Tag: ukraine

Putin’s Winter Strategy: Destroy Ukraine’s Infrastructure, Intimidate Berlin

Russia’s drone and missile campaign against Ukraine has entered a new phase, aimed at the infrastructure that keeps Ukraine’s cities functioning and at the countries that keep its military supplied. In Kyiv, Russian drone strikes have closed or restricted three of six road bridges linking the capital’s two banks.

In Germany, Ukraine’s largest European provider of military aid, the government has blamed Moscow for an explosive-laden drone found at Leipzig airport and says it expects more hybrid attacks. With ceasefire talks unlikely to produce results before spring 2027, Putin appears to be using the winter to raise the cost of the war for Ukrainians and for Berlin.

The bridge strikes on October 1 and 2 targeted a pressure point in how Kyiv is laid out. The South Bridge, which carries both road traffic and metro trains, was hit three times in 24 hours, and the city has no vehicle tunnel under the Dnipro.

Before the 2022 invasion, more than a third of the city’s roughly 3 million residents lived on the eastern, or left, bank. Most government institutions and companies sit on the western bank. After the October 2 strikes, the Paton Bridge was closed in both directions, restrictions were placed on the Metro Bridge, and public transport was rerouted.

The Kyiv Defense Council called an emergency meeting on cross-river traffic. Traffic was restored by midday, but the attacks showed that Russia can disrupt movement between the city’s two banks within hours. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it struck an automobile-railway bridge because it was being used to move troops and military supplies.

Ukrainian officials link the bridge strikes to a decision made in Moscow. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times that Putin ordered his military leadership in September to abandon previous restraints on drone and missile strikes, citing intercepted Kremlin communications. “He said there are no rules now,” Zelenskyy said. Since then, Russian strikes have hit schools, hospitals, and data centers in Kyiv.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the newspaper that Russian forces do not strike civilian infrastructure. The escalation followed a pause in strikes against Kyiv that Putin ordered during a visit by U.S. negotiators in September.

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Ukraine Claims Over Half of Russia’s Oil Refining Capacity Taken Out in Missile Strikes

Ukraine says its long-range strikes have neutralized more than half of Russia’s oil refining capacity, hampering Moscow’s ability to supply its forces during its 4 1/2-year-old invasion.

The Defense Ministry said late Sunday that recent strikes on refineries in cities including Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ust-Luga, Perm, Saratov and Syzran had put 51% of Russia’s oil refining capacity out of action. The claim could not be independently verified.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have intensified their aerial assaults as progress along the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line has largely ground to a halt.

Ukrainian forces have repeatedly attacked refineries from Moscow to Siberia, sparking a widespread fuel crisis in Russia earlier this year that forced authorities to restrict gasoline sales.

Russian officials have not publicly revealed any data on damage caused to the country’s oil infrastructure. However, President Vladimir Putin said in a rare admission on Oct. 1 that the strikes had cost Russia roughly 1% of its gross domestic product.

“They started attacking oil refineries and openly declared the goal of damaging our economy. Did they achieve their goal? Partially,” Putin said at a meeting of the Valdai Club forum of international foreign policy experts.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said analysts from Ukraine´s intelligence services, the General Staff and the Defense Ministry had assessed the strikes’ effects.

“Fifty-one percent of struck refining capacity is a significant blow to the enemy´s economy, to its ability to carry out aggression and supply its troop groupings. Our deep strikes continue to bring the war to Russian territory,” he said.

Russia has historically been the world’s third-largest producer of refined fuel products from crude after the U.S. and China.

Some of Russia’s 32 refineries have been hit as many as 15 times since the start of the war, and one refinery has been hit every three days in recent months, creating a cycle of damage and emergency repairs that could degrade units long term, according to the International Energy Agency.

Ukrainian strikes have also increasingly targeted the more complex equipment that removes impurities from fuel, which takes months to repair. The IEA says diesel output has fallen by about 30%, and drivers have had to wait up to 40 hours to fill up at gasoline stations.

Russian refiners have tried to compensate by delaying scheduled maintenance and bringing mothballed units back online. Another response has been to lower fuel quality standards to maintain gasoline supplies, which risks damage to engines and pollution control equipment.

