By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 5/17/26

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia had a basic problem: having ignored investing into anything except military technology, the newly independent country found that nothing worked properly. All its technology and machinery was vastly inferior to their Western analogues. And it made no sense to invest millions of dollars in trying to catch up, as at the end of the day, the Western machines would still be better and cheaper than anything a Russian firm could produce. So for most of the last three decades by far the largest import category was machinery.

Sanctions changed all that. Extreme sanctions imposed following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine cut Russia off from even basic things like high quality printer paper, let alone sophisticated computer chips. Central Bank of Russia (CBR) governor Elvia Nabiullina warned businesses in a speech at the time that they should be prepared to go back “at least two generations” of technology if they wanted to keep their businesses going.

Fast forward four years and Russia is rolling out tech innovation after innovation to replace those imported machines it couldn’t make for itself. As IntelliNews reported, thanks to the collapse of the economy in 1991, Russia missed out on at least two revolutions in precision tool making which is at the heart of modern consumer and industrial goods production, left so far behind that it seemed almost impossible that it would ever be able to catch up.

Rosatom expands machine-building ambitions as nuclear orders surge

Russia’s Rosatom is best known as the state-owned nuclear corporation responsible for building and maintaining nuclear power plants (NPPs). Russia’s nuclear exports are booming as uranium is the new gas for Russia’s energy-linked foreign policy.

However, Rosatom is playing a second and probably more important role. It is positioning itself as a major machine-building group as demand rises for equipment linked to nuclear energy, Arctic shipping and industrial manufacturing, according to comments made by chief executive Alexei Likhachev at a congress of Russian engineering companies last week.

Likhachev said more than 200,000 people are now employed in machine-building production across its enterprises, as the government has yet another stab at doing something about its inability to make high quality machines.

Rosatom acts both as a customer and producer of heavy engineering equipment for sectors including defence, nuclear energy and industrial technology projects tied to Russia’s import substitution drive. The group also manufactures equipment for external customers in industries ranging from oil refining to liquefied natural gas. The idea is to learn by doing, and thanks to sanctions it has plenty of customers.

“The nearest horizon we see is 2040, which promises us an order for machine-building products worth around RUB25 trillion ($263bn),” Likhachev said during the congress of the Russian Machine Builders Union.

The nuclear sector remains the largest source of future demand. Under Russia’s General Scheme for the Placement of Electric Power Facilities until 2042, the country plans to construct 38 nuclear power units of varying sizes. Rosatom is also building reactors abroad, with projects under way in Bangladesh, Turkey, India, China, Hungary, Egypt and Uzbekistan.

Likhachev said Rosatom had also reached agreements on future nuclear power plant construction in Rwanda, Vietnam, Myanmar and Kazakhstan, underlining Moscow’s efforts to preserve influence in global nuclear markets despite Western sanctions targeting parts of Russia’s energy sector.

Rosatom’s engineering operations also support Russia’s expanding nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet. The Baltic Shipyard is currently constructing the nuclear icebreakers Chukotka, Leningrad and Stalingrad, vessels considered central to the development of the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic.

Beyond nuclear infrastructure, Rosatom manufactures spiral-wound heat exchangers for LNG production, equipment for oil refineries, battery cells, radiopharmaceuticals and medical technology. The corporation has also expanded training programmes, opening engineering classes and operating 12 colleges in Russia’s nuclear cities. Annual graduate recruitment has increased from 1,300 to 5,400 over the past decade, according to the company.

Aviation catching up

Aviation was one of the sectors that was hardest hit by sanctions. Again, the massive Russian plane-building sector built up in Soviet times was stuck in the past and unable to manufacture the nuts and bolts spare parts needed to keep the fleet in the air. During the boom years, like in the power sector, Russia had largely bought the cheaper, but higher quality foreign-made planes. Cut off from spare parts by sanctions, companies were forced to ground aging planes and started to cannibalise them to keep the rest in the air.

