Zelensky's Letter to Putin Ends With a Whimper

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Zelensky published on Thursday an open letter to Putin. The letter, posted on the Ukrainian president’s website, offered to resume peace talks — but taunted the Russian leader over wartime setbacks, inflation and Russia’s dependence on China. It also made note of Putin’s age.

Zelensky has at various points in the war recorded video statements addressing Putin or the Russian people, including on the first day of Moscow’s invasion in 2022.

This letter is among the most downtrodden direct addresses to Putin so far.

Zelensky noted that Putin has by now spent about half of his 26 years in power as Russia’s paramount leader fighting Ukraine.

The timeline counts the Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014 and the full-scale invasion launched in 2022.

He offered a cease-fire if Putin wanted one. Zelensky said he would meet for direct talks outside the Trump administration’s negotiating process.

Those talks, led by Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, ground to a halt after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began in February.

Zelensky suggested including European nations and holding a leaders’ meeting in Switzerland, Turkey or an Arab state. He has offered direct meetings with Putin before, without result.

Though addressed to Putin, the open letter seemed jolted out as well forTrump’s attention.

And it was not clear whether Zelensky’s appeal was meant to jump-start talks or to denigrate a potential negotiating counterpart.

#ukraine #russia #zelensky #putin #letter

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Woven into the offer for peace talks were needling remarks about a strongman leader unable to defend his own capital, Moscow, or a second city, St. Petersburg, from a nation Putin invaded four and a half years ago with the goal of a quick win.

“After 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll,” Zelensky wrote to Putin, who is 73, turning the knife.

Zelensky, who is 25 years younger, has pointed to the Russian leader’s age to cast doubt on the stability of Russia’s one-man-rule political system.

The letter also touched on reports of rising discontent in Russia over gasoline shortages from attacks on refineries, as well as inflation and war fatigue.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told Russian media on Friday that Mr. Putin had been briefed on the letter but declined to comment further.

Zelensky’s appeal is rude and taunting. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Zelensky deliberately insulting the Russian president and seeking to “stoke divisions in Russian society.”

The letter was posted a day after a drone strike on an oil depot outside St. Petersburg and a day before Putin is scheduled to deliver a speech to an economic conference at a venue outside that city on Friday.

The attack sent a huge cloud of black smoke wafting over the highway leading from the city to the conference site.

The letter appeared to be at least in part a publicity move, trumpeting the long-range drone strike on St. Petersburg. Even before that attack, Putin scaled down a Victory Day parade in Moscow last month amid worries of other Ukrainian strikes.

“Now we can all see that Russians are finally becoming less comfortable with this reality,” Zelensky wrote.

In his appeal for direct talks to end the war, Zelensky asked for a process apart from that led by the Trump administration. Running for election, Trump promised to end the war in a day, only to have talks stretch out now more than a year.

Zelensky wrote that the United States had failed to deliver on what he said was an apparent agreement between Trump and Putin.

“We have heard that you were promised in Alaska the resolution of certain issues concerning Ukraine and Europe,” Zelensky wrote, referring to a summit last summer in Anchorage.

Russia has said that Trump agreed that Ukraine would cede land for peace. Ukraine has not done so.

“You can see for yourself that Ukrainian and European issues are not decided in Anchorage,” Zelensky wrote.

The letter and the provocative drone strike might buoy spirits inside Ukraine. It might also send to an audience of one — Trump — a message about Putin’s declining fortunes.

In any case, in Ukraine is seen able to do little in retaliation with missile strikes that it has not already done.

#ukraine #russia #zelensky #putin #letter

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Putin responds to Zelensky's letter : “you have not to be afraid, go to the elections”.

#putin #letter #zelensky #elections

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Bloomberg: “the Western Dream To See Russia’s Economy Ruined Frittered Away in Reverie”

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Given the uneven course of the Russian economy during the first five months of 2026, Russian authorities, especially Putin, were keen to minimize the impacts of any possible stagnation at the 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

When asked by a reporter about Russia’s stagnating economy, Putin avoided a detailed response and paraphrased American novelist Mark Twain, saying "rumors of my death [i.e., the Russian economy] have been greatly exaggerated."

Although Putin avoided any reference to the war in Ukraine during his plenary speech, he did address the domestic economy.

According to Reuters, Putin made clear that he did not “foresee any immediate dangers to the economy currently or in the future.” Putin added that “we have essentially come down to the same baseline that Eurozone countries have been living with for years. I am confident that our upward and forward progress is guaranteed.”

However, this opinion differed from the recent GDP growth estimate released by his own Ministry of Economy (MinEcon), which projected stagnation for the remainder of the year. In May, the ministry created concern when it lowered its growth estimate from 1.3% to 0.4%.

