Events in Ukraine (Substack), 4/25/26

The European Union, having gotten Orban out of the way, has finally formally approved its 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine.

Combined with Zelensky’s recent statements that his country ‘does not need’ Trump’s negotiation team, Ukrainian political analyst Kost Bondarenko has drawn the obvious conclusion — Zelensky is confident that he can blow off Trump. He will continue fighting with European help until 2028, when the hope is for a Democratic administration to return to the White House.

So, how goes the war?

Zelensky and allied western media have been pushing three main narratives this year. First, that Russian casualties are higher than ever. Second, that Ukraine is taking back increasing amounts of territory. Third, that Ukraine has retaken the lead in the drone war that it lost in 2025. The reality doesn’t seem to bear out these claims.

Losses

There have been a remarkable number of contradicting numbers about Russian losses coming from the Ukrainians and their western partners.

To begin with, there is dissonance between Zelensky and the General Staff. Throughout April, Zelensky and his minister of defense Fedorov have been saying that March saw an all-time record of Russian losses, 35 thousand KIA+WIA. But the website of the General Staff, which is the official Ukrainian source for Russian losses, claimed under 32 thousand. More importantly, according to this same website, the Russians lost 28% more troops in the first quarter of 2025, compared to the first quarter of 2026.

Then we turn to Zelensky’s western partners. On April 14, Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb was overjoyed to declare that the Russians lost 35 thousand KIA in March:

“I actually think that Ukraine is in a much better place than it has been at any stage in this horrific war,..

Since December, they [Ukraine] have killed somewhere around 35,000 Russian soldiers per month,” he said. “Russia is not able to recruit enough soldiers to compensate for those 35,000. Ninety-five percent of the losses are through drones…

The ratio of losses right now is one to five… So one Ukrainian soldier to five Russian soldiers.”

But even Zelensky doesn’t say that 35,000 Russians were killed — he says 35 thousand KIA + MIA.

There are serious issues with gathering statistics on losses. Ukraine’s Russian loss calculations are based on video evidence from drones. But often, a hit by a drone doesn’t actually lead to death. The soldier might be evacuated in the meantime. Or, he might be hit again by another drone, which is counted as two Russian casualties.

A rather interesting article came out on April 17 on the topic of Russian losses. It was published by texty.ua, a liberal nationalist publication opposed to commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky. It was reposted by MP Mariana Bezuhla, who is also opposed to Mr Syrsky.

Anyway, it found that Russian losses have been continually decreasing, while Russian territorial gains increase. This is a continuation of a trend they first identified in mid-2025, which I covered here.

This is the graph they produced in April.

Note that the losses are shown on a weekly basis, based on the data of Ukraine’s General Staff. Advances are based on the DeepState semi-independent OSINT project, which is less optimistic for the Ukrainian side than the claims of the General Staff or president, but also often more optimistic than the real situation on the ground.

Texty writes that the situation could be considered “difficult but controllable” (a beloved phrase of the general staff) if faster advances led to greater Russian losses. This would mean that both lines increase simultaneously. However, this this was only the case in 2024.

Since January 2025, texty believes that ‘the situation has begun to deteriorate’ as ‘the Russians are advancing faster and dying less’.

Following September 2025, Russian losses started to increase slightly, which texty describes as ‘meaning the situation has returned from catastrophic to “complex but manageable.”’

However, starting from January 2026, Russian losses again declined alongside increased territorial advances. For Texty, this ‘signals an extremely bad situation’.

Finally, while the ‘surge in Russian losses’ in the first two weeks of March ‘gives hope for a change in the trend, too little time has passed to understand whether this is a coincidence or a sign of changes in our favor.’

This is certainly quite a different tone from that struck by Zelensky and Fedorov. I think that to begin with, of course, Russian losses are seriously exaggerated. The Ukrainians are also constantly losing troops due to Russian dominance of the skies and because of doomed, ill-planned counterattacks against Russian positions.

And finally, the past few months saw comparatively fewer Russian assault operations due to winter weather. Now that spring has led to a regrowth of greenery, Russian infantry assault teams are finding it easier to infiltrate behind Ukrainian positions without being detected by drones.

Starved out

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians certainly seem to have fewer and fewer troops.

Due to the lack of manpower, troops are being forced to stay in the same trenches without rotations for months on end. On April 23, the liberal nationalist publication Ukrainska Pravda wrote about an outcry on social media from relatives of soldiers in the 14th brigade. Stationed in the Kharkiv oblast, they have apparently been largely starved of food and drinking water for the past 8 months. As a result, they are in a highly emaciated condition that is hardly conducive to active resistance.

Ivanna Poberezhnyuk, the relative of one soldier who maintains contact with soldiers in the unit, wrote this to threads:

The guys are in positions without food and water! The command is not responding. Fighters are losing consciousness from hunger, drinking rainwater. There are also problems with communication

It is also notable that Poberezhnuk wrote that these soldiers serving in the 14th brigade were ‘attached’ to the 30th brigade. This practice has been much criticized over the past two years, since it means that the ‘attached’ unit is often ‘used up’ at the frontlines by the unit it is attached to. Units that have the privilege to ‘attach’ other units to themselves care little about preserving the lives of troops in these attached units, because they can always just attach another unit. All the while, they can claim to suffer reasonable losses in their own unit.

Anastasia Silchuk, the wife of one of the soldiers, wrote this to Facebook:

“We voluntarily stood up for the defense of Ukraine on the first day of the full-scale invasion. We ask the higher command to deal with this situation and prevent treacherous actions!

