At the conclusion of the 26th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek on September 1, 2026, leaders adopted the Bishkek Declaration alongside 28 major outcome documents focusing on regional security, multipolar governance, and economic cooperation. The complete official text of the Bishkek Declaration at the time of my writing, had not yet been fully transcribed or translated in its entirety by official English-language outlets following its signing. However, key excerpts and provisions addressing global governance, unilateral sanctions, and economic cooperation are documented across member state portals and regional reports.

Leaders signed a joint statement criticizing Western economic sanctions against member states and (without mentioning the US or Israel) condemning military actions against Iran, labeling them violations of international law. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized building a more equitable global governance system to reduce Western, unilateral economic and political influence. The summit approved programs to create an SCO Green Technology Corridor (2026–2030), adopted memorandums on artificial intelligence cooperation, and established new anti-drug and counter-terrorism centers.

The joint declaration was signed by the heads of all member countries, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the leaders of Pakistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan at the close of the 26th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State.

The SCO meeting will be followed in two weeks’ time (September 11-13) by the 18th summit meeting of the BRICS.

India stood with the SCO bloc on paper against US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s sweeping “Operation Economic Outcast” secondary sanctions campaign in a collective display of unity against Washington’s economic coercion and the extensive economic penalties and upcoming banking secondary sanctions threatened by Bessent.

By participating alongside Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, India supported the SCO’s goal to limit US dominance over global trade and the dollar-based financial system.

However, India’s underlying diplomatic and economic motivations diverge from those of Beijing and Moscow. India engages in perpetual attempts to hedge against the inevitability of multipolarity and the sinking of US hegemony, seeking to balance SCO ties while maintaining vital, strategic partnerships with the US and Europe.

Broadly aligned against Western pressure on the Ukraine and Middle East fronts, Indian Prime Minister Modi has also advised President Putin that “the war in Ukraine must end” and reiterated support for peace efforts (although peace proposals from the US, or Europe, or Ukraine itself, invariably turn out to be totally unrealistic demands for a ceasefire along current front lines to be followed by NATO “peace-keeper” (i.e. warmongering) feet on the ground in Ukraine).

China actively circumvents US measures via “dark fleets” and private “teapot” refineries. India opposes unilateral sanctions on principle but aggressively protects its own banking and tech sectors from triggering catastrophic US secondary tariffs or dollar exclusions - which is all very well, except that India absolutely must continue to consumer Russian oil in the absence of a flow of Iranian oil through the closed Strait of Hormuz. Ultimately, India’s presence at Bishkek allows it to prevent Russia and China from completely dominating Central Asian geopolitics. India will sign collective SCO statements denouncing Scott Bessent’s economic offensive to maintain regional ties, but New Delhi will continuously make a show of adapting (in a sometimes misleading way) its trade to avoid crossing Washington’s red lines while continuing to be a major consumer of Russian oil.

Perhaps even more significant than all that is Xi’s statement today that China is going to increase its coordination with Russia over Ukraine. This, more than anything, tells the world that it must prepare for Russian victory against NATO.

Houthi Blockade

The Houthi naval blockade against Saudi-linked shipping in the Red Sea remains active and tense following continuous missile and drone attacks on regional oil tankers. On July 20, 2026, Yemen’s Houthi movement declared an official naval blockade targeting Saudi Arabian ports and ships in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Houthis struck the Saudi-flagged crude oil tanker Amzan with a ballistic missile roughly 63 nautical miles west of Yanbu. The group claims to have targeted multiple Saudi-linked vessels and forced numerous other commercial ships to turn back or reroute.

At the end of July, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of regional and international partners formed a Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance to safeguard commercial navigation and energy transit lines. The Saudi-led coalition has responded with airstrikes on Houthi-controlled military positions and infrastructure along the Yemeni coast, while internal frontlines on land remain largely static.

The Houthis are still launching attacks on ships in the Red Sea and surrounding waters. The group has carried out recent ballistic missile and drone attacks targeting commercial and military vessels, including a deadly double-tap strike on a cargo vessel near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait that killed multiple crew members and rescuers. While initial campaigns focused heavily on vessels linked to the Israel-Gaza conflict, recent operations have expanded to target Saudi-linked shipping and military assets following declared maritime blockades. The ongoing threat keeps major shipping lanes disrupted, with many commercial carriers continuing to avoid the region by routing vessels around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

US Losing Ukraine

Zelenskiy is complaining that Europe is on vacation and not helping Ukraine and finds this very “unpleasant.”

Massive Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine continue on an almost continuous basis, far outweighing the impact of Ukrainian attacks on Russia. In addition to strikes on Kiev and Odessa, and to strikes on numerous other Ukrainian cities, Putin has ordered massive strikes on Ukrainian energy systems whose consequences will include the complete shutdown of port facilities and the unlivability of parts of Ukraine in advance of winter. Western embassies are advising their citizens in Kiev to leave. Russia had advised the embassies as long ago as May to remove their embassy staffs from the city.

Ukraine has used many flamingo missiles supposedly of its own construction, but Russia claims to have shot down 90 of these over August, of which as many as 17 were shot down on August 15. Russian strikes on Kiev last night included the targeting of Fire Point production facilities where the flamingoes are constructed. Russia appears to have shot down the majority of the 500 ATACMS missiles estimated to have been supplied to it by the US since late 2023. Additional procurement and transfer approvals - such as a mid-2026 arrangement involving 70 M39 ATACMS missiles backed via international defense channels are believe to have continued to supplement the inventory.

Russia’s principal weapon in the air war, as indicated in a recent post, is the Geran 4 and its successor the Geran 5, in addition to Iskander, Zircon and Kalibr ballistic and hypersonic missiles. These will soon be supplemented by the comparatively cheap ballistic Dan T missile. The Dan-T is a new Russian hybrid weapon that combines a jet-powered kamikaze drone with a simplified cruise missile. It has a range of up to 500 kilometers (about 310 miles) and can carry 135 kilograms (about 300 pounds) of explosives. It can be fired from ground launchers, fighter jets, or helicopters. It is built to hit light infrastructure, armored vehicles, and fortified positions. Russia plans to build about 10,000 Dan-T missiles in 2027. The design is built to be cheaper and easier to mass-produce than traditional cruise missiles. The large volume is meant to drain and overwhelm air defense systems.

In August, Russia launched over 2,800 “loitering” or “Green” drones over Ukraine. A loitering drone - more formally called a loitering munition - is an armed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to hover or circle over a target area until an enemy or objective is spotted, and then crash into it to detonate. The European Commission’s foreign minister Kaja Kallas has helpfully ruminated over the possibility of gifting Ukraine with Europe’s remaining interceptor missiles, those approaching their expiry dates.

In Zapporizhzhia oblast Russian forces have reportedly penetrated deep into Russian territory to take the villages of Cervonaya Krenitsa (located well to the west of what had previously been reported as Russia’s further advance, and fairly close to Orikhiv, and, near Dnipro, Novopavlivka, which is located close to the western boundary of Orikhiv. Orikhiv is being described by some sources as having been surrounded by Russian troops and its supply roads having been cut off. Its fall will very likely to be quickly followed by an escalation of Russia’s offensive on the city of Zapporizhzhia itself.

Russian forces continue to advance on the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk conurbation and, in the northeast of Kharkiv are executing maneuvers whose end result will be the integration of a large swathe of Kharkiv into Russian-controlled territory.

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Officials stated the launchers were preparing to deploy fresh sea mines into the critical shipping lane. This action broke a month-long lull in direct fighting between the two nations. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responded by launching ballistic missiles at US-backed air bases (King Hussein and Al-Azraq) in Jordan. Jordan reported that its air defenses intercepted the incoming missiles.

The United Arab Emirates reported intercepting an Iranian drone over its territorial waters, condemning the move as a dangerous regional escalation.

Commercial vessel transit through the strait remains far below pre-conflict levels. Major shipping companies and war-risk insurers continue to exercise extreme caution, despite recent dubious US military declarations that the main shipping lanes have been cleared of underwater mines

Alastair Crooke (currently in Siberia), interviewed this morning by Judge Napolitano, opines that Trump still hopes for Iran’s capitulation over Bessent’s widely-derided “D-Day” economic war on Iran. Washington had been shocked by Iran’s firing earlier today on a vessel that was trying to leave the area without authorization but under American air protection. In retaliation the US attacked the two launchers that had fired on the vessel from Larak Island. A number of IRGC soldiers and civilians were killed in that attack. Iran reacted with massive ballistic missile attacks from all parts of Iran against targets in the Gulf. They destroyed aircraft two US air bases in Jordan, they fired at Al Udaid, the main US CENTCOM base in Qatar and at other targets.

US naval vessels are still over 400 kms away from Hormuz, and US weapons stockpiles are low across many categories, whereas for Iran it is very easy to escalate. It makes little sense for the US to go down the road of escalation, says Crooke, especially given that bond markets yields are rising putting extreme pressure on US debt and its capacity for further borrowing.

Trump may be trying to manipulate the oil and bond markets again (price of Brent crude is hovering at a manageable $90 per barrel), just as he is when he claims that the US now has all of Venezuela’s very heavy crude (most of which, without a great deal of treatment, is fit for nothing much more than building roads) or even when he sends a plane to Moscow (could the CIA director’s visit last week be just an attempt at market manipulation?).

As for Bessent’s D-Day, China is clearly not going to cooperate and is not going to take part in a war on Iran; Russia has likewise refused to play Washington’s game; even Pakistan has said it will not join in a sanctions war. India is shrugging too.

In China, it is illegal to obey Washington sanctions. As for impacts, Iran has actually sold more oil this year than it would have done under normal conditions, and there has been a 15% increase in agricultural production. Iran is of vital support for the Chinese Belt and Road initiative.

Chinese payments for Iranian oil go into accounts of financial institutions that have no connection with the dollar system, and the transactions take place on China’s equivalent to the SWIFT system - CHIPS - and if they are expended they are expended outside the dollar system. The system is doing a trillion and a half dollars’ worth of trade transfers each day. New systems make it possible to deal in Hong Kong and allow users to take profits in physical gold.

We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the sanctioning system. Gulf states probably will not go along with Bessent because they know there will be costs to pay. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have had budget cuts of 30% and revenues have fallen drastically.

As for Russia-Ukraine, Crooke considers that the Ukrainian economy is coming to an end. Accordingt to Zel’s chief of staff, Budanov, 90% of its logistics has been destroyed. Ukraine can no longer sell its grain: Russia is destroying grain trucks as well as vessels. Zelenskiy’s attacks on WildBerries represented another gigantic mistake because of the retaliation from Russia that it invited with now almost continuous attacks, night and day, on all manner of Ukrainian assets. And there is little left on the shop shelves either in east or west Ukraine as the authorities try to move produce from west to east.

Increasingly, it looks like Ukraine is in deadly trouble. Indicators that Russia is gaining ground or wearing down its opponents include the slow territorial advances in the eastern Donbas region that we have been monitoring for the past four and a half years.

These have now reached the point where Russia is poised to surround and attack the last major Ukrainian stronghold in the Donbass, which is the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk-Druzhkivka conurbation. Russian soldiers are in the process of taking Dobrepillia to the south of Druzhkivka and Russian soldiers have been reportedly seen in Druzhkivka itself.

As Russia makes a reality of what once seemed a Putin fantasy of a 20-km buffer zone in the north, it seems also poised to take the northern cities of Chernihiv and Sumy and to use these as bases for further forward momentum on a Kiev city that every night now suffers severe Russian bombardment by drone and by missiles.

In addition, Russian advances on Orikhiv in Zapporizhzhia are emboldening Russian artillery strikes on the west of Zapporizhzhia itself. The city of Kharkiv is virtually surrounded; the city and ports of Odessa are virtually detached from the rest of Ukraine; Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline no longer serves, and its grain trade has been mortally decimated. Russia is increasingly focused on severing supply lines on or close to Ukrainian borders with Romania, Moldova and Poland.

Augmented Geran 4 drones stand ready to bring the war to Western Ukraine in ways that it has not so far achieved and which will likely surpass in Ukraine’s war of drones against Russian refineries and ecommerce warehouses and the like (an extension of the conflict to which Russia has now more than roundly responded) The Geran-4 is a Russian jet-powered kamikaze drone built to fly faster and cover longer distances than older propeller-driven models. It reaches up to 500 kilometers per hour (km/h); its range is documented up to 960 kilometers, putting most of Ukraine within reach. It measures 3.5 meters long with a 3-meter wingspan and weighs about 450 kg at takeoff. It carries a warhead weighing between 50 kg and 90 kg and uses a Chinese-made turbojet engine. The high speed of the Geran-4 is widely believed to be much harder for ground units and air defenses to intercept compared to slower legacy drones. Sustained missile and drone strikes have heavily damaged Ukraine’s power generation capacity, causing widespread blackouts and straining the national economy.

The unexpected visit to Moscow last week by CIA director John Ratcliffe has excited many different interpretations, of which the most likely is that Washington is waking up to how little control it is now able to exercise on events in Ukraine, despite (1) widespread CIA intervention, (2) a legacy of military support of every kind either direct from the US or in collaboration with European partners. This is manifest in Washington’s inability (3) to make good on the badly degraded state of Ukrainian air defenses or to clearly voice opposition to the clear absence of legitimacy either for Ukraine’s so-called “President” (Zelenskiy) who should, under Ukrainian Constitutional law, held presidential elections eons ago. Zelenskiy is now facing sharper domestic resistance led by his former defense minister, Fedorov, and from the ever more threatening interest of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies in Zelenskiy’s minders and in Zelenskiy himself, and from the ire of a population ever more resentful of forced mobilization practices that now extend to women.

Europe, itself led by an unelected strongman(woman), Ursula Von Der Leyen (better known here as Ursula Fundamentally Lying) who, with her cabal of neo-conned conspirators can think of nothing better to do than manufacture reasons why they need to keep hating Russia (the key to EU feel-good unity and the augmentation of Ursula’s powers to borrow money and raise armies). They reject narratives of an inevitable Russian victory, double down on the transition of their taxpayers’ wealth to corrupt neonazis in Ukraine, while bracing for an all-out war with Russia which they helpfully date for anytime between 2027 and 2035 and which, of course, guarantees continued frenzied Russian weapons production, and continuing Chinese vigilance to face off against Western style Armageddon

Senior European officials - including leadership from the European Council and major EU states - recently travelled to Kyiv to pledge unwavering solidarity and coordinate new air defense supplies. The visit also provided Zelenskiy with human shields for Ukraine’s so-called “Independence Day” (Ukraine, in reality, is utterly dependent for funding and for the war on NATO powers), knowing that Putin would not fire on Kiev during the foreigners’ visit (prompting irritated “why ever not?” reactions from Putin’s critics in Russia who are bemused by such insanely gentlemanly behavior that allows Russia’s enemies to plot against it in full sight).

The European Union advanced billions through its multi-billion-euro support and loan packages, specifically targeting anti-ballistic systems, radar, and joint defense-industrial co-production. Several EU member states are aggressively pushing to bypass legal hurdles and leverage immobilized Russian central bank funds to sustain Ukraine’s war effort. Russia will challenge these measures in courts throughout the globe and drag Europe’s reputation as a trustworthy financial entity further into the mud.

European intelligence assessments contradict claims of an imminent conventional Russian assault on NATO or the Baltic states, maintaining that Moscow’s military posture has not shifted toward a wider regional invasion. But leaders like Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and German officials warn that rising Russian hybrid warfare, cyber operations, and sabotage on European soil demand a more robust and realistic security response than current containment measures. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sharply escalated Berlin’s military posture against Moscow through aggressive defense spending, hawkish rhetoric on hybrid warfare, and unreserved support for Ukraine. Since taking office in May 2025, Merz has departed significantly from the cautious approach of his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. Critics and Russian officials label his policies as a dangerous militarization of Germany, while Merz defends the moves as essential national security.

German political pressure and opposition to Chancellor Friedrich Merz have surged due to a combination of persistent economic stagnation, unfulfilled reform promises, and the rapid electoral rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Despite promises to revitalize Europe’s largest economy (in free fall, essentially, since Merz’ predecessor. Sholz. meekly stood beside US President Biden when Biden vowed to destroy Germany’s main source of cheap, pipeline energy by blowing up Russia’s Nord Stream) Merz’s focus on tax cuts and welfare adjustments has failed to pull Germany out of its broader industrial and competitive slump. High-profile pledges for fast reforms in healthcare and pensions have been slow to materialize, frustrating voters who expected swift stabilization: indeed, Merz’ ambition to rearm and to mobilize Germany is expressly at the expense of welfare state measures and guaranteed to bring him down. The federal government has suffered from very public infighting, eroding public trust in contrast to the quiet crisis-management style expected by many Germans.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is against the war with Russia and has capitalized on public discontent, surging in regional and national polls - particularly in eastern states where the AfD threatens to outpace or challenge mainstream parties. Merz’s strict refusal to cooperate with the AfD faces severe pressure from local and regional politicians who struggle under the weight of the far-right’s growing local normalization. Critics on the left and environmental groups accuse Merz of watering down climate change targets and stalling green initiatives. Conversely, economic conservatives and the political right argue that he has not gone far enough to cut red tape or stimulate growth-focused measures.

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Bessent’s Operation Economic Outcast, the “economic D-Day” against Iran, relies on an aggressive “zero-leakage” secondary sanctions strategy to cut off the regime’s global revenue streams.

The Treasury Department claims to have comprehensively mapped the precise networks, facilitators, and shadow fleets Iran uses to illegally move oil and evade sanctions. By targeting five specific loophole sectors - digital assets, gold, technology, aviation, and shipping - the US, according to the Treasury, is systematically closing historical avenues of evasion.

Bessent has issued a strict ultimatum: any foreign entity facilitating money laundering or trade for Iran will be completely removed from the US dollar system. This would seem, on the face of it, a potential shooting-in-the-foot in favor of the aspirations of the BRICs that have been struggling to set up mechanism to allow its members to evade domination by the dollar system. It would also be damaging for the US.

For most global banks and corporations, the US Treasury(very optimistically) believes, losing access to the Western financial system is a corporate death sentence, forcing them to comply.

But this is almost certainly not true if, say, China, Russia and even India collectively ignore Washington, something that is very likely to happen. Amongst the rest there will be a sufficient rainbow of “hedgers” and “twisters” and “dodgers” to effectively scupper US certainties. Think Turkey or Egypt or Indonesia.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is a member of the BRICS, one that has already departed from OPEC and appears to have been converted into a proxy for Israel but which historically has been a key hub for Iranian currency exchange houses - recently announced it would halt financial transactions and trade with Iran to avoid U.S. wrath. In itself, that is hardly a sign of resounding victory. Particularly if Iran carries out its threat to destroy the UAE if it retains its hostility to Iran.