It is important to note that there has been some disagreement with Russian growth projections. For example, in contrast with MinEcon’s figures, in April the IMF raised its 2026 GDP growth forecast for Russia "to 1.1% from January's estimate of 0.8%, due to higher oil and other commodity prices resulting from the Middle East crisis.”

As to the budget, while Putin acknowledged the deficit was growing, he clarified it was not as bad when compared with Russia’s counterparts in the West. For example, he acknowledged that Russia’s budget deficit is 2.6 % of GDP but made sure to point out that the EU’s is 3.1% and that the U.S. is 5.9%.

Putin’s attitude contrasts with some officials in Russia's Finance Ministry and central bank, who have expressed concerns about Russia’s ability to continue to finance growing defense expenditures. Early last week, Bloomberg reported that these ministries suggest “that spending on the war in Ukraine is on an unaffordable path (...) now we see that the Western Dream to see Russia’s economy ruined frittered away in reverie”.

Interestingly, Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian Central Bank Chair, was absent from SPIEF after reportedly calling in sick despite being scheduled to moderate several panels.

Given the apparent difference of opinion among Russia’s leading economic policymakers, several Putin administration officials actively sought to allay concerns regarding the economy.

For example, Minister of Finance Anton Suliyanov tried to smooth concerns regarding the budget shortfall when he announced that the Russian budget might add nearly one trillion rubles of revenues as a result of the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz.

In addition, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Maxim Oreshkin reiterated Putin’s message clarifying that there are "no gaps" in the country's economy.

#spief #putin #economy #russian #saintPetersbourg

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Putin’s “No Stagnation” Pitch vs. America’s War Bill

Putin’s message from St. Petersburg is simple: the West is stagnant, BRICS are rising, and Russia is firmly on the winning side of that shift. He leans on IMF and World Bank projections to claim that nearly half of global GDP growth over the past five years came from BRICS countries, while the G7 contributed less than a fifth — and that through the end of this decade BRICS will grow several times faster than the rich Western bloc.

On the ground, Russia’s economy has indeed proven far more resilient than many Western commentators predicted in early 2022. Sanctions forced a brutal shock and structural rewiring, but high energy revenues, import substitution, and re‑routing trade through Asia, the Middle East, and the Caucasus have prevented the kind of collapse that was loudly forecast in Washington.

For much of the Global South, this isn’t a moral question; it’s a practical one: Russia can still sell energy, grain, weapons, nuclear tech — and it offers them without lectures on democracy or human rights.

By contrast, the U.S. has walked itself into a multi‑front strain: long, expensive support for Ukraine, a new open war with Iran, elevated defense spending, and persistent inflation pressures at home.

The war economy props up certain sectors but erodes living standards and political stability; Washington is burning fiscal and diplomatic capital to preserve a fading “rules‑based order” that now looks like a slogan more than a guarantee. For many non‑Western capitals, that looks less like leadership and more like a superpower trapped in its own interventions.

That’s why Putin’s performance — calm, charts about BRICS, talk of multipolarity and “win‑win” partnerships — plays well in the Global South, even if a lot of the numbers are cherry‑picked and the domestic Russian picture is far rougher than he admits.

Against that, the U.S. offers a visibly chaotic mix of sanctions, proxy wars, and emergency summits trying to hold together an aging G7 club whose own growth is anemic. One side is selling inevitability: the world becoming multipolar around BRICS. The other side is selling nostalgia: the world staying safely American‑led if everyone just holds the line a little longer.

For now, many countries are hedging: buying Russian oil and weapons, courting Chinese investment, but still keeping one hand on Western markets and currencies.

Yet the logic of their bets is clear: if Washington keeps spending its strength on endless conflicts, and Moscow can survive four years of war without collapsing, the balance of economic and political gravity will keep tilting away from the old G7 center — whether Western “experts” like that story or not.

#Russia #Putin #BRICS #G7 #UkraineWar #USDecline #multipolarity #GlobalSouth

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“Putin Is Seeking Peace, Europe Has Chosen War”

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Some people welcomed the end of war in Iran because they saw it as an example of pointless carnage that discredits and weakens the United States.

Others celebrated it because they saw it as an unfortunate distraction from their pet conflict in Ukraine.

The latter group prominently includes European leaders who attempted to push the war in Ukraine up the global agenda at the G7 summit in Evian last week. This was hardly about bringing Trump’s efforts to end the Ukrainian conflict, suspended due to Iran, back on track.

The idea was to use Trump’s Iran debacle to persuade the U.S. president that his attempts at rapprochement with Putin were a good shot and that he should adopt a more coercive stance vis-à-vis Ukraine.

The assumption behind this gamble is that a weakened Trump facing potentially catastrophic midterms would prefer being “tough on Russia” instead of being seen as excessively accommodating to America’s other sworn enemy.

