By Pavel Devyatkin, Responsible Statecraft, 9/15/26

Last week, the war in Ukraine reached deep inside the Russian Arctic.

On September 9, Ukrainian drones struck two gas processing plants in the Yamalo-Nenets region, located about 1,900 miles from the Ukrainian border. This is Ukraine’s deepest strike on Russia since the war began. Arctic energy infrastructure in the Yamal region produces around 80% of Russia’s natural gas.

Russian military analysts believe the Ukrainian drones were launched from Sumy, northern Ukraine, and reached all the way into Yamal with the help of Starlink. Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces announced, “Until today, this was considered an absolutely safe rear.”

The attack also shook European energy markets, as Europe buys large volumes of gas from the Yamal region. President Donald Trump later told Ukraine to stop attacking Russia’s diesel infrastructure, saying fuel shortages due to the strikes were “hurting the world,” without explicitly acknowledging the fact that the spike in global energy prices is largely driven by the Iran war.

This is the second time the Arctic has been drawn into the Ukraine war. Back in June 2025, Ukrainian drones, smuggled into Russia by truck, hit the Olenya air base on the Kola Peninsula, targeting Russia’s long-range strategic bombers that Moscow had considered safe because of their remote Arctic location.

No guardrails for deescalation

What makes these strikes especially dangerous is the lack of mechanisms to manage the next incident. Tensions between nuclear powers are already escalating in the Arctic. A confrontation in this region could quickly escalate into something much bigger.

Both the U.S. and Russia deploy strategic bombers and submarines north of the Arctic Circle. Russia uses the Arctic as a testing site for nuclear-powered cruise missiles and underwater drones.

Last week, anonymous Western officials told Reuters that, in April 2026, U.S., British, and Norwegian forces confronted Russian submersible vehicles that seemed to be practicing how to sabotage critical cables near Svalbard. The Russian Embassy in Oslo has dismissed the report as information warfare meant to justify NATO’s militarization of the Arctic.

Previously, the Arctic was the setting for confidence-building measures, force-posture information sharing, multilateral scientific cooperation, and programs that reduced the risks of miscalculation. Today, we are at dangerously low levels of trust, preventing such cooperative efforts. The region faces growing military activity and almost no mechanism to stop a stray drone or submarine maneuver from spiraling into an escalation neither side intends.

After the 2025 strike on Russia’s strategic bombers, George Beebe of the Quincy Institute noted with alarm that Western commentators celebrated the attack, largely ignoring the risks it posed to nuclear stability. An attack on the aviation leg of Russia’s nuclear triad deserves far more sober reflection than the applause it received.

Arctic security dilemma

Against the background of the worsening conflict in Ukraine is a spiraling West-Russia confrontation. The current trajectory is a classic security dilemma: NATO builds up in the Arctic because of a perceived Russian threat, Russia builds up because of a perceived NATO threat, and round and round it goes. With every move, each side sees proof of the other’s hostility.

Following the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO in 2023 and 2024, seven of the eight Arctic states (all but Russia) are members of the alliance. In February 2026, NATO launched Arctic Sentry, conjoining the alliance’s activities — including Denmark’s Arctic Endurance and Norway’s Cold Response — under a coherent operational framework coordinated through Joint Force Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

Arctic Sentry was announced a month after Trump raised tensions in the alliance with his threats to annex Greenland. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced the mission as he lobbied Trump to drop the push to acquire the island.

European allies hoped that Arctic Sentry and talks with Washington would let NATO move on from the Greenland dispute and refocus on what they call Europe’s security priority: Russia and the war in Ukraine. Trump, meanwhile, continues to seek the acquisition of the Arctic island even as Europe invests $232 million to support Greenland.

Finland convened European leaders in Helsinki this week to discuss the “race with Russians and the Chinese for use and control of the Arctic.” The Finnish prime minister said “Europe has to be so strong that it won’t cross Russia’s mind to challenge us here in the north.”

