian volunteers

Georgian volunteers fighting for Ukraine face increasing persecution at home. About 300 people from the combat unit he led were put on the wanted list in Georgia, according to Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili. Many of our guys who were returning to Georgia were advised by the Georgian special services to leave, he reported.

The crackdown extends beyond the Georgian Legion to other volunteers. Several Georgian volunteer fighters returning from Ukraine have been summoned for questioning by Georgia’s State Security Service (SUS) in connection with a purported coup plot, with charges including terrorism and coup plotting.

Heavy toll among Georgian defenders

Georgians likely rank first among foreign fighters killed fighting for Ukraine, with estimates suggesting around 60 Georgians have been killed fighting in Ukraine, possibly the highest death toll of any foreign nationality fighting for Ukraine. The total may exceed 80 according to Georgian media reports.

Despite government hostility, Georgian public support for Ukraine remains strong. According to the Caucasus Barometer survey, 69% of respondents consider Russia as Georgia’s main enemy, creating a stark divide between the population and the increasingly pro-Russian government.

Background

Georgia’s democratic crisis deepened after October’s fraudulent parliamentary elections, where the ruling Georgian Dream party claimed 54% of the vote amid widespread allegations of fraud. International observers noted serious irregularities, with statistical analysis suggests that the party derided as “Russian Dream” stole 15% of the votes.

The government’s abandonment of EU integration has triggered massive protests reminiscent of Ukraine’s Euromaidan. For many Georgians, this mirrors Ukraine’s experience when Viktor Yanukovych rejected the EU association agreement in 2013, leading to the Euromaidan revolution.

Poland activated its air defenses and scrambled fighter jets during Russia’s largest single-night aerial assault on Ukraine, as Moscow’s unprecedented 537-projectile barrage forced NATO allies into costly defensive mobilizations near the Ukrainian border.

Polish Operational Command reported deploying “Polish and allied aircraft” while activating ground-based air defense systems and radars on high alert during the night of 29 June. The defensive operation continued until after 6 AM when threat levels decreased, with no reported violations of Polish airspace.

“Due to the combined air attack by Russia against Ukraine, Polish and allied aviation was raised into the air, and ground-based air defense systems and radars were put on high alert,” the command stated, noting that such procedures have become standard after previous incidents when Russian missiles violated Polish airspace during mass attacks on Ukraine.

The defensive mobilization occurred as Ukrainian F-16 pilot Maksym Ustymenko died repelling Russia’s most massive night attack, when Moscow launched 477 Shahed drones, 41 cruise missiles, seven ballistic missiles, and four hypersonic Kinzhal missiles—many targeting western Ukraine near the Polish border.

Poland has repeatedly activated its air defenses during major Russian attacks, including scrambling F-16 fighters in January 2024 when Moscow launched massive missile strikes against Ukrainian cities. Previous incidents have included Russian missiles entering Polish airspace and forcing emergency responses from Warsaw.

The overnight assault killed and injured dozens of Ukrainian civilians, adding to Russia’s mounting toll of terror attacks. Recent strikes have demonstrated the deadly effectiveness of Russia’s tactics, with attacks in June killing a 5-year-old boy and destroying homes in Sumy Oblast, while Kharkiv endured its most extensive attack since the invasion began earlier this month.

Poland repeatedly scrambles jets

Poland has repeatedly activated its air defenses during major Russian attacks, including scrambling F-16 fighters in January 2024, and has reported airspace violations during previous incidents.

Such responses have become routine throughout 2025, with Poland scrambling jets during Russia’s “largest attack” on the region on 9 June, a massive assault on 26 May involving 355 drones, and multiple other incidents as Moscow targets western Ukrainian regions near the Polish border.

The 29 June attack represents Russia’s largest single-night assault as Moscow systematically targets Ukrainian civilians to extract political concessions.

Explore further

F-16 pilot killed while repelling Russia’s most massive-yet night terror attack on Ukraine (updated)

Ukraine’s Air Force pilot Maksym Ustymenko, 32, died defending against Russia’s largest single-night aerial assault of the war, as Moscow launched 537 projectiles in a coordinated terror campaign targeting civilian infrastructure across the country.

The massive assault demonstrates Russia’s strategy of escalating terror attacks to pressure Ukraine into unfavorable peace negotiations. By overwhelming air defenses with record-breaking volumes of weapons, Moscow aims to demonstrate Ukraine’s vulnerability and create unbearable civilian casualties that force Kyiv to accept territorial concessions—using mass destruction as diplomatic leverage while Trump pushes for talks.

A photograph of Ustymenko was shared by Lilia Averianova, the mother of another fallen F-16 pilot, “Juice” Andrii Pylschykov:

“Max, a guy of steel. Always striving to be the best. Best at defending Ukraine. He was the super-intellect of the group, a great I.T. guy. He had big, strong wings. Big responsibility. Big dedication… Together with Andrii since the first year, together forever in the sky,” she wrote.

The wife of another Ukrainian pilot told that Ustymenko leaves behind a four-year-old son.

Russian forces deployed an unprecedented combination of 477 Shahed drones, 41 cruise missiles, seven ballistic missiles, and four hypersonic Kinzhal missiles during the 29 June overnight attack, according to Ukraine’s Air Force Command. Ukrainian defenders destroyed 475 of the aerial targets, but the massive scale overwhelmed some defensive capabilities.

“The pilot used the full range of onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. During the last one, his plane was damaged and began to lose altitude. Maksym Ustymenko did his best to take the plane away from the settlement, but he did not have time to eject… He died like a hero!” the Air Force confirmed.

Russia launched the weapons from multiple staging areas, including Kursk, Shatalovo, Orel, Bryansk, and Millerovo in Russia, as well as occupied Crimea and Black Sea positions, as detailed by Ukrainian Air Force, demonstrating the coordinated nature of the assault designed to stretch Ukrainian defensive resources across the entire country.

Poland scrambled its jets but shot down nothing. Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defenses claimed an 88% interception rate despite the overwhelming numbers, shooting down 249 targets with weapons fire and electronically suppressing or causing 226 others to crash through electronic warfare systems.

The operation involved Ukraine’s aviation, surface-to-air missile units, electronic warfare divisions, mobile fire groups, and unmanned systems working in coordination. Debris from intercepted targets fell in eight areas across the country, per the official report.

The massive coordinated attack underscores Russia’s strategic shift toward using swarm tactics to saturate Ukrainian air defenses. The Iranian-designed Shaheds have become increasingly difficult to counter as Russia modifies their flight patterns, uses decoy drones, and launches them at higher altitudes to evade detection.

The attack comes as President Trump has suspended US military aid to Ukraine to pressure Kyiv into peace negotiations, according to multiple reports, while the US recently diverted 20,000 anti-drone rockets originally destined for Ukraine to Middle East operations before Israel’s strikes on Iran.

The loss of pilot Ustymenko highlights the personal cost of Ukraine’s air defense operations, as F-16 pilots face increasing risks from Russia’s evolving tactics and massive drone swarms that can overwhelm even sophisticated Western aircraft through sheer numbers.

The massive assault struck six locations across Ukraine, with debris from intercepted weapons falling in eight additional areas, according to the Air Force. While specific casualty figures from the 29 June attack have not yet been disclosed, the operation represents Russia’s continued escalation of its terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians, following recent patterns of strikes that have killed dozens and injured hundreds in single attacks.

The attack comes amid mounting civilian casualties from Russia’s intensified aerial campaign. Recent strikes have demonstrated the deadly effectiveness of Russia’s combined missile-drone tactics, with ballistic missiles proving particularly lethal due to Ukraine’s limited ability to intercept them without sufficient Patriot systems.

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Shaheds become more difficult to intercept

Russian Shahed drones have become increasingly difficult to intercept as Moscow adapts its tactics through swarm launches, radar decoys, and higher-altitude flight paths. The Iranian-designed weapons cost approximately $35,000 each but force Ukraine to expend more expensive interceptor missiles, creating an asymmetric warfare advantage for Russia.

The massive night attack occurs amid acute shortages of air defense ammunition.

Ukraine received only half of the Patriot systems it requested and operates just six operational batteries out of 25 needed for full coverage. The US refuses to share its 60+ Patriot arsenal while production constraints limit global output, and Europe lines up for 1,000 additional missiles.

Explore further

Why Russian Shahed explosive drones increasingly evade Ukrainian air defenses and reach Kyiv (updated)

Every dictator has that one moment when triumph becomes trap. For Putin, it happened in 2014 when he bloodlessly seized Crimea and watched his approval ratings soar from 63% to 88%.

However, now the peninsula that made him look like a strategic genius threatens to destroy him. Ukraine’s systematic campaign is turning Crimea from Russia’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” into a sinking ship that could drag Putin’s regime down with it.

How Ukraine broke Putin’s Black Sea fortress

The numbers tell the story of a military disaster unfolding in slow motion.

Ukraine has destroyed or damaged 33% of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet—the same fleet that once turned the Black Sea into “Russia’s lake.” By July 2024, Moscow had pulled all major naval assets out of Sevastopol, abandoning the historic base after 240 years of Russian control.