Each parcel is meant to last for 7-14 days. We extract water ourselves – rainwater, in winter we melt snow. If it was dumped, then 1.4-2.5 liters. There are frequent situations when there is no connection at all for 3-4 days. This is the situation at all our positions. Even critical medicines are delivered only together with food,”

That same day, army command claimed to have sent new food supplies to the starving troops of the 14th brigade.

Territory

We’ll now take a look at the battlefield.

I’ve noticed that many top Ukrainian military bloggers, which once used to be quite interesting to read for their frankness, have gone rather quiet over 2026. What little they do say tends to be rather neutral or optimistic. I suspect this is related to the desperate need for European aid, and the hope of convincing the Americans into deepening military engagement. As a result, we have these endless media narratives of a victorious Ukraine, along with increased domestic censorship.

However, there is one Ukrainian military channel that continues putting out interesting daily reports about the frontlines — the airborne assault officer Muchnoy Jugend. And in what is surely a sign of the times, his channel went private this week. That means that by providing translations of his reports, I could claim to be relaying ‘confidential Ukrainian military sources’. He also turned off the copy or screenshot option on April 24.

It’s no wonder that Muchnoy went private. He is lauded among Ukrainian military bloggers for his honesty, and that certainly isn’t what the current media conjuncture calls for.

Take, for instance, his April 25 update. Instead of writing about constant Russian ‘meat assaults’, he noted that in the Dnepropetrovsk oblast, Russian forces weren’t always trying to advance. Instead, they were attacking Ukrainian positions with concealed stationary tanks. He also noted several cases of Ukrainian vehicles destroyed by Russian drones.

He also identified the Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka directions as the most critical sections of the front. Among other things, he criticized Ukrainian command’s decision to send suicide squads into the village of Stare Selo, near Kostiantynivka:

In the area of Stare Selo, there are inexplicable actions on our side: sending infiltration infantry groups into a zone where the enemy tightly controls the air with fiber optic drones. This is essentially a maximally risky one-way game.

To best immerse my readers in the daily events of the frontlines, I decided to use a somewhat experimental approach today. Think of it as a sort of battlefield stream of consciousness — I separated the frontline into eight main hotspots, and translated Muchnoy’s updates, day by day. Along with labeled maps, of course (identifying micro-villages whose names were often recently changed is no easy task).

But first, here are the main trends I identified.

There have been no notable Ukrainian advances over the past month. Instead, Russian forces have gradually advanced across the frontlines. The high-casualty assaults by Ukrainian assault forces in the south fizzled out by early to mid March. The attempts to move forward continue to this day, but with no success and high losses.

Zelensky finds it very important to keep trying here, because his claims of ‘400 square kilometers liberated in the south’ a few months ago were very effective in the western press. In fact, honest Ukrainian mappers believed that around 75 square kilometers of contested territory, not fully controlled by the Russians, was retaken. But since the nature of the terrain here means there is a higher chance of ‘retaking’ territory than elsewhere, the army will continue trying.

Meanwhile, Russian troops continue increasing the amount of drones it uses and the sophistication of their deployment. Russia’s highly effective Rubikon drone team is reported as active along the frontline, and it continues to inflict heavy losses. In response, Ukrainian troops have focused on trying to destroy Rubikon operators and bases in the area around the frontlines.

The key target for both sides is logistics, the zone under 30 kilometers from the frontline. By achieving dominance in the air through drones and drone-corrected artillery, provisions and reinforcements are blocked off, leading to a steady erosion of enemy positions for the side with air superiority (Russia). In recent months, Ukraine has also tried to increasingly use this tactic, to some success. However, its drone teams are often too preoccupied with trying to stop Russian infantry advancing into Ukrainian positions to be able to focus on mid-range logistics.

Now, to the key sections of the frontlines. We’ll analyze separately the following 8 theaters:

1: Sumy oblast border region

2: Kharkiv oblast border region (Vovchansk)

3: Kupiansk (eastern Kharkiv oblast)

4: Area around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk (northern Donetsk oblast)

5: Kostiantynivka (Donetsk oblast)

6: Pokrovsk area (western Donetsk oblast)

7: Southeastern Dnepropetrovsk oblast, bordering with the Donetsk (northeast) and Zaporizhia (southwest) oblasts

8: Huliaipole and nearby villages (northeastern Zaporizhzhia oblast)

The key battles are taking place in the Donetsk oblast. In the south, there is a fluid back and forth over unpopulated former villages. In the north, Russian troops have moved forward partly due to lack of Ukrainian defenses.

But in the Donbass, the operation to take the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk conglomeration continues. According to Zelensky and the western press, Russia is ready to freeze the war on the current frontlines once it has taken these cities. Most of Russia’s advances over the past month have been concentrated here, to the north and east of these twin cities.

Of course, these haven’t been massive advances, and at the current pace it will take quite a few months until Russian infantry are regularly infiltrating Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. At that point, it is likely that very lengthy urban warfare will ensue, depending on how well Russia manages to encircle the cities from multiple sides and strangle logistics.

To the south of Kramatorsk/Sloviansk, Kostiantynivka’s effective logistical encirclement has been intensifying. Ukrainian troops are increasingly demoralized by constant attacks from the air, including heavy FAB airborne bombs, strike drones like the Molniya and Lancet, and heavy artillery. Meanwhile, open displays of pro-Russian sentiment by the local population have further frustrated Ukrainian soldiers.

And beyond Pokrovsk, the situation is also highly intense. Ukrainian media has publicized demands from Ukrainian troops around Myrnohrad to be allowed to retreat — they have long been effectively encircled.