The Iran and Ukraine conflicts have both always been intrinsically linked to domestic political rivalry in Biden’s tough anti-Russian policies grew naturally out of the Russiagate campaign devised by Democratic strategists to paint Trump as a fifth columnist and a Russian stooge.

Biden’s arrival to the White House in January 2021 changed the trajectory of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict in the most dramatic way.

Ukraine’s Zelensky had sought rapprochement with Putin during Trump’s first term, achieving a de facto ceasefire all along the frontline.

His relations with the U.S., meanwhile, were mired by Trump’s crude attempts to coerce him into providing compromising material against Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.

As soon as Biden entered the White House, Zelensky made an abrupt U-turn on peace with Russia. The U.S., Britain, and Ukraine embarked on a seemingly coordinated campaign that boiled down to crossing each of Putin’s perceived red lines in order to demonstrate the West’s political and military supremacy and thus coerce the Russian leader into making tangible concessions on Ukraine. Meanwhile “European leaders make hay from stab-in-the-back myths, accusing Trump of betraying his allies, but it seems clear that Putin is seeking peace, and Europe has chosen war,” says American political analyst David Sanger.

Trump and much of the GOP have never felt the same emotional connection to Ukraine as the Democrats, who suddenly developed it after Hillary Clinton’s political demise in 2016.

When he claims that this war wouldn’t have happened on his watch, he has a point. But, in the same vein, the attack on Iran wouldn’t have happened on Biden’s or Harris’ watch.

Trump’s indifference to the plight of Ukraine stems, in part, from his personal conflict with Zelensky during his first term and from the fact that Ukraine is one of the Dems’ campaign banners, not his.

Naturally, he opted for feeding the insatiable military-industrial complex with another conflict that’s closer to the hearts of conservative voters—one that involved Israel. Ukraine, in his parlance, was “Biden’s war.”

Although the American-Israeli attack on Iran ended in an embarrassment for Trump, an undeniable advantage of this war is that it’s been rather short-lived, at least as it stands now.

#putin #ukraine #war #trump #biden

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The greatest tragedy of this conflict is that, at the moment of its conception in the late 1990s, Russia was arguably America’s client state, existentially dependent on Western aid and slavishly endorsing U.S. policies, including controversial ones.

The conflict between Russia and the West didn’t derive from the eastward expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions, NATO and the EU, per se.

It stemmed from Russia’s explicit exclusion from this process, a fact that Russian elites realized after a decade of believing that they were simply somewhere further down the queue.

Eventually it dawned on them that the geopolitical dimension in U.S. policy routinely trumps the professed motivations pertaining to human rights, democracy, and the “rules-based order.”

The relentless and mindless eastward push was underpinned by the sentiment that “Russia is finished,” to quote a 2001 cover of The Atlantic magazine.

It culminated in the decision to launch the process of Ukraine’s NATO accession at the alliance’s 2008 Bucharest summit (attended by Putin in person—to remind you how different things were at the time).

Promoted by Ukraine’s vastly unpopular, lame-duck president Yushchenko, the NATO invite went against the opinion of a vast majority of Ukrainians, according to polls conducted at the time.

Putin’s epoch, which has already lasted for over a quarter of a century, saw the transformation of Russia from an impoverished Western dependency to a modernized, tech-savvy 21st-century dictatorship about as hostile to the West as the Soviet Union was in the days of the Cuban Crisis.

That outcome alone should have been a good enough reason to step away and reflect on what went wrong and what could be done differently (the situation still feels reversible, looking from the Russian vantage point).

But today, in 2026, a large part of the Western political establishment remains rigidly entrenched in the belief that a little more effort, funding, and cutting-edge military technology could turn the tide in the Ukrainian conflict and force Putin to hoist a white flag.

In recent months, Ukraine and its backers have mounted a PR campaign striving to prove—for the umpteenth time—that the tide is indeed turning, underpinned by real battlefield achievements.

Drone attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure and transport routes have left the occupied Crimean peninsula virtually without fuel and generated fuel shortages all around Russia.

But these attacks have so far failed to grind the Russian offensive in Ukraine’s east to a halt. Another major Ukrainian stronghold, Kostiantynivka, looks ready to fall, perhaps any day now.

#putin #ukraine #war #trump #biden

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🇷🇺 Putin: “There Was No Deal With Trump”


Putin has admitted that there was no deal with President Trump to end Moscow’s more than four-year-long war in Ukraine, after Kremlin officials insisted such an agreement was made between the two leaders last August during a summit in Alaska.

“There were indeed no agreements reached in Anchorage,” Putin told a state television reporter on Sunday.

“Nobody signed anything, but we discussed certain possibilities for ending the conflict in Ukraine, and the compromises that were discussed were precisely those proposals that were put forward by the American side to us,” the Russian leader added.