But the naval retreat was just the beginning. Ukrainian ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles have systematically picked apart Crimea’s air defenses, creating critical gaps across the peninsula.

The crown jewel of Russian vulnerability remains the Kerch Bridge itself.

Ukraine’s June 2025 underwater attack—the third successful strike since 2022—used 1,100kg of TNT equivalent targeting underwater support pillars. Despite billions in defensive investments, Russia cannot protect its only direct supply route to Crimea.

When your greatest asset becomes your biggest liability

The strategic mathematics have flipped completely. An estimated 150,000-160,000 Russian troops remain trapped on the peninsula, not advancing Putin’s war but simply trying to survive it. These forces—equivalent to several army divisions—sit uselessly defensive while Ukraine pounds Russian positions elsewhere.

Ukraine’s naval drone revolution exemplifies how innovation trumps conventional power. Military analysts describe it as the first successful campaign to neutralize a major naval fleet through asymmetric drone warfare—a template that’s reshaping naval combat globally.

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How Ukraine’s scrappy marine drones are revolutionizing naval warfare

Putin’s throne sits on Crimean sand

Here’s what makes Crimea uniquely dangerous for Putin: his entire political identity depends on it.

The 2014 annexation didn’t just boost his approval ratings—it created what analysts call the “Crimean consensus,” the rare moment when 80% of Russians felt like a superpower again. Atlantic Council research identifies Crimea’s seizure as “arguably the most important single element in modern Russia’s national narrative and the greatest achievement of Putin’s entire reign.”

Putin personally took credit for the “brilliant” bloodless operation, linking Crimean success directly to his genius. This created a new social contract: Russians accepted poverty and repression in exchange for restored great power status.

Carnegie Endowment analysis reveals Putin established this bargain post-Crimea—meager social services propped up by the feeling of belonging to a great power again.

Why every Ukrainian strike hits Putin personally

Because Crimea represents the foundation of Putin’s imperial narrative and proof of his strategic mastermind image, Ukrainian successes there generate disproportionate damage to regime legitimacy. Each successful Ukrainian strike doesn’t just destroy military targets—it demolishes the myth of Russian invincibility that keeps Putin in power.

International Crisis Group expert Oleg Ignatov noted recent Ukrainian attacks delivered “the worst setback for Putin for 2025 in terms of military damage and the impact on public morale.” When your political survival depends on looking invincible, every visible defeat becomes exponentially more dangerous.

Ukraine’s systematic demolition strategy

Ukraine’s 2024-2025 campaign represents methodical strategic degradation, not random symbolic strikes.

ATACMS missiles with 300km range have enabled precision strikes on previously secure targets, including the devastating May 2024 attack on Belbek airbase that destroyed two MiG-31 fighter jets and crippled fuel infrastructure.

The genius lies in targeting interconnected infrastructure to create cascading failures.

Ukrainian forces have struck over a dozen major military installations, achieving what RUSI analysts describe as “strategic successes that could shape the ultimate outcome of the war.” Each strike forces Russia to spread its remaining defenses thinner while demonstrating that Ukrainian capabilities keep growing.

Psychological warfare and morale destruction

Each successful strike delivers psychological impact that extends far beyond physical damage.

The naval warfare revolution exemplifies this dynamic. Ukraine’s use of naval drones has not only sunk Russian vessels but fundamentally challenged assumptions about naval power projection.

This represents more than tactical innovation. It demonstrates that technological creativity can overcome conventional military advantages, inspiring broader confidence in Ukrainian capabilities.

Explore further

“Kill a navy for the price of a car”: Ukraine’s drones drove out Putin’s fleet from the Black Sea — then turned on his fighter jets

The economics of strategic disaster

Crimea’s economic math reveals Putin’s strategic miscalculation in stark numbers. The peninsula requires over $7 billion annually in Russian subsidies while producing less than 1% of Russian GDP.

Russia has invested over $20 billion in the past decade on a territory that receives 65-70% of its budget from federal transfers, making it Russia’s most expensive dependency.

Illusory energy wealth and fragile tourism dreams

Even Crimea’s supposed energy wealth proves largely illusory.

While Russia appropriated Ukrainian offshore gas and oil reserves worth $800 million to $1.2 billion in proven reserves, with potential undiscovered reserves valued at $7 billion, these resources remain largely undeveloped due to sanctions and security concerns.

The tourism sector, despite showing growth, remains fundamentally vulnerable.

Despite a 25% increase in 2024 tourism demand reaching 3.3 million visitors, the industry remains fragile and dependent on bridge access (62.1% of tourists). Each Ukrainian attack on transportation infrastructure directly impacts civilian economic activity. This creates a vicious cycle where military necessity undermines economic viability.

Explore further

Russians in Crimea pack up as relentless sound of air alerts and sight of tanks become their new reality

Why Ukraine must strike now

Current conditions create an unprecedented window for decisive action.

Atlantic Council’s Serhii Kuzan assesses that “with the Black Sea Fleet in retreat, logistical connections disrupted, and air defenses depleted, the Kremlin’s grip on Crimea already appears to be significantly weaker than it was when the full-scale invasion began.”

Ukrainian capabilities continue expanding while Russian defenses degrade. The integration of Western weapons with Ukrainian innovation has created a tactical advantage that compounds over time.

Each successful strike not only destroys targets but forces Russia to spread remaining assets ever thinner across an increasingly vulnerable peninsula.

Putin’s shrinking options point to regime survival

Putin’s response to Ukrainian pressure reveals his true priorities. When faced with losing control, he has consistently chosen retreat over escalation—including withdrawing the Black Sea Fleet rather than risking nuclear confrontation despite Crimea’s symbolic importance.

This suggests regime survival instincts ultimately override territorial commitments.

Sustained Ukrainian success could force Putin into impossible choices between costly military escalation to defend the peninsula and politically damaging strategic retreat. Historical patterns suggest that when dictators face existential threats to their foundational achievements, regime survival instincts may prevail over territorial pride.

Expert timeline assessments vary, but continued Ukrainian pressure combined with economic constraints and military setbacks could create conditions for significant regime instability within 2-5 years if current trends continue.

The domino that could topple Putin

Crimea has evolved from Putin’s greatest political achievement into his most dangerous strategic vulnerability. Ukrainian operations have systematically transformed the peninsula from Russia’s naval stronghold into an increasingly indefensible liability that drains resources while providing diminished military value.

The convergence of military degradation, economic burden, and political vulnerability suggests that sustained Ukrainian pressure on Crimea represents a uniquely threatening challenge to Putin’s rule. Unlike other territorial disputes, Crimean control has become so central to regime legitimacy that its loss could precipitate broader political instability.

The final battle for Ukrainian freedom and Russian reckoning has begun, and its outcome will be decided on the shores of occupied Crimea.

Ukraine has discovered Putin’s Achilles’ heel. Every successful strike on Crimea doesn’t just advance military objectives—it chips away at the foundational myth that keeps Putin in power.

The peninsula that made Putin look invincible could be the very thing that destroys him.

Russia’s war against Ukraine took center stage at this June’s GLOBSEC conference in Prague. The high-profile political gathering was a witness to the death of Ukraine’s victory plan, replaced with ceasefire rhetoric and frozen conflict scenarios following the election of Donald Trump to US president.

It is, however, universally accepted that this frozen conflict is not a step to peace, as it would allow Russia to re-arm and re-attack, most likely, on a greater scale. However, Ukraine may ultimately face few other options, as the West hesitates to make decisive steps to turn the tide.

A frank post-panel exchange with former US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker succinctly revealed the real reason for the West’s hesitation: nukes. Illustrating how deeply Russia’s nuclear threats have shaped Western policy constraints, he argued that a frozen conflict represents Ukraine’s best realistic outcome because direct confrontation with Russia “would become a nuclear war and annihilate everybody.”

When pressed on why the collective West cannot prevent this scenario despite Ukraine facing ongoing human rights violations and cultural erasure in occupied territories, Volker’s response was stark: “The reason is quite obvious. It’s because a direct war against Russia would become a nuclear war.”

The exchange exposes how senior Western officials have internalized Moscow’s nuclear blackmail— arguably the Kremlin’s greatest weapon—as an insurmountable constraint on Ukraine support, inadvertently enabling the proliferation of instability around the globe. Volker, who served as US envoy to Ukraine during Trump’s first presidency, grew visibly frustrated when challenged on the implications of this logic, ultimately ending the conversation when questioned about Western hesitation to allow strikes on Russian territory.

EP: Right now, you mentioned a ceasefire and a standoff as the best-case scenario for Ukraine. And I’m wondering how that factors in with expert analysis that would allow Russia to rearm and re-attack Ukraine and beyond. How does that factor in with the human rights violations ongoing in occupied territories and erasure of national identity? And how do we prevent a Minsk Three that essentially allowed Russia to stage this larger war? How can we call it a best-case scenario in this case?

Volker: Well, because all the other scenarios are worse. And of course, Russia is going to rearm, regroup, and plan to attack again. No one should have any other expectations. And the key thing is to make it so difficult for Russia, painful for Russia, that we can deter Russia from actually doing it.

They are going to rearm, but if they find that it’s going to be too costly, too painful for them, we can stretch out that timeline indefinitely as to when they attack.