Now Russia is preparing to begin deliveries of domestically produced passenger aircraft as Moscow pushes to reduce its dependence on Western aerospace technology thanks to progress in domestic manufacturing capabilities.

The first import-substituted SJ-100 regional jets equipped with Russia’s PD-8 engines are expected to be delivered to airlines by the end of 2026 or in the first quarter of 2027, according to industry officials and state media reports. Certification of the PD-8 engine has been completed, with aircraft and engine approvals expected to be synchronised before deliveries begin.

The SJ-100 programme, developed by the state-owned United Aircraft Corporation, is central to the Kremlin’s strategy of replacing foreign-made components previously sourced from suppliers in Europe and the US.

In the medium-haul segment, the Tupolev Tu-214 received certification in December 2025 and deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2027. Red Wings will become the first operator under a firm leasing agreement covering 11 aircraft financed through Russia’s National Welfare Fund.

But production volumes remain limited. The Kazan Aviation Plant is expected to assemble three Tu-214 aircraft in 2026, up from a rate of one or two aircraft annually in recent years. However, United Aircraft Corporation has secured preliminary commitments for 100 Tu-214s from Russian carrier S7 Airlines, with deliveries due to start in 2029.

“The entire lineup — from short-haul to medium-haul — is converging at a single point in time,” the report said, describing the emergence of “a fully independent ecosystem”.

 “Russia has managed to do what no one in the world has been able to do for decades: displace the US in their monopoly in critical avionics,” the report said.

The effort contrasts with China’s approach to aircraft development. While China’s COMAC has advanced production of the ARJ21 and C919 passenger jets, both programmes continue to rely heavily on Western suppliers, including engines produced by CFM International, the joint venture between GE Aerospace and Safran. One of the only deals that US President Donald Trump was able to strike during his trip to Beijing last week was the sale of 200 Boeing jets to Beijing – and even then the market was disappointed as they were expecting 500 planes to be sold.

One of the biggest innovation is Russia has developed its own engines, the most complicated part of plane-making. The fully indigenous PD-8 engine for the Superjet has officially passed all certification tests. This involved: 

-Over 6,500 hours of gruelling real-world and lab testing completed.

-Extreme icing tests (ground rig at CIAM + in-flight over Arkhangelsk).

-150-hour endurance runs simulating years of heavy operation.

-Bird strike, water ingestion, and fan blade failure trials.

-Full hail cloud simulation.

-And dozens more brutal certification tests.

Russia is building its own future in civil aviation, completely independent of Western supply chains.

“Russia — a slower, but autonomous trajectory,” the report said. “In the long run, the second model gives a strategic advantage.”

Microchip factory

One of the lack of technology’s hardest tells is the weakness in Russia’s missile production: it is still heavily dependent on Western microelectronics for much of the guidance and control systems, but that is changing too.

In the first few years of the Ukraine war, 95% of the electronics in captured unexploded Russian missiles was Western-made, but last year a captured decoy drone was discovered that was almost totally made up of Chinese electronics. Chinese tech has also been making rapid progress. Likewise, during last year’s war with Israel, Iranian drones relied on the US-controlled GPS satellite network for guidance, making them vulnerable to Israeli electronic warfare (EW) countermeasures. This year, Iranian drones have changed over to China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system, negating Israel’s ability to spoof inbound drones that have been doing devastating damage as a result.

However, it seems that Russia is finally overcoming this hurdle too. Russia has just unveiled its first domestically produced photolithography machine, the Progress STP-350, in a move aimed at reducing dependence on foreign semiconductor equipment amid western sanctions.

The system is designed to manufacture 350 nanometre chips, a generation far behind the most advanced processors used in consumer electronics but one that remains relevant for military and industrial applications. Larger transistors are generally more durable and can operate in conditions that would damage cutting-edge chips.

Russian developers said the chips produced by the machine are resistant to radiation exposure, electromagnetic pulse attacks and extreme temperatures, making them suitable for defence systems, aerospace equipment and critical infrastructure. The components are also designed to withstand vibration and operate at higher voltages of up to 100V, capabilities valued in military hardware and heavy industry.