Now, NATO exercises, such as Cold Response 26, are folded into the Arctic Sentry framework. This year’s exercise in Norway involved 30,000 troops from fourteen nations rehearsing a counterattack against an “enemy to the east.”

Russian officials have announced that Moscow will take measures to counter NATO in the Arctic. In parallel, Russia and China are increasing their Arctic security cooperation. In 2024, Russian and Chinese bombers conducted joint drills for the first time within Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone, in international airspace. The U.S. responded by sending more troops and artillery to Alaska’s remote corners.

That same year, the Chinese Coast Guard conducted its first-ever Arctic Ocean patrol alongside Russia’s Border Service.

Restarting dialogue

To its credit, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) announced the restoration of military-to-military dialogue with Russia earlier this year. Norway also plans to discuss maritime security issues with Russia under the framework of the Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents at Sea (INCSEA).

With so much activity up north, it is reassuring to see some Arctic states gradually resume dialogue with Russia. Going forward, a circumpolar dialogue and channels for the other NATO member states that operate in the Arctic will be necessary.

The Ukraine war has impacted Russian-Chinese relations in the Arctic. From Russia’s point of view, turning to China has been a practical step in the face of diplomatic isolation, but it’s not necessarily Moscow’s first choice. Before 2022, Russia actively participated alongside its Western counterparts in maritime safety institutions like the Arctic Coast Guard Forum.

After the war started, the Western Arctic states condemned Russia’s military actions and suspended cooperation. Vladimir Kulishov, head of Russia’s Border Service, explained that Moscow felt compelled to find new partners as a result. Russia invited China’s Coast Guard first as an observer to a Russian-led exercise, and later as a signatory to an official memorandum on maritime security cooperation.

The Western policy of isolating Russia has essentially left Moscow with little alternative but to pursue coordination with China. This has granted Beijing a strategic foothold in the Arctic — something the Pentagon regards as a top security threat. Previously, China had access to the Arctic mostly through Russia’s tolerance rather than its partnership.

The recent escalations are a warning that the guardrails and old rules are gone. If we want to prevent the region from turning into a permanent battlefield, all Arctic states need to get serious about risk reduction.

The Ukraine war severed decades of productive Arctic cooperation. As the search for peace in Ukraine now resumes, all Arctic states should enhance diplomatic channels, especially military-to-military dialogue like the channels that EUCOM and the Norwegian armed forces are pursuing with Russia. Multilateral cooperation between Arctic states’ coast guards is also crucial.

The new status quo — a state of ever-increasing tensions between nuclear-armed powers — is simply too risky to bear.

By Glenn Diesen, Substack, 8/21/26

Narrative control has seemingly rendered our societies incapable of distinguishing between ‘explanation’ and ‘justification’. There is overwhelming evidence that Russia has considered NATO expansionism to be the main security threat since the end of the Cold War, and that Russia has considered NATO’s incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat. Yet, our political-media establishment smears and censors any explanation as “justification”. By doing so, they also criminalise any path toward a political settlement to end the war.

Germany invaded my country, Norway, during World War II to a large extent as a pre-emptive move. Britain considered invading Norway to control its Atlantic coastline, to disrupt the iron supplies that were vital to Germany, and to have a northern flank against the Germans. Norway was neutral, yet its neutrality could not be enforced as the British Navy operated in Norwegian waters without its permission. Am I ‘justifying’, “legitimizing”, or “excusing” Nazi Germany’s invasion of Norway by stating these historical facts to explain how states compete for security? To understand how our societies are abandoning strategic thinking, freedom of speech, diplomacy and peace, it is imperative to understand how our political-media establishment suppresses reality to protect war narratives.