This is what we did during the Cold War with the Soviet Union from 1945 up until the Soviet Union collapsed. So that, I think, is the best we’re going to be able to do.

And meanwhile, that buys time for us to work together to strengthen Ukraine politically, economically, and militarily. And eventually, Russia is going to have to change because Putin will not live forever.

The way that they have gone about this aggression, not only against Ukraine but elsewhere as well, is not sustainable. And I think that they are going to have to come to terms with what they have done. And we’re going to have to put up basically a wall to protect ourselves against them.

EP: It appears that this scenario means that essentially Ukraine loses the occupied territories forever, because the return of any connection to Ukraine is ongoing, and there is no reason to expect that they will not be just integrated into Russia beyond repair.

Volker: I don’t agree with that. We had a divided Germany for 40 years, which was eventually unified. We had the Baltic states occupied by the Soviet Union for 40 years, which got their independence back.

I don’t think we can predict how things will go in the future. And I don’t think anyone should recognize these as legitimately Russian territory. They’re not. And you’re absolutely right that things will happen during occupation that are absolutely horrible. But again, we have to think, so what is the other alternative? I don’t see one.

EP: That is a great remark. Why is there no alternative? Why is the collective West not strong enough to prevent the scenario? I don’t agree with the Germany analogy. The Soviet Union was not there to brainwash the Germans out of believing that they’re Germans. Meanwhile, it is doing that in Ukraine because that is the objective of Russia.

Volker: That is the objective of Russia. And the reason is quite obvious. It’s because directly launching a war against Russia would become a nuclear war and annihilate everybody. And no one wants to do that.

EP: But why are we so confident in this scenario?

Volker: In which?

EP: In the scenario of a nuclear war, because that is Russia’s greatest advantage, fear-mongering of a nuclear war.

Volker: Well, as long as we are not threatening the existence of Russia as a state and trying to do regime change in Russia, I don’t believe they’re going to use nuclear weapons. But if we are in a full-scale war with Russia, they will use nuclear weapons. I don’t see why we would doubt that.

EP: Why? But what reason do we have to say that?

Volker: Because it’s in their doctrine and they have the actual missiles themselves.

EP: But multiple assessments have shown that Putin wants self-preservation as well. You can’t play with nuclear weapons. The US would not do that.

Volker: Putin is not always rational. If he were rational, he wouldn’t have started this war to begin with. And they have the capability. And no one in the West is going to say, yeah, let’s risk it. Let’s go to war with Russia and see what happens.

EP: That essentially gives a carte blanche for any country with nuclear weapons to do whatever they want.

Volker: No, that’s not true. Because Putin is not going to use nuclear weapons unless he is faced with that threat to the state. So, you know, we have conventional means, we have sanctions means, we have lots of ways to deter nuclear use and lots of ways to push back on Russia, which we need to do.

EP: Mr. Volker, but during these three years of war, Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons, claiming a risk to its state. For instance, when Ukraine liberated the territories that Russia occupied. And nothing followed.

Volker: That’s baloney. They know themselves that these are not Russian territories, and so that’s just posturing. Ukraine is attacking Russian territory on a daily basis, and this is one of the red lines that the West is afraid to cross precisely because of this nuclear threat. Because if the West were attacking and defeating Russia, they would use nuclear weapons. With Ukraine doing this, they’re not going to do that.

EP: Ukraine is also posing a threat to the Russian state.

Volker: Not really. Certainly. Not really. You’re threatening to weaken their military to a point where they can’t continue fighting, but you are not threatening to take over the Russian state or to topple the Kremlin. And they know that.

EP: But why is the West so afraid to allow strikes in Russian territory? Is it precisely because of fear of nuclear threats?

Volker: I wouldn’t say we are afraid to allow strikes on Russian territory. In fact, Ukraine has been doing this, as you said, almost every night now, and you don’t hear anything from the West.

EP: Yes, but the West is not joining in, and there has been a three-year hesitation on allowing any sort of strikes.

Volker: You’re asking the same question again and again, and I don’t think I’m going to give you a different answer. So, nice to meet you, and thank you. Good luck.

This exchange took place following a panel discussion on Ukraine’s future at a security forum. Volker served as US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017-2019 and US Ambassador to NATO from 2008-2009.

The longer version

Ukraine’s victory plan is dead, killed by Russian nuclear mind games

At the GLOBSEC security conference in Prague, a senior European policy official delivered perhaps the most honest assessment of Western strategy heard in months. “I agree we are good at deterrence,” he told a packed room under Chatham House rules, “but even better at self-deterrence.”

The admission hung in the air like an uncomfortable truth no one wanted to acknowledge. Across three days of high-level panels at Europe’s premier security gathering, a stark pattern emerged: behind closed doors, experts candidly discussed how the West has abandoned the goal of Ukrainian victory, while public sessions featured sanitized rhetoric about “sustainable peace” and “ceasefire as a first step.”

The elephant in the room at GLOBSEC wasn’t Russian aggression or European unpreparedness—it was the quiet death of Ukraine’s victory narrative, and how Western self-deterrence killed it.

A shorter version

Frozen conflict Ukraine’s “best case scenario” because Russia has nukes, Kurt Volker says

The vanishing victory plan

The transformation has been swift and devastating. In 2022, Zelensky’s original peace plan demanded complete Russian withdrawal, war crimes tribunals, and reparations—the full accountability of total defeat.

On the eve of Trump’s election and Western talks of ceasefires, in October 2024, Zelensky presented his “Victory Plan” to Ukraine’s parliament. He called for complete Russian withdrawal, NATO membership, and positioning Ukraine to “force Russia to peace.” The rhetoric was still about total Russian defeat.

By June 2025, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha was singing a different tune at GLOBSEC’s main stage. “A real and lasting ceasefire is the first step to peace,” he declared, parroting the Trump administration’s desire to freeze and forget the war.

The Oval Office spat was the breaking point. On 28 February 2025, Trump told Zelensky bluntly: “you’re not winning this” and “you don’t have the cards right now.” When Ukraine initially resisted ceasefire proposals, the United States temporarily suspended aid. Within weeks, Kyiv had capitulated.

At GLOBSEC, this transformation was visible in real time. In panels operating under Chatham House rules, where officials could speak freely, the assessment was brutally honest. “I think we have helped Ukraine to defend itself, but we haven’t helped Ukraine to win,” the senior official observed. The problem?

“It was fear that if we did too much, Russia would act in a forceful manner that would involve us all.”

But when Ukrainian officials appeared on public panels, they dutifully promoted ceasefire proposals that experts acknowledge would lead to Ukrainian defeat, ensuring the freezing of a war that would allow Russia to rearm and reattack while continuing brutal human rights abuses on occupied lands.

How Russia’s nuclear threats became its ultimate weapon

The heart of the problem, as revealed in GLOBSEC’s frank discussions, is what a senior European foreign policy analyst called “a very well-laid information trap, which people who didn’t understand deterrence and didn’t understand Russia walked straight into.”

The information trap has a name—reflexive control. The technique, developed in the 1960s by Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre, is designed to trick opponents into making self-defeating decisions without realizing they’re being manipulated.

The Soviets perfected this during the Cold War through elaborate deceptions. They developed fake models of intercontinental ballistic missiles for participation in Red Square parades to create “an exaggerated impression on the American side of the shock potential of Soviet nuclear weapons,” as documented by Timothy Thomas in his seminal study of reflexive control theory.

The goal was to trick the West into wasteful spending on nonexistent threats while Soviet leaders knew their actual capabilities were far more limited.

Yet each time, Western officials delayed, debated, and ultimately provided too little, too late.

Ukraine’s Spider Web operation provided a perfect case study. In June 2025, Ukraine struck Russian strategic aviation bases, reportedly destroying one-third of Russia’s nuclear-capable bomber fleet. Where was Putin’s promised escalation? Where was the nuclear retaliation that had paralyzed Western decision-making for years?

“If you can hit the strategic strike force of a nuclear power without having the kind of retaliation that has been the nightmares of Olaf Scholz and Jake Sullivan, then it really is a lesson we should be learning,” the senior foreign policy analyst noted during one GLOBSEC discussion.

Modern Russia has refined reflexive control into a systematic assault on Western decision-making. As Ivana Stradner from the Foundation for Defence of Democracies explained during a closed-door GLOBSEC session, Russian analysts have long studied “how you can actually reflexively control the United States. That’s exactly what Moscow is doing right now in Europe.”

The technique operates through a precise three-part system: mathematical modeling combined with analysis of how you process information and how your enemy processes information.

As Stradner noted, “whoever has information superiority is going to win this war.”

The evidence against Russian nuclear blackmail was overwhelming, yet ignored. Each time, Putin’s threatened escalation failed to materialize. China would never tolerate Russian nuclear use that could trigger global retaliation affecting Chinese interests. And Putin himself, obsessed with personal survival and billion-dollar palaces, hardly fit the profile of a leader ready for nuclear suicide.

But the lesson wasn’t learned. As the senior European official pointedly asked: Russian “red lines”—”have you seen them work?” The answer was obvious to everyone in the room, yet Western policy remains captive to threats that existed only in imagination.