The launch reflects Moscow’s broader effort to localise semiconductor production after export controls imposed by the US and its allies restricted access to advanced chipmaking tools. Russia has struggled to develop domestic alternatives to highly specialised lithography systems, a market dominated globally by companies in the Netherlands, Japan and the US.

While the Progress STP-350 does not compete with the sub-10 nanometre technology used by leading global chipmakers, analysts say mature-node semiconductors remain strategically important because of their reliability and resilience in harsh operating environments.

These are very large chips compared to the 7nm chips used in today’s smart phones and highlight how far Russia remains in the microelectronics industry, but they are sufficient for use in missiles and many other consumer electronic goods production. By comparison, China is now capable of making 12nm chips and recently announced it was able to make commercially viable 7nm chips.

From cheese to turbines

Sanctions have sparked heavy investment into innovation that is starting to bear fruit. It all started with the famous complete disappearance of European cheese from Russian supermarket shelves after Russian President Vladimir Putin imposed tit-for-tat sanctions on EU agricultural goods in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea.

Cheese suffered from exactly the quality/cost problem, but as Russians were cut off from their favourite cheeses, one woman flew to Paris to buy the cheese moulds and started to produce Siberian camembert. Likewise, the patriotically named Koza Nostra firm began to produce very decent Russian goat cheese. (Koza is Russian for goat, so the company’s name roughly translates into “Our Goats”.) Within about two years after the sanctions were imposed, Russia had its own flourishing domestic cheese industry.

Closing the gap on gas turbines was an altogether more daunting task. German engineering firm Siemens had a total monopoly on high efficiency gas turbines during the upgrade of the Russian power sector during the boom years of the noughties. Russian technology couldn’t come anywhere close to Germany’s high precision engineering these turbines rely on as a result of the missing precision tool industry.

The Russian engineering giant Siloviye Mashiny (Power Machines), owned by sanctioned oligarch Alexey Mordashov, had a joint venture with Siemens and was trying to develop a domestic equivalent, but that effort was stymied after Siemens was reluctantly forced to withdraw from the Russian market.

However, as IntelliNews reported, last year specialists from the United Engine Corporation (UEC), part of the Rostec State Corporation, completed testing of the second prototype of the new AL-41ST-25 industrial gas turbine engine in Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, that is almost as good as anything Siemens makes.

It also appears that there has been a technology transfer between Iran and Russia, which has been under a similar extreme sanctions regime for even longer than Russia and has likewise innovated. Last September Iran delivered high efficiency gas turbines to replace Russia’s Siemens gas turbines that were on a par with the German maker’s quality.

Military hardware

With military hardware, Russia has kept its Cold War edge in developing innovative weapons. Iran played a key role here too, as before the war in Ukraine started it was already a world leader in drone technology, sparked by reverse engineering a crashed US drone in its territory.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, Iran sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drones to Russia, but in 2025 there was a technology transfer deal between Moscow and Tehran and Russia built its own drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. Since then Russia has taken drone technology forward with things like the new Geran-5 jet propelled drones. Some of these innovations have also been showing up on the battlefield in the Gulf war, suggesting the CRINK alliance (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea) are increasingly sharing military innovations with each other.

More generally, both Russia and China have run far ahead with a family of super weapons. Most importantly is the family of hypersonic missiles that can penetrate any US air defence and is a class of weapons America does not have yet. Since 2018, Putin has rolled out several more groundbreaking super weapons, including the Oreshnik cruise missile that can hit any capital in Europe, the “unstoppable” Poseidon nuclear torpedoes, which were just deployed last week, and most recently the super heavy Sarmat cruise missile, the biggest ever made that can hit any target on the planet. America and Europe are currently defenceless against all these weapons, experts say. At the same time, Russia has ramped up its drone production to over 7mn units a year, whereas the US cheap drone equivalent is still in its pilot development phase and Europe has no large-scale drone production at all.