The Western war narrative is structured around the absurd claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”. This narrative is protected by smears and intimidation against anyone who discusses the role of NATO expansionism. The former US ambassador to Russia, who later became the Director of the CIA, wrote in 2008 that any effort to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit could trigger a civil war in Ukraine and that “Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”. This is a far cry from the claim of an “unprovoked” Russian invasion to restore the Soviet Union. At the end of the first day of the Russian invasion, Zelensky confirmed that they had been contacted by Moscow to discuss putting an end to the war, which would be based on restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. Three days later, Moscow and Kyiv agreed to start peace talks that were linked to restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. This is absent from our media, as it does not fit the narrative of an “unprovoked” invasion.

After the Istanbul talks failed, we were informed by the Turkish and Israeli mediators that Russia and Ukraine were close to a deal based on restoring Ukraine’s neutrality before the US and UK decided to torpedo the agreement as they saw an opportunity to use Ukrainians to fight and weaken Russia. As Zelensky recognised in an interview with The Economist in March 2022: “Everyone has varied interests. There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”. However, the only acceptable discourse in the West must seemingly be based on the premise that NATO is simply an altruistic actor that responded to Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, even though every poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrated that only a tiny minority of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership.

The discourse is dumbed down to the extent that claiming the Russian invasion was unprovoked is the litmus test for being “pro-Ukraine,” while any dissent is labelled “pro-Russia”. Why? The situation for Ukraine has consistently worsened since 2014, and continuing along this path could destroy Ukraine as a nation. In contrast, if we recognize that Russia will not accept NATO in Ukraine any more than the US would accept the Russian military in Mexico, then a deal could be made that would manage the security competition, remove Ukraine from the front lines of a divided Europe, and create a stable and prosperous Ukraine. Yet, even discussing the possibility of reducing the security competition is criminalized as “justifying”, “legitimizing”, and “excusing” the Russian invasion.

The West has subsequently trapped itself in narratives that make peace impossible to pursue in a war it cannot win.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 9/13/16

The 18th BRICS Summit concluded in New Delhi, India (September 12–13, 2026) under India’s chairmanship, guiding a heavily expanded 11-member bloc amidst intense regional conflicts.

India has achieved a major diplomatic breakthrough by securing a unanimous joint declaration. The text successfully bridged deep fractures over the West Asia conflict between members like Iran and the UAE.

Member states finalized a diverse list of actionable outcomes. These focused on practical cooperation in agriculture, food security, health, energy, and disaster resilience.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced a strategy to deepen intra-bloc integration. This calls on the BRICS Business Council to eliminate the top 10 trade barriers, back 100 startups annually, and form 1,000 new partnerships.

India heavily pushed its low-cost, scalable DPI model as an adaptable blueprint for economic development across the Global South.

The bloc renewed its collective demand to reform legacy Western-dominated institutions. This includes pushing for structural updates to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), IMF, and World Bank.

Prominent international observer and former diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar has offered a highly strategic evaluation of the summit’s long-term geopolitical value

Bhadrakumar argues that BRICS is fundamentally rewriting the global balance of power. He notes that unlike the West, none of the BRICS members built their economic power on a history of bloody colonial wars or global dominance.

He outlines that New Delhi is perfectly content using BRICS to push for a more just and stable world order. The platform enables India to champion the Global South while maintaining independent strategic autonomy.

Bhadrakumar highlights that Western pressure tactics—such as unilateral U.S. tariffs and sanctions—are backfiring. He points out that Russia and China already handle almost all of their trade in rubles and yuan.

He emphasizes that India’s push for an early Free Trade Agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) will accelerate non-dollar local currency trade. This financial pivot effectively creates a major hole in Western economic architecture.

BRICS advances in trade payment systems focus on building a decentralized, multi-tiered network to bypass the Western-dominated SWIFT system and reduce transaction costs. Rather than introducing a single, monolithic currency, the bloc has chosen a modular approach focused on local currency trade settlement and technological integration.

The core strategy relies on linking member states’ highly advanced domestic instant payment systems. The technical and policy framework connects India’s UPI, Brazil’s Pix, Russia’s SPFS, and China’s CIPS. Major infrastructure expansions—such as China updating its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) rules to lower entry barriers for foreign direct participants—serve as immediate conduits for alternative cross-border clearing.

