By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 8/5/26

After over four-and-a-half years of war, one question dominates commentary on Ukraine: Why is Russia advancing so slowly across the battlefield? Prior to the fall of Pokrovsk and Konstantynivka, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported that Russian forces were advancing seventy and fifty meters per day, respectively.1 Compared to the great offensives of the Second World War, this pace of progress is unimpressive, reinforcing a common narrative across the social media landscape that Russia’s campaign is strategically ineffective.

Such conclusions, however, assume that time is a key factor for success on the battlefield. Every village captured becomes a scorecard, while every month without a dramatic breakthrough is interpreted as evidence of failure. Moreover, observers forget that Russia is operating in the most heavily fortified, mined, surveilled and drone-saturated battlefield in the world today. Over a decade, NATO has helped Ukraine construct layered defensive fortifications while enabling Kiev to access Western intelligence, financing, military training and sophisticated weaponry. Russia is thus fighting to defeat a mobilized state whose military effort is sustained by the industrial, financial and intelligence resources of a much larger NATO coalition. As such, the question is not why this task is slow but why anyone should expect it to be fast.

This raises an even more fundamental question. Is the assessment of success the same for the Russian General Staff as it is for the external observer? While this essay does not claim be privy to the classified operational plans of the Russian military leadership, it does claim that there is a recognizable thread that runs through the writings of seven prominent Russian military thinkers in modern history – Aleksandr Svechin, Boris Shaposhnikov, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Vladimir Triandafillov, Georgii Isserson, Nikolai Ogarkov and ultimately General Valery Gerasimov.

Across a century of profound change, these thinkers have focused on understanding the character of war, organizing the state accordingly, destroying the enemy’s operational system, sustaining offensive momentum and adapting military methods to technological change. Viewed through this intellectual tradition, territorial speed is only one variable in the General Staff’s calculations. Russian operational thought sheds light on several factors that might constrain Russian commanders from accelerating the campaign. These relate primarily to concerns around incurring higher casualties, exposing larger formations to destruction and risking exhausting the army before achieving the political objectives of this campaign.

Part I: Understanding the Character of the War

Aleksandr Svechin: Strategy Determines Operational Tempo

All military campaigns start with a deceptively simple question: How do individual battles produce strategic victory? For Aleksandr Svechin, known as the “Soviet Clausewitz” and for pioneering the concept of “operational art”, the answer lay in recognizing an intermediate level of warfare between tactics and strategy. Winning battles alone did not guarantee victory. Modern wars were won by linking tactical successes together through a sequence of operations designed to achieve political objectives.

Svechin explains in his foundational 1926 work Strategiya (Strategy):

«Боевые действия являются не чем-то самодовлеющим, а лишь основным материалом, из которого слагается операция… Нормально этот путь к конечной цели распадается на ряд операций… Мы называем операцией такой акт войны, в течение которого усилия войск без всяких перерывов направляются… к достижению определенной промежуточной цели.»2

“Combat actions are not something self-sufficient, but only the basic material from which an operation is formed… Normally, the path to the final objective is divided into a series of operations… We call an operation such an act of war during which the efforts of the troops are directed continuously toward the achievement of a particular intermediate objective.”

This formed the foundation of Soviet Operational Art. Tactical engagements were valuable insofar as they supported the operational design. Operations in turn were significant only as long as political objectives were being pursued. Towns like Bakhmut or Avdiivka are not captured because of their intrinsic value, but because of the role they play within an operational campaign.

Svechin’s second enduring insight was that strategy must distinguish between wars seeking rapid annihilation (сокрушениe) and those requiring the progressive attrition of the enemy (измор). These were not moral preferences but strategic responses to different military conditions. As he explains:

«…грань между сокрушением и измором нужно искать не вне, а внутри вооруженного фронта.»3

The boundary between annihilation and attrition must be sought not outside, but within the armed front itself.

This distinction provides a useful perspective for assessing Ukraine. Instead of determining why Russia has not undertaken sweeping offensives for a breakthrough, Svechin would want to first determine whether the conditions for such a breakthrough exist. If they do not, the next question is whether successive operations have progressively weakened Ukraine’s ability to sustain organized resistance.