The same thing happened in China 

During his trip to Beijing last week US President Donald Trump offered to reverse CHIPS, the Biden-era US ban on exporting top flight microchips to China, but Chinese President Xi Jinping refused the offer, as in the meantime, China has developed its own equivalents.

The CHIPS ban was supposed to stymie Chinese tech development and ensure that the US stayed at least one, if not two, generations ahead in the race. But according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the export controls backfired in spectacular fashion.

“The US has imposed export controls to deny China access to strategic technologies [but] we find no evidence of reshoring or friend-shoring. As a result of these disruptions, affected suppliers have negative abnormal stock returns, wiping out $130bn in market capitalisation, and experience a drop in bank lending, profitability, and employment. [US firms’] total number of customers declines, potentially inflicting collateral damage upon the same US firms whose technology export controls are trying to protect,” the report said.

What happened was the reverse: it forced a consolidation of a fragmented sector and a massive investment impulse that has seen Chinese technology race ahead and is now increasingly displacing the US from the lead in sector after sector, starting with green energy tech and EVs. China has gone from a net importer of technology to a net exporter in the last few years.

RT, 5/29/26

Russian President Vladimir Putin took questions from reporters during his trip to Kazakhstan on Friday, providing an update on the Ukraine conflict and tensions with NATO in Europe.

He also commented on the recent drone incident in Romania, which NATO blamed on Russia, and touched on foreign policy debates in Armenia, a former Soviet state and longtime Russian ally.

Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield

The Ukraine conflict is nearing the end as the Russian military continues its offensive on all fronts, Putin said, adding that it would be “unwise” to provide a specific timeline.

“The situation on the battlefield gives reason to believe that (the conflict) is drawing to a close.”

He went on to say that although Moscow maintains “certain contacts,” no peace talks are being held at the moment.

While the US has been preoccupied with the Iran conflict, some EU officials have begun floating the idea of resuming talks with Russia, which were suspended in 2022.

Western leaders must stop misleading their people

The president reiterated that Russia has no intention of attacking NATO or EU members, dismissing claims to the contrary as “brazen lies.” He reiterated Russia’s position that it was forced to intervene in Ukraine after Kiev failed to implement the 2014-15 Minsk accords with the breakaway Donbass republics, which later voted to become part of Russia.

Western leaders are using the conflict to justify “unreasonable” military spending hikes, Putin argued. “They should not mislead their own people.”

Aggressors will be razed to the ground

Putin warned, however, Russia has the capability to “raze to the ground” any country that attempts to attack it.

He was responding to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys, who said this month that, in the event of a conflict, NATO must demonstrate that it “can break into” Kaliningrad Region, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania.

He warned that Russia would treat all Ukrainian drone launch sites as legitimate targets, even if they operate from the Baltic states.

Romania should share data on drone incident

Putin called for an objective investigation into a drone strike on a residential building in the Romanian city of Galati near the Ukrainian border on Friday, which injured two people. Romania, along with its NATO allies, blamed Russia for the intrusion.

The president said Romania should provide objective data about the incident, just as Russia handed over decoded flight data from a Ukrainian drone shot down last year en route to one of Putin’s residences. He noted that suspected Ukrainian drones have veered into the Baltic states and Finland in recent months.

Western media outlets ‘making fools of’ their own audiences

Putin said the Western media is “a tool for making fools of people” that is used to channel more money into Ukraine. He blasted foreign news outlets for their failure to cover the Ukrainian drone strikes on a college in Starobelsk last week, which killed 21 students and injured more than 40 others.

“Not a single word was said about the tragedy in Starobelsk, where our children were deliberately killed. Not a single word, as though it never happened,” Putin said.

Moscow has criticized outlets including CNN and the BBC for declining an invitation to travel to Starobelsk.

Armenia’s economy will suffer if it cuts ties with Russia

Commenting on the upcoming parliamentary elections in Armenia, Putin said the country’s drive for closer integration with the EU could eventually become incompatible with its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Leaving the EAEU would cost Armenia at least 14% of its GDP, he said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was recently endorsed by US President Donald Trump, said Armenia is not planning to terminate its membership in the EAEU at this stage, but that voters would ultimately decide between the two economic blocs.