A central milestone is the targeted implementation of BRICS Pay, a decentralized, blockchain-based financial messaging ecosystem. Coordinated through an open payment ecosystem architecture, it is built to allow member nations and partner economies to trade directly using their local currencies. The system is designed to share source code and integrate directly into existing national payment infrastructures rather than acting as a top-down replacement.

All core BRICS nations have active pilot programs for Central Bank Digital Currencies (such as the digital yuan, digital rupee, and digital real). Under proposals championed by the Reserve Bank of India, the group is evaluating the legal and technical parameters needed to bridge these independent CBDCs, making wholesale cross-border trade settlements instant and friction-free.

Despite political rumors, India and other key members explicitly ruled out a monolithic “BRICS common currency”. During the 2026 Summit, members chose to formally “acknowledge” the work of the BRICS Payment Task Force (BPTF) rather than mandate a single architecture. The consensus respects national priorities and avoids a “one-size-fits-all” framework, leaving nations free to advance along parallel technical tracks (e.g., India connecting UPI with Russia’s grid, while China scales CIPS.

Glenn Diesen, in conversation today with Bhadrakumar, makes the important observation that India is a founding BRICS member that, in conjunction with Russia, can ensure that the new economic architecture which the BRICS represents is not going to be dominated by China. Not lease because India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Bhadrakumar talks at length as to the weaknesses of official Indian understanding of the origins of the war over Ukraine, but can see a process of convergence of perspective between Putin and Modi, very much along the lines (if you would please indulge me) that I have outlined time and time again in these postings over the past four plus years, and helped along by Russia’s role in helping ensure a continuing flow of Russian oil and Russian fertilizers to India. Bhadrakumar also refers to Russia’s recent historical experience with extreme Islamist jihadis in Chechnya, providing a shared experience with terrorism which Russia holds in common with China – in the context of jihadi terrorism within the Uighur population, which Western propaganda has twisted into a totally false narrative of Chinese “genocide” of Uighurs which I have demolished in previous posts; and in the contexts of terrorism against Chinese Belt and Road initiatives in Mynmar and Pakistan (Balochistan) among many other instances.

By Julian Cooper, Responsible Statecraft, 8/24/26

In the last decade, 31 former members of Congress and top staff have left Capitol Hill and joined the military-industrial complex as lobbyists or contractors, according to a new report from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The 21 lawmakers named in the report served on either the House or Senate Armed Services Committee, the legislative bodies that set the Pentagon’s annual policies through the annual National Defense Authorization Act. In addition, the report names 10 former senior committee staffers who transitioned to working as weapons industry government liaisons or lobbyists.

These 31 former officials represent a snapshot of the military-industrial complex’s “revolving door,” through which ex-policymakers transition from setting the Pentagon’s agenda in Congress to cashing in on those same policies in the private sector. “That report we published is the most direct explanation we’ve ever seen of why the defense budget always goes up,” said John Mecklin, the author of the report and former editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The report highlighted a variety of potential ethics conflicts, focusing in particular on the growing path between Congress and Silicon Valley defense tech startups.

Chris Vieson, the former staff director of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), was appointed earlier this year to the National Commission on the Future of the Navy, established to advise Congress on everything “from shipbuilding and acquisition to maintenance and repair, workforce, training, and modernization.” Vieson is also an active registered lobbyist for two defense startups: Saronic Inc., a manufacturer of unmanned maritime vehicles; and watercraft builder Whiskey Project Group. Previously, Vieson worked as a lobbyist for Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm gaining influence in the Pentagon and pushing AI integration.

According to its executive director, the National Commission on the Future of the Navy aims to modernize the Navy to prepare for conflict with China and Iran. As part of this goal, the Commission will “test emerging ideas such as a hybrid fleet and expanded use of unmanned systems.” Vieson’s lobbying client, Saronic Inc., is one manufacturer of such unmanned systems.