Boris Shaposhnikov: Mobilization Takes Time

While Svechin emphasized strategy, politics and the uncertainty of war, Boris Shaposhnikov focused on the General Staff and preparing the state for modern war. A Marshal of the Soviet Union, Shaposhnikov defined the General Staff as the institution responsible for coordinating the entire war. This included everything from national mobilization to industry and transportation. His landmark 3-volume work Mozg Armii (The Brain of the Army) remains a foundational text in Russian military education including the General Staff Academy of the Armed Forces. The book’s central insight is that the military system must be designed around the character of the conflict it is actually fighting:

«Характер будущей войны определяет и характер самой мобилизации».4
“The character of the future war determines the character of mobilization itself.”

This principle offers one explanation for Russia’s conduct after February 2022. What began as a limited coercive operation aimed to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table became a prolonged industrial war against a mobilized Ukrainian state supported by the full resources of NATO. Shaposhnikov may have advised that such a change would require not just tactical adaptation but the gradual reconstruction of the military system itself. This would entail generating formations, expanding industrial production, replacing equipment and sustaining repeated campaigns.

He explicitly connected a strategy of attrition with the progressive mobilization of forces not initially committed:

«Стратегия измора вызвала к жизни постепенность мобилизации, приведение в боевую готовность не использованных в начале войны сил и средств».

“The strategy of attrition brought forth the gradual character of mobilization – the bringing to combat readiness of forces and means not employed at the beginning of the war.”

President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization announcement of September 21, 2022, illustrates this principle. Following Ukraine’s counteroffensive that recaptured 12,000 square kilometers of territory under Russian control, Moscow realized that further mobilization was required to increase combat power. At the same time, committing additional manpower would not result in a rapid advance. The 300,000 reservists who were called-up had to be trained, equipped, organized and integrated into new and existing formations before they could generate operational effect.

Part II: The Search for Operational Depth

While Svechin and Shaposhnikov focused primarily on the relationship between strategy, mobilization and the state, Tukhachevsky, Triandafillov and Isserson further explored the operational level of war. Their thinking focused on answering how modern armies could restore operational maneuver against increasingly resilient and deep defensive formations. This was a common question that was left unresolved since the First World War.

Mikhail Tukhachevsky: Operational Disintegration Matters More than Territorial Speed

Tukhachevsky was a Marshal of the Soviet Union and one of the country’s foremost military reformers. Referred to as the “Red Napoleon,” he helped develop the conceptual foundations of “Glubokiy Boy” (Deep Battle) in the 1930s.

Tukhachevsky argued that modern armies fought as integrated systems sustained by logistics, manpower, communications, command structures and artillery that extended far beyond the front trenches. According to him:

«Как по фронту, так и в глубину боевой порядок должен быть поражаем атакой соединенных сил артиллерии и пехоты, а также и прочих родов войск по отдельным, наиболее важным, расчленениям его, при нейтрализации всех прочих.»5

“Both along the front and in depth, the enemy’s battle formation must be struck by the combined attack of artillery and infantry, as well as the other arms, against its individual and most important components, while the remainder are neutralized.”

If the adversary managed to preserve its resources to restore the front, then success at the tactical level would achieve little. Victory depended on disrupting the entire military system rather than just destroying frontline units. The decisive condition was operational disintegration.

From this perspective, Russia appears more focused on degrading Ukraine’s command, drone-support networks and logistics rather than occupying towns. Simultaneously, Ukraine also reveals the limits of Deep Battle. The constant presence of drones, minefields and long-range weapons systems makes it significantly harder to convert local tactical penetrations into wider operational collapse. While the technology has evolved, the operational objective remains consistent.

Vladimir Triandafillov: Sustaining Successive Echelons Limits Tempo

If Tukhachevsky provided the vision of Deep Battle, Vladimir Triandafillov explained how it could be achieved. In The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies (1929), he argued that modern industrial armies could no longer be destroyed in one decisive battle:

«Если поставленная перед армией задача имеет не местное значение, а преследует решительную цель… должно быть предусмотрено значительное проникновение в глубину расположения противника, немедленное нанесение вслед за первым ударом второго, третьего и последующих, с тем чтобы довести противника до полного поражения.»6

“If the task assigned to the army is not merely local but seeks a decisive objective, then it must provide for a significant penetration into the enemy’s depth, followed immediately by a second, third, and subsequent blows, in order to bring the enemy to complete defeat.”

This insight formed the basis of the Soviet concept of successive echelons. Instead of committing all forces at once, the first echelon would penetrate the tactical defenses, following which succeeding echelons would penetrate the breach created and destroy the enemy’s logistics and command posts before it could restore the front again. Thus, victory emerged from sustaining offensive momentum through successive waves of combat power.