Russia is Armenia’s largest trading partner and provides the country with discounted natural gas.

Advantages in AI technology

Russia is one of the few countries with the human capital and energy resources to develop its own sovereign artificial intelligence, Putin said.

“We have enormous capabilities in nuclear and hydroelectric power, particularly in Siberia,” he said, adding that Russia has “clear advantages” in the global AI race.

By Riley Waggaman, Substack, 5/12/26

It’s hard not to notice that Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas MacGregor have made a lot of predictions throughout this war that have not panned out. I think both are speaking in good faith but obviously they need to be read and listened to with discernment just like any other source. – Natylie

Riley Waggaman is a journalist who lives in Russia.

On February 20, 2026, a “Flamingo” long-range cruise missile hit the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, a defense enterprise located in Russia’s Udmurt Republic—more than 1300 km from the border with Ukraine.

Moscow has very clear protocols for responding to these types of attacks: Russian state media publishes a comment from Scott Ritter about how it’s not a big deal and Ukraine is about to collapse anyway.

For example, when Ukraine began using US-supplied ATACMS missiles in 2024, Ritter proclaimed that “there [was] no magic weapon” that could prevent a decisive Russian victory.

“We are looking at the beginning of the collapse [in Ukraine],” TASS quoted Ritter as saying two years ago.

But something was different about this Flamingo strike…something was off.

The intern imprisoned in TASS’ basement and forced against his will to watch “Judging Freedom” in search of juicy Ritter soundbites, found… nothing. Not one soothing or even slightly reassuring word from Scott Ritter about a Ukrainian (British, really) cruise missile hitting a critically important defense enterprise situated 1300 km from the Ukrainian border. Unthinkable! the intern thought to himself. The intern knew that when his editors found out they would chain him to his computer and force him to watch Colonel MacGregor interviews. He lowered his head, a single tear trickling down his cheek.

Yes, it’s difficult to believe, but in a sharp departure from his weekly forecasts about Moscow’s soon-to-be total victory in Ukraine, Scott Ritter wrote, two days after the attack on the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, that Kiev was “develop[ing] the military capacity to strike Russia’s strategic interior in an effort to pressure Russia into ending the conflict on terms less than those previously set forth by President Putin”.

He continued:

If the Russian-Ukrainian conflict ends on such terms, then Russia will have conceded the very thing it said was a red line back in December 2021—the deployment of NATO-affiliated intermediate-range missiles on the soil of Ukraine.

It will represent a strategic defeat for Russia in every sense of the term.

What does Ritter mean by all this?

In December 2021, Moscow presented a list of security demands to NATO, including a prohibition on the “deployment of medium- and shorter-range ground-based missiles in areas from which they are capable of hitting targets on the territory of other Participants”.

This was not a polite request to NATO, but an ultimatum. The Russian government warned of “military-technical measures” should the trans-Atlantic alliance reject the proposed treaty (spoiler alert: NATO rejected the treaty). Russia launched its “special military operation” to “demilitarize” Ukraine two months later, in February 2022.

Ritter actually understated the importance of the missile deployment issue for Moscow: it was much more than just a “red line”. A red line triggers a response when crossed. (Not in the Not-War, of course. But we’ll return to this topic later.)

Among other objectives, the SMO was supposed to preempt the possibility of NATO deploying missiles in Ukraine. Unfortunately, after more than four years of appalling Slav-culling, the SMO has achieved the total opposite result. The missiles that have been deployed in Ukraine are not just “capable” of hitting targets inside Russia, but are in fact hitting targets inside Russia.

Naturally, it would be rather unfortunate if the SMO ultimately achieves what it was supposed to prevent. Currently we are heading in this direction. This is what Scott Ritter means when he writes ominously of “strategic failure” in Ukraine.

In fairness, “demilitarization” is an ongoing process—one that might take another 4+ years of thorough and methodical snail offensives. The battle for tiny hamlets in preparation for a frontal assault on Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk Oblast (located 70 km from Donetsk city—only a short walk to Zelensky’s HQ in Kiev) remains fluid and highly dynamic. Advances of several hundred meters could occur at any moment.