Iran’s economy is already fragile. Previous iterations of maximum pressure led to severe dollar shortages, central bank hyper-printing, and banking panics. Proponents argue that tightening the noose to absolute zero will trigger internal unrest capable of breaking the regime’s operational capacity.

But amidst all the froth and bubble that Washington exudes there is every reason to maintain high skepticism in the face of US proclamations. Claims from Trump and Rubio that they control the Strait of Hormuz are little short of ridiculous and their claims as to the number of ships getting through the Strait are grossly exaggerated, especially since the pact between Iran and Oman to jointly exercise authority over the Strait has been established and is gathering momentum. In addition, the US blockading of ships that is designed to stop the flow of Iranian oil are positioned 600 miles away and the efficacy of the blockade is highly questionable.

President Donald Trump is threatening Iranian ships primarily through an active US military naval blockade and strict operational warnings issued amidst the ongoing six-month war with Iran. Trump has declared that any Iranian Navy vessel that approaches American warships will be immediately eliminated. The administration has instituted a strict zero-tolerance policy in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump warned via Truth Social that any Iranian boat or ship caught deploying new naval mines will be destroyed on sight, noting that the Space Force is monitoring the waterway continuously. Under the naval blockade, the US military claims to be (but almost certainly isn’t) intercepting all ships traveling to and from Iranian ports, as well as any vessels that pay Iran for safe passage through the strait.

Following persistent drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping, Trump has issued a warning that for every Iranian strike on a vessel in the strait, the US will bomb a major piece of infrastructure - such as a power plant or bridge - inside Iran. As part of its broader campaign called Operation Economic Fury, the US Treasury has blacklisted and sanctioned dozens of specific vessels, ship registries, and front companies accused of helping Iran move oil and money.

But many economic analysts and foreign policy experts remain highly skeptical that the operation will achieve its ultimate goal of total isolation or regime capitulation.

Beijing utilizes independent, small refineries known as “teapots”. These entities have zero exposure to the US financial system and trade entirely in Chinese yuan, making them immune to US banking bans. China controls the price of crude oil through control of demand, since it is the single largest consumer of Gulf oil. When prices look as though they are going to go through the roof, China stops consuming, and prices sink or stay steady. China can do this because its reserves are the largest in the world and also it has the back-up of considerable coal supplies of its own.

Bessent has hesitated to instantly enforce the harshest sanctions against major Chinese state banks because doing so could trigger catastrophic volatility in the global financial system. This gives adversaries room to maneuver. As Bessent says, he does not want to destroy the global financial system. But he thinks it is OK to destroy it some time in the near future?

Iran has operated under international sanctions for 47 years. The regime has mastered, as one source puts it, “maritime whack-a-mole,” constantly generating new shell companies, alternative currencies, and digital assets faster than the U.S. can blacklist them.

Rather than surrendering, Iran has historically responded to economic pressure with military escalation, such as targeting oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz or leveraging regional proxies to disrupt global energy markets.

While the Bessent strategy has the teeth to severely starve Iran of liquid foreign reserves and cripple its formal banking infrastructure, its total success is severely bottlenecked by Beijing’s willingness to absorb U.S. economic friction to keep the Iranian regime afloat.

Russia-Ukraine-NATO

Over the past 24 hours, the conflict involving Russia, Ukraine, and EU/NATO allies has intensified with massive aerial bombardments, diplomatic warnings, and legal threats over frozen funds. Russia has launched massive waves of drone and missile strikes targeting nine Ukrainian regions, including Kiev and the port city of Odessa. Increasingly, as Russian retaliation for the Ukrainian initiative of targeting soft, economic targets such as ecommerce warehouse, Russian strikes on Ukraine have extended from energy, transport, port and military facilities appear to include residential buildings, schools, and energy infrastructure. Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russia used an upgraded ballistic missile system, the Iskander-1000, for the first time during these attacks.

Ukraine tends to send many more drones against Russia than Russia sends against Ukraine. This is likely becsause most Russian drones and missiles get through to their targets, given the paucity of Ukrainian air defenses, while Russia shoots down the vast majority of Ukrainian drones (so Ukraine has to send more, drawing increasingly for its supply from NATO countries).

Russia has warned Britain and France against “playing with fire” by supplying sensitive missile technology and military support to Ukraine. These threats followed reports that the US CIA director made a surprise visit to Moscow to warn Russian officials against escalating conflicts with NATO members. The Kremlin, I believe truthly, dismissed the reports as scare stories. At this time, nobody, besides the actual interlocuters, knows what went on during Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow.

The European Union has once again revived a previously failing proposal to transfer nearly €200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets to help Ukraine. The Kremlin responded by calling the potential move illegal and vowed to challenge the EU in court. Perpetuation of the existing role of the EU in this conflict is under question as elections over the next few months in France and Germany may bring to power political parties that are opposed to the West’s war against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy battering ram to undermine Russian security.

Of graver significance, perhaps, are, first, Europe’s “legitimation” of the detention of Russian ships and the pirating and sale of their contents, and, second, Russia’s threat to retaliate against EU ships. Something similar is going on with the Iranian conflict (see above).

Moldovan authorities reported that several Russian drones breached Moldovan airspace during the overnight attacks on Ukraine. Moldovan President Maia Sandu strongly condemned the action as intimidation, and the country announced plans to invest heavily in new air defense systems (good luck with that, since the Collective West is suffering a severe shortage of air defense missiles).

Sources close to the Kremlin indicate that Moscow believes current US-mediated peace negotiations have reached a dead end. US officials expect Russia to further escalate its military campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure, while significant doubts persist as to whether Russia will ever fulfil its threat to move to attack NATO assets in NATO countries (or anywhere else outside Ukraine).

The war may be described as a continuing war of attrition. In so far as Russia and Ukraine are concerned this war is asymmetric. There is no way that Ukraine can attrite Russia more severely than Russian can attrite Ukraine. But, of course, Ukraine is not fighting the war unaided: it is fighting the war, sacrificing its people, on behalf of the Collective West and in favor of its own neo-Nazi entities that are growing rich on the booty they routinely collect from the West.

Even as an attritional war between Russia and NATO, Russia is holding its own, responsible for a significant degrading of Western weapons and air defense systems, amongst other things, and pushing ahead of the Collective West in the development of highly innovative weapons systems, both conventional and nuclear. But, naturally, an attritional war at this level of magnitude is highly uncertain, very dangerous, very vulnerable to all manner of exacerbations in response to global economic crises and the impacts of climate change.

Which is why some voices - as I have repetitively mentioned over the past few months - see less risk with a major upsurge of a Russian force that can bring the war to a quick and decisive end. That such voices may be exaggerating the relative ease by which this could be done I think is a certainty, as I also think it is certain that such voices are far too optimistic in their view that this is a conflict that can ever be “ended,” short of a major global cataclysm that, through immense destruction and pain, forces all parties to negotiate a new security architecture for the world through the auspices of a hugely reformed and transformed United Nations or similar entity.

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The principal, currently active indications of gathering nuclear escalation stem from a systemic collapse of cold-war era arms control, the eruption of kinetic conflicts near nuclear facilities, and the normalization of “nuclear hedging” by non-nuclear states.

The foundational architecture regulating the world’s largest nuclear stockpiles has dissolved. (The rot was instigated by G.W. Bush in 2002). The New START Treaty between the United States and Russia officially expired in February 2026 with no replacement framework, removing mandatory caps and verification measures on deployed strategic warheads.

Global nuclear monitors report that states are actively preparing weapons for ready-use. Over 4,000 nuclear warheads are currently deployed on active delivery systems - including missile silos, strategic submarines, and bomber bases. China is poised for massive expansion in nuclear capability.

The deployment of hypersonic delivery vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI) in command-and-control frameworks has drastically shortened decision-making windows. This increases the likelihood of catastrophic miscalculation.

High-stakes nuclear signaling remains constant. Indicators include public discussions by the Trump Administration about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the positioning by the US of offensive nuclear missiles close to the Russian Federation in Poland and Romania and even, at some future point, in Ukraine, and the Collective West standing-by as Ukraine attacks elements of Russia’s nuclear triad.

The Russian leadership has lowered the structural threshold for nuclear weapon use, non-strategic nuclear force exercises, and frequent airspace violations or drone incursions bordering NATO members like Poland. Kinetic operations have directly intersected with nuclear infrastructure. U.S. and Israeli aerial strikes targeting Iranian nuclear sites, followed by Iranian retaliatory missile strikes, have heightened the dual risks of a radiological disaster and an immediate regional breakout. In May 2026, brief cross-border conflicts between India and Pakistan featured the first-ever joint deployment of advanced drones and missiles paired with active nuclear brinkmanship and coordinated state disinformation campaigns.

Uncertainty surrounding major power security guarantees has altered public and political stances in non-nuclear weapon states. U.S. political alignments allowing countries like South Korea to pursue nuclear-powered submarines have eroded traditional boundaries against uranium enrichment. North Korea has warned this is sparking a regional “nuclear domino effect.” Nations like Poland, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Turkey are actively debating or taking legal steps toward domestic “nuclear latency” - maintaining the raw materials, technology, and enrichment capabilities to weaponize rapidly if geopolitically pushed.

Ratcliffe to Moscow

From the CNN and other mainstream media sources we know that CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced, brief visit to Moscow on August 25, 2026, but neither the U.S. nor the Russian government has officially revealed the exact purpose of the trip. Ratcliffe flew on a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport plane. The flight started at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, stopped in Riga, Latvia, and landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. Ratcliffe stayed on the ground in Moscow for about four to eight hours before leaving. Ahead of the trip, the U.S. asked Ukraine to pause drone and air strikes near Moscow and other Russian cities while the delegation was there.

The Kremlin confirmed that Ratcliffe met with Russian intelligence officials. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not meet with Ratcliffe directly, though Putin was briefed on the talks. The CIA and the White House declined to comment on the details.

Because officials are silent, experts and news analysts have suggested several possible reasons for the rare visit. Ratcliffe may have delivered a new peace proposal or messages from the U.S. administration to push for an end to the ongoing war. He may have delivered warnings regarding Russian drone incursions or actions near NATO’s eastern borders. The CIA has previously helped negotiate prisoner swaps and the release of detained Americans in Russia, making detainee talks another possibility.

A Good Time Not to Have a CIA Pope

An international appeal has asked Pope Leo XIV to convene an emergency global summit to address ongoing nuclear threats and strategic conflict. This could conceivably provide an off-ramp for nuclear powers that otherwise may now fear they have painted themselves into corners from which we can only see nuclear trajectories. Activists and commentators (such as peace advocate Jack Gilroy) have proposed that the Pope use his moral authority as a neutral global leader to bring major nuclear-armed heads of state together.

The initiative follows Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which calls for the “disarmament” of both high-tech artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons. The Vatican also hosted the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War at Castel Gandolfo and Rome, where over 200 experts, academics, and Nobel laureates signed a declaration pushing to ban AI from nuclear launch systems and demanding complete nuclear disarmament. While civil society figures and Nobel laureates continue to position the Vatican as a vital convening platform for nuclear sanity, the Pope himself has primarily used his office to urge the renewal of arms control treaties like New START and warn against an escalating “spiral of annihilation” rather than formally sitting down as mediator of a nuclear-power summit.

Is Putin Ready to Strike Back

With the singular exception of Gilbert Doctorow, occasionally supported by the likes of Paul Craig Roberts, John Helmer (based in Moscow), and Glenn Diesen, alternative media mainly line up as uncritical supporters of Russia’s SMO strategy. This remains the case even after (1) four a half years of fighting; (2) the absence of any meaningful indication of a willingness by the collective West to climb down and refrain from providing Ukraine with all the monetary, technical expertise, navigational guidance and other intelligence that has enabled an entity that we still call “Ukraine” to keep fighting so far, and (3) the continuing if not escalating possibility of nuclear war, and (4) a Russia whose official negotiating position continues to be “Istanbul +” (i.e. Crimea, the Donbass, Kherson and Zapporizhzhia, Ukrainian neutrality, cap on Ukrainian forces, denazification of Ukraine, protection of Russian language and culture in Ukraine) but whose unofficial position indicates an extension of targets to include Odessa, Kharkiv, parts of Chernihiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk.

Doctorow’s skepticism is given broader voice by regular interviews with Doctorow by Judge Napolitano. In this morning’s interview, Napolitano reminds Doctorow of his previous week’s assessment that a Putin “taking the gloves off” scenario would be a lot more convincing if there were Russian attacks on Western weapons supply lines through Romania and Poland. He asks whether these have happened.

Doctorow says he believes that they happened but that the signals were misleading. He confirms that the Russians have essentially blockaded Ukrainian Black Sea ports. So the Russians have covered the sea routes. Had they also covered land routes?

This past weekend, Russia patiently allowed all manner of Western leaders to travel to Kiev to sign agreements in support of Ukraine against Russia, to transfer weapons and weapons technology to Ukraine, and to celebrate what Kiev calls its day of “independence” (at a time when it is in fact utterly dependent on the collective West even to pay the salaries of its bureaucrats) without any attempt by Russia to disrupt this event and interrupt the travel of these leaders. The next day British prime minister Andy Burnham showed up in Kiev to agree the transfer of Shadow/Scalp medium-range missile technology for manufacture in Ukraine so that Ukraine could begin local production (or pretend to do so while receiving the weapons from the UK). If these are produced in mass in Ukraine then all kinds of destruction will be wrought on Russia by Ukraine.

Why did Russia allow Burnham to get to Kiev? Why was the so-called Coalition of the Willing (COW - better known on these pages as Coalition of the Brain Dead) allowed to meet with Zelenskiy in Kiev?

Doctorow says this reticence to strike is directly in contradiction with the notion of a strangulation/sudden-death of Ukraine that Putin has otherwise promised. What is Putin’s strategy? Why is he allowing the West to thumb its noise at Moscow? Just as he has so far failed to retaliate for the recent Guardian disclosure that it is British drones that are to be held culpable for the recent Ukraine drone offensives on Russian oil refineries, Wildberries and Ozon warehouses and the like. The BBC has even published a list of the British manufacturers involved.

This is not good for Russian deterrence capability. The best that Russia seems to be able to offer is a statement to the effect that “there will be consequences?” And a statement from Peskov to the effect that this will not be good for developing relations.

Lame? Or so extremely lame as to invite further escalation?

There have been no consequences. Russia does not seem prepared to strike against the British factories. Doctorow says we are forced to conclude that the Kremlin is gun-shy where it really counts. Such strikes would be legal under international law, would run little risk of activation of NATO’s Article 5 (which is toothless, anyway), and even less risk of US intervention (although we might speculate as to why the CIA’s Radcliffe arrived in Moscow yesterday - see above).

Napolitano asks Doctorow about the state of the Russian military today. (Note, by the way, that the current commander-in-chief, Gerasimov, is due to retire, and his replacement may turn out to be the critical turning point - some people think it may be Surovikin, which indeed might suggest a radical change in direction). Doctorow says the army is holding its own, and that the Russian public is putting up with the inconveniences of Ukraine attacks and gasoline shortages. Yes a lot of drones - most of the drones - are shot down. But quite a lot get through, and do quite a lot of damage. And the sophistication of these drones, and the possibility of Starlink, sooner or later, offering navigational guidance for the drones deep into Russia (a topic that Ratcliffe raised yesterday?), is likely to increase.

The basic reality is that Ukraine can strike at will at anything in Russia anywhere.

Zelenskiy would like a maritime ceasefire because, of course, Ukraine needs passage for Ukraine’s grain cargo ships which account for half of Ukraine’s foreign earnings, but this, by itself, is absolutely not in Russia’s interest since Russia’s attacks in the Black Sea are Russia’s answer to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian ships in the Sea of Azov and the eastern Black Sea coast.

What military achievement would satisfy Russia? In effect, says Doctorow, it would be the removal of Zelenskiy and regime-change. Recent moves against Zelenskiy as suggested by news that Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies are encircling Zelenskiy and that former defense ministers Fedorov is calling for presidential elections suggest US greenlighting of the removal of Zelenskiy. (I am skeptical, but that is Doctorow’s assessment).

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For Oilprice.com, Irin Slav today reports that US refiners face a new squeeze on crude as Canada cuts its supply of oil to the US. In the middle of a gathering and perhaps catastrophic crisis in global oil supply, Canadian oil sands maintenance could cut crude production by 300,000 bpd in September.

Could this conceivably - just pushing at the edge of possibility here - relate to Donald Trump’s latest punishing round of tariffs on Canadian exports? Or is it, as Slav says, just about the maintenance season in Canada? Hmm.

Bloomberg, citing Rystad Energy, says that Canadian oil production may drop in September, due to maintenance activities in the oil sands. Whereas this would normally be offset with crude taken from storage, crude in storage is also lower than usual. Normally, Canadian oil producers send 4 million barrels daily of heavy crude to US refiners.

Hammering home the obvious, Slav notes that replacement heavy crude is scarce, with Canadian inventories unusually low and Venezuela’s production recovery progressing too slowly to fully compensate. Oil shipments from Venezuela may be ramping but they are not ramping up fast enough. Venezuela exported 1.16 million barrels of crude oil daily last month, a slight decline from June’s 1.2 million barrels daily.

Let nobody be so rude as to point out that the US does not own Venezuela nor Venezuelan crude and that its manipulation of the Venezuelan oil industry for its own benefit, or its ineffective stabs in that direction, merely represent one part of a yet-to-be-revisited-and-resolved but Massive War Crime, there as in Cuba, where History is waiting for its reckoning. But that, for the moment, will be another story.

Russian Crude: Forbidden Food

Of course if the US really, really wanted heavy crude, it could do itself a favor by buying from Russia. But that would be far too intelligent for this Administration.

Slav considers that the squeeze in heavy crude, needed for diesel, will likely further increase diesel prices, adding to inflation and pushing the US (and everyone else) towards recession.

Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries meanwhile, continue, squeezing gasoline and diesel production there as well - Ukrainian drone strikes on maritime transport and Black Sea ports have significantly disrupted shipping pipelines, cutting overseas crude flows down to 3.46 million barrels a day though with the positive consequence, for Russia, that given a constrained global market, there has been a sharp recent increase in the $ value for a barrel of Russian crude.

The value of Russian crude has flipped and is increasing rapidly, with Urals oil now trading at significant premiums and multi-month highs. Russian Urals crude is currently trading at $85.87 per barrel. This is a massive jump from its summer lows, which hovered near $60 per barrel. In an unprecedented shift, physical cargoes of Russian Urals crude sold to Asian markets have flipped from a discount to a premium over global Brent crude. October delivery cargoes are being offered at a premium of up to $1 per barrel compared to dated Brent, a complete reversal from the $1 to $2 discounts seen for September arrival.

