By Ted Snider, The American Conservative, 10/3/25

Before they were a government, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and many of the people who have surrounded him, including his chief of staff and closest adviser, Andriy Yermak, wrote and produced TV shows and movies. Writing scripts may be what they do best.

Recently, they have teamed up with the White House to coproduce a script designed to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. It is an attempt to alter the war by altering the narrative. The narrative is not based on intelligence but, like their previous shows, seems to be a fiction that is only loosely based on reality.

Act One, Motive: Drones Over Poland, Planes Over Estonia

On September 10, at least 19 Russian drones violated Polish airspace. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “a line has been crossed” and that the “situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.” 

Nine days later, three Russian jets violated Estonian airspace. Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna called the violation “unprecedentedly brazen.”

In both cases, multiple NATO countries took part in the response, including Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Finland. Interestingly, neither NATO response included the United States. Poland and Estonia requested consultations under NATO Article 4, which calls for meetings and discussions on next steps when a member country is threatened. 

Zelensky called the incursions “a systematic Russian campaign directed against Europe, against NATO, against the West” and said “it requires a systemic response. Strong action must be taken—both collectively and individually by each nation.” He warned that Putin will “not… finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction” by attacking another European country. Zelensky told the UN General Assembly that “Ukraine is only the first. And now, Russian drones are already flying across Europe.” President Donald Trump said that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they violate their airspace.

The only challenge to the airspace incursion narrative came from reality. Though Russian drones crossed into Poland, no targets were hit. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk says that none of the drones were armed with warheads. “There is currently no evidence,” Tusk says, “that any of these drones posed a direct threat. So far, none have been identified as combat drones capable of detonating or causing harm.” And Poland says that “Belarus, whose territory the drones were launched from, also sent warning that off-course drones were headed for its airspace.” General Wiesław Kukuła, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, says that “The Belarusians warned us that drones were heading towards us through their airspace.” He added that the advance warning was “helpful for us.”

Poland was not being attacked by unarmed drones. Russia may have been sending a warning to Europe not to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement, or the drones could have been sent off course by defensive Ukrainian GPS interference. Despite the public narrative, the private intelligence estimate is that the odds are “50–50” that the drone incursion was intentional. Intelligence about the drones’ flight pattern suggests “they had simply been knocked off course by Ukrainian jamming.” And, though it is not unanimous, a senior Western intelligence official told CNN that “they were ‘leaning’ towards an assessment that the incident was unintentional.”

As for public official and media claims that Russian military jets entered Estonian airspace, that, too, is only loosely based on reality. They did not fly over Estonia. On a flight from Karelia, in the northwest of Russia, to Kaliningrad, the jets deviated by five miles or less from their internationally recognized route over the Baltic Sea along the middle of the Gulf of Finland. They passed near, not mainland Estonia, but Vaindloo, an uninhabited island that belongs to Estonia and that sits 16 miles off its coast. The known factual account is, at least, as close to the account Russian gave the Security Council as it is to the Western narrative.

On September 13, a Russian Geran drone entered Romanian airspace. The Romanian Ministry of National Defense called the incursion “a new challenge to regional security.” Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled, but the drone exited Romanian airspace. The defense ministry says the drone “did not fly over populated areas or pose imminent danger.” It is not unheard of for Russian drones to pass through Romanian airspace on route to Ukraine. That this drone orbited for about 50 minutes, though, suggests that this incursion could be consistent with a possible pattern of Russia warning European countries not to send troops to Ukraine.”

The narrative of aggressive Russian actions taken against European nations seems to be a reckless attempt to draw Europe, the U.S., and NATO more fully into the war. 

Act Two, Opportunity: A Window to Win the War

After being briefed by U.S. officials, including Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz, about current battlefield conditions and a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive that will require U.S. intelligence support, Trump posted that “Ukraine… is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” All that is required is the “support of Europe and, in particular, NATO.”

But, here too, there are problems. First, there have been reports that the Trump administration is telling Moscow something different than Trump is posting on Truth Social. The second is that, though Zelensky says that Trump now “clearly understands the situation and is well-informed about all aspects of this war,” it is not clear that he does.

Though Trump is being told that Russia is failing to make significant territorial gains, his briefings miss that Russia is making gains faster than at any point in the war and that the thinly stretched Ukrainian army is becoming porous and vulnerable along the lengthy frontline. A Ukrainian offensive would require the Ukrainian armed forces to outnumber the Russian forces. But the balance is going in the other direction: Ukraine is running out of troops while the Russian armed forces are growing substantially. And while Ukraine is being depleted of weapons, Russia is now producing more arms and ammunition than it needs.