For Triandafillov, however, this was fundamentally a problem of logistics and force generation. Operational tempo depended upon sufficient troop density, reserves, engineering support, transportation and ammunition to sustain each echelon as the offensive advanced.

In Ukraine’s drone-saturated environment, where minefields, constant surveillance and precision munitions reveal each force concentration, the challenge of supporting successive echelons has become far more difficult than achieving the initial breakthrough. As such, deep operations must proceed gradually since logistics and follow-on forces determine the pace of advance.

Georgii Isserson: Campaigns Are Continuous, Not Isolated Operations

Isserson, another prolific writer on military strategy and a contemporary of Tukhachevsky and Triandafillov, further expanded the operational concepts in their works. He argued that modern war should no longer be understood as a succession of separate operations. In The Evolution of Operational Art (1937), he wrote:

«Современная операция не представляет собой единовременного оперативного усилия на одном участке. Она складывается из ряда непрерывных оперативных усилий, сливающихся в одно общее целое. Ряд последовательных операций составляет современную операцию.»7

“A modern operation does not constitute a single operational effort in one sector. It consists of a series of uninterrupted operational efforts merging into one unified whole. A series of successive operations constitutes the modern operation.”

Isserson provides another compelling answer as to why Russia’s campaign should be assessed by whether successive operations cumulatively degrade Ukraine’s ability for organized resistance rather than by the speed of territorial advances. The objective is to link a continuous series of operations that gradually attrit the enemy’s ability to wage war until it can no longer regenerate combat power.

Part III: Technology Changes But Operational Art Endures

Nikolai Ogarkov: The Reconnaissance-Strike Complex Changes How Operational Depth is Perceived

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the Soviet General Staff during 1977-1984, became the leading proponent of the transformation of conventional warfare through the domains of information, precision strike and automated command systems that would eventually become known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Based on the operational theory developed by Tukhachevsky, Triandafillov and Isserson, he contended that improvements in reconnaissance, communications and precision weaponry would radically alter how operational depth was achieved. The future army would no longer depend mainly on mechanized forces to breach the enemy’s rear, but would employ its operational depth to strike at all levels of the enemy’s operational system through what would become known as the reconnaissance-strike complex (RSC).

Ogarkov’s vision laid the intellectual foundation for the Russian military’s transformation after 2008. The reforms first launched by the former Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov and subsequently by Sergey Shoigu and General Gerasimov, trace their origins to Ogarkov. These reforms focus on flattened command structures, high-readiness combined-arms formations, strategic joint commands, reconnaissance-strike loops, integrated service operations and non-nuclear strategic deterrence.

Ukraine represents the realization of that vision. Information now moves faster than armies. Targets are detected in seconds and strike cycles have been compressed from hours to minutes. Firepower can reach deep into the enemy’s operational rear without first physically occupying it. Operational depth is increasingly generated through reconnaissance, precision munitions and electronic warfare than by mechanized penetration alone.

Valery Gerasimov: Operational Art Meets the Transparent Battlefield

If Ogarkov foresaw the reconnaissance-strike battlefield, then General Valery Gerasimov is the first Russian Chief of the General Staff to conduct a large-scale conventional war on it. While his writings do not depart from the principles of Soviet operational art, they are modified to adapt to a time where surveillance, unmanned systems, electronic warfare and precision strikes dominate.

In fact, Gerasimov faces the problem of no longer gaining operational depth but sustaining the combat capabilities required to use it. Any concentration of forces and logistics is vulnerable to satellite surveillance followed by drone strikes. Command post operations need to be kept mobile and maneuver coordinated with electronic warfare to defeat the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike capabilities.

This provides one answer to the central question of the essay. The comparatively slow pace of Russian operations need not be interpreted as a lack of maneuver. In an open battlefield, the tempo of operation increasingly depends on the survivability of forces to seize temporary windows of opportunity to maneuver. Commanders thus face a dilemma between retaining their combat capability and accelerating territory capture.

All of this does not mean Russian operational theory has been flawlessly executed. It explains why commanders would prefer to preserve combat power instead of accelerating the advance across the frontlines at the risk of higher casualties. The analysis also does not rule out competing explanations around command problems, logistics issues or political constraints facing the Russian military. What matters is that the discussion on operational art provides another framework to assess the conduct of Russian operations.