D-Day for Iran is Daffy Duck Daft

To this potential economic conflagration (of US interests), US Treasury Secretary has proposed economic warfare against Iran for the purposes of regime change. His proposals, even in the ultra-conservative Foreign Affairs, have been universally derided by analysts.

Bessent has launched a comprehensive economic offensive against Iran that under the name “Operation Economic Outcast,” projects on to Iran that which the US is already experiencing for itself and will learning a great deal more about in the near future.

The strategic objective of this campaign is the complete “economic asphyxiation” of the Iranian regime.

Bessent pretends to be totally oblivious to the fact that the current conflict was an unprovoked war by the Trump adminisration, apparently heeding the requests of Israel’s Netanyahu. Without any shadow of a doubt the US is the aggressor here, although its side-kick, Israel, which has used the time since February not by helping the US, but by pursuing its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and against Hezbollah and Shia communities in southern Lebanon and against Shia communities and pro-Iranian minorities and militants in Syria.

Under Bessent’s terms, any foreign entity or bank found laundering money or facilitating transactions for Iran will be permanently cut off from the US dollar system. The US is aggressively targeting Iran’s third-party global financial connections and trading partners - including China, India, Turkey and the UAE. The toughest secondary penalties on major foreign banks are temporarily delayed under a brief compliance window to allow countries time to cut ties.

The Treasury Department issued new sectoral sanction determinations designed to completely sever Iran’s remaining revenue streams: targeting cryptocurrencies used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to bypass standard banking channels; restricting the use of gold, which Tehran relies on to artificially stabilize its collapsing domestic currency; broadening blocks on the “shadow fleet” and vessels moving oil or weapons components; restricting commercial and cargo airlines assisting the regime; blacklisting advanced weapons-related tech and procurement networks.

The plan aims to lock down remaining Iranian funds held across various Gulf state banks.The administration proposes using these confiscated assets directly as financial compensation and reparations for damages Iran has caused to its regional neighbors.

The economic onslaught is part of a broader Trump administration effort to force an endgame to the nearly six-month-long war and compel Iran to reopen the Strait ofg Hormuz. In response, Iranian officials claim they are fully prepared for the sanctions, threatening a complete halt to all regional oil exports if the economic warfare escalates.

Battering Bessent

Mearsheimer

Asked for comment by Judge Napolitano this morning, Professor John Mearsheimer sees no prospect of success for Bessent. The two main reasons are that for Iran this is an existential conflict, and Iran is not going to roll over. Secondly, for Bessent to win he has to get almost all Iran’s major partners to sever intercourse with Iran. And this is simply not going to happen.

China has already made it illegal for Chinese banks to cave in to US threats. It is equally unlikely that Turkey or Russia will play ball with the US; it is doubtful that even the EU can shoot itself in both feet, yet again, by humiliating itself and obliging its Washington masters by turning against trade with China, one of the few bright prospects in the EU’s diminishing universe of possibilities.

In addition to these considerations, Bessent will have to face the consequences in terms of Iranian capability for retaliation. Iran has already told the UAE that if the UAE plays along with Washington and does whatever Washington (and Israel - the UAE is now a Zionist domain) requires, Iran will destroy the UAE economy. And it is well positioned so to do.

Iran will very likely crack down on what remains of US bases in all its Middle East territories and the Gulf countries that host these bases against their own interests. If Iran has to do down, it will bring its neighbors, the US and the world down with it. It has already shown, this year, that it can strike the heart of Israeli nuclear power at Dimona with ballistic missiles (in retaliation for the US strike on Natanz).

Next time the strike will be direct, and Israel will be bereft of its nuclear weapons armory.

An economic blockade of the kind that Bessent is proposing takes quite a long time to work, but Bessent - especially because he knows that if he moves too hard and too fast he will break the global financial system - must also know that he does not have enough time. The negative impacts on the global economy that result from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the Houthis’ blockade of Saudi tankers in the Red Sea will likely impact much sooner than Bessent’s sanctions.

Besides, Iran has several decades of experience dealing with and working around sanctions.

Whereas, at the time of the first JCPOA in 2015, the Western world stood shoulder to shoulder with Russia and China in bringing pressure to bear on Iran against its non-existent nuclear weapons program (Russia and China then still duped by the myth of a Western-spearheaded neocon process of “globalization” that they still foolishly thought would lift all boats), this time the West does not have such support.

Indeed, a huge swathe of the human population has a vested interest in seeing the US lose this conflict. Such is the thirst for liberation from neocon adventurism and abuse. Turkiye, for one, cannot afford to let Iran lose. Otherwise it is Turkiye who will be facing off against the US and Israel, an alliance that has agreed that once Iran has been demoted in the pecking order of regional power it will be the turn of Istanbul.

The Global South is aghast at the hybrid immorality (the utterly insane support for Israel’s genocide and Zionist expansionism that every day more moves the world to an ever growing number of triggers for global and possibly nuclear conflict (which is why Trump, with comparable idiocy, keeps asking his advisors about tactical nukes).

The Hill today reports the findings of a Reuters/Ipsos poll that shows that Trump’s approval rating shows a 14-point slide from the start of his second term, when it was at 47 percent, down to 33%. His disapproval rating hit 65 percent in the same poll.

Krugman

Paul Krugman today predicts that Bessent’s economic campaign will fail as thoroughly as the US military campaign. He is prepared to concede that, under US military protection and shouldered by US insurance, some oil may have been making it out.

But the Strait of Hormuz, opines Krugman, is almost a secondary consideration now that the US has been forced to abandon many of its bases in the region, something which, combined with the depletion of US stocks of interceptors and other munitions, means that America is effectively unable to defend its Gulf allies.

If Iran feels that its blockade of Hormuz isn’t doing enough damage, it can and will escalate to attacks on oil facilities all around the region.

Further, energy prices to final users have become increasingly disconnected from the price of crude oil because it is the prices of diesel and similar refined products that really matter. The huge premium in the prices of refined products over the price of crude is a result of a global shortage of refining capacity. This will not be helped by the reopening of the Strait, even if such a thing was likely, which it isn’t.

Yes, Iran is losing its main source of export revenue which, in 2025, amounted to about $45 billion, around 7 percent of the country’s 2025 GDP. However, that represents only about 0.2 percent of China’s GDP and it is China, says Krugman, that is the real beneficiary of Washington short-sightedness. China can well afford to gift Iran whatever it needs. The US cannot control Iranian imports: there are just too many routes. There is no way that a weakened US can coerce China into helping it defeat Iran.

Lynch

Even Foreign Affairs, in an article by Marc Lynch, despairs when Lynch writes that the American Middle East is finished. The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran, Lynch argues, has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence. The US cannot protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or keep Hormuz open, and has shown itself unable or unwilling to pressure Israel into an accommodation with Palestinians.

The US and the political West has vastly exaggerated its own power, underestimated everyone else and has shown egregious callousness in the face of human suffering. There is a strong probability of continuing violence between Israel and Iran. Otherwise, the old order of a pro-American Arab Sunni alliance in opposition to a Russia-leaning Shia alliance is on the verge of disappearing in favor of a new order that is no longer run in the service of the USA. Why? Because -

“By nearly every economic, political, and developmental indicator, the Middle East under American domination has performed far worse than any other region.”

Sins of the Political West

I would further argue that the US has gravely underestimated the world’s wrath at Israel’s savage and deranged attempts to annihilate the Palestinian people, as it has steadfastly refused to look bravely at the fundamental injustice of the UN’s elevation of Israel to the status of nationhood in 1948. leaving the Palestinians not only in limbo but in subjugation to a mean-spirited, apartheid and racist administration incapable of showing anything approaching reasonable compassion. Nor was there meaningful aid from the political West and, in particular Britain, who were fundamentally responsible for this state of affairs.

Nor has the US had the moral courage to revisit the existential crimes that it wrought upon Iran in 1953 when, in collaboration with the British, it violently overthrew the democratically elected government of the estimable and respected Mohammed Mossadegh just so that Anglo-Persian Oil could cling on to its undeserved and obscenely thuggish hold on Persian oil wealth.

In both these crimes Britian played a central and essential role, and continues to be significantly responsible for the evils in the Gulf, in the Red Sea and in Ukraine. Here, Britain continues to suck into the many decades of official Russophobia with a view, it fantasizes, of one day being able to fragment the Russian Federation and grasp at the vast wealth that it thinks would sit for the taking by American and British Banks and corporations.

Britain’s Russophobia propaganda campaigns have their origin in attempts by Britain to put an end to conspiracies from Napoleonic times between Russia and France to strike at Britain’s then primary source of wealth - its ownerhsip and control of its colonly, India, from the period of the East India company onwards. Britain feared Russia’s southward expansion that threatened its hold on India while Russia feared British expansion of its interests into Central Asia (Afghanistan, Persia, Tibet).

Even as late as the 1930s, when France proposed a British-French-Russian alliance against Nazi Germany, Britain refused to join (thrusting Stalin into a fateful, but short-lived pact with Hitler).

Today, even bereft of a convincing army, navy or airforce, and with suicidal determination, Britain, ignoring its own economic stagnation and cultural demise, retains its focus on Russia through the filter of the West’s proxy (though never to be really allowed into the hallowed halls of NATO), Ukraine, whom it takes pride in assisting in missile and drone warfare on targets deep in the heart of Russia, seemingly confident that the dear, brave, little island will never be the subject of retaliation.

Will Russia Rise, Does it Need to Rise, to Proportionate Retaliation?

Indeed, I was interested to hear Professor John Mearsheimer tell Judge Napolitano today that he thought it very unlikely that Russia would ever strike NATO targets outside of Ukraine itself from fear of becoming embroiled in a war with the entirety of NATO.

But isn’t Russia already at war with the entirety of NATO?

Gilbert Doctorow, who in the past has positioned himself in company with Paul Craig Roberts, John Helmer and, just perhaps, Glenn Diesen, in a view critical of Putin’s reluctance to end the war by more decisive action - action that would entail Russian attacks on NATO targets beyond Ukraine - recalls today that during an event they shared in 2015, Mearsheimer expressed the view that Russia was a country in decline that could only be a ‘spoiler’ in international relations. Doctorow, at the time, considered that Mearsheimer’s then popular, “realist” view took insufficient account of the role of national determination properly harnessed by leaders (of the kind lately demonstrated in spades by Iran).

Although Mearsheimer now acknowledges Russia as a “great power,” Russia, Doctorow argues, has been frittering away this status by failing to respond to ever more brazen provocations and now serious physical attacks on its critical infrastructure from the Collective West. Even now, when its supporters profess that Putin has “taken off the gloves,” and is hitting hard, very hard, on Odessa and close to the Romania-Moldova ports on Ukrainian borders, this is a case that may still be made.

If Russia was capable of showing meaningful deterrence, why is not Britian, for one, actually deterred? Or Germany, or France, or Ursula von der Leyen or her fiery little comade from diminutive Estonia, Kaja Kallas?

Yes, Russia might seem to be winning on the battlefield, as Mearsheimer concedes, but why is Kiev not making serious gestures of readiness to negotiate (the current “ceasefire” proposals are, as Putin rightly observes “exotic” or, if one prefers, downright idiotic).

Doctorow argues that this is “the best moment for Russia to deliver a blow at the UK, at France, at Germany in a well-considered move against the military factories now supplying drones and missiles to Kiev. This would be permitted under international law. More importantly it will not trigger a united NATO response under Article 5. NATO is toothless absent the USA, and the two years of Donald Trump in the Oval Office represent a rare opportunity for Russia. One can be fairly certain that Trump will not jump into the fight to save Britain or to save Germany if Russia hits the factories producing weapons being used against it. Moreover, the longer Russia waits to respond, the more time it is giving Europe to rearm so that any eventual war would be fought on terms more adverse to Russia than at present.”

Against that view is another namely, that Ukraine is close to collapse and Russia has little else to do other than maintain its advance and pick up the pieces when it does. I am doubtful, though, that if and when Ukraine does collapse, and it might very well collapse, that Europe is going to leave it alone to lick its wounds for any time at all before leaping back into the conflict in the guise of covert and guerrilla warfare while the EU and NATO continue to rearm and mobilize (even if Russia is or will be rearming and mobilizing faster).

Anyone who looks at the current money that the EU is still planning to send in the direction of a rotting, corrupt regime in Kiev, can be in no doubt as to European determination to keep chasing this hare into the teeth of nuclear armageddon.

That Ukraine is close to collapse was pretty much admitted by Zelenskiy over the weekend when he said that the country is acutely short of funds and that its most important challenge is to get more money and more resources at a time when some kind of global economic catastrophe looks like it may be about to impact the globe from its starting points in Hormuz and the Red Sea.

Ukraine Debt Status and EU’s Lunatic Generosity

Ukraine badly overspent in the first half of 2026 (and is in debt to the tune of $26 billion; having used up most of the $90 billion “loan” advanced by the EU earlier this year - which was supposed to last two years - but standing to benefit from a further $40 billion agreed recently at Ankara - see below), and well before Russia disengaged Odessa from the rest of Ukraine.

Ukraine took great pride in the media successes of Fedorov’s (very expensive) Spring drone campaign and diverted more money into the campaign even as its air defenses disappeared and the US-European ability to furnish more Pac-3 Patriot missiles evaporated with them, and Russia escalated its own drone kill rate to 94%.

The diversion of more Ukrainian money into the drone campaign took place at the expense of basic maintenance of the military and this was at the root of the conflict between Fedorov as minister of defense and the military chief Syrskyi, both of whom have since been dismissed. Fedorov has fruitlessly demanded reinstatement and called for new presidential elections, which Zelenskiy has rejected, and now Fedorov is being derided by the Western politicians and media who desperately need their boy in dictatorial control of Ukraine while they keep the war going in the hope of something, anything - perhaps the return of US Democrat Neocon Morons - that will save them from total exposure for the stupidity to which they have committed the entire European subcontinent for the past four years since European “leaders” (pack-runners) undermined an agreement between Russia and Ukraine that would have actually traded Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO for the Donbass remaining within Ukraine.

As for that new $40 billion for Ukraine:

During the Ankara Summit, NATO allies pledged a total of €70 billion ($80 billion) in military aid for Ukraine. The specific “40 billion” figure refers to how that package is divided:

€30 billion comes directly from the European Union’s joint loan program.The remaining €40 billion is being provided through bilateral military support from non-EU allies and individual state budgets.

Separately at Ankara, NATO launched a $40 billion initiative called Drone Edge to fund counter-drone capabilities over the next five years.

The financing structure depends on which part of the Ankara package is being utilized:

The EU’s share (€30 billion) is a loan. It is tied to the broader €90 billion EU Ukraine Support Loan, which Ukraine will ultimately repay using interest and war reparations extracted from immobilized Russian state assets.

The €40 billion bilateral share consists of direct military donations, equipment, and training rather than loans.

The European Commission approved an immediate €6.1 billion ($7.12 billion) defense tranche under this exact loan framework to supply Ukraine with urgent air defense and ammunition.

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It has been a busy summer for the Trump administration, from public disputes with European NATO leaders over defense commitments to its manifest inability to protect Gulf allies over the conflict in Iran (which Trump started without provocation, apparently at Israeli request), whose civilization Trump has theatened to terminate, just as he has threatened to blow US ally Oman apart, while pursuing public disputes with European NATO leaders over defense commitments and the conflict in Iran, and scaling back military cooperation with a close Asian ally, South Korea, and sharing with the world just how delightful Trump finds the leader of North Korea Kim Jong-Un.

And now, of course, we have a full-scale trade war with Canada, with whom trade negotiations collapsed late Friday, prompting the US to immediately implement 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Early this morning, President Trump escalated the fight by threatening an additional 50% tariff on Canadian cars, trucks, and steel to take effect on January 1.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has scheduled retaliatory tariffs against US industries to begin on September 8. Local Canadian officials, like Ontario Premier Doug Ford, have gone as far as suggesting Canada cut off electricity and critical mineral exports to the U.S. in response.

In addition, President Trump’s renewed focus on the Arctic has created a severe rift within NATO. Throughout the summer, President Trump has repeatedly demanded that the U.S. acquire or control Greenland to protect national security interests against Russia and China.

Economic Wars from the Middle East to Latin America

For Antiwar.com Kyle Anzalong reports that President Donald Trump, for the second time this month, posted an image on Truth Social Saturday showing the Strait of Hormuz as “new US territory.”

US officials have told pro-Israeli news source Axios that the US successfully helped 40 vessels carrying 16 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz on a single day using the southern lane of the Strait. But an international shipping tracking agency did not record a single vessel exiting the waterway: Kpler, a global data and analytics platform that tracks physical commodity markets and shipping in real time, recorded zero barrels of oil exiting the Strait on that day. US sources, on the other hand, continue claim that the US strategy is to move tankers in bulk with US fighter jets escorting the vessels and shooting down Iranian missiles and drones.

Mecca Alliance

The Islamic Republic of Iran denied today that it had been invited to join the Mecca defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan, but confirmed that proposals have been made to hold regional security talks with the three countries. The formation of the alliance had been considered by some analysts as a Sunni alliance that would work essentially in support of Western interests in the region against Iran and favorably towards normalization of relations with Israel.

A movement towards a Sunni-Shia alliance, however, might suggest the creation of an entity whose main purpose would be to achieve regional stability, seeking to push the US out of the region altogether and assuming regional responsibility. Such an alliance would likely work against Zionist expansionism in Syria and Lebanon, by involving all members of the alliance in activities to counter the Israeli invasions and to provide additional support to Turkey in the increasingly likely event of direct confrontation between Turkey and Israel in Syria (with the aid of Kurds in Syria, and Iraq), and perhaps support to Iranian efforts to come to the aid of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli expansionism thretens Turkish own influence mongering across central Asia to Azerbaijan and China’s Xinjiang.

In the short term, however, it is possible that Netanyahu is preparing to escalate ongoing wars to have a pretext for postponing the upcoming Knesset election. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz Israeli has told the Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare for a “long-term stay” in occupied southern Lebanon, where Israeli has been confirmed to be using white phosphorus since the invasion began, and also ordered them to escalate the rate at which they’re destroying what is being framed as “Hezbollah infrastructure” across the south.

France 24 reports that Turkiye last Friday said it was seeking an international arrest warrant from Interpol for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a domestic criminal case over Israel's interception and detention of dozens of activists attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip in May. In response, Netanyahu's office called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an "anti-Semitic dictator" and vowed to "act forcefully against Turkiye's attempts to destabilize the region".