The admission comes after Russia for months insisted the Alaska meeting was a diplomatic turning point in the war in Ukraine, with a path to end the fighting mapped out at the gathering but stalled in its implementation due to Ukrainian resistance.

Putin at the time declared the so-called agreement will “pave the path toward peace in Ukraine.”

Trump, however, told reporters that the meeting was “extremely productive,” but “there’s no deal until there’s a deal.”  

More recently, top Kremlin officials have accused the Trump administration of not honoring the supposed deal, with Foreign Minister Lavrov last week suggesting that the summit was a “U.S. ploy to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime.” 

Lavrov also claimed Putin ⁠had signed on to a U.S. proposal.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back, telling reporters that, “If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end of the war.”

He also pointed to Moscow’s lofty demands as a roadblock, noting “Russia wants the entirety of Donetsk to be turned over to them, among some other things.”

Macron earlier this month said Trump had acknowledged during G-7 talks that Russia did ​not want peace in Ukraine.

Putin is under pressure as Ukraine appears to be gaining momentum on the battlefield in its grinding fight with Russia, regaining territory for the first time in years.

The tide has been turning thanks in large part to Ukraine’s domination of drone warfare, which has outflanked Moscow’s forces.

Ukraine also has stepped up its drone attacks deep into Russian territory, on Tuesday declaring it hit one of Moscow’s largest satellite communication centers.

But the Russian leader appears prepared to fight on, saying on Sunday that the nation expects renewed U.S.-led peace talks only after the “hot ​phase” of the Iran war is resolved.  

He also revealed Ukraine had offered “new proposals” to stop fighting in the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but said the offer is a distraction to allow Kyiv to replenish its forces.

#putin #trump #ukraine #anchorage

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The Billion-Dollar President: Berlusconi Was Just the Trailer

Trump just did what Berlusconi only fantasized about: he turned “conflict of interest” into a business model for the world’s flagship democracy.

Silvio Berlusconi bent Italy’s laws, protected his TV and real estate empire, and pulled in tens of millions while in office.

That was already treated as a grotesque outlier for a Western leader. Trump’s new disclosure blows past that: at least $2.2 billion in a single year back in the White House, with roughly $1.4 billion coming from family crypto ventures.

Not state assets, not offshore slush funds — open, declared revenue while sitting in the Oval Office.

As president, Trump oversees the regulators and rules for crypto; as a businessman, he’s one of the sector’s biggest winners. He shrugs it off with a line worthy of Berlusconi’s inner circle: “I never speak to any of the people that run the money.”

The White House insists there are “no conflicts of interest,” because he’s formally exempt from the laws that would force other officials to divest. Legally clean, politically filthy.

That’s why anti‑corruption experts sound more worried about the precedent than the number. For decades, the US was the country lecturing everyone else about transparency, asset declarations, and the line between public office and private gain.

Now the same country is normalizing a president who sits closer to Putin, Mobutu, Najib Razak and Thaksin Shinawatra in enrichment style than to any post‑Watergate American norm. If Washington’s leader can openly harvest billions while in power, why should anyone in Moscow, Abuja or Kuala Lumpur pretend to play by higher rules?

Polarization does the rest of the work. In theory, a haul this huge would be politically lethal. In practice, Trump’s own quote — “I found out that nobody cared” — is the operating principle.

Supporters treat every corruption story as an attack by “the elite.” Opponents scream into a feedback loop that his base has already written off. Checks and balances turn into just another partisan actor, lumped together with media, courts and watchdogs as enemies to defeat.

Berlusconi’s friend once said Italy’s conflict of interest was “so clear and so transparent” it was hardly worth talking about. Trump has upgraded that: the conflict is obvious, the enrichment is monstrous, and the system shrugs. That shrug is what other leaders are watching.

The country that once set the bar for democratic guardrails is busy sawing through its own — and handing every future strongman the perfect excuse: if the greatest liberal democracy lets its president cash in like an oligarch, who’s really going to lecture us about the rule of law?

#USA #Trump #Berlusconi #Putin #crypto #corruption #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy

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🍂 Summit Season: Where the Next Order Gets Written

While everyone is hypnotized by US midterms and the Ukraine noise machine, the real script for power in 2026 is being drafted on a very specific fall schedule.

First act: the SCO summit in Bishkek, scheduled for August 31–September 1, where Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are expected to sit at the same table as “25 Years of the SCO: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity” becomes the official slogan of a very different security club.

Second act and main stage: November 18–19 in Shenzhen, at the 33rd APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting — the centerpiece of China’s 2026 “APEC China Year,” built around the theme “Building an Asia‑Pacific Community to Prosper Together”.