The history of Russian military thought thus suggests that battlefield speed has never been an end in itself. From Svechin to Gerasimov, it is the gradual degrading of the war-fighting system of the enemy that has been consistently sought in order to achieve political objectives. If this intellectual tradition is genuinely considered, the key question is not why Russia advances at such a slow pace, but whether the tempo of its operations is consistent with the strategic logic that has shaped Russian operational art for more than a century.

Kautilya The Contemplator is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I will always be grateful for your support.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 8/19/26

Fred Weir is a Canadian journalist who has been based in Moscow for decades.

When Russia’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the controversial decision to bar the liberal Yabloko party from running any candidates in next month’s elections for the state Duma, it focused on alleged infractions of electoral legislation.

But it doesn’t seem coincidental that the removal of Yabloko – which has participated in every federal election since 1993 – will eliminate the only voice that explicitly opposes the war in Ukraine. That means Russian voters won’t be able to express anti-war sentiments via their ballots.

The decision “is a self-exposure of the political system,” said Yabloko’s venerable founder, Grigory Yavlinsky. “It is obvious that the demand for peace and freedom has turned out to be much stronger today than the authorities expected.”

As the war escalates, with a new generation of Ukrainian drones striking deep into Russia’s heartland, destroying oil refineries and laying waste to consumer distribution centers, Russians are finding it increasingly difficult to ignore, or treat as a distant inconvenience. Like Mr. Yavlinsky, some Western analysts have speculated that the arrival of war’s destructive realities on their own doorstep might cause public patience to wear thin, or that the growing costs and economic strains will lead Russia’s elites to press the Kremlin to end the conflict.

War weariness on the rise

Ukrainian experts say the logic of hitting largely consumer targets is in part retribution for analogous Russian attacks, and that disrupted supply chains affect the military as well. But the hope that rising public pain might stimulate anti-war sentiment and activism is clearly part of Kyiv’s calculation.

In his evening address on Aug. 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that “every level of pressure on Russia must bring that country – above all, its society – closer to wanting to end their war.”

Gauging Russian public opinion can be difficult, particularly under war conditions, but some are still trying to do it. Amid the intensified Ukrainian drone assault in July, over 70% of respondents to a survey conducted by the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent [western backed] polling agency, continue to support Russian forces in Ukraine, but almost two-thirds wanted to see peace negotiations.

However, only a quarter approved of making concessions to Ukraine and the West to reach peace, and half backed more assertive military action to bring Ukraine to the table. Half said they believed the Russian army is achieving its war goals, while about a third thought it is not winning.

“The strains have been with us for a long time, and now we have these drone attacks,” says Kirill Poputnikov, an architect in Yaroslavl, a city 160 miles northeast of Moscow that has seen multiple drone attacks, including early August strikes on a local refinery that caused massive fires and sent up thick clouds of black smoke. “If life were normal, then fuel shortages and such might make you feel panic, but with all this going on it’s just another irritating thing.”

In a July survey of Russians by the Levada Center, 57% of respondents assessed the political situation in the country as “tense,” an increase of 10% in just over a year. Only one in four described the situation as “calm,” a decrease of 14% since last year.

Another Levada poll reports that one of the most basic measures of public well-being – what’s sometimes called the “Happiness Index” – has fallen to near-record lows, with just 47% of respondents saying that they are, on balance, satisfied with their lives. Sociologists say that Russians generally tell pollsters that they’re “happy” as long as things are basically OK with health, family, and income.

A big hit to business

Perhaps the hardest-hit social sector is the small-business community, which was already in deep economic distress due to rising taxes, high interest rates, and falling consumer demand even before Ukrainian drones targeted critical warehouse hubs.

Kyiv’s war planners appear to have singled out the online retailer Wildberries, often described as Russia’s version of Amazon. Since July, they have destroyed an estimated 25% of its storage facilities, hitting sites as far away as the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, 1,250 miles from Ukraine’s border, and destroying billions of dollars worth of merchandise.

Lev Gudkov, scientific director of the Levada Center, says the mood among Russia’s approximately 7 million small-business people is one of “pessimism and hopelessness.” Many of them rely on Wildberries and its main competitor, Ozon, and the online nationwide reach they provide, to bring their goods to market. Some have seen their inventories literally go up in smoke and, despite promises of compensation, many are facing imminent bankruptcy.

“Trust in all branches of power – the government, the Duma and, to a lesser extent, the president – is falling,” Mr. Gudkov says.