Iraqi President Nizar Amidi is reportedly close to an arrangement with Iran allowing the passage of “some ships carrying Iraqi oil in the strait.” This occurs even as Iraq deploys three army brigades along its border with Saudi Arabia under a newly established Desert Operations Command, seeking to stop pro-Iranian militia from using Iraqi territory to launch attacks. Iraq has mixed interests in the Iranian war but does badly need to export its oil whether through deals with Iran, future pipeline entities, or through land-based workarounds. Iran’s integration into the Mecca alliance could plausibly invite Iraqi participation as well.

The Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee on Sunday approved a provision in a draft law allowing Tehran to charge ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Israeli Influence in Latin America

Colombia

Israel is experiencing a diplomatic upswing in Latin America, driven by a rightward political shift, new regional alliances like the Isaac Accords, and leadership changes in key nations that are reversing previous anti-Israel policies. Following the recent election (by one percentage point, amid allegations of electoral irregularities), billionaire Abelardo De La Espriella as President, Colombia dramatically reversed the hostile stance of the previous Gustavo Petro administration. De La Espriella restored full ties, moved to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and pledged to relocate the Colombian embassy to Jerusalem.

Argentina

In Argentina, President Javier Milei has positioned Argentina as Israel’s closest regional ally, pioneering the Isaac Accords cooperative framework with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to build a pro-Israel bloc across Latin America. Argentina also cracked down on Iranian influence, expelling diplomats and designating the IRGC as a terrorist group.

Bolivia

After the shift away from long-term socialist rule, Bolivia re-established diplomatic relations with Israel, dropped out of international genocide lawsuits against Israel at the ICJ, and lifted visa requirements for Israeli citizens. Bolivia ended two decades of leftist rule by the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party when voters recently elected centrist Rodrigo Paz as President, Bolivia ended two decades of leftist rule by the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party. This political shift was driven by a severe economic collapse, chronic fuel and foreign currency shortages, soaring inflation, and intense infighting within the socialist party. Bolivia’s heavy reliance on natural gas exports backfired as state-controlled fields suffered from a lack of foreign investment, turning the country from a net exporter into a major importer of diesel and fuel. The state ran out of foreign currency reserves, causing a severe shortage of US dollars, massive lines at gas stations, and inflation climbing past 20%. Costly government price controls and domestic fuel subsidies drained national funds.

The United States has contributed to the disruption of Bolivia’s economy over several decades through trade penalties, aggressive financial conditions and strict anti-drug policies. While internal choices ultimately drove the latest collapse, external pressures from Washington repeatedly strained the country’s finances.

Starting in the 1980s, the U.S. tied its economic aid to strict targets for destroying coca crops. When Bolivia did not meet these rules (as in Peru, coca is widely used as an innocuous remedy against high elevation). The US-led “War on Drugs” heavily targeted poor, indigenous coca growers rather than major traffickers. This destroyed the only source of income for thousands of families and caused massive local protests that stopped trade. Bolivia expelled USAID in 2013. Then President Evo Morales had accused USAID of meddling in local affairs by funding and influencing peasant unions and social organizations. The Bolivian government alleged that the U.S. agency was secretly financing political opposition groups to weaken Morales’s administration. Morales specifically blamed USAID for funding an indigenous federation that organized major protests against his plans to build a highway through the protectedIn response, the US stopped almost all bilateral economic and medical development programs.

In the late 20th century, Washington and US-backed groups like the IMF pushed Bolivia to adopt strict free-market rules. These forced policies froze worker wages, cut vital public welfare, and privatized state companies. Rather than helping, these rules decimated public-sector jobs and kept standards of living from improving for the average citizen. Going back to the 20th century, US banks loaned money to Bolivia under harsh terms. When Bolivia fell behind on repayments, the banks issued newer, more expensive loans just to pay off the old interest, creating a cycle of deep national debt. In Trump’s recent tariff wars, the US has sought to pressure Bolivia’s leftist leaders, by hiking import tariffs from 10% to 15% on most Bolivian goods. This penalty hurt Bolivian businesses trying to sell their products to the American market.

Ecuador

Ecuador designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, while Costa Rica advanced free trade talks and moved toward embassy relocation. In addition to the usual mechanisms of US low-intensity conflict and meddling these changes may be explained by a rising wave of conservative and right-leaning leadership across Latin America has sought closer alignment with both the United States and Israel, aid frm Israel in the domains of advanced defense technology, counter-terrorism collaboration, and expertise in agriculture and water management, and strong backing from evangelical Christian communities across various Latin American countries that provides a foundational base of public support for closer ties with Israel.

While many major economies show steady growth, too much of that growth is the result of additional government spending, much of it on unrealistic military goals, involving higher borrowing, and rising interest rates. Couple with commercial real estate stress and sudden geopolitical shocks these factors could trigger unexpected global financial stress in the coming months.

Governments owe record amounts of money. High borrowing costs make paying back this debt very expensive. Central banks keep interest rates high to fight inflation. This slows down business activity and strains borrowers. Property values drop as more people work from home. Empty buildings cause big losses for banks that lent money to real estate owners. Smaller regional banks face sudden deposit runs. Stressed financial institutions can spread panic through global markets quickly.

Persian Gulf and Red Sea

Ongoing wars and trade fights disrupt global supply chains. These disruptions raise prices and create economic uncertainty. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the crises in the Persian Gulf and in the Red Sea which, because of Iranian attacks on Gulf state neighbors in retaliation for US attacks on Iran, have significantly reduced the production of oil from the Gulf as well as the distribution of whatever oil is still being produced, requiring distributors to create more expensive workarounds by pipeline and by ship.

Such is the case of Saudi Arabia whose major oil producer, Aramco, subject to a blockade of its tankers by the Houthis in Yemen, is having to shuttle oil from its Yanbu port in the Red Sea north towards Egypt’s Ain Sukhna port, also on the Red Sea. Here, the oil is discharged and transferred to the SUMED onshore pipeline that carries the oil to Egypt port of Sidi Kenir on the Mediterranean from which it is shipped around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope in the direction of Asian customers to the east. Saudi’s use of the SUMED pipeline has increased 30% since the Houthi blockade began and is adding considerably to the overall cost of oil distribution, as well as requiring an additional month for transit.

US Contribution to the Crisis

As the world’s largest economy, the United States plays a central role in driving global financial instability through its massive debt levels, shifting trade policies, and recent geopolitical shocks. Because the global financial system relies heavily on the US dollar, internal American economic stresses quickly spread to other nations.

The US government’s gross national debt has officially crossed the $40 trillion threshold, climbing faster than federal analysts previously expected. This is in no small measure driven by unwieldy imperial military ambitions to preserve US hegemony by fighting along an impossible number of fronts, including Russia over the proxy Ukraine, China over the proxy Taiwan and Asian nation claims to small islands in the South China Sea, and Iran over the proxy Israel.

US National Debt

The US government spends over $1 trillion annually (averaging over $3.3 billion daily). just on net interest payments. This interest burden consumes roughly 14% to 17% of total federal spending, making it the government’s second-biggest expense behind only Social Security. Interest costs equal roughly 3.2% of the total U.S. gross domestic product. The debt surge is driven by both the record size of the accumulated debt and higher average interest rates compared to past years. To finance its multi-trillion-dollar budget deficits, the US Treasury borrows heavily on global bond markets. This heavy borrowing leaves less capital available for other developing nations.

The 30-year U.S. Treasury yield recently jumped above 5%. Higher U.S. yields force central banks around the world to keep their own interest rates high to stop their currencies from crashing against the strong dollar.

Struggling to Pay Debt with Tariffs

A recent Supreme Court ruling invalidated sweeping U.S. tariff policies, forcing the Treasury to abruptly pay back roughly $165 billion to importers. This unexpected shock has forced the Treasury to rapidly scramble for extra funding. The Trump administration is looking for other ways to extact money in its assymetrical relationship with many of its trading partners.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose sweeping peacetime tariffs, President Donald Trump shifted to a sequence of older, alternative trade and statutory authorities to revive his levy agenda.

These include Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. This was initially used as a temporary 150-day stopgap measure to impose a baseline 10% global tariff following the high court’s defeat. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 is utilized for more durable, targeted duties (ranging from 10% to 12.5%) on dozens of trading partners by framing the actions around specific justifications, such as inadequate foreign enforcement against forced labor. Section 338 of the Tariff Act is a rare, Depression-era provision revived by the administration to threaten (and this weekend to impose) heavy, 50% duties on specific trading partners like Canada. Targeted Industrial Statutes allow separate, industry-specific duties previously enacted under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (such as Section 232 on steel and aluminum) which were left untouched by the broader IEEPA ruling.

The Administration has exploited various loopholes. By eliminating the De Minimis Exemption, the administration has used executive actions to halt the $800 low-value shipment exemption, effectively collecting duties on millions of small retail packages and bypassing broad tariff limitations through administrative import restrictions. Additionally, by quickly launching formal agency investigations required under tools like Section 301, the administration has attempted to satisfy procedural guardrails that the emergency-based IEEPA approach ignored, creating a new round of customized trade barriers that face fresh challenges from multi-state coalitions.

The US implementation of aggressive trade policies has significantly reshaped international commerce. The administration’s sweeping tariff regimes pushed the effective U.S. tariff rate from 2.1% up to an estimated 11.7%. These tariffs disrupt global supply chains, drive up manufacturing costs, and export inflationary pressures to international trading partners.

New Inflationary Pressures

Recent escalations in US foreign policy have created severe waves of volatility across global commodity markets. The ongoing war with Iran - and the administration’s aggressive “Operation Economic Fury” (discussed in my most recent previous post) has severely pressured global energy lines. The US has threatened severe financial punishments against any foreign country or bank providing an economic lifeline to Iran. The resulting friction has caused global oil and gas prices to spike.

This spike adds new inflationary pressure to an already strained global economy.This is mainly because the amount of oil that is physically available on global markets has shrunk since the US unprovoked attack on Iran last February and Iran first retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz. At the time of the attack there was considerable oil already on tankers at sea. Most of that oil has now been delivered. Global oil consuming countries were also advised to reduce the suddenness of the impact of the crisis by drawing on their oil reserves so as to reduce the pressure on domestic prices. Most of these reserves are now approaching the point of exhaustion. Further, even countries that produce considerable quantities of their own oil do not necessarily produce the categories of oil that their economies most need. Most (around 70%) of US oil refineries, for example, are geared not to the refining of US shale oil but of heavy crude oil that is most needed for diesel oil and aviation fuel. Diesel oil is essential for industry generally, including agriculture. commercial transportation as well as for military activity.

It is these fuels, based on heavy crude, that experience the most intense price pressure and which the US and US refineries so badly need in competition with multiple sources of major demand around the world, including China and India. This is where the coming global crisis has its most shocking root.

Canada, on whose exports to the US Trump has just applied a 50% tariff, is by far the most important supplier of heavy crude oil to US refineries, providing over 4 million barrels per day via pipeline. Other key foreign suppliers of heavy and medium-heavy crude include Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Latin American producers like Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela (over whose oil industry exports the US administration has taken control since the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro on January 3 this year, but whose oil infrastructure is in too poor a state of repair that production can be easily increased in the immediate future).

Canada dominates imports via extensive pipeline networks connecting Alberta’s oil sands directly to US Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries. Mexico provides substantial volumes of heavy, sour Maya crude through state producer Pemex. Saudi Arabia and Iraq supply heavier, sour grades primarily to large complex refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast but this supply has been negatively impacted by events in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Countries like Colombia and Brazil supply supplemental heavy and medium-heavy sour crudes.

US A Source of Instability

The IMF has warned that the U.S. Treasury market, long considered the ultimate bedrock of global stability, is turning into a source of severe volatility. Because global banks hold these Treasurys as safe collateral, any sudden selling or liquidity freeze in the US bond market could instantly trigger a fast-moving, systemic panic across the entire international banking network. The current crisis in US Treasuries - highlighted by long-term yields surging to multi-decade highs above 5.3% and severe market volatility - is driven by the explosive national debt growth past $40 trillion, persistent inflation fears tied to Middle East conflicts, massive corporate debt issuance for AI infrastructure, and a structural pullback by traditional foreign buyers such as Japan which now want to offload US Treasuries.

Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, making it a vital player in the US Treasuries and bond market. However, rising inflation in Japan and intense pressure on the Japanese yen have shifted its role from a reliable, passive buyer into a major source of volatility that is actively driving U.S. bond yields higher. A historic, coordinated intervention by the US Treasury and the Bank of Japan was launched to support the crashing yen. The move was specifically designed to prevent Tokyo from aggressively dumping its $1.116 trillion holding of U.S. Treasuries to raise cash, which would have triggered a severe spike in US borrowing costs

The US continues to run annual deficits exceeding $2 trillion, forcing the Treasury to flood the market with new supply. Major technology hyperscalers have drastically ramped up corporate bond issuance to finance capital-intensive artificial intelligence infrastructure. This surge in corporate debt competes directly with government issuance, siphoning investor demand away from Treasuries and driving required yields higher. Inflation continues to run above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, reducing expectations for near-term interest rate relief.

Foreign central banks have slowed reserve accumulation and reduced their proportional share of Treasury holdings. With traditional big banks and primary dealers absorbing a smaller slice of auctions, the market relies more heavily on leveraged hedge funds and private domestic funds that demand higher yields to compensate for risk.

Consequences for Ukraine

For the past year, the policy of the US administration has been to sustain what had originally been a low-intensity conflict with the Russian Federation by weaponizing the buffer state status of Ukraine against Russian security by passing over many of the cost burdens of the war on to Europe. Europe’s role was to take over from the US the burden of buying the weapons that Ukraine would need by ordering them from US weapons companies and have these ship the weapons direct to Ukraine. The US maintained its intelligence networks throughout Ukraine, its collaboration if not leadership over Ukrainian intelligence, and supplied satellite data and other logistics support for “Ukrainian” (much of it Western) drone and missile attacks deep into the heart of Russia against Russian refineries, energy targets and military and civilian warehouses.

European economies have been largely stagnant since the rupture of the Nord Stream pipelines that used to carry cheap Russian oil to European industry, made worse by a continent-wide propaganda campaign or, rather, a myriad of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns that had their origin in feuds between Europe and Russia going back several hundreds of years and which still today impede the ability of European to perceive the current stage of their conflict through a clear lens.

Russia has never at any point, even now, indicated that its beef with Ukraine has more substance to it than the terms repeated by the Kremlin on various occasions concerning Crimea and the Donbass and Novorussiya regions, to protect the interests of the Russian speaking and pro-Russian peoples of that area and to secure Russian borders and security interests (including security from NATO nuclear attack). As late as APRIL 2022, Russia was willing to negotiate a settlement that would have left the Donbass as part of Ukraine provided that the terms of the earlier Minsk agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Europe were honored, provided that Ukraine would guarantee neutrality and not join NATO.

But Europe, on the foundation of no evidence whatsoever, while ignoring the copious evidence of malign intent by NATO towards the integrity of the Russian Federation, has pretended to believe that Russia constituted an existential threat beyond eastern Ukraine, not just to Ukraine but to Europe. This claim has always been an absurdity. Europe’s persistence in this absurdity may be explained in part by its hope that West European security would continue to be supported and mainly paid for by the US. Its willingness to be humiliated by the US into paying for Ukraine to fight NATO’s war against Russia is still premissed on the hope that eventually the US will see itself obliged to return to the direct defense of Ukraine and, in tow, Europe - if not under a Trump administration then under another neocon Biden-like Democratic administration.

A global economic crisis is looming at a time when it is clear that Ukraine is lacking the air defense that it needs for the escalating Russian attacks on its major cities of Kiev, Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zapporizhzhia, and that it was very few manpower reserves left to enable to a new mobilization that is actually going to make much difference to its prospects on the battlefields where, despite constant Western claims (supported by dubious statistics) that a state of stagnation reigns, Russia is making significant inroads in practically every direction. In addition, the conditions of life in eastern Ukraine are seriously degraded by widespread energy, food, transport and electricity shortages. Ukraine’s ability to survive the winter ahead is in serious doubt.

This is the reason why visitors to Kiev this past week have included Germany’s Foreign Minister and former Trump advisor General Kellogg. It is difficult to see what either the US or Germany can practically do to help Ukraine given the energy challenges that Germany itself, and Europe as a whole, must also face this winter, resulting from falling weapons stockpiles, the Gulf and Red Sea crises, oil and gasoline shortages, rising prices (especially in competition with Asian consumers), and falling levels of oil and natural gas reserves. Not least is the corrosive effect of Russia’s near isolation of the Odessa oblast from the rest of Ukraine, this week exacerbated by Russian shelling of ports close to Romania and its threat to Ukrainian ships currently in Romainian Black Sea ports hoping still to sail up to Odessa, considerations which may conceivably bring Romania, a NATO member, more directly into the war, along with Moldava which is currently providing an alternative route for Western weapons shipments coming into Moldava from up the Danube.

Pro-Ukrainian commentators continue to point to what they consider weaknesses in the Russian economy and take far too much comfort, often incorrectly, from that source. In real terms, it is Russia that has the greater wealth, is successfully attriting Ukraine and NATO, has the strongest allies (especially China, also Iran and North Korea as sources of manpower and weapons) and is showing resilience in its efforts to sustain and to continue to grow that wealth, while the much smaller wealth of Ukraine is being drained and devastated by war, population loss, egregious corruption and Western war games that spend Ukrainian wealth and lives on Western geopolitical ambitions.

President Donald Trump’s intensified economic warfare and secondary boycott threats against Iran are widely viewed as bad policy because they risk severe global economic fallout, fail to trigger political capitulation, and alienate key international allies while worsening domestic hardships for ordinary Iranians without halting the core strategic conflict.

Aggressive blockades and economic isolation campaigns targeting critical shipping routes like the Strait of Hormuz, choke global energy supplies, fueling inflation and raising fuel costs for U.S. and international consumers.

Instead of trying to solve the problems of Hormuz and the sister crisis in the Red Sea where Iranian ally, the Yemeni Houthis have blockades Saudi Arabian tankers, the US throughout the time when it was supposed to have been considering implementation of its now-expired MOU with Iran was violating the MOU by trying to get ships through Hormuz.

According to the New York Times (NYT) the US military has run a shipping corridor through the southern channel of the Strait of Hormuz along the coast of Oman, guiding 15 to 20 oil tankers through the area each night, moving roughly 10 million barrels of oil daily to bypass Iranian blockades while the US blockade in the Gulf has blockaded, with some efficacy, Iranian ships or ships carrying Iranian oil or in other ways trading with Iran. The operation is said to have kept oil prices “stable” at the price of making future price peaks more rather than less likely since Oman and Iran have separately negotiated a framework to manage regional transit, proposing that ships enter via Iranian waters and exit near Oman (ships hostile to Iran will not be allowed to pass). Despite the US-backed southern route functioning, overall commercial traffic remains well below pre-conflict levels, and the corridor continues to face security risks and threats from regional escalation.