Also, let’s not forget that nearly three months have passed since Ritter warned that continuing to allow Ukraine to lob cruise missiles at Russia could lead to strategic defeat for Moscow. A lot can change in three months. We need a more up-to-date SITREP.

Gazeta.ru reported on May 5:

In Chuvashia, a Ukrainian Armed Forces attack killed two people, and the number of injured rose to 34. Twenty-eight apartment buildings were damaged in the city, and one business was also hit. A state of emergency was declared in the republic. The Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism investigation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Flamingo cruise missiles were used in the attack on Chuvashia.

Hours later, the Russian government confirmed that Chuvashia—located approximately 1200 km from the Ukrainian border—had been targeted by cruise missiles.

The situation has not improved since Ritter penned “The Flamingo Effect” on February 22. If anything, the threat of long-range Ukrainian (NATO) missile attacks has become part of the new normal in Russia, alongside mobile internet shutdowns and “falling drone debris” somehow capable of turning oil refineries into ash.

Speaking of “drone debris”…

Although the Flamingo represents “a tangible demonstration that the deep Russian rear is no longer invulnerable” (source: Russian Z-patriot news portal Military Review), the low-accuracy, relatively high-cost missile does not currently represent the greatest threat to “mainland” Russia: this dubious distinction goes to drones. Russia is being swarmed with drones.

Drones are hitting Belgorod. They’re hitting Kursk. They’re hitting Crimea.

They’re blowing up ports, refineries, and critical infrastructure from the Baltic to the Black Seas. From Ust-Luga to Novorossiysk. The oil refinery in Tuapse was hit multiple times, resulting in a days-long inferno that caused oil to rain from the sky. Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl….PERM (which also reported “oil rain” after being attacked).

As I type this article, at this very moment, Perm is bracing for another drone attack.

What to do? Ritter explored this prickly conundrum three months ago:

Russia is at a crossroads.

In the short term, Russia needs to find a solution to the Flamingo threat to Votkinsk and other strategic defense industries located in the Ural regions that are now under threat of attack (a solid rocket motor production facility in Perm, for example). Given the role played by Europe in designing, funding, and manufacturing the Flamingo, a response limited to striking targets inside Ukraine would achieve no fundamental change.

Missiles would still be built, and these missiles would continue to be launched at strategic targets deep inside Russia.

If Europe is not deterred once and for all from delivering this kind of military assistance to Ukraine, then Russia will be at risk of dying a death by a thousand cuts.

Ritter then insinuates that the Russian government is considering the use of tactical nukes. It’s not exactly clear if he thinks tactical nukes might be used against Ukraine, or its European sponsors, or both.

Instead of nuking Europe, Russia resumed oil supplies to NATO states via the Druzhba pipeline in April.

Ritter was close. At least he got the “Europe” part right?

Ritter wants you to believe that Moscow, which provided NATO with gas from a pumping station in Kursk Oblast OCCUPIED BY THE UKRAINIAN MILITARY, would all of a sudden decide to NUKE Europe.

He’s honestly just the inverse of the clowns on CNN: both scream about how Putin wants to nuke all the gay people. NO! Putin wants to give the gay people gas. As much gas as they want, and at a generous discount! THIS IS FACT.

I feel obliged to mention that Ritter’s 4-year grift-narrative about the Brilliant War of Attrition That Has Murdered Hundreds of Thousands of Ordinary Slavs For No Good Reason Whatsoever makes absolutely zero sense if Ritter is now acknowledging that the long-term threat posed by Ukraine’s rapidly developing military capabilities means Moscow might need to drop a tactical nuke on London if it wants to avoid “dying to a death of a thousand cuts”.

The longer the war goes on, the better—right?

Four more years.