Margarita Zavadskaya, an expert with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki, says that even beleaguered small-business people are unlikely to panic but – judging by past behavior – they will probably hunker down and find ways to survive, hoping that things will get better.

“We shouldn’t expect a mass flight of entrepreneurs from business, but more cautious behavior,” she says. “They can cut investment and hiring, keep more cash on hand, diversify warehouses and suppliers. These are the kind of actions they take when times get bad.

By Patrick Armstrong, Website, 8/2/26

Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defense specializing in the USSR/Russia. He started in the time of Chernenko and watched the whole thing develop. He was a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow 1993-1996. He retired in May 2008 and has been writing on Russia and related subjects online since then.

A couple of years ago I had lunch with a former colleague. We had worked together for several decades and I had always regarded him as a very good analyst. He was able to find evidence, evaluate it and put together a competently argued thesis to explain or describe objective reality. As I have said before I, and he, were not formally in an intelligence unit but our work was similar: trying to figure out what’s going on in Country X.

So we’re talking away and I make the comment that some of what Russia is doing in Ukraine reminds me of the tactics used by Brusilov in 1916. (see my piece here). Immediately came an outburst – Russia is a shithole country, Bucha, unprovoked invasion, Bucha, shithole. Quite passionate and sounding almost as if he had rehearsed it and was just waiting for the cue to unload.

Now a real analyst would have responded by asking what I meant, listening, questioning, contradicting with an argument and so on. At the end of the process we would have got a bit closer to reality. Or, alternatively, just said he didn’t want to talk about it.

Some time ago Paul Robinson observed that there were two approaches to foreign policy operating in the world today. One is a belief in “a traditional, Westphalian, order in which states are equal sovereign entities”. The other is quite different:

“By contrast, human rights reasoning has pushed the West in an opposite direction, towards a preference for legal asymmetry. In this model, the just and the unjust, those who respect and those who don’t respect human rights, are not legally or morally equal.”

A very perceptive observation, in my opinion, and I wrote my own essay on why I thought Russia took a “Westphalian” view of things. My argument, in essence, was that Moscow had spent seven decades pushing an exceptionalist/moralist view – the world’s first socialist state, the bright future of mankind and all that stuff – and had found it to be a complete failure. It had learned the hard way that countries are as they are and have to be dealt with as they are. Moralistic posturing leads to failure.

Readers of this site will no doubt have concluded that I come down on the “Westphalian” side of the argument. You may not like your neighbours but they won’t disappear if you shut your eyes and disdain them. You may feel smug for a while but, when you open your eyes again, nothing will have changed. To deal with them, you have to try to understand them; try and see the world from their point of view. A veil of moral superiority obstructs a clear view.

But getting back to my colleague’s response, what do we see here but feelings substituted for reason? Don’t bother to make the effort to try to understand how Moscow sees things, just say it’s a shithole country. Judgement and condemnation supplant thinking and understanding.

The essence of intelligence is the attempt to see the other guy’s point of view. How does he see things? What’s he trying to do? What threats does he see? What is he able to do about it? That’s the whole point of intelligence, analysis, international relations, diplomacy and all that sort of thing. It’s difficult and you’ll never entirely get it right but you must keep your moral judgements to yourself and try and see reality. And that’s what disappointed me about his rant: I thought he was better than that. He just sounded like some think wank “expert” on TV saying we’re great and they suck. Moralism is easy, analysis is hard.

The first problem with the moralistic worldview is that one soon becomes very restricted on whom one can talk with. After all, the Good cannot acknowledge the Bad. Especially after all the carefully constructed war words have been deployed: the “regime’s” “claims” are “unverified”, they’re “disinformation” spread by “state media; they’re “talking points” from the “playbook”. The Good, The Just, by contrast, have democratic governments, speak the truth and have a free media. The more the Good stresses the evil of the other, the less it can know or understand. And certainly can never pollute its purity by meeting with The Bad. Here’s the essence of Robinson’s legal asymmetry expressed by one of its chief practitioners: Putin’s a monster, “there you go” “Russian talking points” and NATO is defensive. What more do you need to say or think?

When moral superiority becomes entrenched, other superiorities soon take root. We’re morally better and everything we do is better too. Evil fails across the board, in war and in peace. Our tools work better and we use them better. The morally inferior are worse at war too. And so we come, to quote a certain Austrian watercolourist, to the expectation that “one good kick at the door and the whole rotten edifice will collapse”. But the USSR did not collapse in 1941 and neither did Iran in 2026.