The West chose not to win

Ukrainian officials at GLOBSEC laid out the stark reality that Western leaders refused to acknowledge. “Unfortunately, we don’t now have enough power to do it on the battlefield. I have no doubt that our partners have this power,” explained Yehor Cherniev, deputy chairman of Ukraine’s National Security Committee. “Russian ability to wage war has two pillars: economy and military capacity.”

The Ukrainian analysis was straightforward: Russia could be defeated through either military or economic pressure.

• On the military side, this meant providing sufficient weapons without restrictions and removing the artificial limitations that kept Ukraine fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
• On the economic side, it meant actually using the sanctions power and frozen assets that could cripple Russia’s war machine.

“There is so much space with the sanctions on their oil and gas, their metallurgy, their financial sector,” Cherniev continued. “And the Western world, you can do this and can put this burden much more on Russia’s economy. Without the financing, their army cannot move forward.”

The tragedy revealed at GLOBSEC was that the West chose neither path.

Instead of decisive military support, Ukraine received delayed, limited aid with restrictions that protected Russian territory. Instead of economic warfare using Russia’s own frozen assets, Europe debated legal niceties while taxing its own citizens for defense.

The means to victory existed; the will to use them did not.

“If we collectively in Europe realized that Ukraine’s victory is central, we wouldn’t be sitting here three and a half years in still not having won the war,” the senior foreign policy analyst admitted.

Kacper Rekawek from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism was more direct: “We chose not to win this. We, the West. Maybe we’re unable to because we have grown too lazy, too fat, too comfortable. And the ones who wanted to win this, generally for Ukraine and with Ukraine—the likes of Poland and the Baltics—just don’t have the bandwidth to push the others into thinking that this is a geopolitical struggle.”

Being lost is a rare chance:

“You have a once-in-a-hundred-years chance to proverbially kick some Russian ass. Last time was 1917, when they made a suicidal mistake. We just need to push them for suicide to actually happen.”

How nuclear theater works

Former spy boss: Moscow plants nuclear docs through captured spies

The resource paradox

The absurdity of Western defeatism becomes clear when examining the numbers.

• Europe’s economy is 12 times larger than Russia’s, its population four times greater.
• The frozen Russian assets alone—€300 billion of the aggressor’s own money sitting in European banks—could fund Ukrainian victory multiple times over.
• Combined European and American GDP dwarfs Russia’s by orders of magnitude.

Yet European leaders speak of “preparing for war by 2030” while refusing to use existing resources to prevent it. The clearest articulation of what was lost came from Olena Halushka of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory during GLOBSEC’s opening panel.

“If the goal is to help Ukraine survive, that’s one type of aid,” she explained. “If the goal is to help Ukraine win, that’s a whole other story about supporting and commitment.”

The clearest way to support Ukraine would be to use the frozen €300 bn of Russian funds for Ukrainian defense.

More precisely:

How Ukraine could spend $ 300bn in frozen Russian assets to win the war

However, EU countries have not mustered the will for full confiscation, and only a fragment—€3.5 bn windfall profits from the €183 bn sitting in Belgium’s Euroclear—has been spent on helping Ukraine’s resistance in 2024. But starting from 2025, even these proceeds will not buy weapons for Ukraine; rather, they will be used to repay a €50 bn loan issued by the G7.

The West, Halushka argued, had unconsciously shifted from victory to survival mode. European leaders speak of preparing for war by 2030, of ramping up defense production over five to ten years. But, “the elephant in the room is that the best way to deter Russian aggression from expanding, deter Russia from attacking other countries, is to help Ukraine win.”

Ukrainian victory would eliminate the Russian threat to NATO’s eastern flank. Ukrainian defeat—disguised as a “frozen conflict”—guarantees future Russian aggression.

The expert consensus on current ceasefire proposals is damning. Every serious analyst who spoke at GLOBSEC warned that Trump’s approach would create a dangerous frozen conflict rather than lasting peace.

Historical precedent supports their pessimism: Russia has used identical tactics in the 2014-2015 Minsk process, designed to present an identical illusion of “peace.” The full-scale invasion followed in 2022.

Western decision paralysis enables broader aggression

Ukraine’s victory wasn’t just abandoned—it was sacrificed to a broader Western reluctance to confront authoritarian aggression. As the senior foreign policy analyst revealed during GLOBSEC discussions, Western intelligence communities exhibit “an inherent bias to be warning against the worst” with “a negative bias because that warning is seen as your job.”

“When nuclear war is at stake, you can understand the urge to caution. But actually, the result of that caution is a worse strategic situation that puts you in grave danger of another kind,” he revealed the working mechanism of nuclear decision paralysis.

The cost of this indecision becomes clear when examining current ceasefire proposals. Even tentative ceasefires and ensuing frozen conflict appear to be wishful thinking: Russia is not even interested in taking a breather, as it keeps making unacceptable demands for Ukraine to surrender regions it controls, without a fight.

“I’m surprised how many people are seriously hoping that something may come out of the process where the starting points are absolutely unacceptable. We are speaking about a whole new level of escalation where Russia can add into their constitution whatever they want: Suwalki, Narva, Svalbard, Dresden, whatever their lawmakers decide,” Olena Halushka stated bluntly.

This constitutional annexation strategy represents the ultimate weaponization of nuclear blackmail—allowing Russia to claim any territory simply by adding it to domestic law, then threatening global war if the world doesn’t comply.

“The international law rules-based world order is already destroyed,” Halushka continued, “but that would be a whole new level of destruction.”

Meanwhile, the West’s much-vaunted “coalition of the willing,” suffers from the same paralysis that enabled Russian success. Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielis Landsbergis has repeatedly asked: “Coalition of the willing to do what? And coalition of the willing to do when?”

The initially enthusiastic Franco-British idea of putting EU boots on the ground is facing an uncertain future after failing to secure American backing. Or rather, because it was designed as a post-ceasefire deterrence force, while achieving this very same flawed ceasefire needs immediate deterrence.

The consequences of this coalition paralysis are becoming increasingly stark. New GLOBSEC analysis assigns a 20% probability to “Hybrid World War III”—a scenario where multiple global conflicts blur international focus on Ukraine while Russian aggression spreads.

Ukrainian experts warn this represents the second most likely scenario after prolonged war of attrition, reflecting how Western indecision creates conditions for broader conflict escalation that the intelligence community’s excessive caution was supposedly designed to prevent.

Explore further

GLOBSEC mapped seven Ukraine war scenarios through 2026. Even the “best case” spells future disaster.

The road not taken

GLOBSEC’s most sobering discussions focused on what victory could have looked like.

Ukraine has proven that “no safe place now in Russia” exists for military targets, demonstrating capabilities that have surprised even supporters. The country’s defense industry has scaled production 35-fold in some areas, developing drone and electronic warfare technologies that NATO militaries are eager to learn from.

“Ukraine is rewriting the rules of modern warfare,” as one Ukrainian official noted. The irony is palpable: the West abandoned victory just as Ukraine was demonstrating it was achievable.

Instead of leveraging these Ukrainian capabilities for decisive victory, Western policymakers chose managed stalemate.

The question left hanging in Prague’s corridors was stark: will Western leaders find the courage to align their policies with their private understanding before Russian nuclear blackmail succeeds permanently? Signs of awakening were visible—recognition that Europe faces an existential threat, not a regional conflict.

But with Ukraine already being pushed toward ceasefire negotiations and Russian forces entrenching in occupied territory, the window for course correction is rapidly closing.

The tragedy is that officials who privately know better continue to implement policies that, as they themselves admit, make the catastrophic war everyone fears far more likely. Whether private wisdom can overcome public cowardice before it’s too late remains the defining question of our time.

GLOBSEC, a leading European think tank, has released its latest security scenarios report analyzing potential developments in the Russian war in Ukraine through 2025-2026, finding that a war of attrition with lowered intensity due to resource depletion represents the most probable outcome.

The comprehensive analysis, based on surveys of 61 top Ukrainian security experts including former defense ministers, ambassadors, and senior military officials, offers a distinctly different perspective from Western-based assessments. Unlike typical think tank reports that rely primarily on external analysis, this study draws directly from the expertise of those who have been managing the war effort firsthand.

“The original concept of the Scenarios was to provide an aggregated assessment from the top Ukrainian experts in security, defence, foreign policy, and diplomacy on how the security situation in Europe is perceived from inside a country under military attack,” the report states.

The expert pool includes seven former ministers of defense and foreign affairs, nine ambassadors, and 25 senior-ranking current and former officials who have direct operational experience with the conflict.

This insider perspective assigns a 38% probability to what researchers term “war of attrition with lowered intensity of hostilities due to draining out of resources on both sides.”

Speaking at a GLOBSEC panel discussion during the report’s presentation, Iuliia Osmolovska, Director of GLOBSEC’s Kyiv Office, presented the sobering assessment that “four military scenarios outweighed significantly the probability of three peace scenarios – it’s 75% altogether against 25%,” suggesting limited prospects for meaningful peace settlement in the next 18 months.

Military factors drive scenario predictions

The report identifies a stark shift in driving factors compared to previous analyses. “Unlike the first edition of Scenarios for 2022/23, where political drivers were equal in numbers to military ones (5:5), military and military-financial drivers continue to define the situation in 2025/26 (9:1),” according to the study.