Ukraine is not going to win back all of its territory while on the back foot. Rather, it will continue to slowly lose more. And it is likely not capable of going on the offensive, because it lacks the necessary manpower and weaponry. Though Trump posts about a window to win, the truth is Russia’s advantage will likely grow as the war drags on.

Worse, though, is that the media gave all the attention to Trump’s statement that “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” It ought to have given more attention than it did to the lines that followed. While promising to “continue to supply weapons to NATO” to give to Ukraine, he referred to NATO as “they.” He said NATO can do “what they want with them.” That sounds like the U.S. will continue selling weapons to Europe for Ukraine but that the U.S. is getting out, an impression made stronger by Trump’s “wish[ing] both countries well” before signing off with “Good luck to them all!” The news was that Trump thinks Ukraine can win. That’s a change in belief, and one that he may not really even hold. But it may not represent a change in policy. The U.S. will still limit its role to selling weapons while it continues to step back.

Act Three, Means: The Tomahawk Missiles

In an interview with Axios, Zelensky said he had asked Trump for a new weapons system. He said that just having this specific weapon would force Putin to come to the negotiating table even if Ukraine didn’t use it. Heightening the drama of the narrative, Zelensky said he would only reveal what weapons system it was once they were off camera.

That system, it turns out, are Tomahawk missiles that have a range of 1,500 miles. If Ukraine gets the long-range missiles, Zelensky says, then targets in Moscow, including the Kremlin, are very much on the table. This week reports surfaced that Trump is considering providing the cruise missiles to Ukraine.

By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 10/13/25

The Nord Stream saga has taken a new twist. A Ukrainian citizen detained in Poland at Germany’s request over the 2022 pipeline sabotage has now become the center of a diplomatic storm. Ukraine’s reported pressure on Poland is straining ties with Warsaw and Berlin, reopening questions European leaders have tried to bury.

Polish authorities have resisted Germany’s extradition request for the detained Ukrainian, citing national interest and judicial independence. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated bluntly that it was “not in Poland’s interest” to hand the suspect over to Berlin — a statement that speaks volumes about the deepening mistrust within the European Union. He added that “the problem of Europe… is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built.”

This is symptomatic of Europe’s broader crisis: a continent that once aspired to “strategic autonomy” now grapples with American influence, tensions over the “Ukranian Question”, and internal divisions.

The destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022 effectively ended decades of German-Russian energy cooperation, forcing Europe into costly dependence on American LNG. From that moment onward, every official narrative seemed to deflect attention away from one key question: who truly benefited?

One may recall that in August, Italian police arrested Ukrainian national Serhij K. for alleged involvement in the 2022 Nord Stream sabotage. According to Der Spiegel, he coordinated a Ukrainian team that planted explosives from the yacht “Andromeda.” The operation was reportedly approved by Ukraine’s military.

At the time, I wrote that the Nord Stream case has been a tale of confusion and cover-ups. I pointed out that a so-called “Ukrainian diver” suspect (unnamed to this very day) could be a lone scapegoat, a proxy, or just a minor operative in a much larger operation. All signs, I argued, pointed to the US as the main orchestrator, with Ukraine likely playing a supporting role on the ground.

According to Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s sources, the CIA is behind the deed. Ukraine’s latest behind-the-scenes pressure on Poland suggests Kyiv has more to hide than to reveal. The Eastern European country has long been a key hub for CIA operations.

Indeed, one must ask: why would Ukraine intervene at all, unless it feared what an open extradition to Germany might uncover? Berlin’s prosecutors have hinted that their investigation connects the detained suspect to a wider network tied to Ukrainian intelligence. If that thread were ever pulled, it could expose not just Kyiv’s denials, but also shake the credibility of the entire Western narrative since 2022.

The Polish position is equally telling. Tusk’s refusal to comply with Germany’s request exposes the uneasy balancing act that Poland now faces. On the one hand, it remains a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its proxy war with Russia. On the other, it has domestic political reasons to resist appearing subservient to Berlin — and perhaps also to shield itself from unwanted entanglement in the Nord Stream mystery.

Poland, after all, was one of the loudest voices calling for the pipelines to be dismantled long before the explosions happened. The fact that the blasts occurred in waters close to Denmark and Sweden, yet remains unsolved three years later, is remarkable enough.

The European Union’s silence is thus deafening. While media attention focuses on minor procedural disputes, the larger strategic implications are quietly ignored. The Nord Stream sabotage was no mere act of vandalism — it was a geopolitical earthquake that permanently reshaped Europe’s energy map. By destroying the infrastructure that connected Germany to cheaper Russian gas, someone ensured Europe’s long-term dependence on transatlantic energy imports. It is worth remembering that American officials, including then President Biden himself, had publicly threatened to “end” Nord Stream 2 before the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict even began. That is too much of a coincidence.