As a result of the current crisis in the Strait of Hormuz - which could have been completely avoided had Trump not launched an unprovoked war on Iran back in February or, at the very least, honored the terms of the MOU which it signed with Iran in June - world trade is already seriously threatened by reduced energy supplies, fertilizers and other products that are essential not simply to global production and productivity, as is also human survival (as in food).

These supply shortages have been further exacerbated by Ukraine’s strikes on Russian tankers and grain cargo ships in the Sea of Azov and the east coast of the Black Sea, and by Russia’s isolation of Ukraine’s Odessa. Grain exports are very much reduced by contrast to this time last year and future food production is threatened to the extent that Ukrainian and Russian farmers have less money to invest in preparation for the 2027 harvest. The problems are even further amplified by the intense heat and fires that have afflicted much of European agricultural production this summer. These will radically reduce harvest yields.

Threatening secondary penalties on any nation or business trading with Iran strains relations with major global economies (such as China, India, and Turkey), forcing a fracture in international cooperation and destabilizing global trade networks.

Decades of sanctions have trained Tehran to construct robust shadow trade networks, illicit maritime oil transfers, and internal workarounds, rendering absolute economic strangulation difficult to achieve.

Severe inflation, currency devaluation, and shortages disproportionately crush the working class and youth rather than dislodge the ruling elite.

Blanket economic warfare hardens the stance of hardliners in Tehran, foreclosing constructive diplomatic off-ramps and locking the U.S. into a costly, open-ended cycle of confrontation.

The crisis may yet launch nuclear war. Former Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned her Congressional Post in January has claimed that her informants told her that the possibility of a nuclear strike on Iran had been debated in recent strategic meetings, even as Trump was declaring “victory” over Tehran.

A nuclear strike on Iran would be another catastrophic US abuse of nuclear power, devastating for Iran and for its neighbors and would only make global trade in energy and other commodities even more precarious than it already is. It is barely conceivable that China or Russia could stand by, either to allow such a thing in the first place, or to refrain responding to such an atrocity with equivalent force. (Paradoxically, it would make it impossible for Europe to sustain its already suicidal, self-imposed, blockade of Russian energy pipeline imports).

The US has adjusted its nuclear strike policy to enhance flexibility and responsiveness, allowing for a broader range of scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be employed. This includes maintaining a posture that does not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats and modernizing its nuclear arsenal to ensure readiness and deterrence capabilities.

Recent policy shifts reflect a more flexible approach to nuclear weapons use. The US maintains a ‘launch under attack’ posture, allowing for immediate response to perceived threat. The US is undergoing a nuclear modernization program, maintaining approximately 3,700 warheads to ensure readiness. Pentagon discussions indicate a desire for ‘expanding options’ for nuclear weapons use, reflecting evolving strategic considerations.

The Pentagon is drafting a classified nuclear strategy overhaul that emphasizes shorter-range, lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons to provide the president with flexible options for regional conflicts involving Russia or China. This shift aims to make extended deterrence for allies more credible by preparing for limited theater strikes instead of jumping straight to total strategic retaliation. Shifting policy acknowledges the potential for simultaneous, synchronized nuclear modernization and pressure from both Beijing and Moscow. As the US has dismantled a network of international agreements reached in many decades ago with the Soviet Union/Russia to help prevent nuclear war, the expiration of the New START treaty has removed binding limits on strategic arsenals, accelerating global competition. The US maintains and updates existing tactical assets like the B61 gravity bomb variants and low-yield submarine warheads (W76-2), while advancing programs like the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N). New policy focuses on the possibly unachievable goal of “controlled escalation” involving employment guidance for U.S. Strategic Command to manage localized theater conflicts without immediately crossing into all-out thermonuclear war.

Critics say that emphasizing smaller, “usable” nuclear weapons diminishes the taboo against nuclear use and raises the risk of uncontrollable escalation.aThe focus on theater-level readiness risks inciting further nuclear and conventional escalation across Europe and Asia.

A Conversation on Democratic Socialism, Democracy, Regime Change and Empire

The following is a link to the most recent episode of WMD, featuring Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Sumanath Inukonda and Ben Thomason. (This will be uploaded shortly to the WMD discussions that appear on the You Tube WMD channel at https://www.youtube.com/@WMDChannel1804).

A Conversation on Democratic Socialism, Democracy, Regime Change and Empire

The following is a link to the most recent episode of WMD, featuring Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Sumanath Inukonda and Ben Thomason.

On the Military Summary Channel and extrapolating from information of recent Russian reconnaissance over Ukraine and equally recent activity at Russia’s Olenya and Ukrainka air bases, as well as in Bryansk, Kursk, Rostov and Liski, Dima is predicting another massive attack by Russia on Ukraine, not only on the customary targets in Kiev, Odessa, Zapporizhzhi and so on, but also concentrating more than before on Central and Western Ukraine. There has been a Russian strike with Banderol missiles already, targeting Zhytomar in the Zhytomary oblast which lies 130-150 kilometers west of Kiev. Dima expects to see strikes on targets along Ukraine’s borders with Romania and Moldova (nothing is said about Poland).

In the Air, on the Land

Other recent Russian attacks have destroyed warehouses in the area of Brovary - a suburb of Kiev, a ship in Odessa, a bridge and a warehouse in Zapporizhzhia. On the ground, Russian forces are moving further in on Orikhiv in Zapporizhzhia. They have taken the suburbs to the south of Novodanylivkia to the southwest and Mala Tokmacha to the southeast, taking control of the MO8 and TO-8-15 highways into the settlement. The Ukrainian garrison in Orikhiv will very possibly soon be surrounded by Russian forces and therefore unavailable to buttress any Ukrainian defense line between Orikhiv and Zapporizhzhia.

In the Polohy Raion district of Zapporizhzhia, as Russia creeps westward, Russia has already taken Verkhnya Ters and Kaponi, russian troops are moving southwestwards froim Liubytske, Novosoloshyne and Lisne towards Chervonyi Yar.

In Donetsk, Russian forces move slowly to tighten a noose around the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk-Druzkivka conurbation in preparation for multiple ground attacks from the north, east, south and southwest. The conurbation is being evacuated, and Ukrainian troops are pouring in to build anti-tank defenses. To the east, Bilytske and Novomykalaivka have fallen, and Russian forces have just captured Andriivka, improving their positions in the direction of Zoloty Kolodiaz to eventually form a line from Stepy, through Zoloty Kolodiaz, Vesele, Hryzke to Novomykalaivka. Vodyanske and Krasnopodillia, east of Lyman, have also fallen, and fighting is going on northwest of Andriivka for the village of Staroandreyevka.

Domestic Crises

The Russian escalation coincides with the call by recently dismissed Ukrainian Minister of Defense Sergei Fedorov to be reinstated and for there to be new presidential and parliamentary elections. There have already been modestly populated protests outside the Verkhovna Rada in support of Fedorov, but Zelenskiy has publicly rejected Fedorov’s demands, while the Rada has appointed Zelenskiy’s choice of interim as permanent Minister of Defense namely Yevhen Khmara.

Fedorov is said by the Substack site Events in Ukraine to represent the Soros-supported liberal opposition to Zelenskiy. But then what does Zelenskiy represent?

Zelenskiy, Fedorov and George Soros

One perspective suggests that politically Zelenskiy is best seen as representing the centralized wartime executive power of the Ukrainian state, balancing traditional political and military command structures rather than serving as the antithesis to a specific reformist faction.

The premise that Mykhailo Fedorov acts as a designated “Soros-supported liberal opposition” is an oversimplification. Fedorov is a tech-savvy innovator and former defense minister who rose within Zelenskiy’s own administration before a political and structural falling-out over military bureaucracy and leadership turned him into a rival.

Zelenskiy serves as the supreme commander and political face of Ukraine’s national defense and international coalition-building against the Russian invasion. He manages the vertical power of the government. Thius includes balancing legacy military brass, defense contractors, and political factions. He represents institutional continuity under martial law, arguing that ordinary democratic elections must wait until security allows.

Fedorov did not start out as an external opposition figure. He served as a core member of Zelenskiy’s team (notably driving digital transformation and drone procurement), taking pride in what the West (briefly?) saw as the magnificent success of Ukraine’s spring and summer drone offensive. His removal from the defense ministry stemmed from clashes with traditional military command and bureaucratic resistance to procurement transparency and may also reveal the regime’s growing skepticism of the value of drone offensives that do nothing to stem the loss of valuable, industry-and-agriculture rich territory to Russia.

From the margins to which he has essentially exiled himself, Fedorov has transitioned into an independent political voice, publicly criticizing opacity and calling for mechanisms to restore democratic processes. This transition, therefore, places him alongside movements that, with support from Europe and the US, oppose corruption in Ukraine and favor an early return to democratic process.

Economic and other Pressures

The appointment of Fedorov’s replacement and Zelenskiy’s certain refusal to consider elections that would, with equal certainty, remove Zelenskiy from power (such is the much-vaunted “democratic” status of Ukraine) will likely heighten tensions and incite protests across many cities of Ukraine. This comes as an embattled Zelenskiy pleads fruitlessly with the US and with Europe for more Pac-3 missiles for Ukraine’s remaining Patriot missiles, and confronts a major, growing agricultural crisis. This arises from Russian bombardment of Odessa ports that has effectively cut off a considerable chunk of Ukraine’s routes for agricultural export. Further, farmers, deprived of their expected revenues for the 2026 harvest will have fewer resources or even economic capability of preparing for 2027.

This is also contributing to a global food crisis. Ukrainian attacks on Russian grain cargo ships in the Sea of Azov and on the eastern Black Sea coastline have reduced Russian grain and fertilizer exports as well. Sister crises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea have also cut global supply chains of fertilizer.

Attacks by Ukraine on Western-affiliated assets - including, yesterday a Greek tanker headed for the Russian port of Novorossiysk and a recent attack on the Caspian-Black Sea oil company which is an important conduit for the delivery of Kazhak oil to Turkey and other clients - may also be moderating the enthusiasm of Ukraine’s Western sponsors. Ukraine’s Fire Point, which some commentators see as linked to Zelenskiy, made the Flamingo missiles that attacked the Progress factory engaged in the manufacture of Rassvet satellites in Samara, but pictures of holes in the roofs of two of the buildings of this vast entity suggest that the strikes did not cause explosions and did relatively little damage.

Mounting Russian attacks on Kiev, on top of the previous months’ of Russian bombardments of Ukrainian energy, electricity, gasoline, transport and commercial warehouse assets will conceivably make life intolerable for citizens of Kiev, leading to an exodus of its population headed, with or without resistance from police and military for European destinations.

A Russian Pyrric Victory?

Ukraine’s difficulties and, in particular, the degradation of its air defenses and the weakening of effective Western sponsorship, would certainly seem to offer the promise of a more determined Russian effort to finish the war and to reduce Ukraine to a rump State. There is evidence of a recent upsurge of Russian activity across the fronts, even extending to NATO assets in Ukraine. Leaks from Britain detailing British supply of drones that are launched deep into Russia have provoked comments from Russian foreign minister Lavrov that in effect indicate Russian preparedness not only to attack assets in NATO countries, but, following the logic of NATO’s Article 5, to regard the aggression of any one NATO country as greenlighting Russian attacks on any member of NATO.

Commenting on this development, Gilbert Doctorow, lately in the vanguard of commentators who have grown increasingly skeptical of the military logic of the SMO in favor of much sharper and conclusive action, says that unless this British provocation does actually evince a meaningful Russian response against Britain, Putin will have caved to NATO, undermining his own legitimacy. He further points out that the absence of a meaningful response will be interpreted by other European powers including, most notably, Germany, as an invitation for them to escalate their own support for Ukraine and their direct engagement in the war.

For Doctorow, “winning” for Russia is not victory unless it achieves Putin’s objectives. The first and most important of these was that Ukraine should not fall within the umbrella of NATO but would remain neutral, and that goal, along with others including the de-nazification of the Kiev regime, and a cap on Ukrainian troop numbers, are far from being fulfilled.

The US gangster chief threatened to bomb Oman if the country “gets in the way” of US efforts to resolve the ongoing war with Iran and reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The threat coincided with the expiry without resolution of a 60-day diplomatic deadline to reach a broader peace agreement with Tehran, following immediate and multiple US violations of the MOU that the two countries signed on June 17.

The crime boss is opposed to Oman’s working with Iran to establish a joint authority that could also allow both nations to charge fees on shipping traffic through the strait. It is not thought likely that this traffic is going to include any time soon the ships of the US, Israel or any other country that has lately proven itself hostile to Iran, including the ships of neighboring Gulf nations.

South Korea

The gangster chief also ordered the Pentagon to cut down joint military drills with South Korea, a staunch US proxy in east Asia that contributes to US attempts to contain China, along with Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and others, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He was angry with Seoul for refusing to help in the US conflict with Iran. This is the result of two unprovoked attacks by the US on the sovereign nation of Iran including complicity with Israel in the murder of Iran’s leader, many members of his family, and other senior Iranian figures.

South Korea was understandably reluctant to participate in an illegal, meritless and possibly losing war that has already threatened its economy. Trump’s sudden decision has strained the 70-year alliance with South Korea while renewing a direct, friendly diplomatic push toward Pyongyang.

North Korea

This is, of course, an absurdity, since North Korea, facing off against US resistance, has become a significant nuclear power (possessing missiles that can reach the continental USA) even while Trump continuously claims that the key purpose of his war with Iran is to stop it becoming a nuclear power, and even though all credible evidence shows that up until now Iran has had no nuclear weapons, does not want nuclear weapons, and that the claim that it does has been constructed by none other than the nefarious Israeli gangster chief, Netanyahu, for the past two decades. Indeed, at least until the US-Isrseli gangsters launched theirt recent wars, Iran even subscribed to IAEA supervision and inspections of its nuclear energy plant at Bushehr. All this, while Iran’s nemesis and Trump’s best buddy, Israel, has built a vast nuclear armory, having stolen the technology from the USA over half a century ago, and operated without the approval of or any surveillance from the IAEA which nonetheless and with total lack of conviction, professes to be a neutral agency.

It is extremely unlikely that North Korea would allow itself to be lured away from its current, solid, brotherly relationship with Russia, whose army it augments with men and whose weaponry it augments with drones.

Israel

Meanwhile, Israel, whose military intelligence had wisely advised Prime Minister Netanyahu, prior to the second US attack on Iran last February, that there was no guarantee that Iran would readily collapse - advice that Netanyahu and Trump recklessly ignored – has been encouraged by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to continue its genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, land which the property developer would love to clear and build resorts on (particularly since a comparable if smaller scheme in Albania is falling apart under consistent pressure from the popular Flamingo resistance).

Antiwar.com reports today a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kushner that ended with an agreement that Israel will continue so-called “targeted strikes” in Gaza (i.e. the odious discourse of the US that wouldn’t “restrict Israel’s right to defend itself”). Yet the very day before, Kushner had attended a meeting of the “Board of Peace” (a Trump mockery of the UN) in the presence of the equally odious Tony “WMD” Blair, at which Hamas had committed to a disarmament plan.

Far from tempering its violence in Gaza and in the West Bank, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, says Israeli forces should “kill 30 or 40” people in Gaza every night and go beyond “those who pose a danger … at that particular moment,” while Israel pushes further forward in its invasions of neighboring countries. Israeli forces continued their offensive against southern Lebanon on Monday, with an airstrike reportedly targeting a location in Wadi al-Hujair as Israeli ground vehicles advanced deeper into the country, chiefly in the Ali al-Taher area. For Antiwar.com, Jason Ditz reports that the latest push began over the weekend with the deadliest strikes Israel has launched since mid-June The US has reportedly given Israel the green light to invade and seize Ali al-Taher, if it would exercise restraint.

In short, there are no indications whatsoever that the conditions that the US agreed with Iran in the now expired framework of the MOU, especially those that are contingent on Israeli collaboration, will be met any time in the foreseeable future.

Red Sea and Hormuz

Meantime, the crisis grows worse. Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have attacked another Saudi ship in the Red Sea. They launched ballistic missile and drone strikes targeting a Saudi military landing ship and four escort boats in the Red Sea off Mocha, causing the main vessel to catch fire.

Such escalation is putting additional pressure on the official price of Brent Crude ($87-91 a barrel). This increase is worrying, but prices are not reaching the levels seen earlier in the conflict and seem to fall well short of outright panic. I have commented on this discrepancy many times in the past few weeks, noting, for example, the various workarounds that have been established by the Gulf Countries, including Iran (whose ships must avoid the US blockade) to get their energy products to market, and the (seemingly failed) experiments of the US to establish alternative routes through the Gulf with the cooperation of Oman.

Working Around the Crisis

This was the topic of a long analysis yesterday by Larry Johnson at Sonar21, written in the wake of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s threats of new sanctions that would bring about Iran’s capitulation, sanctions that might once have worked when Iran was shut off from the rest of the world and operated only in dollars but are less likely to work now that Iran is well networked with countries like Russia, China and North Korea, and trades in local currencies.

Tehran has been a member of the BRICS since in January 2024, and in August 2026 it moved toward membership in the bloc’s New Development Bank which offers project financing outside the Western financial system that sanctions weaponize. Moscow and Beijing are increasingly offering Iran active material support, including real-time intelligence on the positions of American warships and aircraft, and they have rushed air-defense support.

“This lattice of support rests on a formal scaffolding — a 20-year Iran-Russia strategic partnership signed in January 2025, a 25-year Iran-China accord from 2021, and a trilateral Iran-China-Russia strategic pact signed on January 29, 2026, whose central plank is unified opposition to reimposed sanctions. The powers that once helped seal Iran’s isolation are now helping it fight the war and rebuild its shield.”

There is now a land bridge that bypasses the blockade entirely. Pakistan has announced six overland transit corridors linking the ports of Karachi, Port Qasim, and Gwadar to Iranian border crossings at Gabd and Taftan. These corridors send goods from third countries, including China, to reach Iran by road, entirely outside the reach of a naval blockade.

De-Dollarization

Iran, China and Russia have simply stopped using the US dollar machinery.

“Iran now sells its oil to China — which buys more than 80% of Iran’s seaborne exports — settled in Chinese yuan rather than dollars, routed through China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), the renminbi clearing network the People’s Bank of China built in 2015 explicitly to move money across borders without touching the US-dominated dollar-clearing and SWIFT infrastructure. A transaction that never touches a dollar and never clears through a US-linked bank is a transaction Washington cannot easily see, freeze, or block. That is not sanctions evasion at the margins; it is the removal of the chokehold itself.”

More than 100 countries now access the CIPS system.

Resistance is not only monetary. Iran, Russia and China held their first trilateral naval exercise in 2019, at Iran’s initiative and it has recurred almost every year since, becoming a fixture following American withdrawal from the JCPOA in May of that year.