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Zelensky Vows To Hammer More Russian Refineries As G7 Greenlights Emergency Fuel Dump

President Volodymyr Zelensky told Reuters in an exclusive interview that Ukraine plans to intensify attacks on Russian oil refineries in response to continued strikes on Ukrainian cities. The threat comes as the Trump administration pressures European allies to release up to 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter, with a global refining crunch already straining fuel supplies.

Zelensky told the outlet that Ukrainian intelligence had obtained documents outlining what he described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new war doctrine to broaden attacks on civilian infrastructure ahead of winter.

“We saw documents and we know that they allow them to attack infrastructure, logistics, and especially to attack in the cities, in the villages, everywhere, roads, schools, hospitals,” Zelensky said. “To pressure people to leave the capital, leave different cities: this is the goal of the operation.”

Zelensky then said, “We have to respond in any way (we can). With their attacks on our energy, we have to respond on their energy. First of all, oil refiners, etc.: what gives money to them for this war. But we will not respond, of course, just like them, on any civilian objects.”

Zelensky’s plan to further destroy Russia’s refineries comes as the Trump administration seeks to revive peace negotiations. Zelensky said Russia had shown no willingness to discuss either peace talks or a ceasefire covering energy infrastructure.

The Trump administration’s move to pressure European countries and other G7 members into releasing as much as 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks, as confirmed by French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, is likely in response to Zelensky’s expanding drone and missile attacks on Russian energy assets, as stockpiles for critical fuels are well below seasonal levels for this time of year. 

The International Energy Agency is coordinating the emergency release, which will take place over the next four months, according to Macron.

Goldman energy analyst Nikhil Bhandari warned last month that the global refining crisis stems from a combination of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and, more importantly, Ukraine’s bombardment of Russian refineries. Those attacks have prompted Moscow to extend its diesel export halt, suggesting the refining crisis could linger well into next year and keep refined-product prices elevated. 

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Merz Pledges €1.35 Billion More to Ukraine, Vows to Keep Fighting Russia…The War Machine Grinds

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv on 4 October 2026 by special train, as air-raid sirens and explosions sounded over the capital, and used the trip to lock in another round of weapons, money, and industrial cooperation rather than any concrete path to a ceasefire.

Berlin’s package, as described by German officials to Reuters, is straightforward. Germany will release €1 billion in military aid already budgeted and €350 million for repairs to Ukraine’s energy system, while finalising a joint production deal covering drones and related systems. Merz travelled with Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and executives from defence and energy firms, including companies tied to interceptor drones and longer-range weapons.

The visit was not a diplomatic probe. It was an arms-and-industry mission staged under fire.

Merz’s own framing left little room for de-escalation. “If Russia is not stopped, it will turn its war machine against us sooner or later,” he said on arrival, according to German reporting of the trip. He told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Ukraine could continue to count on German help. That is the logic of indefinite support: Russian power must be worn down in Ukraine, or it will eventually be turned on Europe, so the flow of interceptors, long-range systems with ranges above 1,000 kilometres, and repair money cannot be allowed to stop.

Winter attacks on power plants are treated as a reason to spend more, not as a reason to force a settlement before the heating season.

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Zelenskiy Looks To Spread Economic War To China, India

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in a Wall Street Journal interview published around the time of the UN General Assembly that China and India are the two most useful countries to Russian President Vladimir Putin in relation to sanctions. He repeated these accusations on European media this morning.

It is energy trade with these two countries that is currently financing the war, Zelensky said. United States, China and India collectively putting pressure on Russia is enough to bring an end to the war, he added.

Although he identified a “lack of a consistently strong position from China and India” in his address to partners, Zelensky struck a softer note on New Delhi in a subsequent Fox interview, saying he believed that “for the most part, India is with us” and that it was only energy trade with Russia that remained an open question.

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian crude oil made up only a marginal portion of India’s total oil imports. However, in the years following the invasion, crude imports from Russia became a major component of total oil imports for the country, with Indian refineries purchasing roughly $140 billion worth of Russian crude between 2022 and mid-2025, according to analysis of trade data published by European research institutions in July 2026.

Of Russia’s total crude exports in July 2026, 37% went to India, while 50% went to China, according to the same analysis. While most of these exports would currently find their way to third countries, it is Europe that is currently reluctant to purchase Russian crude at prices comparable to those offered by other producers in the Middle East, typically at a discount.