While the revolving-door phenomenon is not new, the report captures the increasing influence of a new generation of Silicon Valley military firms. Former HASC members Mike Gallagher and Jeff Miller have taken up jobs as an executive and a lobbyist, respectively, for Palantir. Former Republican staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Christian D. Brose is now the Chief Strategy Officer for Anduril, an autonomous weapons startup valued at $61 billion in its latest round of fundraising.

According to Mecklin, Congress is eager to let Silicon Valley officials into their bureaucracy. “It takes the Pentagon many, many years to acquire a new defense system like a fighter plane. With a high-tech system, you just can’t wait that long,” he said. “So they found a way around the complicated acquisition processes of the Defense Department.”

Likewise, Silicon Valley weapons startups that wish to challenge prime contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are desperate to hire former politicians. “If you’re a company that wants to get into defense contracting, it’s highly beneficial to hire people that understand the process of federal appropriations in the defense sector,” Mecklin explained.

The Bulletin’s revolving-door report also details a who’s-who of top congressional stock traders. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who has served on HASC since 2015, has been trading GE Aerospace stock via his spouse since 2023. Scott’s trades this year violated the STOCK Act, a bill passed in 2012 to curb insider trading. That makes Scott one of seven Armed Services Committee members to violate the STOCK Act this year, generally for failing to disclose trades within 45 days, as the law mandates.

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) is another HASC member who has benefited from military contractor stocks. In December 2025, she disclosed her husband’s $100,000-$250,000 purchase of stock in Elon Musk’s xAI, which merged with SpaceX soon after in February. McClain’s husband’s xAI shares were converted into SpaceX shares months before the company’s historic IPO in June. McClain previously violated the STOCK Act for her delayed disclosure of a trade worth up to $450,000 in Palantir stock.

The report also makes note of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) trading stock for prime defense contractor Lockheed Martin and aerospace manufacturer Honeywell. Tuberville, one of the most active stock traders in Congress, has served on SASC since 2021. When President Donald Trump faced criticism this spring for his own portfolio of weapons stocks, Tuberville told a reporter for MeidasTouch, “I do the same thing.”

Mecklin believes that laws like the STOCK Act are insufficient to curb members of Congress cashing in on defense spending. “The way you really stem this kind of behavior is to have inspectors general and law enforcement agencies that are on the lookout for them. Occasionally, take up one of these egregious cases and just prosecute it,” said Mecklin.

“Unless you have a system that actually scares these people so they cut it out, it’s going to continue.”

By Branko Milanovic, Substack, 8/26/26

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the world reactions were predictable. The strongest reaction came from the United States, that saw itself as a guardian of the old system and possibly as a guarantor of Ukraine’s NATO eventual membership. Europe’s reaction was several octavos lower as it generally was during the Cold War. Finally, the rest of the world, while mostly condemning Russia for an obvious violation of the international law and UN rules, was not overly concerned.

Things have changed. They began changing already under Biden who, while very critical of Russia, including through the imposition of the most radical sanctions ever (with the seizure of private property and property of a government with which the United States was not at war), still observed some rules from the Cold War—namely avoidance of unnecessary escalations with a nuclear-armed power. This was evident in Biden’s policy that did not allow strikes on Russian territory. But even under Biden that policy was gradually abandoned and the US de facto entered the war through its selection and direct targeting of places in Russia.

Over the past two years, the situation has further evolved. The US has continued with a policy where it is a de facto participant in the war but has also shown a desire to wrap-up the conflict in one form or another. What was surprising is that the thirst for war has become almost insatiable in several European countries, principally in the Nordic and Baltic countries, but more recently also in Germany, and, for long-term historical reasons that go to the 18^th century, in the UK too.