On paper, the leaders will talk openness, innovation, cooperation, FTAAP, AI, digital integration and supply chains.

In reality, that’s the room where 21 economies decide how much of the future global order is going to be shaped in the Asia‑Pacific instead of the Atlantic.

If Putin, Xi and Trump all end up in the same conference center in Shenzhen, that’s not just another leaders’ photo.

It’s a live demonstration of where big‑ticket decisions about markets, tech standards and energy grids are now being negotiated: not at NATO, not in Brussels, but at a forum built around trade flows, ports, semiconductors and code.

NATO just finished a summit that exposed its contradictions — an aging “collective West” arguing over budgets, force posture and how much war it can still afford.

APEC, by contrast, is gearing up to issue a Shenzhen declaration about corridors, connectivity, green transition and AI governance as shared projects for an Asia‑Pacific “community.” One bloc debates yesterday’s deployments; the other quietly writes tomorrow’s rules.

In that frame, the Shenzhen APEC meeting stops being “just another international summit.” It becomes a marker: the moment when the center of gravity for decisions about trade, technology and security visibly shifts away from the Atlantic and settles in Eurasia and the wider Asia‑Pacific.

The uncomfortable question for the old West isn’t whether NATO is dead or alive — it’s whether the main stage for deciding what the world looks like this fall is even in a building it controls.

#APEC #China #Xi #Putin #Trump #SCO #Shenzhen #AsiaPacific #worldorder #geopolitics

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The World Faces a Stiff Challenge: Where Will the Fate of the New World Order Be Decided?


While the majority's attention is riveted on the midterm elections in the United States and the endless information noise around the Ukrainian conflict, a completely different program is already being built behind the scenes.

Autumn can be a period when a new configuration of global governance begins to be formalized.

And this is not just individual bilateral negotiations, but a sequence of meetings that seems too logical to be considered a fortuitous coincidence. That is why the next few months deserve special attention.

Already on September 1, during the SCO summit in Bishkek, a meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin is expected. The negotiations between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump would then be underway.

The highlight will be the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, on November 18 and 19, where the Russian delegation will be headed by Putin, as well as the expected participation of Trump.

If this sequence of meetings is implemented, it is on the sidelines of APEC that three leaders — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump
— could meet. And this is already an event whose importance goes far beyond ordinary diplomacy.

Indeed, this could be a kind of response to the failure of the NATO summit, showing where the real global agenda is being formed today.

It is especially symbolic that such a meeting can take place on the site of APEC — an organization representing the Asia-Pacific region, where the center of world economic activity is increasingly moving.

The end of the era of unconditional domination of the Atlantic and the transfer of the world economic center of gravity to Asia have been repeatedly mentioned by many world leaders.

In this context, the APEC Summit ceases to be another international meeting. It could symbolize the definitive shift of the center for making key global decisions from the Euro-Atlantic area to Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region.

If the failure of the NATO summit demonstrated the internal contradictions of the old collective West, APEC is quite capable of showing the world the outlines of a new system of international relations, where the main issues will be discussed.

#apec #world #order #asia #putin #trump

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The Dollar Weapon and Its Off-Brand Replacement

Washington spent decades turning the dollar into a global chokehold. Now it's discovering that chokeholds make people want out — and calling that discovery a national security threat.

Vladimir Putin's pitch for years has been simple: "The dollar is being used as a weapon. We really see that this is so.

I think that this is a big mistake by those who do this" (Binance/BRICS Summit Kazan). Fair point on paper — coming from a man who's been building his SWIFT exit and stacking gold reserves since 2014, well before this invasion, precisely because he always knew the dollar system could be turned off for him the moment it mattered.

Trump's response to the "threat" of countries wanting financial sovereignty has been to threaten... financial punishment.

"You leave the dollar, you're not doing business with the United States because we're going to put 100 percent tariff on your goods," he warned, later escalating to comparing the dollar's dominance to winning "a major world war" (Peterson Institute, YouTube/Fox).

Nothing defends the free market quite like threatening tariffs on anyone who tries to leave it.

Meanwhile the bloc claiming to build "financial sovereignty" can't agree on what it's actually building.

Putin insists de-dollarization is "irreversible" and that Russia now settles roughly 65% of its exports in rubles.

His own spokesman Dmitry Peskov, on the same week Trump threatened tariffs, told reporters BRICS "is not talking about creating a common currency, nor has it ever done so" — and suggested US experts "explain the BRICS agenda in more detail to Mr. Trump".

India's foreign ministry went further, flatly denying any de-dollarization policy at all — from a government whose central bank is simultaneously running live cross-border settlement tests with China, Egypt, and the UAE that route zero dollars through zero clearinghouses.