The US blockade will not hold against overland routes that include Pakistan’s roads to the east, and the long-standing rail and road links north to Russia through the Caspian and the International North-South Transport Corridor. A reduced US Navy may not have the logistical depth to sustain a comprehensive blockade indefinitely, especially since its former Gulf bases have been crippled by Iranian strikes.

“A blockade is only as durable as the logistics sustaining it, and those logistics are stretched to the point of failing at the galley….A state that imports through Pakistani roads, finances through a BRICS bank, sells its oil for yuan beyond the dollar’s reach, and fights under a shield that Moscow and Beijing help repair has room to endure that the Iran of 2015 did not.

Who Will Endure Longest?

In brief, Johnson is arguing that in this attritional phase of the conflict initiated by the US and the political West, Iran has far more endurance capability than it had a decade ago.

An alternative perspective is offered by Brian Berletic at New Atlas. Berletic’s perspective holds tenaciously to the view that whatever the US does internationally is motivated by a policy of restoring and maintaining US global primacy.

Looked at through this prism, marginal embarrassment for the US over Iran barely matters. Nor does the US fear a long attritional war with Iran.

It welcomes it.

US or Chinese Hegemony, or Multipolarity?

What is important is the continuing preparation by the US for the diminution of the threat to US hegemony that China represents. The US has, for a very long time, maneuvered into position a ring of US bases and hostile governments around China. (It is shooting itself in the foot at the moment by taking out its carriers from the Asia Pacific; if China thinks it needs to invade Taiwan, it should do so now, although I do not for one moment expect that it will).

In the Berletic narrative, and there is a lot to be said for it, the crises in the Gulf and in the Red Sea are not reducing US primacy, they are strengthening it.

China has now been deprived of oil from both Venezuela and from Iran. This does not cripple China by any means, since it is significantly self-sufficient in energy (when one includes coal) but it increases the overall cost of energy for China. Perhaps even more importantly, it impoverishes the allies that the US had nurtured to contain China: they are deprived of oil, their energy costs increase, they are forced to depend more heavily on LNG from the US. Their number include Japan, whose economic misfortune are not being resolved by the recent US sale of Euros to boost the Yen and which might very well soon have to divest its holdings of US Treasuries.

Most significantly, the USA’s Asian proxies have less money to trade with in business with their most important trading partner. And the most important trading partner for most of them is China. So this too also rebounds negatively on China, while making the US in some ways stronger, if only in relative terms.

Europe

Much the same is true of the USA’s relationship with Europe. The US had already crippled the European economy when, through one means of another, it succeeded in executing Biden’s threat to kill Nord Stream pipeline deliveries which had been the foundation of German and European prosperity.

This generation of European leaders, through an ideology of neoliberalism which promised them an all-too-brief era of glowing prosperity in the peak years of “globalization” exuberance that persuaded them to renege on the welfare state compromises with big capital that were characteristic of the immediate, guilt-filled post-war period, now see themselves umbilically tied and subordinate to US primacy even at the expense of increasing economic anguish, for them. Their deal with Satan, in this case the USA, requires them to execute the US goal of diminishing and fragmenting the Russian Federation through the weaponization of its proxy, Ukraine, even when the US no longer seems to have the interest, resources or the nerve to do this just by itself.

Russia-Ukraine

In this battle, Russia, like Iran, has shown itself extraordinarily resilient and adaptable and powerful. Whereas for Iran the challenge is purely defensive, for Russia it must also be offensive. Because Ukraine was weaponized against Russian security interests from the time of the US-instigated coup d’etat on the Maidan in 2014, Russia eventually had to accept (in 2022) that its own defense required it to establish effective authority over the largely pro-Russian regions of the Donbass and further afield.

So Russia’s war, although often described as “attritional” is a lot less “attritional” than in the case of Iran. But it has been a long, hard, slow struggle. So slow that many analysts, including this one – and with some justification – have criticized Moscow for failing to use its weapons of deterrence to actually deter the ever escalating levels of Western aggression against Russia that have included strikes on its nuclear triad and on the life of Putin himself and, more recently, have included strikes on Russian oil refineries, Russian tankers and grain cargo ships, and Russian ecommerce warehouses.

We have seen in the past few months that this Western aggression has provoked – at last, some would say – Russia to a new level of counterattack, as in its effective land, sea and air blockade of Odessa.

But although some pro-Russian analysts profess to be awfully convinced as to the proximity of the collapse of the Ukrainian economy, or the collapse of the Ukrainian army, or the collapse of Ukrainian governance, while downplaying and belittling the importance of Ukrainian attacks deep into the heart of Russia….well, we have been here so many times before that any expression of confidence is hardly worth the effort.

For sure, Russia’s recent strikes on Odessa, which I have covered many times in recent posts, along with its gathering forces for the establishment of Russian control over the remaining conurbation (Slavyansk-Kramatorsk) in Donetsk, its approaches in Zapporizhzhia to Orikhiv (now said to be 20% controlled by Russia) and its bombing of a major bridge across the Dnieper in the city of Zapporizhzhia itself, not to mention its constant incremental gains in Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv, all these things testify to Russian strength.

They are further assisted by the deterioration of air defense mechanisms in Ukraine, the diminution of weapons stockpiles throughout the political West - especially in such things as Patriot interceptor missiles – and the growing, successful use by Russia of AWACS, Rassvet satellites and ground towers for the annihilation of the hundreds of Ukrainian drones sent into Russia every 24 hours, and Russia’s continuing ability to out-produce the political West in ballistic missiles and major new weapons innovations.

Will any of this be enough to bring about a new security architecture for EurAsia and for the World?

I do not see this as remotely likely on the current horizon, given the situation that we have, and given the people we have in power in the political West who, for the most part, are outstanding only in terms of their absence of moral sensibility,pompous self-deception, greed, self-regard, short-sightedness, corruption and intellectual poverty.

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Flashback

My attention was caught by a title I used for my post of Nov. 17, 2023 !

Russia Can Win This Now. Why Doesn’t It?

Here is the text:

Ruminations on a Victory Interrupted

On the Military Summary Channel, Dima calls attention to the growing intensity of the Russian offensive and opines that Russia is executing the “third Maidan” strategy of replacing Zelenskiy and his regime with an alternative system of governance that will be distinctly more favorably disposed towards Russia. I have my doubts as to whether regime change best explains the logic of the Russian geopolitical bid for security.

When looking at the overall picture, I am struck by three contradictory things: (1) what the western powers like to call the “stalemate” along the combat lines (a word that completely fails to convey the intensity of actual fighting from Kherson in the south to Kupyansk in the north); (2) evidence of the deterioration across many dimensions of Ukrainian armed forces, amidst pressures for mobilization on the most vulnerable members of the citizenry namely, women, young people and people who are considerably older than conventional fighting age, and given a relative absence of actual and potential reserves; (3) evidence of a considerable Russian army, with large numbers of reserves and the potential for many more mobilizations, if necessary, from conventional fighting-age populations, backed by an industrial capability for exponential increase of most categories of weaponry including armored vehicles, fighter jets, nuclear submarines, all categories of missiles from nuclear downwards, bombs and shells, with the support of an even greater industrial power namely, China, which the collective West has done everything in its power to alienate and to weaken its trust in Western capacity for rational policy making.

I am drawn to three conclusions.

The first (1) is that the appearance of “stalemate,” follows from the extraordinary length of the combat line, some 700 miles, a length that cannot possibly be fought over in its entirety. This, then, leads to sporadic concentrations of forces in areas of perceived greatest value, including the industrial heartlands of eastern Ukraine in terms, particularly, of mines and transport. A concentration of forces on one side, of course, immediately attracts a comparable concentration of forces by the other side. One side then tries to reduce the concentration of forces of its opponent by moving north or south to open a new area of combat, with a view to enticing its opponent to redeployment of forces from the first position. And so and so on in a seemingly eternal dance.

But (2) this dance is only necessary so so long as both sides maintain roughly equivalent strengths. Ukraine’s strength is matched by Russia’s.

But (3) whereas Ukraine’s strength is its absolute strength, Russia’s strength is simply relative, calibrated only to match, not greatly exceed, that of Ukraine.

In other words, (4) Russia has greater capability and could, if it so determined, double the strength of its forces at all the major points of conflict along the combat line or simply greatly increase the number of points that it chooses to defend or where it chooses to position its forces. These are options that Ukraine does not have. The presumption is that nuclear forces would only ever be used in the event of an existential threat to the continued existence of the Russian Federation.

(5) Therefore, it appears to me, Russia could, if it chose, win the war now, especially given its currently daily attacks by bomb and by drone on energy, transportation and military targets across Ukraine and which Ukraine fears will be intensified with the onset of winter. Consideration should also be taken of the speed of growth (4-5%) of the Russian economy and the increasing size of its GDP (2-3% now and for the next two to three years) and the likely continuing high flow of oil and gas revenues at prices well above the misjudged western oil price cap and racing ahead of half-hearted western efforts to curtail existing Russian classic and LNG energy exports to Europe.

If so, we have to answer the question: if Russia could win the war now, why doesn’t it just proceed to win and get the damn thing over with (something that would now, it appears, have the support of the majority of the Russian people)?

Several possible answers suggest themselves:

(1) A “Big Arrow” Russian offensive will win whatever it is that Russia wants, but it will do so at a very heavy price in Russian as well as Ukrainian lives, a price that the Russian governing elites choose not to pay; further, it is likely to involve much greater destruction of infrastructure, infrastructure that Russia may intend to incorporate into the Russian Federation;

(2) A slow win is a safer, more predictable process than a sudden win, because it is more humanitarian, because it will create less anguish in a population with which Russia still at some point will have to try to get along with, and because it leaves more opportunities, more doors open to potential peace initiatives whether these come from Washington, Brussels, Kiev or Moscow, or even from the UN;

(3) A slow win better follows the logic of attritional warfare wherein not only are Ukrainian forces greatly reduced over a longer period of time, but so too are the forces and the weapons and the treasure of the collective West, reducing the ability of the collective West to constantly threaten the world with existential and nuclear annihilation scenarios whether these be against Iran in the Middle East, against Palestine in Israel, against China in Taiwan and, of course, against Russia whether this be over Ukraine, or Georgia or Armenia or wherever.

This logic therefore (4) involves a steady decline in the political, economic and military prowess of the collective West as there is a corresponding process in reverse among the powers of the BRICS and in the Global South, involving the end of the petrodollar and de-dollarization, ushering in a new epoch of the disappearance of a rogue hegemonic superpower - one that stops at nothing to secure the interests of its plutocracy, even at the expense of its own people - in favor of a more equitable distribution of power in a multipolar world.

First, here is the Sonar21 link that I referenced in my previous post - having to do with the reasons behind the Abaraham Lincoln debacle. The earlier link did not work. I hope this one will fare better: Sonar21).

It’s a quieter week, so far, than many (!). And yet, it starts with a shock.

I was amazed to listen to Alaistair Cooke today in conversation with Judge Napolitano.

My amazement was not about the content. This principally had to do with Netanyahu being the target of a lot of angry criticism within Israel about the Prime Minister ignoring his own intelligence prior to the US unprovoked assault on Iran last February, intelligence that warned that there was no guarantee of a quick collapse of Iran.

(Naturally, everyone is forgetting the evidence of a TLIHOP scenario on October 7, 2023 for which Netanyahu, a mover and shaker in setting up Hamas in opposition to the PLA, is an obvious suspect. During his terms as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu pursued a political strategy that tolerated and facilitated the flow of Qatari (not Iranian, notice!) funds into Gaza to support Hamas-administered governance.

This approach aimed to keep the Palestinian leadership divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, thereby reducing pressure to negotiate a two-state solution - although that has always been a fantasy, given the assymetry of power between Israel and Palestine).

Natanyahu and his head of Mossad (whose propaganda campaign required him to reside at the White House for days last December), in a decidedly murky and less-than-democratic line of decision-making, lied to Trump and assured him of a short, sharp US victory and there was nobody, not one, apparently, in US intelligence that was able to advise Trump convincingly that he was being lied to, not just about the short, sharp victory, but also about Iran posing an imminent, nuclear threat (it did not even have a nuclear weapon - as testified to by practically every competent source of intelligence and analysis around the world, including from yours truly over the past decade) AND about the US having sufficient weapons to fight a longer war if necessary.

David Barnea, the culpable Head of Mossad, has since been replaced by Roman Gofman.

And besides, doesn’t Trump, like JFK over the Cuban crisis, have an obligation to actually think for himself? Or is that a skill for which there is zero tolerance in imperial maintenance?

No, none of this is worthy of amazement. Of course, Netanyahu lied. Of couse, Barnea lied. It is barely conceivable that any individual in the US administration from janitors upwards ever thought that the business about an Iranian nuke was to be taken seriously, and only evil but stupid scavengers pretended to believe that there was any kind of real pretext for going to war with Iran - in fact, there was even less reality to the pretext of Iran being a nuclear threat than there was reality to the fake WMD pretext on which the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was based, and THAT one had no reality whatsoever!

What I do find amazing, is that Crooke and Napolitano this morning were collaborating on the construction of a narrative of a poor, beseiged Donald Trump being lied to and, apparently, being taken in by that lie (or, I should say, these mutliple lies).

Trump, the unwitting, incredulous innocent? The one who didn’t think that Israel could possibly lie about something so important? The one who loves Iran and the Iranian people and could never hurt a hair on their heads (except for that time last August, but Israel started that one with a decapitation strike, and the well-meaning USofA did not decapitate not a single one of them)?

Please, give me a break. Gentlemen, grow up. You are in the headlights of ultra-fascism. Stop messing about in the road trying to determine where the light is coming from.

Is this an attempt not just to give Trump a ramp out of the corner into which he has painted himself over Hormuz and the Red Sea, but to whitewash Trump prior to the November midterms? It sees incredible that this would be the case, but how else are we supposed to read this?

Donald Trump, the pitiable, put-upon, peace-loving billionaire, whose political funds are paid for by pro-Israeli multi-billionaires, gets lied to by nice people from that cozy den of peaceloving genocidal Israelis and their genocidal neocon agents in the US with whom Trump, by careful choice, has complete surrounded himself with.

And Trump, always wanting to do good in the world, is taken in by the lie, (didn’t he set up the Board of Peace, after all? - a stunning act of kindness on behalf of the wretched, underfunded United Nations suffering in soggy downtown New York, to help it feel better about itself being so pathetically incapable of managing the Israeli-Palestine conflict from even before it created a state for Israel in 1948 but left the Palestinians stateless and totally undefended, and on behalf of the fact that Trump just can’t help being all-knowing and all-wise).

Nobody in the entire corpus of the complete waste-of-money that constitutes the US intelligence machine or employed by the sychophantic money-slurping mainstream media behemoths that are an extension of that machine had sufficient guts and knowledge to stand up for truth?

There is hardly a more potent or pungent example of the bottomless stench of US corruption and incompetence than Trump’s acquiescence to Israeli lies (an act of theatre to camouflage Israel’s role as a tool for US empire) and the duplicity, amorality, and studidity of an entire Administration that lines up behind the lie, imagining, at best, that pretending that lies are true is somehow smart even, and perhaps especially when, as a result of the lie, thousands of people will certainly die, the touch-paper of global recession will be lit, and there may even be a nuclear war.

Democrats did not formally support the military strikes and war on Iran. They opposed the action, criticized President Donald Trump for bypassing Congress, and pushed for war powers resolutions to limit his military authority. They accused the administration of starting an unneeded and costly conflict in the Middle East. They pushed and voted for bipartisan or Democratic-backed war powers resolutions to rein in military operations.

But they had had no qualms under Biden in starting the war with Russia over proxy Ukraine, they have fallen hook, line and sinker about how the US must go to war with China, and they had been firm advocates of the existential lie of Iran-as-a-nuclear-threat-when-it-does-not-have-a-single-nuclear-warhead-but-Israel-has-hundreds that undergirded Obama’s fated JCPOA in 2015. The Democratic Neocon wing, its dominant wing, is every bit as pro-Israeli and anti-Iran as the Republicans.

This is a political system for which meaningful reform is not only unimaginable but is simply imposible.

Well, this week, meine Damen und Herren, sees me preparing, yet again, for another academic year of university teaching (if only part-time) and, like all such weeks, it portends additional pressure on top of the general business of being human, getting older and attending to family and financial responsibilities as they arise (and they arise).

So please forgive me if I am not always able to sustain the continuity of effort of the past few months to the degree that I would like.

This context, notwithstanding, I would truly appreciate it if those of you who have kindly supported these efforts up until now as unpaid subscribers would find a way of upgrading their membership to paid subscriptions.

This helps me, among other things, augment the range of my sources and justify my expenditure of eons of time on what may seem to my detractors to be merely an indulgent hobby. Whether or not it is a hobby, I cannot think of anything more important that I am called on right now to exercise. I could do more of it if I could lower the teaching load!

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The reasons for the Lincoln fiasco are clearly identified by Larry Johnson in this Sonar21 expose (Sonar21 - apologies if the link does not work; I shall fix later today). We can summarize them in terms of logistics (cutting supply chains to the bone), just-in-time economics, privatization and a monopoly capitalism that is dependent on screwing the State.

A system that is now threatening to divert $1.5 trillion dollars to war cannot get decent food to an aircraft carrier. The money is instead being spent on coddled defense industries that, because they long ago learned how to bribe politicians, get away with extremely costly overruns on products that are priced outrageously high in the first place. The more of those products that are consumed in war the richer they get, and if the use outpaces the supply then they benefit even more from the economics of scarcity.

In Russia the State remains in control and the power of the oligarchs is restrained.

Russia produces a quarter million artillery 155mm shells a month because that is what the State needs and industry is structured to supply; it is also drawing on shells manufactured in Russia by North Korea or imported from there and has the potential of buying from China.

US cannot manage more than 36000 a month because it has destroyed its own industrial depth by outsourcing and import dependence. Because it is short of shells to send to Ukraine or because it is short of shells that Europeans must buy to sell on to Ukraine alongside Europe’s own surging shell production, (one million and rising) Ukraine needs more missiles that the US and Europe are also short of.

Which is why the US is encouraging Türkiye to release Turkish stocks of US missiles for Ukraine. Turkiye has been a conduit for US weapons for some time. Only now, its main supply route by sea to Odessa has been crippled by Russian bombardment and the effective blockade of Odessa ports.

Türkiye is calling for a Black Sea ceasefire and has lately been threatening to restrict passage of Russian ships through the Dardanelles.

Only, Russia is not playing ball any longer, and is likely to bring heavier pressure on land routes.