The top factors influencing Ukraine’s security situation include:

• Development of Ukraine’s defense sector to enhance self-sufficiency
• Ukraine’s resource capacity to sustain war expenditures
• Ukraine’s technological advantage in drones and electronic warfare
• Population morale and mobilization dynamics

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov emphasized during the panel that priorities remain unchanged since 2022: “Priority number one still is air defense systems, all types… Second priority still remains artillery shells… The third probably point of this list, it’s electronic warfare.”

Compare with GLOBSEC’s 2024-2025 report:

Five realistic scenarios of war in Ukraine in 2024: GLOBSEC report

Technology and self-reliance take center stage

The analysis reveals Ukraine’s growing focus on military self-sufficiency. The country has achieved remarkable progress in drone production, with 95% of frontline drones now manufactured domestically by over 1,000 companies. Ukraine aims to produce 4 million drones in 2025, representing a dramatic scaling from zero production capability in early 2022.

“This war is the last conventional war in the history of mankind, and we are fighting in a new type of hybrid war,” Reznikov explained, highlighting the evolution toward drone and electronic warfare technologies.

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European defense awakening, but challenges remain

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna delivered a stark assessment of Europe’s preparedness, stating, “Unfortunately, Putin didn’t wake Europe up… who actually woke up Europe? Based on the investments in our own defense, it was actually President Trump.”

Tsahkna awarded grades to European defense efforts: “A++ for the Baltic states and Poland and Finland and Sweden, frankly, it’s a gamma for, or if not verging on a delta, for much of the rest of Europe.”

Former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Sir Richard Shirreff was even more direct, declaring “America is no longer a reliable ally” and emphasizing that “Europe holds free and secure against Russia. What do you need to… What objective do you need to satisfy that? You need the defeat of Russia in Ukraine.”

Nuclear self-deterrence fuels global conflict risk

While resource depletion drives the most probable scenario, the second-highest probability (20%) points to a more alarming development: “Hybrid Type World War III,” in which Russian impunity encourages other conflicts globally.

This scenario is driven by what Iuliia Osmolovska identifies as a dangerous Western nuclear paralysis. “While we are afraid, or our partners are afraid of Russia using nuclear weapons, we basically make Russia feel that their blackmailing bears fruit,” she explained.

“This creates an adverse effect internationally, because the countries that do possess nuclear weapons feel emboldened by seeing that if you are in possession of nuclear weapons, then you can enjoy impunity to do whatever you want.”

The ripple effects are already visible. “Look at Iran. Look at Pakistan and India right now,” Osmolovska noted. The scenario envisions nuclear proliferation risks rising as authoritarian regimes conclude that nuclear threats provide effective leverage against Western responses.

Seven scenarios range from global conflict to fleeting ceasefire

The GLOBSEC analysis presents seven scenarios with varying probabilities – but crucially, none deliver sustainable peace:

1. Hybrid World War III (20% probability) – Western nuclear self-deterrence emboldens global aggressors
2. Current intensity maintained (13% probability) – US and Europe provide optimal support
3. Russian breakthroughs amid US withdrawal (4% probability) – Russia gains amid reduced Western aid
4. War of attrition with lowered intensity (38% probability) – Resource depletion forces reduction
5. Ceasefire on unacceptable terms for Ukraine (11% probability) – Ukraine forced into bad deal
6. Reasonably acceptable ceasefire (12% probability) – Patchy peace process with no sustainable outcome
7. “Peace” addressing Ukraine’s interests (2% probability) – The most dangerous illusion.

What the “best case” actually looks like

Even Scenario 7, which the report describes as addressing “Ukraine’s interests and security,” reveals the hollowness of any negotiated outcome. This supposedly optimal scenario would include the rejection of Russia’s maximalist demands.

• Cessation of hostilities along existing contact lines without official recognition of annexed territories.
• Rejection of Ukrainian neutrality or demilitarization demands.
• No written commitments ruling out future NATO membership.
• Presence of European “deterrent forces” on Ukrainian territory as peacekeepers.

Yet even this outcome—achieved only through maximum US pressure on Russia via “draconian sanctions” or China distancing itself from Moscow—remains fundamentally unstable. The report acknowledges that Russia would use “legal language as vague and ambiguous as possible” to “challenge it in the future and use it as a precursor to a renewed conventional attack on Ukraine.”

The fundamental reality: Russia will never stop

The report’s most sobering conclusion is that even this most optimistic 2% scenario doesn’t achieve genuine peace. The analysis makes explicit that Russia’s core objectives remain unchanged since 2022:

• Ukraine’s neutrality and exit from Western security structures;
• Demilitarization rendering Ukraine defenseless;
• “De-nazification” – replacement of Ukraine’s leadership with Russian proxies;
• Territorial concessions acknowledging “Russia’s historical rights.”

As the report states: “Russia will never accept Ukraine as an independent sovereign country, capable of taking independent decisions about its own development, alliances and friends.”

Explore further

Why freezing Ukraine’s war would guarantee another Russian invasion

The cycle of deception

Even under the best-case scenario, the analysis warns of “shifting cycles of ‘conventional-hybrid-conventional warfare'” where any peace agreement becomes merely preparation for renewed aggression. Russia would exploit any ceasefire to:

• Reconstitute military forces while Ukraine faces agreement constraints on defense development;
• Launch intensified hybrid warfare campaigns across Europe, with the report noting Russia will “continue with aggressive hybrid attacks in Europe”;
• Exploit Western “war fatigue” and reduced defense spending as partners assume the threat has passed;
• Lock in territorial gains while rebuilding capacity for the next assault.

Why “peace” becomes the greatest threat

The scenarios reveal a counterintuitive strategic reality: negotiated settlements may pose greater long-term risks than continued warfare. A false peace would:

• Freeze current territorial gains, rewarding Russian aggression;
• Allow Russia to rebuild while constraining Ukrainian defense development through agreement terms;
• Create Western complacency leading to reduced military preparedness;
• Leave Ukraine vulnerable to the next, potentially decisive Russian assault.

The report’s classification of even the most favorable agreements as temporary pauses reflects the Ukrainian experts’ sobering assessment. While they assign 2% probability to a scenario “addressing Ukraine’s interests,” the analysis makes clear this would still be temporary. In their view, any diplomatic solution short of Russia’s complete strategic defeat merely postpones—and potentially worsens—the inevitable next phase of aggression.

Explore further

The peace trap: Five ways Putin wins if Ukraine freezes the war

European defense reality check

The GLOBSEC panel revealed stark assessments of Western military readiness. Former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Sir Richard Shirreff declared “America is no longer a reliable ally,” while emphasizing Europe’s need for strategic autonomy: “with a population of four times that of Russia, a GDP combined 12 times that of Russia, plus all the Russian assets sitting here in Europe, absolutely we can do it.”

However, Tsahkna warned that Europe faces a critical timeline problem: “we need to have at least 5-10 years” to build adequate defense capabilities, while noting “only for four years” remain before potential Russian readiness for renewed aggression.

US analyst Heather Conley observed a gradual American disengagement: “the United States is right now in a slow moving away,” noting that “anti-drone capabilities that were destined for Ukraine have now gone to the Middle East” due to other regional demands.

The path forward: critical actions required

The analysis reveals that achieving favorable outcomes requires immediate, concrete actions rather than diplomatic gestures alone. With military factors now driving the situation at a 9:1 ratio over political considerations, Western allies face a narrow window for decisive intervention.

Critical military support requirements:

• Ensure production of 10-12 air defense complexes monthly for Ukraine
• Scale artillery shell production to 40-50 thousand units per month by 2026
• Support development of 120-150 long-range ballistic missiles annually from 2026
• Back production of 300-400 medium and long-range UAVs per month

Strategic defense imperatives: European allies must prepare for potential direct confrontation with Russia by 2027-2030, the timeframe intelligence services identify for possible renewed Russian aggression. This requires reviewing NATO strategic plans for deploying at least 500,000 troops and developing genuine European strategic autonomy.

Economic warfare continuation: Maintaining G7+ sanctions coordination while strengthening measures against Russia’s shadow fleet becomes essential, as economic pressure remains one of the few tools forcing Russian strategic recalculation.

The report’s stark conclusion: half-measures risk the worst-case scenarios of either Ukrainian defeat or broader European conflict. The 75% probability assigned to continued military scenarios versus 25% for peace outcomes underscores that decisive military support now determines whether Europe faces prolonged instability or achieves sustainable security.

Is Russia at war with Europe? For Czech President Petr Pavel, that is a non-question.

At the GLOBSEC security conference, Pavel delivered a stark assessment of the Russian threat, declaring that Russia views its relationship with Western democracies as “continuous conflict” rather than traditional periods of peace and war.

The warning comes as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte prepares allies for a potential agreement on 5% GDP defense spending at the upcoming Hague summit in June, with Pavel confirming that “if the discussion in The Hague leads us to a general agreement that we need to spend up to 5%, Czech Republic is ready to support it.”

Russia is in a “kind of war” with Western democracies

Pavel, a former NATO Military Committee chairman, outlined a fundamental difference in how Russia approaches international relations compared to Western nations.