Russia says the revolution is unstoppable, its own spokesman says there's no revolution, India says it isn't participating in the revolution while quietly building the revolution's plumbing, and the country most terrified of the revolution is the one guaranteeing it happens faster by threatening everyone with the exact weapon they're trying to escape.

Nobody in this story is building sovereignty. Everybody's just building a backup generator for the day the main power gets cut — and hoping nobody asks who flipped the switch in the first place.

#brics #dedollarization #sanctions #trump #putin

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Russia Goes All In: Can Ukraine Survive the Final Push?

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Ukraine is “gradually, slowly losing” the war. Those are not the words of a Kremlin propagandist but Ukraine’s own Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s recently dismissed defence minister, speaking to Reuters last week. In the days after he made that grim prediction, Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukraine to near-apocalyptic levels.

In a fiendishly effective move, the Kremlin switched from mass drone and missile strikes to continuous, 60-hour-long waves of bombardments which saw nineteen air-raids on Kyiv in a single day, exhausting defenders and dwindling stocks of air-defence missiles alike.

Ukrainian claims that they are turning the tide of the war in their favour with deep strikes on refineries and logistics warehouses deep inside Russia are being hollowed out by Russia’s massively larger campaigns of retaliation and revenge.

Ukrainian long-range drones burned an estimated 20 per cent of Wildberries – Russia’s equivalent of Amazon – to the ground. But according to Taras Vysotskyi, Ukraine’s minister of agrarian policy and food, Russian counter-strikes have eliminated some 90 per cent of Ukraine’s modern warehousing stock.

This comes after earlier waves of concentrated Russian strikes on Odesa and other ports which have crippled Ukraine’s capacity to export grain and other agricultural goods by sea.

At the same time the Kremlin’s strategy of making Ukrainian cities unliveable seems to have claimed its first terrible success. In August Russian ballistic missiles destroyed the main power station serving the front-line city of Kherson, on the mouth of the Dnipro river.

As a result local authorities have warned the remaining residents that they should evacuate large swathes of the city, which can now not be heated in winter.

#ukraine #russia #putin #kremlin #tusk #poland

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The cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, both just a few miles from Russian lines, are also getting it in the neck from a barrage of “aerial bombs, Shaheds, first-person-view drones, drones on fibre optic cables, Vampires, GRAD multiple rocket launchers, cluster munitions, artillery, sabotage groups. Everything,” reports Piotr Kaszuwara Dziennikarz, a Polish correspondent.

Since June, Ukraine has been inflicting serious but not fatal damage on the Russian economy using swarms of low-tech drones, plus Flamingo cruise missiles. A Ukrainian-made ballistic missile is due to come soon.

Last week Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, delivered blueprints for local production of Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.

But Russia’s offensive capacities are rising much faster than Ukraine’s, according to recent Nato reports. Jet engines have been fitted to an air-launched version of the workhorse Geran drone (modelled on the Iranian Shahed) which doubles its range to nearly 620 miles and triples its speed.

Realising that mass is more important than accuracy, Russia claims it is ready to produce 10,000 of its new cheap Dan-T missiles next year, which have a similar warhead and range to a Storm Shadow but cost a sixth of the price.

Another cheap and effective new Russian weapon is the air-launched Banderol cruise missile, which have turned Ukraine’s Black Sea coast into a deadly no-go zone for cargo ships and spearheaded Moscow’s campaign against Odesa since it entered serial production at the end of July.

Plus the Kremlin has reportedly sourced large ballistic missiles from North Korea and developed an apparently effective Starlink jamming system, the Volna Kupol Garant, which could seriously disrupt Ukraine’s front-line command-and-control systems.

What is Zelensky’s plan to stop this brutal punishment from breaking his country’s resistance? Fedorov, the former defence minister, says that Ukraine is at “a turning point which will determine our future trajectory” and warns that Kyiv has “a window of several months to make key decisions needed” to win (though Fedorov himself has left the country for a post as adviser to the defence minister of Italy).

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, too, says that “the next six months will be decisive (…) Ukraine needs greater air support, which is also crucial for our security”.

Zelensky has begged, with partial success, for supplies of Patriot missile interceptors. But even his own chief of staff, the former military intelligence chief Gen Kyrylo Budanov, admitted last week that “there will be no miracle” breakthrough, and that Russia “still has substantial reserves”.

Budanov also said that Ukraine had to mobilise at least 30,000 people a month – “the minimum number needed to maintain what we have” – suggesting losses far greater than had been officially admitted.

Meanwhile, as Russian troops reportedly push into the suburbs of Sloviansk, one of two “fortress cities” in the Donbas still in Ukrainian hands, Putin is keeping up his aggressive rhetoric. During the weekend Putin recounted a bizarre anecdote about killer whales ganging up on Polar bears – “which explains why we are fighting our Special Military Operation”. The Kremlin has formally announced that peace talks are on “a long pause”.