Now, onto daily reports from the frontlines. All 10,000 words of them.

The north

The past month has seen Russian troops take around 150 square kilometers of territory in northern Ukraine, in the border areas of the Sumy oblast. These are often not quite military operations, but look more like Russian troops advancing into essentially unprotected villages. Here’s a comparison between April 1 and April 25.

It seems unlikely that Russia has particularly grand aims here other than pulling Ukrainian reserves away from the more important parts of the front. The Russian government is also implementing its stated strategy of creating a ‘buffer zone’ along the border in order to prevent Ukrainian incursions into Russia, like the 2024 Kursk operation.

However, some think otherwise. Ukrainian journalist Yuliya Kiriyenko sounded the alarm for the city of Sumy on April 20:

A very dangerous situation in the Sumy region.

Earlier, information emerged that active assaults had begun against two brigades in different sectors of the front.

As of now, there are four penetrations along the border. From the east and the north, Russian troops are advancing in small groups.

There is continuous enemy use of KAB glide bombs and artillery strikes.

The worst possible scenario is that Sumy could end up in partial encirclement.

This post earned Kiriyenko a great deal of criticism from the general staff and DeepState. Nevertheless, she maintained that the threat for Sumy exists.

Meanwhile, in the northern Kharkiv oblast, Russian forces continue probing further beyond Vovchansk. Like Sumy, the goal seems mainly to thin out Ukrainian reserves across the frontlines, rather than achieving key territorial aims (as in the Donbass).

And troops certainly are thinly dispersed. The following April 17 update on Vovchansk from Muchnoy illustrated Ukraine’s manpower problems:

Vovchansk direction: A deep infiltration of the enemy in the area of Zybyne has been recorded, groups have gone up to 5 km before being detected and hit by drones. This is not just reconnaissance, but a serious probing of the defense. Such a distance without contact by our forces is a signal that we are blind in some places. If we do not reinforce control and reconnaissance, the enemy may repeat the attempt with larger forces and consolidate.



In general, the enemy’s main focus is on flanking bypasses, infiltration and control of the sky. In short, he is not breaking the front, but slowly eroding it. Our task: not to let these infiltrations turn into full-fledged breakthroughs.

Further south in the Kharkiv oblast is Kupyansk, which the Ukrainians triumphantly ‘retook’ in late 2025. However, despite constant promises to fully clear remaining Russian troops from the city within weeks, that never materialized. And now, Ukrainian defenses here are once again weakening.

The DeepState map is quite interesting — an island of red consolidated Russian terrain connected by a gray zone. The Russians in Kupyansk are by no means having an easy time and largely receive supplies through drones and such. Nevertheless, their holding out seems to have aided advances nearby.

Much of the Russian advances visible on a map this month were to the southeast of Kupiansk. Muchnoy wrote this on April 16:

Kup’yansk direction: Infiltration attempts are being detected in the eastern part of Kivsharyivka. The enemy is entering in small groups, trying to gain a foothold, but our soldiers immediately suppress them and prevent this from happening. At the moment, the situation is controlled, there are no major breakthroughs or deep incursions, the line is holding steady.

And on April 24, Muchnoy wrote that ‘the situation around Kupyansk is starting to change in favour of the Russians’. They are ‘seizing the initiative west of Kupyansk’ and infiltrating several areas northwest and southwest of the city. Russian units are ‘destabilizing the defense not at a single point, but along the entire arc, stretching out of forces and finding open spaces for maneuvering’.

They are also consolidating gains on the eastern bank of the Oskil river, with Kurylivka effectively under Russian control. Assault actions are being conducted into Kivsharivka.

And finally, the Russians are also infiltrating into the eastern outskirts of Kupiansk-Vuslovy, taking control of key infrastructure and logistics.

As a result, Kupiansk is being ‘pressured from the west’, Russian troops are ‘consolidating to the east’, and penetrating certain parts of the city itself.

Muchnoy also suspects that the Russians have intensified their efforts here because Ukrainian troops have been redistributed to the north of the Kharkiv oblast, due to Russian advances around Vovchansk. Having sensed a weakening of defense density around Kupiansk, they struck here. Such is the logic of a war of attrition on a 1200 kilometer frontline.

Kramatorsk/Sloviansk

Now we get into a stream of exclusive Muchnoy updates. 10,000 words, all the better to become truly immersed in the killing fields of the steppe.

The steadiest Russian advances have been throughout the Donetsk oblast, the most important theater of the war. These two maps (DeepState) compare April 1 to April 25:

And here are the key locations in the territory around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk:

April 9:

Kramatorsk–Sloviansk direction:

The enemy maintains fire control along the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas canal, preventing us from building up forces. At the same time, they are bringing in reserves for a possible advance toward Minkivka.

In Nykyforivka, the situation remains unclear: strikes south of the center could indicate either enemy attempts to advance or movements by our forces.

Both sides are actively using drones: our forces are operating against Riznykivka, while the enemy is striking Kryva Luka and Ozerne. The area is heavily saturated with UAVs, making any movement difficult.

April 11:

Lyman direction: The situation in Yampil has transitioned into a phase of close-quarter combat with a completely mixed line of engagement. The settlement is effectively divided into separate control zones, with our units holding positions in the center while the enemy infiltrates and consolidates from the southwest sector. This creates a checkerboard of positions where there is no continuous control—every building could be a battle point. In such conditions, both sides are working to inflict maximum damage, trying to dislodge each other from their positions and prevent the enemy from consolidating.