“We still divide the periods of history into peace, crisis, and war. Russia is not doing that,” Pavel explained during the conference. “They see history as a continuous conflict where only means and intensity change. So for them, they are actually in a kind of war with Western democracies.”

Currently, Pavel noted, Russia employs “mostly cyber and hybrid tools” against the West, “but this may change very quickly because, as I say, they really see it as a continuity.”

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Economic pressure over military force

When pressed on how Europe can compel Russia to negotiate, Pavel emphasized economic tools over military intervention.

“Frankly, I don’t think that Europe alone has the power to push President Putin to the table,” he said. “We need other countries, and especially the United States, on board at the same frequency.”

Pavel argued that Russia’s economic vulnerabilities present the best leverage: “The only way how to convince President Putin that the time has come to sit at the table is really to push him to the brink of economic collapse. It’s not about bringing Russia down. It’s simply bringing them to the table to negotiate the future.”

NATO’s 5% spending push gains momentum

The GLOBSEC appearance coincides with accelerating discussions within NATO about dramatically increasing defense spending, with Rutte proposing 3.5% for core military expenditures and 1.5% for broader security investments including infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Pavel warned that a seven-year timeline to reach these targets may not provide adequate preparation time given Russia’s ambitions.

“Russia has an ambition to reconstitute the Soviet Union as a global power,” he stated. “It would be very naive to believe that President Putin will not be tempted to use the power he has – the power of war economy – to at least try to test NATO unity and resolve.”

Czech Republic’s role

Pavel highlighted Czechia’s position as already exceeding the current 2% NATO spending target and committed to reaching 3% in coming years. The country has also led international efforts to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine.

Pavel directed pointed remarks toward neighboring countries: “When it comes to the Czech Republic, the Russian assessment is that we are a hostile country, we are an enemy, and we are a traitor. So why should we consider Russia as a neutral country to us?”

He added: “I hope this was heard loud and clear also in other neighboring countries – in Bratislava or Budapest as well.”

After Ukraine’s stunning Operation Spiderweb damaged over 40 Russian strategic bombers on 1 June, President Trump took a 75-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin. Putin warned he would “have to respond,” Trump reported. Days later, as Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian apartments and cafes, Trump offered his analysis: the war was like “two young children fighting like crazy” in a park, and “sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while.”

The Kremlin loved it. Western media ran with “retaliation” headlines. But to mindlessly adopt the vocabulary of the aggressor is to excuse the crimes. At best, it’s lazy. At worst, it’s complicity by another name.

How Western media adopts Putin’s narrative

This latest episode perfectly captures a dangerous pattern that has defined Western coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Failing to grasp Russia’s criminal war for what it is — whether out of ignorance, indifference, or false hope of normalizing relations — telegraphs to Moscow not only America’s weakness, but its moral ambivalence, if not overt permission.

Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb was a singular event, while Russian suicide drones, guided aerial bombs, and ballistic missiles have hit Ukrainian cities with such regularity that they no longer make headlines — just body counts.

Why Russia cannot be a victim of its own war

A rapist is not the victim of rape. A rapist is the perpetrator.

Russia is not — and cannot, by definition — be the victim of its own unprovoked war of aggression. It is the perpetrator. Apply even a shred of logic, and the distinction becomes obvious: Ukraine can retaliate. Russia cannot. Retaliation is a right reserved for the attacked — not the attacker.

While editorial errors were too many to count, the prize for the most cruel headline goes to The Washington Post, which recently described defensive strikes as “Ukraine’s dirty war.” As if targeting military assets inside an aggressor state were somehow morally equivalent to Russia’s daily slaughter of civilians.

The article itself was well-written and nuanced — alluding to the actual dirty war Russia has been waging against the West, from polonium poisonings in the UK to deployment of mercenaries to destabilize Africa — which makes the choice of headline all the more baffling. A free gift to Kremlin propagandists.

Let us, once and for all, state the obvious: there is no “conflict” in Ukraine. This is a war of conquest — deliberate, sustained, and criminal under the very rules established after World War II.

Moscow’s war is not a tragic misunderstanding or a geopolitical chess match between great powers with Ukraine as a mere pawn.

Russia has been killing Ukrainians for the crime of being Ukrainian since 2014 — predictably, methodically, relentlessly. Ukraine is fighting because the alternative is not peace, but annihilation.

How Russia’s information warfare succeeds in the West

Moscow doesn’t separate kinetic warfare from the so-called “active measures” – disinformation, corruption, infiltration, sabotage, or covert operations — they’re all components of the Gerasimov Doctrine.

But the real scandal is not that Moscow deploys these tools — it’s that the West keeps falling for them.

Worse, we amplify them. Our commentators give airtime to lies. Our most respected outlets parrot enemy framing, wittingly or not. And all the while, a gang of war criminals in the Kremlin smiles, watching as we dignify their deceit with click-bait headlines and poison our own public discourse.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov eagerly seized on Trump’s playground analogy, calling the war “existential” for Russia.

In truth, it is existential only for Ukraine. For Russia, it is optional — a war of choice that could end tomorrow if Moscow stopped waging it. Each day it chooses otherwise, Russian war crimes compound. But when the White House implies both sides are comparably at fault, it reinforces the Kremlin’s central lie.

Ending the war is not in Ukraine’s hands. Peace will come when the revanchist zombie empire stops trying to re-colonize its neighbours.

America’s mixed signals embolden Putin

While Ukraine pleads for help, the United States, reportedly, diverted 20,000 anti-drone missiles — badly needed to defend civilian areas — away from Ukraine to other deployments. What Washington calls “balance,” Moscow reads as tacit acquiescence.

Under international law, Ukraine has the legal right to self-defense against Russia’s illegal war of aggression — a right explicitly affirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Russian attacks — whether by Iranian-sourced Shahed drones, North Korean artillery shells, or any other means — are not responses. They are the methodical continuation of a war it chose.

To call them retaliation is to legitimize the death and destruction Moscow unleashed.

The stakes: Putin’s victory means global tyranny

Russia’s own former Foreign Minister (1990-1996), Andrei V. Kozyrev, explained in a tweet: if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, Putin’s dollar-hungry mafia state will solidify into a victorious militarist tyranny driven by hateful anti-Western ideology. Today’s warmongering and hollow nuclear threats against the West will then become real.

Since Moscow first invaded a sovereign neighbor — Georgia, in 2008 — the so-called Free World has excelled at self-deterrence, moved on to self-sabotage, and now flirts with self-extinction.

We can do better. But if we don’t, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Andrew Chakhoyan

Andrew Chakhoyan is an Academic Director at the University of Amsterdam and a former U.S. government official at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. A Ukrainian-American, he studied at Harvard Kennedy School and Donetsk State Technical University.

Editor’s note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press’ editorial team may or may not share them.

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“We fucked up.” It’s not often you hear a democracy activist open with those words, but Nino Robakidze, a veteran democracy activist with over 15 years fighting for Georgian freedom, isn’t interested in pretty narratives.

Speaking at the “FuckUp Night” panel at the Lviv Media Forum 2025, Robakidze laid bare how Georgian civil society enabled the fastest documented democratic collapse in modern European history.

The timeline is breathtaking: December 2023, Georgia receives EU candidate status. Eighteen months later, dozens of political prisoners, including four high-profile politicians, fill Georgian jails, independent media faces criminal prosecution, and the government has abandoned European integration entirely. Over 200 public servants were fired simply for posting pro-European statements on Facebook.

“Georgian civil society is in a perfect storm,” she says. “We saw the red flags. We really saw the red flags. But it was so uncomfortable to really talk about that.”

From EU dreams to Russian nightmare in record time

Twenty-one years after the Rose Revolution promised Georgia a European future, the country has achieved something unprecedented: the fastest documented slide from EU candidate to authoritarian crackdown in European history.

The timeline is breathtaking.

• December 2023: EU grants Georgia candidate status.
• May 2024: Government passes Russian-style “foreign agent” law.
• October 2024: Elections marked by widespread fraud.
• November 2024: Government suspends EU talks.
• January 2025: First female journalist political prisoner.

The halt to EU accession talks were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Polls show 80% of Georgians want EU membership—one of the highest rates in any candidate country.

What followed was six months of non-stop protests across Georgia—unprecedented in the country’s history. Police have violently dispersed demonstrators using water cannons and tear gas against crowds singing the EU anthem.

Hundreds have been arrested, including Mzia Amaglobeli, co-founder of independent outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, who faces up to seven years in prison for symbolically slapping a police chief after he allegedly spat in her face and verbally abused her. She became Georgia’s first female journalist to be designated a political prisoner.

But Robakidze, former Country Director for IREX Georgia, isn’t just analyzing the crisis—she’s dissecting how democracy defenders like herself enabled it through a fatal dependency that made Georgian freedom hostage to foreign funding.

For two decades, the US government poured millions into Georgian civil society—building the independent media, NGOs, and democracy programs that became the envy of the former Soviet space. That investment created something genuinely remarkable: a vibrant civil society that helped Georgia become a beacon of democratic progress in the region.