Türkiye is coming under extreme pressure: a member of NATO that has represented NATO through the destabilization of Syria, a former empire (Ottoman) that would like to be acknowledged as leader of the 40 or so Turkic language communities in Central Asia (a threat to China among the Uyghur peoples, and to both Russia and Iran through Azerbaijan). It is also partner with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in an alliance that could make it more independent of NATO but might make it a powerful Western proxy. It is a friend of the US that wants its F-35s but a friend of Russia and for whom Russian oil, trade and tourism are badly needed.

Russia may no longer be prepared to allow Türkiye the luxury of these complex balancing acts. This so-called bridge between East and West may need to decide whether it is a puppet for the unipolar order or an equal and sovereign player in its multimodal successor. On either count it has also to deal with Israel, which sees Turkey as its next regional enemy to sort out after Iran.

In the war over Ukraine, meanwhile, Kiev has come under significant Russian missile and drone attack once more. Major industrial facilities were also hit in central Ukraine. Ukraine on Friday night struck a Russian air base and a plant that manufactures satellites for the Russia’s new “Starlink-style” system, and Russia reported shooting down over 800 Ukrainian drones headed for the Moscow region. Three large Russian warehouses were destroyed, one of them reportedly Russia’s biggest. The increasing number of Ukrainian drones is in part a factor of Russia’s improving capability for taking them down and Ukraine’s determination to make sure that a fraction gets through.

On the battlefield, Russia’s war for Orekhiv has begun. Once successfully completed, Russian pressure on the city of Zapporizhzhia will intensify. In Donetsk, Russian forces have entered Dobrepillia, reinforcing preparations for a southern assault on the Slaviansk-Kramatorsk conurbation.

(Official: Joke, sort of)

Odessa and the Doctorow Assessment

In the past 24 hours, Russia has continued its broad offensive against the oblast of Odessa with a view to isolating and blockading Odessa by air, land and sea, extending its targets to ports like Izmail that are close to Romania and to the Dneister-Danube waterways. In Chornomorsk in Odessa and Ochativ in Mykolaiv oblast, Russia has struck military-related fuel storage units, port infrastructure, a bulk carrier and a patrol boad. In the Razdelnaya and Stanye Shompoly areas it has taken out a train and a locomotive, among many recent strikes on locomotives, and gasoline stations.

This goes some way to addressing the issue that was raised in my post yesterday where I assessed Gilbert Doctorow’s case that Russia is still holding its punches in this war, to the detriment of Russia’s long-term security interests namely and that it has not done enough to defend itself by attacking the routes that carry NATO provisions of weapons and materiel to Ukraine.

But Doctorow’s case is still probably supported by Russia’s failure to attack such supply routes through Poland. If so, then we might expect to see over the next few months and in the process of the roll-out of the new Russian Rassvet satellite system (Russia’s answer to Starlink) that will apparently boost Russia’s ability to navigate advanced Geran drones to targets in western Ukraine, many more and more precise strikes on such transborder trade.

Ukraine to Novorossiysk and the Clamor for Ceasefire

Ukraine last night retaliated against Russia’s campaign on Odessa by striking the Russian port of Novorossiysk a major port city located in Krasnodar Krai in southwestern Russia where it sits on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea along Tsemes Bay. This was said to be a massive drone attack on the naval base and on two major grain terminals. Ukraine’s Zelenskiy claimed that two frigates, a large landing ship, a corvette and other vessels were struck. Russian sources claim that the attack was a failure, that many or all of the Ukrainian drones were shot down - essentially with bullets - and that Ukraine once again expended a huge outlay for very little return.

This in turn begs the question as to how much Ukraine actually spends on its drones and, as one might expect, the range is huge (see Bidochko 2026 - https://www.justsecurity.org/138164/ukraine-drone-superpower/): Tactical FPV Drones for frontline operations cost $400 – $800. Interceptor Drones ($1,000 – $5,000) are built to hunt and ram enemy suicide drones like the Iranian-designed Shahed. Budget options like SkyFall’s 3D-printed P1-SUN cost about $1,000, while fixed-wing air force interceptors hit around $5,000 per unit. Long-range drones, the ones most likely to have been used in the case of the Novorossiysk strike can cost between $2,000 and $200,000. These are used for deep-strike missions behind enemy lines. For example, the specialized long-range FP-1 strike drone costs roughly $55,000. Unmanned surface vessels (USVs) used to strike naval targets or transport FPV drones to littoral combat zones and can cost between $50,000 and $300,000.

As I noted in a recent post, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has called for a Black Sea “moratorium” on military attacks targeting merchant and civilian shipping. This proposal follows drone strikes (almost certainly Ukrainian) on Turkish-owned cargo vessels near the Russian port of Novorossiysk which disrupted regional trade and led Ankara to briefly delay or scrutinize transit permits through the Turkish Straits.

Ankara urged both Russia and Ukraine to halt strikes on commercial navigation, warning that the war has expanded into a direct threat against civilian shipping and global food security. Türkiye proposed setting up a bilateral or localized implementation framework to guarantee the safety of merchant vessels operating across the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. The push for restraint came after drone attacks hit commercial cargo ships—including vessels with Turkish crew members—near Russian coastal infrastructure, causing injuries and property damage.

Türkiye’s Directorate General of Coastal Safety temporarily delayed or tightened processing times for transit permits through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus for vessels heading toward Black Sea hubs like Novorossiysk. But, standard transit clearances through the Turkish Straits resumed as oil tankers and container ships bound for terminals near Novorossiysk were cleared to move after brief safety evaluations. Novorossiysk remains a critical export artery for Russian oil and grain, but escalating maritime attacks have spiked insurance risk premiums for ships traveling to the port.

What I conclude from this is that Turkiye’s recent intervention is not as anti-Russian as it at first might have seemed and as I assumed in my post.

I further note that the Black Sea drone and missile confrontations have demonstrated that the Ukrainian decision to strike Russian tankers and grain cargo ships in the Sea of Azov and the eastern Black Sea ports has proven disastrously counter-productive and that while the economies of both countries are negatively impacted, the consequences for Ukraine are more disastrous than they are for Russia which, in general has a far healthier, larger, and more diversified economy. An assessment in IntelliNews (IntelliNews) today comes to the same conclusion:

“They are both hurting, but on balance Ukraine’s economy is worse off. Both economies are spending too much on defence, but Russia still has several options to find extra funding, and its economy is starting to recover a little thanks to CBR governor Elvia Nabiullina’s 600bp of rate cuts. Ukraine’s economy is short $20bn this year and it is entirely dependent on external funding, which is running out fast.”

This morning’s IntelliNews editorial (IntelliNews) observes that the attacks on Novorossiysk are self defeating. I have already referred to Turkey and, alongside that there is the problem of Kazakh oil almost all of which leaves via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) route to the Russian port. Additionally, as already mentioned, there is the problem of wheat. The third of Russia’s three big grain terminals was closed down yesterday and this will stop a lot of Russian grain being exported, adding to the problem of weakening supply of grain to global markets, including European. The Odessa ports carry 90% of Ukraine’s grain exports. The Russian blockade of Odesa region ports has sent Ukrainian grain exports tumbling 76% year-on-year in August. Compared to last year, Ukraine’s exports of wheat have fallen 4.3-fold, barley 5.6-fold, and corn 2.7-fold.The price of wheat on the Chicago commodities exchange has already jumped, merely adding to the straina of the Iran war which has closed down fertilizer exports from the Persian Gulf - about a fifth of the world’s total that mostly goes to Asia normally passes via the Gulf. In Europe, heatwaves have burnt crops in European fields to a crisp so that will also reduce supplies.

These setbacks likely explain Zelenskiy’s latest call for a Black Sea ceasefire, alongside yet more pleas for what he claims would be 5-10% of the US stockpile of Pac-3 Patriot air defense missiles to enable Ukraine to survive for the coming winter (he seems less concerned about diminishing energy supplies sufficient to keep his people minimally warm), at least, and to secure it from Russian ballistic missiles, at best (although Patriots do not have a good record against ballistic missiles and are virtually useless against Russia’s hypersonic missiles).

Declining Value of Life in Ukraine

As reported by Reuters, Ukraine offered Russia a mutual truce via a third party to halt attacks on civilian targets in the Black Sea. Weeks of intensified strikes on ports and commercial vessels have severely disrupted regional agriculture shipping.

(The Ukrainian proposal has today been rejected by Russia).

Latest reports suggest that retail shops in Ukraine show empty shelves and missing products including dairy products, meats, fish, baby food and cigarrettes. This is not just because of the Black Sea war but also because Russia has been retaliating against Ukraine for Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian Wildberries (e-commerce) warehouses so that in the past few days over one million square meters of Ukrainian warehouse space have been destroyed and three-quarters of this is located in Kiev. Entities impacted include Fozzy, Novus, Silpo, Fora and Thrash.

A World Bank report concludes that almost 42% of Ukraine’s remaining population (which stands between a half and two-thirds of what it once was) lives below the poverty line and double the poverty rate of 2021, in which time food prices have surged by 80% and utility costs by 70%. Ian Proud this morning comments that Zelenskiy and his crew have grown richer while the lives of most Ukrainians have been rendered worthless, subject to a war-profiteering machine that depends mainly on the extremely unwise transfer of Western wealth to the corrupt aparatchiks of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian offer aimed to safeguard global food supplies and ease pressure on vital civilian trade routes. Russian officials at first stated they had received no formal proposal yet, noting that while various truce ideas circulate through backchannels, nothing official had been presented to Moscow. But statements by Sergei Lavrov today make clear that the offer has been rejected.

Precisely because the ceasefire would be of greater assistance to Ukraine than to Russia it is unlikely that Russia will accept the proposal. At best, it might counter by requiring that Ukraine, in addition to a ceasefire in the matter of ships and ports would also agree to stop striking targets in Crimea.

Ukraine’s “Counteroffensives”

The request for a Black Sea ceasefire also coincides with a claim by Zalenskiy that Ukraine has made important gains in northeast Zapporizhzhia and is executing successful counteroffensives elsewhere. Northeast of Orekhiv, which has been the single most important Russian objective in recent months, Ukraine claims it has recovered the Komar front represented by a pocket of territory stretching from Ivanivka in the north to Zelenyi Hai in the east, to Andriivka-Klevtove in the west and down to Voskresenko in the south, and that Ukraine is extending this victory from Piddybne in the east to Myrne in the southeast and on towards Komar.

Additionally, Ukraine has been mounting a counteroffensive closer to Orekhiv countering Russian forces at Mala Tokmachka and Bilohirya. If all these claims are true or substantial then Ukraine may have deferred Russia’s seizure of Orekhiv from two to several months. But Ukraine does have a poor record in comparable claims in the past that have either turned out to be false or misleading or, at least, ephemeral, and there is a very good chance that this is the case now.

The same conclusion might attach to Ukrainian claims to be stalling Russian advances in the direction of Slavyansk, in Lyman. Here, there has been a pocket of Ukrainian resistance to Russian advances over most of the territory of Lyman on land that separates Lyman from Chasiv Yar (a major battlefield for much of the war earlier on), but as much as the Ukrainians may claim this represents an active counteroffensive, Russia can claim that these forces are a holdover from the Russian Lyman campaign and that the Ukrainians are effectively surrounded.

Russia’s Continuing Advances

Elsewhere, the Russians continue to register advances. Military Summary Channel documents how in the northern oblast of Sumy, close to Kiev, Russian forces are gradually closing in on the city of Sumy itself from four directions: from the north where Russian forces are descending south to Stetskivka and Radkivka; from the northwest, where Russian forces are moving further south from Mohrytsia, Zepsillia and Myropillia towards Hrvnivka and Barlivka, and have entered the forest of Sumy; from the south east, from Pokrovka through to Novodmytrivka, Jardutyne and Riasne; and from the northwest from Zarya via Bezsalivka and Ryzhivka towards Stari Vryky, the P44 highway, and Voozhba and Bilopillia.

In Kharkiv, as I have previously posted, Russia continues to clear the far northeast pocket that includes Varvarivka (north), Mala Vovcha (northwest), Chorne (southeast) and Rublene (east). Russian forces have entered the village of Vaslivka that lies between Ivanivka to the west and Chorne to the east, heading for the villages of Blahodatne and Nefedivka that separate them from Chorne.

In Donetsk, Russians are reportedly (see above) facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area near Lyman made up of the villages of Novoselivka, Karpivka and Nove. South of Kramatorsk near Druzhivka, Russian forces have reached Raise (southwest), Oskove (east) and are entering Oleksiivevo-Druzhkivka. Russia is making progress in splitting off eastern Slavyansk from supply support.

IntelliNews today (IntelliNews) reports that Russia just leapt ahead of Ukraine in the drone arms race. The Geran-5 drone, in production but in low volumes, is an entirely new class of drone that can travel a lot further and faster than the 1-4 versions. There is also the S8000 Banderol, a jet-powered cruise-missile hybrid that flies above 500 km/h and now accounts for the bulk of strikes on Odesa’s food infrastructure.

“Russia has embraced the cost-to-kill ratio philosophy of modern asymmetrical warfare: keeping the production costs of increasingly powerful weapons down so you can mass produce them and simply outshoot your opponent.”

In addition, Military Summary Channel this morning notes that Russia is intensifying its missile and drone attacks on targets in Western Ukraine.

The Coming Piracy Wars

Of greater concern to Russia, perhaps, than Zelenskiy’s bid for a ceasefire, Ukraine’s attacks on Novorossiysk, Turkish threats about the Dardanelles, or Ukrainian counteroffensive claims is the EU’s recent transition to open piracy (I covered this in a post a few days ago) - already practiced to relatively little effect by Britain, France and Sweden - and legitimizing the seizure and impounding of ships involved in trade with Russia, even approving EU sale of their contents.

In his recent speech to his Pacific Commanders, Russian President Vladimir Putin, entirely predictably, has ordered his navy to retaliate with the seizure of ships engaged in EU trade - anywhere.

Branding the EU policies as “piracy and banditry,” Putin stated during naval exercises that Russia would retaliate against European commercial interests anywhere it deems appropriate, not strictly in the waters where a seizure occurs. The Russian Foreign Minister echoed these points on state television, accusing Brussels of inventing the “shadow fleet” concept to override international law. The head of Russia’s Maritime Board called the EU approach a “deliberate escalation” and proposed a permanent naval presence to deter Western actions. Pacific Fleet Commander Viktor Liina reported that Russian forces are prepared to inspect and detain vessels from unfriendly nations.

The Duran (The Duran) notes:

“Russia’s Pacific Fleet has already mapped significant volumes of maritime traffic through its region, according to the draft, identifying hundreds of vessels sailing under flags Moscow regards as unfriendly. This is important because European governments possess considerable regulatory and financial leverage over shipping, but they do not possess uncontested naval dominance everywhere Russian forces operate.”

European and UK officials maintain that boardings and detentions are executed in strict accordance with international maritime law to enforce lawful sanctions. Governments argue that interdictions target aging, uninsured, or falsely flagged shadow tankers that present severe environmental risks and finance the conflict in Ukraine.

All this, of course, is absurd and patently deceitful nonsense. Everybody understands that this is an escalation of the war, in a further European bid - almost all its bids have so far proven to be counterproductive - to cripple the flow of tax revenue to the Kremlin from trade in Russian oil, and at a time when the whole world, Europe more than many, is experiencing a major crisis in the supply and pricing of oil!

There are already indications in some European capitals that some leaders are aware of the damaging consequences that will rebound on European interests. One of these is the sharp increase in insurance rates that Lloyds of London and other EU insurers will be forced to apply to ships that are now at risk of being detained and impounded, perhaps indefinitely, by the Russian navy.

It is unlikely that the US Navy is in a position to offer much succour to European vessesl: it is way over-stretched as it is - in the Asia-Pacific, West Asian and Latin American zones - busily pretending to maintain a blockade, a “wall of steel,” as Trump would have us believe, against Iran in the Arabian sea, to blockade the island of Cuba in the Caribbean, and to sustain its proxy, Taiwan, in preparation for instigating war with China, even as US sailors commit or attempt to commit suicide on its ships as a result of exceptionally long periods at sea, poor and inadequate food, insanitary conditons and manifestly pathetic leadership.

The Persian Gulf Crisis

Mainstream media accounts over the past 24 hours, indicate that the US-Iran conflict continues at a high state of tension. Iran maintained the waterway’s effective closure by striking two UAE-affiliated oil tankers, while the U.S. sustained its ongoing naval blockade, with traffic through the strait dropping to a trickle of roughly 13 ships a day. High-ranking Iranian officials publicly rejected U.S. claims of “total control” over the Gulf, maintaining “maximalist” demands (to which the US agreed when it signed the MOU) including financial compensation and sanctions relief - before any full reopening of the trade route. Iranian-aligned regional dynamics continued to strain shipping lanes, keeping economic pressure high on Western markets.

The U.S. military maintained its active naval choke point, which has successfully redirected dozens of commercial vessels attempting to trade with Iranian ports. In the wake of the scandal involving conditions for sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the US has moved forward with strategic force rotations in the region, deploying the USS George Washington to replace the Lincoln, and to sustain naval presence and pressure. Washington has signaled upcoming Treasury Department measures aimed at compounding fiscal strain on the Iranian state.

Addressing the conundrum of why oil prices are not considerably higher than they are, Paul Krugman (Krugman) yesterday concludes:

“A large part of the answer is that oil prices actually are higher — if you look at the right numbers.

Today’s post will be short and wonkish, because I’ve been overwhelmed with real-life responsibilities. I have had enough time, however, to put together a few charts.

So, what do I mean by looking at the right numbers? Nobody burns crude oil directly. Instead, they burn products refined from crude, mainly gasoline and diesel. And these prices, after falling for a while on fake news of peace, are back most of the way to their recent peaks.”

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Doctorow has monitored Ukraine’s summer drone offensives - taking earlier and more careful note, perhaps, than many other analysts in western “alternative media” scape - of the severe damage Ukraine inflicted on energy and transit nodes in Crimea, as well as on Russian oil refineries and on energy, military and civilian assets that lie well within the Russian mainland (extending recently to Siberia), and on Russian oil tankers and grain cargo ships both in the Sea of Azov and along the coast of the eastern Black Sea.

Many of his critics have been quick to argue that the damage sustained by Russia from these Ukrainian offensives is not as bad as Ukraine and its Western sponsors claim, that much of the damage is repairable and has or is being repaired, that the attacks constitute a major drain on Ukraine’s war economy and that, above all, Russia has retaliated fiercely, with far more impact, against Ukraine. In particular, they point to Russia’s bombardment over recent weeks of targets in the Odessa oblast against port facilities, port infrastructure, vessels, energy and transit infrastructure. They argue that Russia has imposed what amounts to a blockade of Ukrainian ports along the Odessa and the remainder of Ukraine’s western Black Sea coastline.