China’s role in enabling Putin to work around sanctions extends far beyond the energy trade, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a November 2025 report. The report, entitled Energy, called China “a decisive enabler of Russia’s sanctions evasion and export-control evasion.” This was based on higher oil and gas imports from Russia by China as well as an increase in the trade of dual-use goods, which could also be used for military purposes.

Barter deals involving grain and raw materials for Russian-made military equipment have also been reported to be used by the Kremlin to reduce reliance on dollar-denominated transactions and on the services of Western banks, in addition to trade of cars, electronics and industrial components made by Chinese companies that are replacing similar goods from Western manufacturers on Russian markets.

As for India, its purchases of Russian Urals have been described by Indian officials and refiners as strictly market-driven and not part of any political alignment with Moscow. In fact, the largest buyer of Russian oil of all, India, is currently subject to the possibility of being hit with tariffs of up to 100% on its Russian oil imports under the recently signed Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump.

Whether or not Trump will use this authority to pressure the two major Asian buyers of Russian oil remains to be seen, but Ukrainian officials have pointed to the role of key Russian missile producers operating through jurisdictions including China, as one of the key components of ongoing sanctions evasion by the Kremlin.

Trade between China and Russia totaled $135 billion in the first half of 2026, with Russia’s exports to China including energy products as well as raw materials, and China’s exports including cars, electronics and industrial goods that would otherwise have been imported from the West.

Zelenskiy’s efforts to increase economic pain on Russia by targeting China and India is a sign of desperation, as Russia continues to take territory in the east and pressures Ukrainian infrastructure via overnight strikes.

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Global Crop Prices Log Biggest Quarterly Jump Since Ukraine Invasion As Sticky Inflation Hits Grocery Bills

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest quarterly gain since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, as Black Sea disruptions, a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, and mounting El Niño risks have formed what could be considered a perfect storm poised to drive food prices higher.

BCOMAGSP, which tracks 10 major crops including corn, soybeans, wheat, coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, and others, jumped 13% in the third quarter.

Beyond the Russia-Ukraine fighting and disruptions to grain shipments from the Black Sea region, the next big threat to the crop space is a strengthening El Niño, on track to rank among the strongest on record. This puts various types of crops in major growing belts around the world at risk and has sent harvest yields plunging. 

Already, India’s weakest monsoon season in a decade has added to concerns about harvests and food prices.

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Where Are Another 60,000 Ukrainian Soldiers Every Month Supposed to Come From?

Zelensky now says Ukraine needs to mobilize 50,000 to 60,000 people EVERY MONTH simply to keep pace with Russia. Stop for a moment and think about what that number actually means. At 50,000 per month, that is 600,000 people per year. At 60,000, it becomes 720,000. Zelensky is talking about finding a population roughly equivalent to a substantial European city every single year to feed into a war that has already been grinding on since 2022. Where are these people supposed to come from?

That is the question nobody wants to confront because Ukraine does not possess an unlimited reservoir of military-age men. Its population was already declining before the war. Millions of Ukrainians subsequently fled abroad, millions more live in Russian-occupied territory, and the remaining population has endured years of casualties, disability, displacement, emigration, and demographic collapse. Ukraine does not publish a complete current population count because there has been no census since 2001 and wartime migration makes estimates difficult.

Ukraine has already been forced to expand the recruitment pool. The minimum mobilization age was lowered from 27 to 25 in 2024. Men between 18 and 60 generally remain subject to wartime restrictions on leaving the country, although there are exemptions, and Kyiv has repeatedly revised mobilization procedures as the military searches for additional manpower. Rumor has it that they will start going after the young women next. Ukraine has resisted lowering compulsory mobilization to 18, instead creating voluntary contracts with enhanced financial incentives for people aged 18 to 24. I’d expect that to change as well.

A 20-year-old is not merely another soldier on a spreadsheet. He is potentially forty or fifty years of future productive labor. He is a future engineer, farmer, mechanic, entrepreneur, taxpayer, husband, and father. Kill or permanently disable enough young men and the economic consequences continue for generations after the politicians finally sign whatever peace agreement they could have negotiated years earlier.

Human capital is much harder to measure. How do you calculate the children who will never be born because their prospective fathers died at 23? How do you calculate the businesses never created, the taxes never paid, the families never formed, or the skilled workers who fled the country rather than risk being mobilized?