A key feature is the constant risk of flanking attacks and sudden close-quarter engagements. The enemy operates in small groups, attempting to infiltrate between positions and expand their control zone from the southwest, while our forces hold the center and maintain fire control to prevent the enemy from closing off our flanks.



In Zakitne, our units continue to hold the western outskirts despite systematic pressure. The enemy is trying to dislodge us from this area, as it has tactical significance for further advancement and control of approaches. In response, our forces are working proactively, striking the enemy’s positions east of the central part, which allows us to weaken their defenses and has already yielded results in the form of destroyed fortifications.



Overall, the direction is unstable, with high dynamics and constant clashes. The enemy is trying to expand its presence through the chaos in the built-up area, while we are holding key points and working selectively to prevent them from consolidating and seizing the initiative.

April 14:

Sloviansk direction: The enemy is methodically working with artillery south of Kryva Luka, simultaneously covering the west of Ozerne. The task is to destabilize the area and not allow us to accumulate forces. This is a classic preparation of the terrain for further movement.



Lyman direction: The movement of new enemy units has been detected. They are already conducting reconnaissance of Lyman and actively adjusting the artillery. This means one thing – the intensity of the fighting here will increase. The enemy is preparing to act harshly, the area is entering a phase of escalation and it will definitely not be easy here.

April 16:

Sloviansk direction: In Kaleniki, the enemy is already openly visible, the presence in the eastern part is fixed, plus information-psychological pressure: leaflets with calls to surrender are being distributed. In Kriva Luka and Ozerne, intensive artillery work is ongoing, our soldiers’ positions are under constant cover, the enemy is trying to knock out the defense through exhaustion.



Lyman direction: The city is also under regular artillery pressure, especially the south-eastern part, the enemy is working on residential and front-line infrastructure.

In the forests to the east, our attempt at infiltration failed, the enemy quickly reacted and hit with a fiber-optic drone, there are losses. This shows that their control there is tight, there are minimal blind spots.

At the same time, in Sosnovoe, we carried out a cleanup, knocking out a group of the enemy that had managed to get in and held out for a while on the eastern outskirts.

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Moscow Times, 4/18/26

Russia’s government warned it will scale back new support for businesses as mounting fiscal pressures limit its ability to sustain the stimulus that helped drive recent economic growth, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said Friday.

Speaking at an entrepreneurship forum, Reshetnikov said the state would honor existing commitments but offer fewer new subsidies and concessional loans.

“We will never abandon the obligations we have already taken on. But, of course, new disbursements will be much more modest,” he said.

The shift underscores a broader turning point for Russia’s economy, which is slowing after a period of rapid, state-driven expansion that relied heavily on spare labor, industrial capacity and fiscal reserves — many of which are now largely exhausted.

Reshetnikov urged businesses to invest and create jobs but acknowledged that companies would increasingly have to rely on their own resources.

“We have learned to do this, but in conditions of a relatively calm labor market,” he said. “We managed because there were reserves somewhere in the economy. Now these reserves are largely depleted, and the situation is significantly more complex.”

Russia’s economy grew by 4.1% in 2023 and 4.9% in 2024, driven in part by mobilizing idle resources. Officials say those buffers have now been used up.

Deputy Kremlin chief of staff Maxim Oreshkin has pointed to a shrinking labor pool, with unemployment falling to a record low of 2.1% in February.

Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has said production capacity is also near its limit, while fiscal and financial reserves have been drawn down.

Liquid assets in the National Wealth Fund have dropped to 3.9 trillion rubles ($51.5 billion), from 8.4 trillion rubles ($110.9 billion) before the war.

Banks, too, have less capital headroom, while high oil revenues are increasingly being directed toward debt repayment rather than new lending, she has said.

Without those supports, growth has slowed sharply. The economy expanded by just 1% in 2025, while GDP in January-February was 1.8% lower than a year earlier, though fewer working days may have skewed the comparison.

Budget constraints are tightening. The federal deficit reached 5.6 trillion rubles ($73.9 billion), or 2.6% of GDP, in 2024, and in the first quarter of 2026 alone hit 4.6 trillion rubles ($60.7 billion), or 1.9% of GDP, already exceeding the full-year target.

One of the main pressures on public finances is the cost of subsidizing interest rates. The Central Bank estimates that subsidized loans total around 17 trillion rubles ($224.4 billion), including roughly 4.5 trillion rubles ($59.4 billion) in state-backed lending programs across sectors such as small business and agriculture.

This includes about 1.4 trillion rubles ($18.5 billion) in loans under small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) support programs, more than 2 trillion rubles ($26.4 billion) in concessional loans for agriculture and nearly 1 trillion rubles ($13.2 billion) for borrowers in other sectors.

With interest rates still high, the fiscal burden of these programs has risen sharply. Each additional percentage point in the key rate costs the budget about 280 billion rubles ($3.7 billion), according to Andrei Makarov, head of the State Duma’s Budget and Taxes Committee.

“We continue to implement all existing support measures,” Reshetnikov said. “But the current situation, including the budget, does not mean we will subsidize lending programs or distribute grants at the same scale as during Covid.”

Instead, the government is shifting its focus toward encouraging companies to raise equity financing.

“Our vector is moving away from debt-based support — subsidizing interest rates — toward supporting capital in various forms,” Reshetnikov said. “We will develop programs to help more mature businesses access IPOs.”

The Central Bank has long pushed for such a shift, arguing that widespread subsidized lending reduces the effectiveness of monetary policy by dampening the impact of interest rate changes.