These have had a severe, negative impact on the key sources of Ukrainian export activity namely, grain, fertilizer and agricultural goods that far outweigh, as a proportion of the value of Ukraine’s total economic activity, the impact of damage inflicted by Ukraine on Russia’s economy. Moreover, this takes place within the context of a worsening situation for Ukraine and its Western sponsors in the availability of missiles and air defenses, while Russian production of most categories of weapons is robust, and out-competes that of every other country save, possibly, China.

But China and Russia are firm allies and the core members, one might argue, of the BRICS, along with India and Brazil. China possesses a vastly superior, larger, and more technologically advanced manufacturing ecosystem for weapons production compared to Russia. While Russia, as some argue (but it is debatable) has transitioned its economy onto a wartime footing to rapidly churn out basic munitions and conventional armor, it remains heavily dependent on Chinese dual-use components, microelectronics, and industrial machine tools to sustain its output.

China’s industrial base is exponentially larger and more technologically advanced than Russia’s defense sector facilities some of which might be described as “aging,” although Russia has shown enormous innovation in such areas as ballistic missiles (e.g. Iskander-M), hypersonic missiles (e.g. Kinzhal, Zircon), highly precise non-nuclear or nuclear-comparable missiles (e.g. Oreshnik), and other original weapons that have yet to be used in combat such as the Burevestnik and Poseidon.

Chinese military hardware in the air and naval domains - such as avionics, destroyers, and advanced missiles - is thought by some to be qualitatively and quantitatively ahead of Russian equivalents, China has largely moved past its historical reliance on Russian military imports, successfully substituting native systems and advanced jet engines, whereas Russia relies significantly on foreign inputs.

Returning to Doctow’s argument, we can see, as he concedes, that Russia has recently and significantly upped its game, so to speak. But Doctorow is still critical. He concludes that Russia is still playing tit-for-tat, striking against Ukraine in a manner that is simply comparable with Ukrainian strikes against Russia rather than engaging in crushing responses for which Russia has the technological and other means to deploy.

Russia continues to avoid striking against Ukrainian command and control centers and centers of decision-making in Kiev. Russia continues to avoid striking key transit routes that bring Western military and other forms of aid to Ukraine. Russia continues to restrain itself from attacking production or other facilities in NATO countries that are used to supporting NATO’s war against Russia over the pretext of Ukraine from their own territories. Its threat to retaliate against NATO seizures of Russian oil tankers with retaliatory seizures of its own of NATO ships once again strikes one as passively and unimaginatively tit-for-tat.

Russia restrains itself because it is worried that, were it to strike NATO targets in NATO countries, then Article 5 might be invoked and Russia would find itself facing off againat the entirety of NATO, directly.

Doctorow’s argument overlaps with that of Sergey Karaganov whose thinking I have explored previously in this space. For Karaganov the failure of Russian deterrence to actually deter is the existential problem. Russia, he believes, must actually set about actual deterrence by demonstrating some of its most potent weapons in meaningful combat context. Karaganov may originally have thought in terms of a progression from conventional to nuclear terms, but might now reasonably limit himself to further demonstrations - probably beyond the territory of Ukraine - of the Oreshnik or the deployment of Russia’s more recent innovations, including the Poseidon and Burevestnik.

Doctorow can reasonably argue that so far, after four and a half years, Russia has not achieved any of its military objectives. Ukraine is still clamoring for entry into NATO and NATO still pretends that it would actually like to see Ukraine in NATO; Russia has not yet fully secured the Donbass, it has only partial control over Kherson and Zapporizzhia and even its control of Crimea seems more fragile today than it did back in 2014. We have yet to see meaningful discussion of a cap on the number of Ukrainian troops, or a methodology for removing neo-Nazi elements from Ukrainian governance or for protecting the interests of pro-Russians and Russian speakers throughout Ukraine. Surely, there is a case for more decisive action, especially given that Russia has the means to engage more decisively (though certainty is a rare thing).

In short, Doctorow concludes, first of all, that Russia’s SMO is a strategy to keep the war going for as long as possible because this benefits the oligarch class - not so much through the defense industries proper, which are largely state-controlled, but through the mining and raw materials processing industries that are fundamental to weapons production.

Secondly, Doctorow argues that commitments to the thinking of the SMO puts Russia in a very poor light when nations of the Global South can watch the success of Iran in real time in stalling and reversing the might of the Hegemon, even inviting criticism of Russia’s war in Ukraine that has less to do with war-profiteering and more to do with a failure of nerve and cowardice.

This growing perception, if that is what it is, among the Russian people represents Putin’s Achilles’ heel: if he is to retain political power, he must demonstrate more force; if he does not, then he will be removed. This is behind what Doctorow believes he can see in instances of disparaging behavior towards Russia and Russian interests from countries that one would formerly have thought of as being its natural allies, including countries Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and even Serbia (whose leader Vucic recently hosted a visit by Zelenskiy and warbled something about Ukrainian sovereignty).

Pro-Western Assessment of Doctorow’s Argument

Mainstream Western analyses (such as reports from the Center for Strategic & International Studies) share Doctorow’s premise regarding unsustainable costs, pointing to massive casualty tallies and economic strain.

Pro-Western critics and hawkish commentators argue that labeling the outcome a “Pyrrhic victory” underplays Ukraine’s agency or frames an eventual Russian survival as a disguised defeat. Some alternative Western analysts (such as Scott Ritter) actively reject Doctorow’s thesis, accusing him of adopting defeatist narratives that mirror foreign intelligence objectives aimed at destabilizing the Kremlin.

Pro-Russian Assessment of Doctorow’s Argument

Pro-Kremlin commentators and nationalist Russian milbloggers strongly reject the idea that Russia faces a hollow or ruinous outcome. They maintain that Russia’s industrial base has successfully adapted, force generation exceeds attrition, and the state is forging durable non-Western economic ties.

Hawks within the pro-Russian sphere agree with Doctorow’s critique that current military leadership has been overly cautious, but they reject his pessimistic conclusion. Instead, they argue that Russia can avoid any semblance of a Pyrrhic outcome simply by choosing to massively escalate its military operations and eliminating political eadership in Kyiv.

A Personal Assessment

So far as I am concerned, I think Doctorow’s argument deserves some space. It raises the possibility that the overall consensus over what is often presumed to be the pro-Russian platform in alternative media, may itself function ideologically or propagandistically to support the SMO and to support Western interests that may see the SMO not as a threat but as their protection.

I have argued previously in this space that I don’t find Doctorow’s invocation of the oligarch class as culpable at all compelling. Further, I think the Doctorow argument may give insufficient weight to actual Russian power, firstly in comparison with Ukraine, and secondly even in comparison with the entirety of NATO which, as a fighting force, is less than an impressive, rational, mighty and unified machine but strikes me more as a fig-leaf for the power of the hegemon, a hegemon which would rather not want to bother, right now, with Ukraine, while it also sustains a machinery for European purchase of US weapons.

In this context we can look to the diminishing weapons stockpiles in the West, to the patent incompetence of the current generation of Western political and military leaders - from Hegseth’s teenager-angst performative glare to the insanitary conditions and inedible foods of the USS Lincoln.

When we give full credit to actual Russian power and leverage then a Russian rejection of apocalyptic strategies to end the war may rather seem an expression of strengh, both physical and intellectual. It may not, in the end, save lives, but it minimizes the chances of Armageddon.

While Doctorow’s argument expresses understandable frustration, is it sufficiently patient? There are still plenty of NATO assets inside Ukraine for Russia to strike before it extends its range to assets actually located in those NATO countries (yes, we could ask why Russia waited quite so long). Russian patience further exposes the lie that Russia is now or, in this conflict, has at any point been a threat to anyone beyond Ukraine. Although, certainly, analysts must take note of warnings from Sergei Lavrov and other Russian leaders warning that Russian patience has a limit, and what this might entail in the event, say, that European leaders keep borrowing to buy more weapons and try to mobilize their youth for armed service in a war with Russia that is set to begin on a date, they foolishly think, of European choosing.

There is some truth in the view that the SMO seems to maximize the time it will take to win this war and although this may be comfortable for Russia, it is also comfortable for Russia’s NATO enemies because they now have more time to regroup, restrock, rethink and a longer duration in which who knows what (?) might transpire that might better serve NATO and European interests than Russian.

Who, after all, can be absolutely certain of anything in so liquid a situation as a war? A decisive victory now, this point of view might advise, forecloses on future uncertainty. On the other hand, who can be certain of victory, and what would it truly take to make it “decisive?” And, besides, right now the list of potential uncertainties in the near to mid-term future do not seem to favor NATO: a crisis in the Gulf that can unseat Western trade dominance, soaring prices in energy and food markets, increasing pressure on Bond rates that will add to the US national debt, growing inability of the US to fight even on one front, let alone two or more, threats to the dollar system posed by the rise of China and the BRICS.

Over the past 12 to 24 hours, Russia has launched heavy ballistic missile and drone salvos across Ukrainian cities—including Kyiv and Zapporizhzhia - pkilling at least 10 to 12 civilians and exploiting depleted Ukrainian air defenses. Concurrently, Ukraine retaliated with massive long-range drone strikes hitting Russian logistics and the Wildberries warehouse in Voronezh.

Russia capitalized on Ukraine’s dwindling supply of advanced interceptors by using ballistic waves (allegedly including North Korean-supplied missiles) that overwhelmed regional defense grids. Overnight raids successfully struck vital industrial and transport nodes inside Ukraine, such as a steel enterprise in Zapporizhzhia and logistics facilities in Kyiv. Incremental ground advances continued in sections of the eastern front, keeping pressure on stretched Ukrainian units.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that Kyiv has transmitted fresh proposals for ending the conflict to American negotiators, keeping a channel open for US mediation despite broader global distractions. This is an entirely useless endeavor, of course, first of all because the US can in no way be considered an appropriate “mediator” of a conflict that it started and in which it is deeply implicated at every level; secondly, because no sane entity on planet Earth believes that the US under its present leadership is a remotely credible or trustworthy interlocutor and, thirdly, because the dictator Zelenskiy himself is cursed by similar reputational and behavioral impediments. Ongoing expenditure of high-end Western-supplied interceptors and escalating regional energy market volatility continue to present policy and economic challenges for Washington and its allies.

Zelenskiy and some of his supporters in Europe is arguing that European countries should give up any air defense capability they are currently holding and send them to Ukraine.

This is an arrogant ask indeed, that European countries like Greece and Spain should sacrifice their own safety and throw their remaining defenses into the hands of Kiev, which has been the recipient of hundreds of billions of aid from NATO countries over the past four and a half years and is still losing the war. For Greece, such a sacrifice would make it vulnerable to any flare-up in its already tense relations with neighboring Turkey.

Zelenskiy is also hoping for some concession from Elon Musk that would make it easier for Zelenskiy to exploit Starlink communications satellites to help in navigation of drones and missiles for striking deeper into Russia and, more especially, for identifying Russia’s mobile missile launchers. For Musk, this would entail the sizable risk of a Russian retaliation against Starlink satellites, a move that might strike a blow at the very heart of the commercial engine of this US network. For Russia, and for the world, there is a very big additional risk entailed here, and that is the fact that the mobile launchers used, say, for Russian Iskander-M missiles, are scarcely different from the launchers used for Yaris nuclear missiles, or nuclear-capable or nuclear-equivalent Oreshniks or Zircons.

On the Battlefield

Zones of intense battlefield activity right now include Zapporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Sumy, Odessa and Donetsk.

In Zapporizhzhia Russia continues to make steady headway westwards from Huliapole, which is now in Russian hands, to the major logistics hub of Orekhiv, which Russia is beginning to penetrate from the south through the conglomerations of Novodanylivka and MalaTokmachkae.

Russian forces are tightening the noose around the Ukrainian pocket west of Danylivka: from Blahodatne in the north, down to Zariche in the south and Nove to the west. Essentially, Russia now commands a line that runs SW to NE from Liubytski to Oleksandrivka, positioning Russian forces to move northwestwards to take control of the M15 highway from Zapporizhzhia city (which lies due west) at Dubovyika, Novomykolaivka and Sofliivka. Russia continues to subject the city of Zapporizhzhia to regular bombing and missiles, including, last night, 10 strikes with Iskander-Ms, and 14 with UMPK glide bombs and 5 with MRLS.

In the north of Kharkiv, Russia continues to take more territory west of Vovchansk in the area of Kozachi Lopan, which is now mainly controlled by Russia, and also in Kudivka a bit further east, where it is using cluster bombs in retaliation for a recent delivery of such to Ukraine from the US, along with ATACMS redirected from Turkey. Before this conflict began there was an international prohibition on the use of cluster munitions but this was openly violated by Biden at a point in the war in 2023 when Ukraine was running short of alternatives, thus opening the door to Russia to respond in kind. The US administration claimed that Russia had already been using them, and some sources claim that cluster munitions had been used by both sides from the beginning of the war.

Over the past day or so, Russian advances near Kozachi Lopan have incorporated Shevchenka and Hrvaniv to the north, and Russian forces are moving down via Tokarivka towards Tsupivka and Lobanivka.

To the east of Vovchansk, Russia has now taken control over the important logistics center of Bilyi Kolodiaz. This means, essentially, that Russia is well poised to acquire the entire pocket of northeast Kharkiv that is still currently under Ukrainian control. Russia already controls the surrounding communities of Zemlianyi Yar, Yurchenkove, Ivanivka and Zakhariuvka, and Russian forces are advancing from Ivanivka eastwards towards Chorne and Ustynivka some 16 kilometers away, territory over which it has established drone control.

Ukrainian forces in the pocket to the north of this line will likely withdraw, if they can, down to Velykyi Burlak, in the first instance but, because this will be a difficult settlement for them to protect from Russian encirclement (as Russian forces can also move across to Velykyi Burlak from the Oskil river and Kupyansk to the southeast), the Ukrainians may eventually be forced south to Shevchenkove. Here too they will be under pressure from Russian positions close-by in Russian-controlled Kupyansk to the east. Russia may soon be eyeing the city of Izium to the southeast of Shevchenkove.

In Sumy, Russian forces have recently acquired control over the settlements of Nova Sich and Mohrytsia, and have encircled the forest of Sadky, pushing Ukrainian forces south towards Pushkarivka, just north of the city of Sumy. The steady destruction by Russia of gas stations is creating a formidable fuel shortage in the entire Sumy-Kharkiv region.

Russian missile and drone attacks continue to bombard Kiev and Odessa each night, as I have related in recent posts, while Russian forces continue to make slow advances around the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk conurbation in Donetsk. The most important battle in the weeks ahead will likely be for Dobrepillia, south of Kramatorsk.

Ukraine continues to send swarms of drones deep inside Russia, the latest reaching very far east indeed, to include the city of Orsk, which is the second largest city in Orenburg Oblast, located on the steppe about 100 kilometers (62 mi) southeast of the southern tip of the Urals. There appears to have been a strike on the Irkutsk power station in Angarsk, Irkutsk oblast, Siberia. A major fire broke out at a thermal power plant in Angarsk - roughly 4,300 to 4,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Persian Gulf

An article in the New York Times today (NYT) argues that Iran’s war-fighting skills have evolved at the same time as the Pentagon runs low on interceptors (and other weapons). Using advanced missiles that can suddenly change course, Iran has pummeled the defensive systems of US bases, forcing the Americans to burn through scarce supplies of Patriot interceptors. The article concludes that Iran has become a more skilled adversary as the war has progressed, learning how to evade US air defenses, widened the battlefield to include most of the Middle East, and enlisted allies like the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq.

The Pentagon’s supply of interceptors has quickly dwindled, with the weapons becoming more precious each day. The Pentagon has used more than 1,500 Patriot missiles and has fewer than 1,700 left. The US produced about 600 interceptors in all of 2025.

Learning from Russia’s war with Ukraine, Iranians have discovered how to deploy ballistic and cruise missiles and then to rush in drones. Iranian drone and missile attacks have moved further than anticipated to threaten US troops in Jordan who had been previously stationed in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but were moved before and during the war to bases like Muwaffaq Salti.

The Gulf states have found out to their considerable cost that they were not adequately protected by the US, and they have therefore resisted further escalation of the conflict, strongly pressurizing Trump to put it on pause.

Over the past day of the US-Iran conflict CENTCOM forces fired missiles to disable what it said was a blockade-running ship in the Gulf of Oman, while both Washington and Tehran exchange maximalist demands for war reparations rather than engaging in active combat.

Iran maintains a tight grip on commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, successfully restricting flow to a tiny fraction of normal traffic and forcing regional tankers (such as recent UAE vessels) to navigate high-risk attacks and at high expense (not least because of hefty additional insurance payments).

Tehran’s new security leadership is holding firm, declaring that the vital waterway will stay closed until the U.S. lifts its naval blockade, ends regional operations, pays full war damages and, among other things, puts an end to the continuing stream of Israeli atrocities and war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank (over 500 Israeli crimes noted here just in the past week), south of Lebanon and south of Syria. Iran continues to tie down US and allied resources by maintaining proxy and maritime pressure points across the region, from the Gulf to Red Sea approaches.

President Donald Trump has publicly rejected Tehran’s financial ultimatums and countered by demanding multi-decade compensation from Iran for past American casualties and regional proxy damages. Washington is leaning heavily into an ongoing naval blockade and financial strangulation, banking on the premise that Iran’s isolated economy is rapidly running out of resources while global oil prices remain relatively stabilize.

Trump’s arguments for Iranian compensation rest on an extremely one-sided Washington-favored reading of recent history that conveniently ignores, for example, the illegal coup that the US, with the UK, launched against a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, under Mohammed Mossaddegh, carried out on behalf of the British Anglo-Iranian oil company and US oil interests.

This, together with a never-ending cycle of US and Israeli-originated political and economic harassment of Iran, both through the imposition of the West’s dictatorial proxy government under he Shah of Persia from 1953 to 1979, and in the immediate wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, including, notably, the likely US instigation of an 8-year Iraqi-Iranian war in which 200,000 to 220,000 Iranians died from direct combat, military operations, and air raids (total casualties - including higher conventional estimates, wounded, and missing - are significantly higher).

A final accounting will indeed impose an uncomfortable bill for Washington when justice is served.

As for Trump waiting for Iran to collapse, what Trump is mainly waiting on is time to produce more weapons (when it will find that Iran has put the time to good use in the identical way). Even if Iran was likely to “collapse,” despite aid from Russia and China, it is even more likely that the political West and its proxies in the Global South will go down long before Iran, in view of the global crisis in the supply of oil, fertilizer and many other commodities that has been brought about in large measure because of the war that Trump initiated last February, in addition to other Washington and European shenanigans that have interrupted international markets for both Iranian and Russian oil and gas.

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