Ukraine already entered this war with one of Europe’s worst demographic problems. Its fertility rate had been well below replacement for years, and the war drove births still lower. That means the generation Kyiv is drawing upon today was already smaller than the generations that preceded it. You cannot manufacture another generation of 25-year-olds because the Defense Ministry needs another 50,000 recruits next month.

Then there is the issue everyone conveniently ignores when quoting mobilization figures: recruitment is not the same thing as increasing the size of the army. If Ukraine mobilizes 50,000 people while thousands of existing soldiers are killed, wounded, medically discharged, missing, deserting, or otherwise leaving service, the net increase is far smaller. They are replacing men the war has already consumed rather than expanding the military.

Russia faces the same brutal arithmetic, but Russia began with a population several times larger than Ukraine’s. Ukraine cannot simply compete with Russia soldier-for-soldier indefinitely and pretend demographics do not exist. If Moscow can recruit or mobilize from a vastly larger population, matching Russia’s monthly manpower numbers becomes increasingly expensive for Ukraine in demographic terms.

The people cheering for endless war from Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, and Berlin do not have to supply 60,000 Ukrainians every month. They supply money. They supply artillery shells. They supply missiles. They supply loans and weapons contracts. Ukraine supplies the human beings.

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Polish Foreign Minister Says Ukraine War Should Keep Going No Matter What

The foreign minister of Poland, Radosław Sikorski, once more expressed the stance of his country in relation to the conflict in Ukraine, stating that it is not a war that needs to be ended.

The negative perception of Russia that can be gleaned from the comments of Sikorski and his country’s institutions, including their foreign policy and mainstream media, is part and parcel of the arguments currently employed by them in order to establish the view of Russia as a failed state. Furthermore, historical grievances which can still be utilized as tools to be employed against Russia in order to bring it to its knees are being consistently emphasized and brought to the forefront of Polish foreign policy.

Poland’s stance in relation to Russia is in lockstep with the remainder of the EU and the structures of NATO, the principal goal of foreign policy being to ensure the continued goals of these two organizations. In other words, as long as these are able to function in a suitable manner in the region from the perspective of their leadership, Poland will continue to support the war.

These comments reveal that Sikorski views Russia through the prism of economic underachievement. He once calculated the position that Russia would occupy had it developed at the same rate as Canada from 1913 onwards and arrived at the conclusion that by then it would have reached the level of the economy of the United States. Alas, we are told that, instead, the economy of Russia has been decreasing and is now even smaller than that of Italy.

The point Sikorski’s comments make is that of Russia’s economic underdevelopment and how it should be used in order to continually put even greater and greater pressure upon it, while, at the same time, also curtailing its existence. Sikorski would continue to advocate further degradation of the economy of Russia in order to force it to negotiate and to insist that any concessions that may be granted to it in terms of geography would in reality amount to nothing more than a reward to aggression on its part.

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Ukraine Air-Drops Exploding Robots Deep Behind Russian Lines, Killing Thousands

Ukraine claims it killed around 3,000 Russian soldiers in a secret operation that included dropping bomb-carrying robots behind enemy lines by drone.

The Telegraph reports that the mission, known as Operation Vivaldi, was carried out by Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps over several months.

The unit also claims it retook 48 square miles of Russian-occupied land.

According to the report, a large drone carries a small robot on wheels, loaded with explosives, 10 miles or more into Russian territory in the Donetsk region before releasing it.

Operators then drive the robot, which is known as Gryphon, by remote control toward Russian troops preparing to ambush Ukrainian forces and detonate it.

The unit’s commander claimed Ukraine is the first country to use the tactic.

The drones needed to carry the robots are large enough that it is easy for Russian troops to spot and shoot down.

To get them through, Ukrainian forces jam Russian surveillance drones, hit enemy positions with artillery and drones to keep troops pinned down and fly only at night.

Some of the robots have reached as far as 12 miles behind Russian lines.

Once the robots strike, Ukrainian infantry move in on foot to capture the ground, then wait for drones and artillery to hit the next target.