And there are so many wars because there is so much evil that cannot – ought not – be reasoned with and certainly not left alone. And so NATO, that alliance of the morally superior, had to intervene in the Balkans, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine. War all the time and everywhere.

“Essentially, NATO not only helps to defend the territory of its members, but also engages – where possible and when necessary – to project its values further afield, prevent and manage crises, stabilise post-conflict situations, and support reconstruction”

Interesting how often this “projection of values” involves bombing isn’t it? Here’s a picture of NATO’s values projected into Raqqa.

The moralistic view is disastrous for its practitioners (to say nothing of thousands and thousands of the recipients). The moralists never see reality – how can they when it’s so evil!? They underestimate the opponent and over estimate themselves.

It’s hard to see reality, but reality has teeth that eventually bite. (Vide Washington and Iran at the moment.)

Moralism is fatal for intelligent decision making and it absolutely blocks the real purpose of intelligence. But I fear that moralism has taken over in the West and all “analysts” today have to agree with Nuland that Putin is a monster. Anyone who swims against the tide is a “Putin apologist” (which I have been called) and therefore at least a little bit monstrous too.

No wonder all of NATO’s wars have been defeats.

(And a good thing I retired 16 years ago.)

TASS, 8/17/26

MOSCOW, August 17. /TASS/. An intelligence service of a Western country, in coordination with its “Ukrainian stooges,” plans to stage another anti-Russian stunt and accuse Moscow of arming drug cartels in Latin America, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) press office said.

TASS outlines the key points of the SVR statement.

Preparations for a provocation against Russia

An intelligence service from a Western country, working with its “Ukrainian stooges,” plans to “stage another anti-Russian show.” This time, the action takes place on the Latin American stage, with a plot the SVR likens to “a scene from a third-rate crime drug thriller.”

The “directors” of the provocation against Russia naively hope to undermine Moscow’s constructive relations with Latin America and “persuade Latin American governments to support the West’s anti-Russian policy.”

“Russophobes can realistically achieve only one thing: once again show their lack of moral constraints and stereotyped thinking.”

Scenario of the provocation against Russia

A Western country, in coordination with Kiev, plans to accuse Russia of supplying arms to drug cartels and other organized crime groups in Latin American countries.

“Russia is to be accused of illegally providing weapons to drug cartels and other organized crime groups in Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico. To this end, Russian-made weapons seized by the enemy during the special military operation are already being brought into those countries.”

The SVR said fabricated audio and video materials were also being prepared to support alleged ‘evidence’ of Russians transferring weapons to Latin Americans through intermediaries.

The operation is also expected to include forged documents purportedly showing the involvement of Russian military personnel in the scheme.

By Aaron Mate, Substack, 8/5/26

…The predicate for this unprecedented [FBI] probe of a sitting president as the agent of a foreign power has been kept from the public ever since. When I obtained the first public release of its opening document in late 2024, just weeks before Trump’s second term, the FBI redacted the entire “articulable factual basis.” After more than nine years of secrecy, a new declassification by the Trump White House confirms that the investigation, codenamed “Oxferd Comma” [sic] and launched on May 16, 2017, was not driven by any secret information tying Trump to Russia. It was instead based on the FBI leadership’s maximalist, neoconservative-influenced reactions to innocuous and falsely reported public events.

One of the FBI’s triggers was a controversy that erupted in July 2016 at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. At the time, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin claimed that the Trump campaign had removed an amendment from the party’s platform that called for arming Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas region. In reality, the RNC platform committee had merely rejected a proposal to endorse providing “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine. The Republicans’ final platform text instead called for “increasing sanctions” on Russia and “appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine,” which could easily have included weapons. The RNC platform was also far more hawkish than the Democrats’ platform that same summer, in line with the policies of President Obama, who had refused to send the same weaponry to Ukraine…

…The document only underscores that the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was influenced by Cold War views and the conspiracy theories of an illicit Trump-Russia connection promoted by the Hillary Clinton campaign and its media allies…

This article is behind a paywall here.

***

When Winning is Not Victory

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 8/19/26

Massive Russian Attack Anticipated

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

In the Air, on the Land

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

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

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

Domestic Crises

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

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

Zelenskiy, Fedorov and George Soros

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

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

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

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

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

Economic and other Pressures

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

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

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

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

A Russian Pyrric Victory?

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

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

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