By Leonid Ragozin, The American Conservative, 5/9/26

If you were exclusively on a mainstream Western media diet in recent weeks, you’d be excused for thinking that the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime now lies on its deathbed. Signs of “public discontent” are all over the place, you see. Silicon-lipped beauty blogger Viktoria Bonya attacked the government on YouTube. So did the notorious Kremlin propagandist Ilya Remeslo, fresh from a stint at a psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, the former defense minister Sergey Shoygu might be plotting a coup, according to CNN.

But if you talk to people inside Russia, as this author does on a daily basis, you’ll find them perplexed and doubting the West’s sanity upon hearing about this fresh bout of “Russia is finished” sentiments.

Pretty much all of my interlocutors are strongly anti-Putin and antiwar. In my intelligentsia circle, you need to walk miles to find anyone pro. People do complain about the ongoing economic slowdown, pointing to the closure of some of their favorite small businesses, like boutique fashion brands that had only recently emerged. They are aghast at the Russian government’s (so-far unsuccessful) attacks on popular messaging services and perturbed by mobile internet interruptions in the center of Moscow caused by the Ukrainian drone threat. 

But unlike Ukrainians, who live in constant fear of Russian strikes and of press gangs roaming the streets in search of fresh recruits, people in Russia are still enjoying much the same kind of lives as before the war, with living standards comparable to poorer EU member countries (check IMF’s GDP PPP charts).

More than anything, Russians of all political convictions are flabbergasted by the onslaught of irrationally xenophobic and jingoistic pro-Ukrainian propaganda they subject themselves to whenever they turn on their VPNs and check feeds on X and Facebook. What Western government-backed online mobs like NAFO mostly achieve is confirming the Kremlin’s narratives about the West’s inherent hatred of Russia and intent to wipe it off the face of Earth.

Clearly, those Western politicians and opinion makers—like former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who believed that a proxy war against Russia (in Johnson’s own terminology) would upend Putin’s regime were badly wrong and succeeded only in pushing Ukraine under a Russian bulldozer.

So, what would it really take to change Russia for the better?

As an 18-year-old student in 1991, I took part in overthrowing a political regime in Russia. I joined the defense of the White House—the one in Moscow, not Washington, and the seat of Boris Yeltsin’s government at the time—against the coup by hardline Soviet civilian and military leaders.

Our victory resulted in the collapse of the communist system and subsequently of the USSR. The events were driven by public euphoria, particularly on the issue of independence movements in Soviet republics. To give an idea, one of the largest Moscow rallies of 1991—and arguably in the history of Russia—was in support of Baltic independence. As for Ukraine and Belarus, they appeared to us too stubbornly Soviet for refusing to go along with shock therapy reforms which Yeltsin’s government embarked on first thing after dissolving the USSR. 

The mass uprisings and burst of optimism became possible for one reason: While Soviet people of 1991 had many realistic fears, including economic collapse, military dictatorship, and Yugoslav-styled civil war, the last thing they feared was the West. Opposite from terrifying, the West was a beacon of hope, if not a freshly adopted political religion.

This effect wasn’t achieved by the U.S. funding Osama bin Laden when he helped Afghan Mujahideen fight the Soviets, nor by the Iran-Contra affair, nor by propping up Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile or fighting Vietcong. 

Rather, it was attained through soft power—music, films, quality goods, enviable lifestyles, and an effort by a myriad of Americans and Europeans, often on the left-wing and antiwar side of the aisle—to build bridges and friendships with us, Soviet people. What we saw through our rose-tinted glasses at the time was the West of “We Are the World,” of U2’s album The Joshua Tree, and of transcontinental U.S.-Soviet “TV bridges” hosted by Phil Donahue and Vladimir Pozner.

When the Soviet system collapsed, we definitely didn’t feel defeated, no matter what America’s Cold War hawks said at the time. Instead, there was a sense of victory, achieved jointly with the West.

That sentiment changed radically by the end of the 1990s when economic hardships and domestic security threats sobered people up, while the West had firmly adopted a policy of radical eastward expansion explicitly aimed at isolating and containing, rather than integrating, Russia (read Mary Sarote’s Not One Inch for details). 