“Why don’t companies go to the capital market?” Nabiullina said previously. “Because there are too many subsidized loans.”

President Vladimir Putin has set a goal of doubling the capitalization of Russia’s stock market to 66% of GDP by 2030, from 33% in 2024. But market capitalization has since fallen by roughly one-third.

Achieving the target would require annual initial public offerings worth at least 1 trillion rubles ($13.2 billion) over several years, said Central Bank First Deputy Governor Vladimir Chistyukhin — roughly equal to the total volume of IPOs over the past decade.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 4/17/26

No sooner had new President of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) Dmitry Trenin issued his clarion call for correcting foreign policy misperceptions in an interview with leading domestic media, which was republished by RT and analyzed here, that another top expert stepped up to echo him. Ivan Timofeev is RIAC’s Director General, but he’s more well known as one of the programme directors at the Valdai Club, which is a hybrid think tank and expert networking platform that hosts Putin yearly. [https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/is-peter-the-great-s-project-over-no/]

He published a detailed article at Valdai about “Russia and Modernization: The Enduring Legacy of Peter the Great”. As the title implies, most of the content is an historical review of that Russian leader’s modernization reforms and their legacy across the centuries, but it contains a stark message in both the introduction and conclusion. In his words, “No matter how we define Russia—as a ‘civilisational state’, a ‘nation-state’, an ‘empire’, or in any other political form—without modernisation, it is doomed to perish.”

He observed that “Russia is simply turning to other sources of modernisation that have emerged outside the West, and applied them domestically. This applies primarily to China. However, interaction with the West itself is also not excluded.” Timofeev is correct in warning that “[Russia] is doomed to perish” without modernization, pointing to China as a new model, and not ruling out cooperating with the West. The first and last points are realities that many “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPRs) have ignored.

This global community has long extolled the virtues of emulating the Chinese model with Russian characteristics but either naively assumed or dishonestly denied the existential stakes of failing to modernize. Timofeev wrote that “It has become clear that without technical, scientific, and industrial modernisation, maintaining competition (with the West) will be difficult, if not impossible”, which alludes to what was written in the US’ National Defense Strategy that was published earlier this year.

The authors noted that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power.” The aforesaid just have to be fully unleashed through US incentives and strategic guidance in order to more effectively contain Russia. Timofeev assessed that “[the West’s] consolidation is unprecedented, but not absolute”, though he obviously isn’t taking for granted future irreparable divisions within its ranks and that’s why he’s so urgently calling for far-reaching modernization reforms.

As for the second point that many NRPRs have ignored, economic cooperation with the West, Putin is pursuing exactly this via the resource-centric strategic partnership that his Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev is negotiating with the US. They doubt its viability, however, usually speculating that either Putin or Trump is “psyching out” the other in order to strategically disarm them. By contrast, Timofeev positively referenced Trump’s proposed cooperation, so it’d be wise to drop the skepticism and take this seriously.

His latest article is so important because of what he calls for, the existential stakes that he highlighted, and that it follows his colleague Trenin calling for correcting foreign policy misperceptions, thus hinting at top Russian experts’ newfound interest in reforms. Former deep-cover-spy-turned-expert Andrei Bezrukov called for precisely this in summer 2013 before the Ukrainian Crisis derailed his similarly proposed reforms, but they now seem to be making a comeback, and NRPRs should support them.

***

‘We bow to no one’: Trenin sets out Russia’s worldview in a ‘new world war’

RT, 4/5/26

The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) has a new president: the renowned international affairs expert Dmitry Trenin. In his first interview in his new role, he told Kommersant correspondent Elena Chernenko how he envisages the development of this important foreign policy think tank and who is more important to study, Russia’s partners or its adversaries.

Q: You become president of the RIAC at a time that diplomats describe not merely as turbulent, as it was before, but as dramatic. What is your plan?

Dmitry Trenin: My plan as president of the RIAC is to give this remarkable council new impetus and to rise to the challenges we face today and those that will arise tomorrow. Despite the apparent chaos and illogicality of what is happening, we should not pretend that nothing like this has ever happened in history. Today’s events have their own distinctive features, partly due to technological developments, but this is not the first time the world has gone through a period of fundamental change. In the past, such periods were linked to world wars. Today, we are experiencing something akin to a world war. I do not like to use the term ‘Third World War’, because it implies a continuation of what happened in the First and Second World Wars. A more accurate phrase is ‘a new world war’, distinct from the first two. We must get through this period and emerge from it in a stronger position, becoming better and wiser.

Q: By ‘we’, do you mean Russia?

Dmitry Trenin: Yes. But it won’t happen by itself. Everyone has their own section of the front or line of advance. We can be on the defensive, on the offensive, or launching a counter-offensive. Since we are talking about war, we can use such terms. The RIAC is, as I see it, a small but unique area of Russia’s interaction in the international arena with other states and civilizations. And I already have some initial ideas for its further development, which I will now propose and promote and, if possible, implement.

Q: Is there demand for foreign policy expertise in Russia?

Dmitry Trenin: I am convinced that yes, it is in demand. But, unfortunately, a significant proportion of foreign policy expertise, and not only in Russia, is either not interesting or detached from reality. I speak with Foreign Ministry staff and have heard from them on numerous occasions that they are swamped with paperwork, but cannot always get anything useful out of it. The RIAC has many tasks, but one of the key ones must be to assist those who are actually engaged in foreign policy. Such people often have less time than experts to delve into the causes and origins of what is happening; they are overburdened and operate under time constraints. Experts must understand the substance of the issues and provide conclusions and recommendations that will be useful to those involved in decision-making. This is where I see a role for the RIAC. But, as I have already said, the council has other functions too, including promoting our foreign policy around the world and educating the public on foreign policy issues.