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Is Putin Caught In An “Escalation Trap”? The Long War In Eastern Europe

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has flagged a recent interview that Professor Robert Pape did with Mario Nawfal. During the interview, Pape argued that Vladimir Putin is caught in an “escalation trap.” In his telling, Russia launched a preventive war in February 2022 to seize Kyiv and roughly 60 percent of Ukraine. That plan collapsed, and the fallback, betting that NATO would break, is now producing the European counterbalancing coalition Moscow most feared. It is a tidy theory. It also rests on a premise about Russian intentions that the record does not support, and once that premise goes, the trap goes with it.

What the force tells you about the objective

Start with arithmetic, the kind any planner of military operations does before anything else. Russia invaded with roughly 150,000 to 190,000 troops, including separatist forces. The standard rule of thumb for occupying a hostile population, from James Quinlivan’s RAND work, is about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. For a country of more than 40 million, even occupying 60 percent of the territory would require several hundred thousand troops, several times what Russia sent. Moscow’s General Staff can do this arithmetic. A force that size is a coercive instrument, not an occupation army.

The pattern of the operation fits coercion. Russian forces approached Kyiv from the north but never attempted to assault or encircle a city of three million. The pressure was aimed at the government, not at taking the capital block by block. Talks began within days, in Belarus on February 28, and moved to Istanbul in March. Pape’s supporters point to the airborne assault on Hostomel as proof of a plan to seize the capital. But a failed coup de main against an airfield is not evidence of an intent to occupy 60 percent of a country.

Istanbul: the objective was achieved

The strongest evidence against Pape is that the coercion worked. By the end of March 2022, meetings in Belarus and Turkey, together with video conferences, had produced the Istanbul Communiqué, a framework for a settlement. Ukraine accepted permanent neutrality in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and its allies, with Russia also as a guarantor. Russia, for its part, agreed to a process to settle the Crimea dispute diplomatically.

That was the core of what Moscow wanted, and the Ukrainian side confirmed it. David Arakhamia, who led Ukraine’s delegation, later said Russia was prepared to end the war if Ukraine accepted Finland-style neutrality and committed not to join NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed to me, Judge Napolitano and Mario Nawfal directly that the talks produced a tentative agreement, and that its terms were brought to the table by the Ukrainian delegation, not imposed by Moscow.

As a gesture of goodwill, Moscow withdrew its forces from north of Kyiv. Western commentary treats that as a retreat forced by battlefield failure. It is at least as consistent with the claim that the pressure had served its purpose.

How the deal died

Then the politics changed. Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kyiv on April 9, 2022, and according to Arakhamia told the Ukrainians not to sign anything with Russia and to “just fight.” Two days earlier, Lavrov had already complained publicly that Ukraine’s new draft departed sharply from the key provisions agreed at Istanbul on March 29. Washington and London had decided Russia was weaker than they had thought and that it could be bled. Ukraine walked away.

This is the point Pape’s framework cannot absorb. If Russia’s goal was a neutral Ukraine obtained through negotiation, the war did not go on because Moscow’s plan failed. It went on because Russia’s adversaries rejected the settlement.

No plan B, but a fast pivot and a new army

With hindsight, Russia clearly had not prepared a plan B for Ukraine walking away. That was a real planning failure. But the Russian military adjusted quickly. It concentrated on the Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea, and the fall of Mariupol in May gave it the first major result of that phase.

The bigger adjustment came in September 2022. After a large number of contract soldiers left the army in August and the Kharkiv counteroffensive exposed how thin Russian lines were, Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists. That was the start, not the end, of Russia’s response. From that point Moscow set about building a much larger army, as the Russian officers I have interviewed have described in detail, including Gen. Apti Alaudinov, Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky, Gen. Andrei Gurulev and Col. Eduard Basurin.

The mobilization was followed by a sustained recruitment campaign and an expanded annual draft. By Medvedev’s count, more than 452,000 men signed military contracts in 2023. Roughly 450,000 followed in 2024, and more than 422,000 in 2025. Year after year, Russia has added at least 350,000 new soldiers. Putin’s decrees tell the same story: authorized military strength rose from about 1.15 million in 2022 to 1.32 million in December 2023, then to 1.5 million effective December 2024. By 2026, according to my sources, Russia’s army had reached that 1.5 million active-duty figure.

That is not the behavior of a state that expected a quick war and is now improvising its way out of a trap. It is the behavior of a state that decided in the autumn of 2022 to fight a long war, and built the force to do it.

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