In 1999, NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia prompted Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov to write an op-ed which opened with the latest polling data: 64 percent of Russians now feared NATO and 70 percent believed the attack on Belgrade posed a direct security risk to Russia. Luzhkov, then seen as a presidential hopeful, pointed out that NATO’s expansion and its rising appetite for war were encouraging “sieged fortress” sentiments in Russian society that could lead to self-isolation. He called for social mobilization to overcome the deep economic crisis that dogged Russia throughout that decade and “to revive a strong Russia.”

Although his views at the time were moderately pro-Western, Luzhkov was pictured by Western and Russian media alike as a Communist revanche figure. He was eventually forced out of the race in favor of a little-known intelligence officer chosen as a successor by Boris Yeltsin’s family and preferred by the West—Vladimir Putin.

But Luzhkov’s words turned out to be prescient. The reason these warnings from him and a plethora of Western dignitaries, like U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, were ignored is a certain Western delusion best captured by a cover headline in the Atlantic from 2001, one year into Putin’s presidency: “Russia is finished.”

That arrogant sentiment informed many ill-fated decisions—Ukraine’s and Georgia’s invitation into NATO at the Bucharest summit in 2008, the endorsement of a forced removal of a democratically elected Ukrainian president at the end of Euromaidan revolution in 2014, and the aggressive crossing of Putin’s red lines in the run-up to Russia’s all-out invasion in Ukraine in 2022.

Fast forward to 2026 and Russia feels less “finished” than ever. Instead, it has evolved into a tech-savvy 21^st-century autocracy with a highly modernized war economy. It has successfully adapted to a conflict in which it sees itself as an underdog confronting the mighty Western military industrial machine, which makes it not too concerned about inevitable setbacks. Most importantly, every alternative to Putin seems to pose risks of civil war and state collapse.

To be sure, the country is going through what every Russian would admit to be a difficult period, but Putin’s Russia is showing far fewer “cracks in the regime” than the U.S.-led West, currently torn between Trump-style right-populism and Biden-style left-liberalism.

As the Atlantic’s “Russia is finished” cover turns 25 this month, there is a nagging feeling that it is the West’s own hostility and appetite for conflict which has been the main factor in the rise of Russia’s high-end, 21^st-century authoritarianism. Conversely, it is a return to the era of detente and soft power which could reverse this trend and change Russia for the better. But how many Ukrainians and Russians need to die in a senseless and avoidable war to prove the obvious?

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 4/9/26

The true total of US national security spending in 2027 will exceed $2.5 trillion, far beyond the already record-shattering $1.5 trillion military budget President Trump has requested, according to veteran defense analyst Winslow Wheeler.

Wheeler, who spent decades working in Washington for senators and the Government Accountability Office on national security issues, reached the figure by factoring in the Pentagon budget, military-related spending from other US government agencies, the national security share of interest accrued on the US debt, among other factors (full table of his work at the end of the article).

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has said that the $1.5 trillion military budget request for 2027 is a $445 billion, or 42%, increase over this year. The OMB said the $1.5 trillion includes $1.1 trillion in “base discretionary budget authority” for the Pentagon, plus a request for $350 billion in “additional mandatory resources through reconciliation.”

More than $150 billion in supplemental military spending was included in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which President Trump signed into law last year, to pad the Pentagon budget, and the Trump administration is seeking to secure the $350 billion for the 2027 budget in a similar way.

Trump is also looking for additional military spending to replenish stockpiles of US air defense interceptors and other munitions used in the US-Israeli war against Iran, which is expected to be worth somewhere between $80 billion and $200 billion and would be counted as part of the 2026 spending if it’s pushed through Congress soon.

Wheeler said that he labeled the supplemental spending bills as “slush funds” to “characterize the lack of specificity in congressional legislation for how the funds are to be allocated within the major categories shown here, compared to historic discretionary appropriations.”

At the beginning of his term, Trump suggested he was interested in reducing the military budget, but he went on to dramatically expand US military interventions and seek unprecedented levels of military spending.

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