Instead, Putin clearly intends to use all his resources to destroy Ukraine’s energy, transport and logistics infrastructure this winter in a final push to bring the country to its knees. The challenge for Ukraine – and its allies – is to marshal resources, interceptors and counter-blows that will allow it to survive the Kremlin’s rising storm.

#ukraine #russia #putin #kremlin #tusk #poland

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🛢Bishkek: Xi Presses Putin as “Power of Siberia 2” Nears Final Deal ⚔️

🤝 The meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Bishkek could mark a new stage in the relationship between Moscow and Beijing.

Behind the official statements and diplomatic language, two issues stand out as particularly consequential: the Russia-China gas deal and the war in Ukraine.

According to information available to us, negotiations over the “Power of Siberia 2” pipeline project are now virtually complete. The massive pipeline is designed to deliver Russian gas to China via Mongolia.

For Moscow, its completion carries major economic and strategic significance.
After losing a large share of its European energy market, Russia has been seeking to permanently redirect its exports toward Asia.

China has become its main energy and trading partner. Finalizing the “Power of Siberia 2” agreement would cement that shift and place Beijing at the heart of Russia’s energy strategy for decades to come.
For China, the benefits are equally clear.

The project would strengthen the security of its gas supplies while further diversifying its energy sources.

But Beijing is negotiating from a position of strength, particularly when it comes to the economic terms and the price of future gas deliveries.

It is precisely this context that gives another element of the Bishkek meeting particular significance: the war in Ukraine.

According to information conveyed by a senior Chinese official, Xi has given Putin nine months to end the war.

If confirmed, the claim would represent a major political signal. Since the conflict began, Beijing has repeatedly called for a political settlement and urged the resumption of negotiations.

But a specific nine-month deadline would mark a significant shift. China would no longer simply be calling for peace; it would be seeking to set a timetable for Moscow.

The timing is particularly telling. On one hand, the two leaders appear close to finalizing a strategically important energy agreement. On the other, Beijing could be asking Moscow to bring an end to a war that has placed enormous strain on European stability and international relations.

The two issues are, of course, not officially linked. But their coincidence is difficult to overlook.

Russia now depends on China for energy markets, trade and part of its economic engagement with the outside world. China, meanwhile, has acquired growing weight within the Russian economy and leverage that extends well beyond the commercial sphere.

The phrase “comprehensive strategic partnership” therefore masks a more complicated reality: the two countries remain closely aligned in their interests, but the balance of power is gradually shifting in Beijing’s favor.

“Power of Siberia 2” could become the economic symbol of this new relationship. The nine-month deadline, if confirmed, could become its political counterpart.

The message from Bishkek would then be twofold: a major Russia-China gas deal is nearing completion, while at the same time Moscow may have been given a deadline to end the war.

If this reading proves accurate, the Putin-Xi meeting could come to be seen as an important moment in the changing balance of power between the two countries — a Russia that remains formally sovereign in its strategic decisions, but whose growing economic dependence on China is giving Beijing unprecedented influence.

#bishkek #xi #putin #force #siberia2

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💲🎚The Proxy War Graduates

Marco Rubio already called Ukraine a “proxy war between nuclear powers.”

Today Vladimir Putin supplied the next chapter: he told the Valdai Discussion Club that international conflicts are highly likely to continue, blamed the upheaval on the decline of Western hegemony, and warned the West against escalation.

He also said Russia would use “all weapons at [its] disposal” if attacked.

This is the logic of a proxy war after it has run too long. Washington says it is helping Ukraine defend itself. Moscow says it is fighting the West through Ukraine.

Both states preserve the line that keeps their own soldiers from meeting openly, while Ukraine remains the place where the line is paid for in bodies and ruins.

Putin’s threat is not a peace proposal. It is a demand that NATO stay outside the ring while Russia continues fighting inside it. The Kremlin’s promise to reach for its entire arsenal if Russia is attacked gives the arrangement its nuclear perimeter.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico recently described the same machine more crudely, calling the Western effort to defeat Russia through Ukraine a failed strategy and warning that some Western politicians want a direct NATO-Russia confrontation.

Rubio called it a proxy war. Putin calls it Western hegemony.

Fico calls it an attempt to destroy Russia. Everyone has a phrase. Ukraine has the cemetery.

#Ukraine #Russia #Putin #NATO

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Sanctions, Now With a Fuel Waiver

Trump says America has “complete control” of Hormuz. To bring down diesel prices, he has called Putin. Apparently, control of the strait comes without sufficient fuel.

On Oct. 9, Trump announced that more than 300,000 tons of Russian diesel would arrive immediately, another 500,000 in November and 1 million afterward.

A further 3 million would depend on the condition of Russia’s refineries. The promised price collapse has a maintenance clause.