The role of small countries—that through their geopolitical irresponsibility can wreck great damage to the world—tends to pass under the radar. The Nordic-Baltic coalition is essentially calling for a war with Russia, citing its own fears and traumas of Russian/Soviet control and occupation. Leaving aside the discussion about the full one-sidedness of such claims (could not Russians argue that the Latvian riflemen played a key role in the Russian revolution?), this type of warmongering by small nations is extraordinarily hypocritical. It is based on the idea that one can advocate for war but bear no consequence of such a war. It tries to do everything possible to make interests of great powers become entangled with interests of small powers so that great powers can fight it out, millions die, yet the objectives of small countries be satisfied after a general war.

This attitude is bad enough in itself—but what is worse is that there are clear historical precedents in Eastern Europe and the Middle East of similar policies that brought global cataclysms. Serbia was playing off Russia in the run-up to the First World War. Poland and Hungary participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia which paved the way for Nazi Germany to continue with aggressions. Israel has been playing up the United States for several decades in the Middle East, most obviously right now when the US entered the war against Iran –very similarly to the way Russia entered the war against Ukraine—without knowing why, or what are the political aims of that war. But the outcome arranges Israel because it weakens another Middle Eastern power and deepens the chaos in the region.

The world is now facing a similar situation where several countries, whose combined populations hardly reach the number of inhabitants of a Tier II Chinese city, want, in order to cure their frustrations and traumas, to plunge the entire world into a catastrophe that may more or less end civilization. It is an incredibly irresponsible policy. It is also hypocritical because it is based on the assumption that somebody else (in this case, the United States) will fight for them. For if they were so keen on the war and convinced of its moral value, why don’t enter it themselves? Why don’t they attack Russia directly and see what happens? It would be madness but at least it would not be irresponsible towards the rest of the world and not hypocritical.

Of course, the argument for a war (fought by somebody else) is that accepting to speak of a ceasefire along the current lines gives the advantage to the aggressor. But according to that logic, all wars should be fought until the end, until everybody is destroyed. There should never have been any negotiations. Diplomacy should not exist. The Korean war should be still fought—in fact, it probably would not because had the policies advocated by the Nordic-Baltic alliance been followed then (as McArthur wanted), we would have never been born and our parents or grandparents would have all died long ago.

The Nordic-Baltic alliance also forgets that if the cease-fire is established along the current lines of control, the territory of the Donbass etc. will indeed be controlled by Russia but no single country in the world would officially recognize it. Did they not notice that no country from the Commonwealth of Independent States has recognized it? Did they not notice that not even Belarus recognizes it? Such, indeed fragile, peace not only puts an end to today’s carnage, but leaves open a possibility of eventual long-term solution between Russia and Ukraine. Neither Putin, nor Zelensky, nor the social forces that support them are eternal. Things will change in Russia, and in Ukraine. Negotiations can take place in ten or twenty years—but at least people would be alive rather than dead.

They mention that it would lead to a “frozen conflict”. But is a frozen conflict worse than an open conflict? Is absence of death inferior to continued carnage? There are dozens of frozen conflicts all around the globe, from Cyprus to Kosovo to Western Sahara to Malvinas to Kashmir. Should we reopen them all? They are loath to answer the moral questions because the implicit value they place on Ukrainian lives is zero, and the implicit value they place on Russian dead is a plus. Consequently, an endless conflict is a positive sum game from their point of view.

Not only is the idea of an endless war immoral, but it plays with an immense risk of nuclear escalation. During the Cold War that risk was taken seriously by the two major powers. That’s why they had four binding nuclear agreements, all of which have lapsed. Today, people assume that nuclear weapons do not exist. This is an entirely invalid assumption, but even if there were just one-millionth probability of nuclear war happening, the costs of such a war are so immense (since such a war is uncontrollable), that every rational person’s calculation must be to do everything to avoid it.

The Nordic-Baltic warmongering under the current conditions is therefore (i) irresponsible, (ii) hypocritical, (iii) immoral, and (iv) flirts with a disaster of immense proportions.

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