Q: Russian think tanks have begun to focus more actively on the countries of the global majority. Those states that are regarded as unfriendly are receiving less and less attention. So, who should we study more closely, friends or foes?

Dmitry Trenin: An expert in international relations must first and foremost focus on his or her own country, on its needs regarding the outside world, and on the opportunities and risks that arise for it from that outside world. In this sense, for an expert, there is no difference between friendly and unfriendly countries. The distinction lies in whether, and to what extent, it’s possible to engage positively with a particular country. With unfriendly nations, this is practically impossible at present and for the foreseeable future. But that does not mean they should not be studied. In war, studying the enemy is of the utmost importance.

The building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia in Moscow, Russia. © Sputnik / Alexey Maishev

In fact, I would start by studying the enemy in Ukraine. We need to gain a better understanding of the reasons behind their behavior. For instance, why haven’t they surrendered yet? It is clear that external factors play a significant role here, but there are internal factors too.

We need to understand Western Europe better. For a long time, we were under the spell of the West, which prevented us from accurately assessing its intentions and actions at a time when we were seeking to build a partnership with it. We had, and, incidentally, the president himself spoke of this, illusions about the West. We are now re-evaluating many things, and it is important not simply to swap positives for negatives, but to gain a deep understanding of what the modern West represents, both its American and European components. In recent years, Western European countries have on more than one occasion behaved differently from what we expected.

Q: For example?

Dmitry Trenin: Ever since the days of the Soviet Union, we have viewed Western Europeans as hostages to the US: vassals upon whom Washington imposes its will. At the same time, we were firmly convinced that they were pragmatic and would not sacrifice business for the sake of politics. I think it came as a revelation to many of us just how quickly these European countries, including Germany, on which we had pinned our greatest hopes, severed ties with Russia, including cutting off trade links. Business didn’t stand in the way of these European countries’ anti-Russian policies.

Today, Western Europe continues to surprise us, though in a different way. It has refused to accept the Trump administration’s approach to the conflict over Ukraine and has begun to obstruct it. I had generally assumed that if the US president said we needed to move towards peace, the bloc would comply, but it is resisting. At the same time, we are witnessing Western European defiance regarding the US and Israel’s war against Iran.

It is clear that these Europeans still have many ties to the US, and many in Western Europe simply hope to wait out Trump’s presidency, especially as there are many like-minded people among the current president’s opponents in Washington. Yet, in many respects, it is no longer appropriate to speak of the European NATO states as vassals, this topic requires study and re-evaluation. The same applies to the US, where significant changes are also taking place. One must know one’s opponents almost as well as one knows oneself.

Q: And partners?

Dmitry Trenin: As I’ve already said, we need to start with ourselves. Next, it’s important to study our adversaries. And that knowledge must be up to date: the war in Iran changed the world in the space of just a month. The next circle comprises the neighboring countries that are most important to us: the states of the former USSR and the largest countries of Eurasia. We need to know the countries of the South Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Central Asia far better, rather than simply living on memories of holidays in Pitsunda or walks through Registan. We need to take this seriously, because our own ignorance or lack of understanding of our neighbors will create problems we really don’t need, right on our doorstep. Ukraine demonstrates just how dangerous such an approach can be.

Dmitry Trenin © Sputnik / Anastasia Petrova

Our largest neighbor, China, naturally deserves our closest attention. This requires a systematic approach. The same applies, of course, to India, of which we have a positive but as yet rather superficial understanding, and to other major Asian countries, from Pakistan to Indonesia and from Vietnam to Japan and the Korean Peninsula. I also count Türkiye and Iran among Russia’s immediate neighbors, as we are linked to them by the Black and Caspian Seas. Alongside the leading countries of the Arab world and Israel, these are the most important players in the Middle East. And then, on the next front, there are the countries of Africa and Latin America. It’s clear that these regions, especially Africa, are currently on many people’s minds; it is a rapidly developing continent that may be of interest to Russia, including in terms of developing economic ties. Personally, however, I currently view the outside world primarily from the perspective of Russia’s national security interests and, accordingly, set regional priorities.

Q: We spoke in an interview following the publication of your book ‘New Balance of Power: Russia in Search of Foreign Policy Equilibrium’ in 2021. Given the current balance, or imbalance, of power, how should Russia shape its policy?

Dmitry Trenin: The call to seek foreign policy equilibrium remains relevant, but under fundamentally different circumstances. The book was written long before the military operation in Ukraine. Back then, it was still possible to try to work together with countries that were subsequently deemed unfriendly. Since then, the situation has become more complicated. We are forced to wage war against a significant part of the collective West. A significant part, not the whole, because even within the European Union we see differing approaches towards Russia; it is important to take this into account when formulating policy. It’s a difficult task to strike a balance with the US, which is in fact our adversary, as they share intelligence with Ukraine to launch strikes against us and do much more for Kiev. Nevertheless, under the current US administration, we should not regard America as the same kind of adversary as, say, Britain.

As we find ourselves in a historic confrontation with the West, it is vital that we maintain a balance in our relations with its other opponents, supporting our partners and allies whilst ensuring we retain our freedom of maneuver, an indispensable attribute of a great power. For example, with China, which far surpasses Russia in demographic and economic terms and has achieved remarkable successes in the field of technology and so on, it’s absolutely essential for us to maintain an equal footing in our relations and to remember that Russia is a great power which cannot be a junior partner.