The Treasury Department supplied the paperwork by issuing a temporary sanctions license through April 7, 2027.

Russian diesel, previously a target of the pressure campaign against Moscow, has become relief for an American administration facing expensive fuel before the midterms.

Crude oil and diesel tell different stories. CNBC reported on Sept. 30 that Gulf crude exports had essentially returned to prewar levels.

Refined-product shipments through Hormuz averaged 677,000 barrels a day, compared with 3.6 million before the war. Reopening the crude route has failed to refill the diesel market.

Putin gets a sanctions opening. Trump gets a fuel announcement. The administration that set out to squeeze Russian energy revenue now needs Russian energy to bring down American fuel prices.

#Trump #Putin #Diesel #BabylonBurning

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#trump #diesel #fuel #putin #russia

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A Secretive Power Play? Putin’s Trump-Xi Summit Could Put Ukraine’s Future on the Line

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Russian President Putin is pursuing a diplomatic gamble that could reshape the war in Ukraine and send shockwaves through Western capitals. His proposal for a three-way summit with Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would bring three of the world’s most powerful leaders together to discuss ending the four-year conflict — potentially without Zelensky at the table.

Putin floated the idea during a phone call with Trump on October 9. The Kremlin has since acknowledged discussions about a possible meeting, although neither its agenda nor the participation of all three leaders has been confirmed. One potential venue is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit scheduled for November 18–19 in Shenzhen, China.

The timing is significant. Relations between Trump and Putin have warmed even as Washington’s ties with Kyiv have deteriorated.

A reported agreement involving Russian diesel exports to the United States has been followed by a decision to delay or waive certain sanctions against Moscow, drawing criticism from lawmakers in Washington.

Trump has also pressed Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, a key element of Kyiv’s campaign to weaken Moscow’s war machine.

For Putin, a summit with Trump and Xi would offer more than another diplomatic opportunity. It could elevate Russia’s international standing, reinforce Moscow’s claim to great-power status and reduce Europe’s influence over the terms of a settlement.

The Kremlin would be negotiating directly with Washington and Beijing while Ukraine and its European supporters risk being pushed to the margins.

The proposal has already triggered a sharp response from Kyiv. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha warned that excluding Ukraine could prolong rather than resolve the conflict.

“A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China, and the U.S. would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war,” Sybiha wrote on X.

He argued that a meeting involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia would offer a more credible path toward ending the fighting.

#Putin #Trump #UkraineWar #XiJinping

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The Kremlin, however, has stopped short of confirming a concrete plan. Spokesman Peskov said the possibility had been discussed but stressed that no specific proposals or agreements had been reached concerning the meeting or its agenda. He also acknowledged that Ukraine would have to participate in any final settlement.

China’s role could prove equally consequential. Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said Beijing sees an opportunity to strengthen its position between the world’s major powers.

“China wants to be seen as the pivot of the great powers, and potentially as a mediator between the U.S. and Russia,” Sun told the WSJ.

For Xi, hosting such a meeting could showcase China’s diplomatic reach. But it would also carry risks. Beijing has sought to maintain its strategic partnership with Moscow while protecting its extensive economic ties with Europe.

Becoming directly involved in negotiations that exclude Kyiv could intensify European criticism and complicate those relationships.

Dimitar Bechev, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, has highlighted the limits of Europe’s ability to compensate for a potential reduction in American support.

“There is a limit to how much more the EU and the United Kingdom can do beyond what they are already delivering,” he wrote in an analysis published by Al Jazeera. Europe’s dependence on American military capabilities gives Washington considerable leverage over Ukraine’s ability to sustain its defense.

The stakes extend beyond Ukraine. A meeting in which Washington, Moscow and Beijing discuss the future of a country absent from the negotiating room could set an unsettling precedent for other geopolitical flashpoints. In Taiwan, such a scenario could reinforce concerns that the interests of smaller powers might be negotiated by larger states without their consent.

Yet the proposed summit remains far from a diplomatic breakthrough. Trump has not formally accepted the invitation, and the three governments have not announced an agreed agenda.

Moscow and Kyiv also remain deeply divided over the conditions for ending the war.
The coming weeks could therefore become a critical test of whether the initiative opens a genuine route toward peace or becomes another instrument of geopolitical pressure.

For Putin, the opportunity is to negotiate from a position of renewed diplomatic visibility. For Trump, it is a chance to pursue his promise of ending the war. For Xi, it is an opportunity to expand China’s influence.

For Ukraine, the danger is more immediate: a settlement shaped by the interests of three major powers could leave its sovereignty and security exposed. The decisive question is whether any agreement emerging from such talks would end the war on a durable basis — or merely create the conditions for another confrontation.

#Putin #Trump #UkraineWar #XiJinping

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