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The fatal dependency: how Western money created the weapon to destroy democracy

For two decades, Georgian civil society lived on life support: US government funding. Independent media, NGOs, democracy programs—all relied heavily on American largesse because local businesses feared government retaliation for supporting critical outlets.

“This was mainly the US government funding because there was not enough advertising money in independent media,” Robakidze explains. Vulnerable to state pressure, “big business did not want to work with media outlets like this because they were investigating government corruption.”

But the irony runs deeper—and darker. Western funding didn’t just create the vulnerability; it actively trained the oppressors.

Georgian Dream created Western-funded strategic communication units across government ministries. “And then this communication in the crisis, when the crisis was approaching, was used against those who were actually protecting Western values—civil society, media, free media, etc.”

The absurdity was complete: civil society trained its own oppressors. “We were inviting representatives of this group to different trainings, on strategic communication, on public opinion research, and they learned the lesson really well. Maybe they were the best in their class, actually.”

The students became the masters, using Western-funded skills to dismantle Western values.

Playing fair while opponents cheated

Civil society’s commitment to democratic norms became another vulnerability. While democracy defenders insisted on fact-checking, verification, and due process, their opponents weaponized speed and fabrication.

During Georgia’s October 2024 elections, civil society deployed 3,000 trained observers who knew by 11 AM they were witnessing “the worst election in Georgian democratic history.” But while they spent the day meticulously fact-checking evidence of fraud, Georgian Dream simply declared victory at 8 PM.

“We struggled to communicate this on time because we were checking each and every case, double-checking it,” Robakidze recalls. “But we lost the battle of the very important, crucial minute.”

Civil society eventually proved the elections were fraudulent—no international observer recognized the results as legitimate. But Georgian Dream had already won by ignoring the verification process that constrained their opponents.

“We collected all this evidence… But we lost the battle of the very important, crucial minute,” Robakidze reflects. It revealed a global pattern: authoritarian forces exploit democracy’s commitment to due process, turning democratic values into democratic vulnerabilities.

The statistical proof

Stolen election: how the Georgian Dream helped itself to 15% of all votes cast

Media massacre: systematic destruction of independent voices

The government’s media strategy went beyond funding manipulation—it became systematic annihilation. In April 2025, the Georgian Public Broadcaster fired two prominent journalists—Nino Zautashvili and Vasil Ivanov-Chikovani—after they openly criticized the channel’s editorial policy. Ivanov-Chikovani had stated live on air that the broadcaster’s editorial policy “fails to meet the public’s demands.”

The broadcaster’s supervisory board, headed by Vasil Maghlaperidze—a former deputy chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party—called for prosecutors to investigate journalists who criticized the channel’s coverage. The message was clear: dissent will be criminalized.

Since May 2024, more than 30 journalists covering the “foreign agent” bill have been targeted with anonymous threatening phone calls. Unknown individuals plastered posters on journalists’ homes and offices, denouncing them as “foreign agents” with messages like “There is no place in Georgia for agents.”

The new Foreign Agents Registration Act grants the state authority to criminally prosecute media outlets, NGOs, and individuals for failing to register as a “foreign agent,” with penalties of up to five years in prison. As one media executive warned: “We will work as volunteers as long as we can… But I cannot take any money from any donor past May 30, because I don’t want to go to jail.”

More than 70 journalists have been injured while covering protests, with some hospitalized. The systematic nature is unmistakable: this isn’t random violence but coordinated destruction of independent media.

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The confession: “I was not fierce enough”

For Robakidze, the crisis forced brutal self-examination. Could civil society have prevented this catastrophe?

“I always ask myself: did I do everything I could to convince my colleagues and those with whom I worked closely that what is happening is dangerous, and this might lead in a very wrong direction?”

Her answer haunts her: “I think that no, I did not.”

She was part of the problem—attending conferences, sitting at tables with government representatives, participating in dialogues even as the warning signs mounted. “Maybe I was not fierce enough, and maybe the urgent situation that we have now would not have been needed if we started being really fierce and dramatic on the very first cases.”

The first red flag came just months after the peaceful 2012 transition, when Georgian Dream defeated Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement in parliamentary elections. The victory was celebrated as a triumph of Georgian democracy—the first peaceful transfer of power in the post-Soviet space.

But the honeymoon was brief. On 17 May 2013—International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia—a small solidarity gathering of maybe 50 people, mostly journalists and human rights defenders, planned to remember LGBTQI+ victims in Tbilisi’s city center.

Instead, they were attacked by a massive, organized mob, with things getting so out of hand that the 50 protesters needed to be bussed out.

For Robakidze, this wasn’t random violence—it was a test. “At that moment Georgia government had a really brilliant police structure. There was no way, no chance, if the state wanted to protect these people, that things could get so ugly and so violent.”

The attack was “visible that it was organized… And those people were having the blessing or green light from the government and Ministry of Interior.”

The red flag was a warning of things to come: 12 years later, the Georgian police disperses hundred-thousand-strong protests; the state’s repressive apparatus has been fully unleashed on the people.

More red flags followed. In 2016, Azerbaijani investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was kidnapped from Tbilisi’s Freedom Square and appeared in an Azerbaijani prison. No footage existed. “We knew that there was no possibility without state interference for such things to happen.”

But civil society and international partners found it easier to focus on Georgia’s successes than confront uncomfortable realities—so they were ignored.

The lesson crystallized too late: “There is no small compromise with non-freedom. If you compromise that small thing, you definitely need to compromise the bigger thing tomorrow.”

Why Georgia will still win: the freedom advantage

Despite the catastrophic failures, Robakidze remains optimistic about Georgia’s ultimate victory. Her reasoning cuts to the heart of what separates Georgia from Russia and Belarus—and why this matters for democracies worldwide.

“Georgia was a democracy for 30 years. And we enjoyed the freedom of speech, freedom of arts, freedom of movement, everything,” she says. “We tasted freedom.”

Even under Soviet rule, Georgia maintained psychological independence. “Even during the Soviet Union, Georgia was still having that sense of freedom alive because of the language we were using, which was never Russian.”

This creates a fundamental difference from Georgia’s neighbors: “We are genuinely not part of the Russian thinking world.” The government’s target audience—those susceptible to pro-Russian messaging—consists mainly of “mostly older men in regions who had only good things happening in their early years” and “have the sentiments of the Soviet Union.”

But the crucial difference is ideological. Georgian Dream lacks what Putin possesses: an ideology, which makes long-term authoritarian consolidation questionable.

The government is “on their lowest level. Lowest approval ratings in their 12-year history.”

From dependency to independence: The silver lining

The loss of US funding, while painful, may have been necessary medicine. For the first time, Georgian civil society is learning to survive independently.

“Now, first time I see that really viable… society will support independent media and society will support civil society actions,” Robakidze observes. “Whatever happens right now is completely 100% financed by ordinary citizens who are just crowdfunding.”

This grassroots renaissance extends beyond civil society. “We also see for the first time big business also understanding the responsibility that if things go wrong in this part, we can die with them as well.”

The protests themselves represent this new independence. You cannot find “the industry or the sphere where the most prominent people are not part of the protest in Georgia.” All major theaters, singers, and composers have joined the streets. “These are theaters that young people are going to, and you cannot find a ticket for months if you want to attend a theater.”

Even government employees are risking everything. More than 200 public servants were fired simply for posting pro-European statements on Facebook—a purge that backfired by revealing the government’s desperation and creating martyrs.

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Global warning: your democracy is next

Georgia’s crisis reflects a global phenomenon that Robakidze calls the “spirit of non-freedom spreading.” The mechanics are eerily familiar across continents.

“A lot of people in the world were living many years thinking that freedom is granted and guaranteed, taking freedom for granted,” she explains. “In Europe, in the US, in the West in general, they had this problem maybe even deeper than the Georgian society has.”

Western societies “allowed in their societies this darkness to spread without reacting to it when it’s needed.”

The warning signs are identical:

• Small compromises that seem manageable
• External funding creating dependency vulnerabilities
• Strategic communication training weaponized against democracy
• Media capture through economic pressure
• Civil society taking freedom for granted.

“Right now weather is the worst for beginner democracies,” she warns. But the crisis is a “wake-up call for not just for us, for societies who want to be democratic and consolidated democracies one day, but for everyone.”

The clock is ticking

As Georgia’s protests continue into their seventh month, the timeline offers a stark warning: democratic collapse can happen faster than anyone imagines. Eighteen months from EU candidate to authoritarian crackdown.

“There is never a bad time to think about your mistakes, and we can never be uncomfortable discussing the elephant in the room, because this elephant will never go anywhere,” Robakidze reflects. “And the only problem that this discussion creates is this uncomfortable feeling, which I think is very important—better experienced earlier than later.”

The uncomfortable truth: external funding made Georgian democracy vulnerable by creating dependency rather than genuine grassroots strength. But losing that crutch may have forced the authentic resistance needed to survive.

Georgia faces its ultimate test—not just of its democratic institutions, but of whether a society that truly tasted freedom can recognize and defeat authoritarianism when it matters most. The answer will determine not just Georgia’s fate, but offer crucial lessons for every democracy grappling with its own “spirit of non-freedom.”