We must help maintain a positive balance between our strategic partners, China and India, preventing the Americans or anyone else from using India against China and, by extension, at least indirectly against us. We must maintain a balance in our relations with the former republics of the USSR, building relations on an equal footing – and in such a way that they bring far greater benefit to Russia than the previous ‘center-periphery’ model. And so on. We must maintain a balance, standing firmly on our own two feet and understanding that we are a sovereign nation: we bow to no one and will not let the world fall apart.

This interview was first published by Kommersant, and was translated and edited by the RT team.

By Elena Chernenko, special correspondent at Kommersant daily newspaper in Moscow

***

Russia and Modernization: The Enduring Legacy of Peter the Great

By Ivan Timofeev, Valdai, 4/6/26

No matter how we define Russia—as a “civilisational state”, a “nation-state”, an “empire”, or in any other political form—without modernisation, it is doomed to perish. The legacy of Peter the Great is more than relevant in the current international climate, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Ivan Timofeev.

The crisis in relations between Russia and the West suggests that the “window to Europe” created by the Russian Emperor Peter the Great is losing its purpose. It is quickly being bricked up, and this work is clearly proceeding faster on the Western side. However, a closer look at his policies suggests that it is premature to talk about abandoning his paradigm. For the first Russian emperor, the “window to Europe” was more of a means to an end. The goal, however, was to overcome backwardness and strengthen the Russian state, especially in the face of external dangers and threats. This goal remains relevant today, requiring a reflection on Peter the Great’s legacy.

In brief, the essence of Peter the Great’s policies can be summed up as follows: the comprehensive modernisation (contemporisation) of the supporting structures of Russian statehood, including the military as an organisation, the country’s administrative system, its industry, and infrastructure. Given that Russia at that time lagged behind its Western neighbours in a number of respects, their forms of military, bureaucratic, and industrial organisation were viewed as a benchmark, while the neighbours themselves were viewed as a source of the necessary specialists and competencies for the establishment of Russia’s own school.

Russian rulers had set similar goals long before Peter the Great. Individual models were adopted in military affairs, fortification, metallurgy, and so on. This convergence was reinforced by the experience of continuous military conflicts with neighbours. Historically, Russians learned from their adversaries to the south and east, as well as from rivals on their western borders. The experience of such borrowings can be traced back at least to the reforms of Ivan the Terrible. They continued as a common thread throughout the 17^th century, accelerating particularly in the second half. By the reign of Peter the Great, experience in military reforms had already been accumulated (including the “regiments of the new order”), numerous attempts had been made to gain access to the Baltic Sea, and elements of a military industry had been created, including with the participation of foreigners.

The fundamental distinguishing feature of Peter’s policy was his attempt to make modernisation irreversible and systemic, to infuse it into the “DNA” of Russian identity, and transform it into an integral part of the nation’s culture and way of life. The nobility—the future foundation of the officer corps and civil servants—was to become the bearer of this “DNA”. Peter went far beyond mere technical borrowings. Having won the Northern War, he created the conditions for permanent transport links with the leading Western countries. In addition to purely economic benefits in the form of easier access to markets for Russian raw materials and industrial imports, conditions were created for more stable “humanitarian ties”. Here, Peter broke with the established practice of relative isolation from the West. The pendulum swung back with tremendous force.

And yet, for Peter, the “window to Europe” was a tool, not an end. Using this “window”, he achieved colossal successes. However, they were determined not only and not so much by the “window” as by colossal political will, the ability to adapt foreign innovations to Russian soil, existing practices in such adaptation, and Russia’s own legacy. In military affairs, Peter directly borrowed tactical techniques from the Swedish army, learning from it directly on the battlefield and then inflicting painful lessons on the teachers themselves. The military industry made significant strides. Shipbuilding was practically created from scratch. Metallurgy and other industries made enormous breakthroughs.

Peter didn’t limit his foreign policy to engagement with the West. His attempts to gain access to the sea began in the south, with the conflict with the Turks over the Sea of ​​Azov. Peter’s push in that direction would continue, leading to Russia’s consolidation of power on the Black Sea. As a result of its Persian campaigns, Russia strengthened its position on the Caspian Sea. Relations with China developed, although they were objectively hampered by geography. Kamchatka expeditions and a series of explorations of Siberia and the Arctic were organised. However, unlike in the West, these ventures did not serve as a source of modernisation for Russia. Moreover, Russia’s accelerated modernisation along Western lines and the growing backwardness of its neighbours became an important condition for the expansion of the empire, both militarily and peacefully.

The flip side was a colossal loss of life, the accelerated enslavement of the peasantry, and the formation of an absolute monarchy in Russia without checks and balances. In the West itself, the experience of developing political systems during that period was highly contradictory. On the one hand, there was the experience of bourgeois revolutions in England and the Netherlands. On the other hand, there was the development of absolutism in most polities on the western borders. The British and Dutch experience in this context is rather marginal. It would have been simply impossible to replicate it in Russia or in any other context. However, both “marginal| countries found themselves at the forefront of industrial progress. Russia itself, despite the development of industry under Peter the Great, failed to resolve the problem of its peripheral economic role. Strengthening ties with the West, instead, deepened this peripheral role, cementing Russia’s role as a supplier of raw materials and a market for industrial products. Developing its own advanced industrial base remains a challenge to this day.

The model created by Peter the Great proved remarkably resilient. After the Emperor’s death, Russia was plagued by palace coups, and industry was held back. However, his paradigm soon resurfaced. Perhaps the most serious challenges were the objective economic and social changes of the second half of the 19^th century, against the backdrop of bourgeois revolutions abroad and the rapid development of bourgeois countries with all the foreign policy threats. The country increasingly faced the task of political modernisation. It would seem that the revolutions of 1917 put an end to the Petrine model, but Soviet modernisation retained several of its key features—a focus on military, industrial, and technological modernisation, the establishment of the cultural and social foundations for this, and active engagement with Western countries, both peacefully and militarily. The USSR achieved impressive results. Peter the Great’s legacy plays a significant role in the structure of Soviet identity, being seen as unequivocally progressive.

The failure of the Soviet project once again threatened the Petrine model. Russia attempted to become a “normal” bourgeois country. In many ways, it succeeded—capitalism developed in Russia at an impressive pace. However, Russia’s place in the global division of labour once again proved to be peripheral. Moreover, the collective West still did not accept Russia as “one of its own”.

The current crisis in relations between Russia and the West, paradoxically, returns us to the Peter the Great paradigm. It has become clear that without technical, scientific, and industrial modernisation, maintaining competition will be difficult, if not impossible. The symbolic sealing of the “window to Europe” does not change the logic itself. Russia is simply turning to other sources of modernisation that have emerged outside the West, and applied them domestically. This applies primarily to China. However, interaction with the West itself is also not excluded. Its consolidation is unprecedented, but not absolute. Just yesterday, the United States was at the forefront of containing Russia, and today, it is Washington that is initiating negotiations on the Ukraine issue, and not ruling out the resumption of economic cooperation.

Western countries remain a dangerous rival, but Peter the Great’s Russia learned much from its equally dangerous rivals, just as the Soviet Union had to do. The relevance of Peter the Great’s progressivism remains, although it is no longer confined to the West, which has lost its monopoly as the leader of modernisation. However, no matter how we define Russia—as a “civilisational state”, a “nation-state”, an “empire”, or in any other political form—without modernisation, it is doomed to perish. The legacy of Peter the Great is more than relevant in the current international climate.

By Caitlin Johnstone, Substack, 4/21/26

Former senior Biden advisor Amos Hochstein said during an interview on Sunday that the Biden administration had been preparing to bomb Iran if they had won re-election in 2024.

Hochstein was asked by Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, “In July 2024 Secretary Blinken claimed Iran was one or two weeks away from having enough fissile material breakout capacity to eventually make a weapon if Iran had decided to do so. There were indirect negotiations that the Biden administration did, but it went nowhere. So when President Trump argues that he did what no other president would, is it just simply that the bill was coming due and it fell on his watch?”

“I do think there’s a certain element to that, and that’s why I was supportive of President Trump joining in in June to take the strikes that we had thought internally in the Biden administration, we may have to take if there was a second term,” Hochstein replied. “We thought that the spring, summer of 2025 was probably, we may have to be there in the same place. And we did, we did war games. We did some practice runs on what it would look like to look into it, because that may have had to happen under our watch as well.”

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/NuhJS1d-F6Y?start=169s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Hochstein, for the record, is an Israel-born IDF veteran who reportedly played a major role in the Biden administration encouraging Israel’s horrific bombardment of Lebanon in September 2024. And his narrative that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities “may have had to happen” under a theoretical second Biden term is false.

In March of last year, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini [sic] has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” contradicting both the claims of President Trump and of Antony Blinken the year before.

But even if you accept that Iran was a nuclear risk, there was nothing stopping the Biden administration from simply restarting the nuclear deal that the Obama administration secured with Tehran in 2015. The JCPOA was working fine while it was in place; anyone who says otherwise is a lying warmonger. Trump and his handlers torched the JCPOA in 2018 because it was the primary obstacle preventing them from getting to war with Iran, and the Biden administration refused to reverse this move because they wanted war too.

Democratic partisans have been pointing to Trump's war for weeks to chide Hasan Piker and anyone else they blame (read: everyone but themselves) for losing in 2024. But it turns out the Biden admin was planning to attack Iran if they won a 2nd term. https://t.co/UE9C6EiQN3

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) April 20, 2026

The Democrats were beating the drums of war for Iran well ahead of the 2024 election. Here’s an excerpt from the official 2024 Democratic Party platform explicitly attacking Trump for not going to war with Iran in his first term:

“All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere ‘headaches’ — and again, took no action.”

Kamala Harris, who controversially replaced the dementia-addled Biden as the Democratic candidate late in the race, labeled Iran the number one enemy of the United States. In their 2024 debate, Harris repeatedly slammed Trump for being too soft on America’s enemies and announced that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

I’ve seen a lot of people trying to argue that Trump’s depravity in Iran proves everyone should support Democrats, but it’s clear the Democratic Party is just the more polite-looking face on the same evil power structure.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0nt1CgQsgpI?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/KmHYS8oK-pg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

The war with Iran was always planned. Analysts like Brian Berletic and Richard Medhurst have been laying out solid arguments that this American war is more about attacking the economic and energy interests of Russia and China in a last-ditch effort to retain planetary hegemony than it is about assisting Israel. This places the United States on a dangerous trajectory toward increasingly hostile escalations between nuclear-armed powers.

These moves were planned years in advance, and would have been rolled out regardless of what impotent meat puppet happened to be wheeled into office in January 2025.

You don’t get to vote out an empire. Whether or not the US will continue working to dominate the planet will never be on the ballot. We will continue seeing reckless US wars of immense human consequence until the empire falls, or until the American people bring the revolutionary change to their country that the world so desperately needs.