For Robakidze, the fight continues: “We will not let Georgia slide back under Russia’s influence.” The question is whether the world’s other democracies will learn from Georgia’s mistakes before their own 18-month countdown begins.

Ukrainian analyst Dmytro Zolotukhin recently posed a haunting question: Ukraine has been striving to be a democracy ever since it regained independence, but aren’t Ukrainians, by chance, playing in the team of losers now?

“Absolutely not,” rebutted Timothy Garton Ash at the 2025 Lviv Media Forum, the British historian and Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, whose latest book, “Homelands: A Personal History of Europe,” chronicles the continent’s transformation over half a century and won the 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize.

“You’re on the winning team. It just may take a bit of time for the victory to come.”

Ash, Europe’s self-described “historian of the present” who has spent decades “breathing Europe,” believes democracy is experiencing growing pains, not death throes.

In fact, he argues that Putin’s war against Ukraine proves democracy’s enduring power.

Ash believes that one of the reasons for Russia’s ongoing invasion was the 2004 Orange Revolution, in which Ukrainians rebelled against the electoral fraud that gave a pro-Russian president victory instead of a Western-leaning candidate: “Putin thought that democracy was coming towards him, in addition to his motives of restoring the Russian Empire.”

The strength of democracy, Ash contends, is evidenced by its unprecedented expansion: “According to Freedom House, in early 1974, there were only 35 free countries in the world. By early 2004, 89.”

What we’re witnessing now, he suggests, is not democracy’s failure but a natural “anti-liberal, anti-democratic counter-revolution” in response to this historic spread, despite all of liberal democracy’s faults. The autocracies and hybrid regimes are simply not delivering—hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Hungary, Serbia, and Hungary are proof of that, Ash believes.

But the data tells a different story

Reality, however, presents a more sobering picture: democracy is hemorrhaging support worldwide at an unprecedented pace.

Only 6.6% of the world’s population live in states defined as full democracies, while 72% live in autocracies—a historic reversal that has seen the global Democracy Index score fall from 5.52 in 2006 to an unprecedented low of 5.17 in 2024.

Even the Western democracies Ukraine aspires to join are backsliding. France’s score fell below the threshold to qualify as a “full democracy” and was downgraded to a “flawed democracy” in 2024.

The United States continues to be classified as a “flawed democracy,” ranked 28th globally. Hungary has recorded the biggest decline ever measured, plummeting to become a “transitional” or “hybrid regime.” When weighted by population, the level of democracy in Europe has fallen back forty years, to where it was in 1978.

Between 2020 and 2024, in one in five elections worldwide, losing candidates publicly rejected the outcome.

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Democracy’s three critical ailments

Despite this grim landscape, Timothy Garton Ash maintains his diagnosis offers hope. The historian identifies three fundamental weaknesses that have made democracies vulnerable to authoritarian assault:

1. Democracy degrading into oligarchy

“The great achievement of modern liberal democracy was to separate wealth and power,” Ash explained. “Most of human history, wealth and power have gone together. In oligarchy, they come back together.”

Ukraine knows this threat intimately from its own struggle with oligarchs. But even in established democracies, the lines are blurring dangerously. “Now, even in the United States, we see, with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and all the tech bros, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and others, lining up to support him, democracy degrading into oligarchy.”

2. Liberalism creating its own resistance

The second ailment emerges from democracy’s own successes. “What was associated with liberalism over the last 40 years, in particular neoliberalism, globalized, financialized capitalism, but to some extent also identity politics, left a huge part of our societies, in countries like Britain or America, feeling both economically and culturally neglected.”

Into this vacuum step the populists, who revolt against the “liberal cosmopolitan elites” and the big cities.

“They say, we hear you. We’re on your side. And they counterpose democracy to liberalism.” They claim to speak for “the people”—but as Ash notes, “it’s not the whole people. It’s only one part of the people.”

Trump himself once distinguished between “the people, and then there are the other people. And the other people are the bloody foreigners, quote, unquote. The immigrants, the outsiders, the others.”

3. Fragmentation of the public sphere

Democracy depends on shared reality, Ash argues, invoking ancient Athens: “All the citizens meet on the Pnyx. They hear all the facts. They can debate freely all the different policy options. And then together they decide to fight the invading Persians on sea rather than on land, which is how they win the Battle of Salamis.”

Today’s digital revolution has shattered this foundation.

“What’s happened over the years over the last 40 years is because of the digital revolution in media, we have the phenomenon of both monopoly, Facebook, Google, and fragmentation, so that we are losing the kind of public sphere, the kind of information environment you need for democracy to flourish.”

Ash’s seven-point prescription to save democracy

Ash’s remedy is both pragmatic and urgent:

1. “Tough on populism, tough on the causes of populism.” Address the genuine economic and cultural neglect that feeds populist resentment rather than dismissing it.

2. Strengthen all pluralist, anti-majoritarian institutions.”The independence of the courts, the civil service, auditors, obviously the different houses of parliament, and so on and so forth. These are the things that are coming under attack now, for example, in Trump’s America, and have been eroded in countries like Hungary.”

3. Learn from success. “Poland, two years ago, was very close to going down the Hungarian path, to state capture, to the demolition step-by-step of liberal democracy, and they came back. How? By winning an election that was not wholly free and fair. More people turned out to vote than ever before. More young people than old. More women than men voted in that election.”

4. Rebuild the media environment. “If you have public service media worthy of the name, hang on to them for dear life, strengthen their editorial independence, and quadruple the budget.” Ash credits the BBC with helping Britain avoid America’s fate: “You in Ukraine have Suspilne. Hang on to it for dear life. Strengthen its editorial independence. Quadruple the budget.”

5. Keep looking for what people have in common. “You’re going to have this problem in Ukraine in the next few years when the hot phase of the war is over… there’s a big danger of all the tensions and divisions in Ukrainian society coming to the surface. So keep looking for the things that keep people together.”

6. Don’t try to out-populist the populists. “It never works. We know that. If you adopt the rhetoric of the populists, if you do the dog whistle to the populists, voters will say, why should I vote for the dog whistle when I can have the real dog? It only strengthens the Marine Le Pens and the AFDs and the Nigel Farages.”

7. Don’t collaborate, even in very small ways. Drawing on Václav Havel’s wisdom: “Every dictatorship, every authoritarian regime isn’t just built on force. It’s built on these thousands and millions of tiny individual acts of collaboration. So don’t collaborate, even in the smallest way.”

The Ukrainian test case: when optimism meets reality

Ash’s confidence in democracy’s resilience faces its ultimate test in Ukraine. While he speaks of democracy’s long-term victory, Ukrainian survival depends on short-term Western commitment—commitment that’s eroding as anti-democratic populists gain power across the democratic world.

The very democratic backsliding Ash diagnoses is producing leaders hostile to Ukrainian aid. In Poland, despite historical solidarity, anti-Ukrainian sentiment is rising among voters frustrated with economic pressures, culminating in the victory of Karol Nawrocki, who has questioned Ukraine’s EU and NATO aspirations.

Slovakia’s Robert Fico has explicitly cut aid and adopted a Russia-friendly stance.

Romania’s Călin Georgescu, a pro-Putin candidate who praised Russian values and opposed NATO support for Ukraine, won the first round of presidential elections before the vote was annulled due to Russian interference. His political ally George Simion then ran in the 2025 rerun and lost by just 7% in May 2025—meaning pro-Putin forces came within single digits of controlling a NATO country bordering Ukraine.

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In the United States, Donald Trump promises “peace deals” that would reward Russian aggression by forcing Ukraine to cede territory.

Ukrainian soldiers die defending democratic ideals while voters in those same democracies choose leaders who would abandon Ukraine to Putin’s sphere of influence—exactly what happened to Georgia after its 2008 war with Russia.

The brutal mathematics are stark. Ukraine’s European integration depends on sustained Western support, but the rise of anti-democratic populists—fueled by the very ailments Ash identifies—is putting that support in jeopardy. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has already blocked EU aid packages. The Trump administration is raising suspicions of directly serving Putin’s interests. The recent Polish election of Nawrocki is sure to send shockwaves regarding supporting Ukraine through Europe.

If Ash is wrong about democracy’s resilience, if the current crisis represents not growing pains but terminal decline, Ukraine faces a choice starker than any since independence: submit to Russian domination or stand alone against an empire. No less than centuries of Ukraine’s national liberation struggle hang in the balance.

The historian’s gamble

Ash’s seven-point plan may be academically sound, and his historical perspective offers valuable long-term hope. But for Ukraine, the timeline of democratic recovery matters as much as its ultimate success. His prescription assumes democracies have the luxury of time to heal themselves—time Ukraine may not have as Western support wavers and Russian pressure intensifies.

The historian’s optimism about democracy’s eventual triumph rings hollow when Ukraine’s immediate survival depends on democracies that are currently failing his own diagnostic tests. While Ash speaks confidently about democracy being “on the winning team,” Ukrainian leaders must plan for the possibility that the team might forfeit the game before victory arrives.

For Ukraine, Timothy Garton Ash’s confidence isn’t just an academic question—it’s an existential gamble. If he’s right, Ukraine’s democratic aspirations will eventually be vindicated. If he’s wrong, they may not survive to see it.

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