In that light, the current Polish-German-Ukraine triangle takes on a new meaning. It reveals the uncomfortable truth that Europe’s supposed allies are now quietly at odds. Germany apparently wants to restore a semblance of legal order by investigating the crime, while Poland wants to preserve its political leverage. Ukraine wants to avoid revelations that could alienate its Western backers. Washington in turn seems content to keep the entire affair buried under layers of confusion and selective leaks.

The deeper irony is that the Nord Stream pipelines were not merely Russian assets — they were European lifelines. Their destruction accelerated deindustrialization and skyrocketed energy prices, while American energy exporters reap the profits. The most obvious suspects remain Washington and Kyiv.

Yet European leaders cling to transatlantic loyalty. Berlin’s alignment with American policy verges on economic self-harm, while Brussels pushes “solidarity” as factories close and households struggle with high energy costs. The result is a Europe that’s strategically adrift and economically weakened — a dynamic that suits Washington.

If this Poland-Germany-Ukraine scandal deepens, it could force a reckoning. Europe will have to confront what everyone avoids: was the Nord Stream sabotage an act of war — and by whom? Until then, diplomacy remains a messy game where allies distrust each other, and truth is sidelined for convenience.

The Nord Stream affair may be remembered not just as sabotage, but as the moment Europe lost its last illusion of autonomy. It could confirm how dependent the continent has become on external powers — even in matters of justice. Politically, this could be as explosive as the pipelines blasts themselves.

By MK Bhadrakumar, Consortium News, 10/6/25

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came out of a meeting in New York on Sept. 24 with the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio showing a thumbs-up sign as he passed journalists.

It was a confusing signal so soon after U.S. President Donald Trump publicly shamed the Russian military as a “paper tiger” and stunned European capitals by saying that Ukraine could still “fight and win” all its land.

A charitable explanation could be that Trump was building the off ramp to hand the responsibility for Ukraine’s defence to the Europeans. He made a strong point that Europeans can and should do more.

That said, it is also noticeable that Trump’s initial sympathy for Russia has given way steadily to a more neutral position — a shift that accelerated last month.

British columnist Gerard Baker wrote in The Times that “Trump is signaling to Russia that he no longer has its back. But he has also made clear that Europeans can’t rely on U.S. support.” Moscow played cool initially, but realism dawned within the week.

While reduced U.S. involvement in Ukraine is a good thing to happen for Russia, it is far from an open and shut case that Trump won’t reassume NATO leadership.

The matrix is getting complicated, as NATO is not in step with the U.S. and Trump does not control NATO anymore, although NATO doesn’t amount to much without America. And neither NATO nor Trump controls the war.  

Clearly, the U.S. appears to be growing more distant. This is an epic inflection point: in the American global order Europe flourishes and has the opportunity to become a geopolitical force in its own right but also risks becoming an afterthought in a fragmenting world.

Scott Bessent, U.S. treasury secretary who is close to Trump’s thinking, highlighted this paradox in an interview with Fox Business when he said, “As I told my European counterparts about two weeks ago, ‘All I can hear from you is that Putin wants to march into Warsaw. The one thing I’m sure of is that Putin isn’t marching into Boston.’”

U.S. President Donald Trump with Ukraine’s President Volodymy Zelensky in Paris on Dec. 7, 2024. (President of Ukraine/Flickr/Public Domain)

Trump’s remarks about the Ukraine war and his invitation to the E.U. to be the ‘counterweight’ to Russia were by no means a spontaneous, emotional outburst. They came from long multi-layered strategy sessions over several weeks.

Indeed, by last Sunday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance was already revealing that Washington is considering a Ukrainian request to obtain Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine — a long-range, nuclear capable, all-weather cruise missile of technological sophistication and precision whose land-based version is in production.

Tomahawks, if inducted into the war, will give Kiev the capability to strike deep inside Russia. Moscow sharply reacted overnight to Vance’s remark, saying it would carefully analyse whether any Tomahawk missiles that might be supplied to Ukraine would be fired using targeting data supplied by the U.S.

A new dangerous phase of the war is beginning, which holds the risk of a direct Russia-NATO confrontation. Asked about Vance’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was analysing them carefully. President Putin has previously stated that Western countries will make themselves direct parties to the war if they supply targeting and intelligence to enable Ukraine to fire missiles deep inside Russia.

Peskov said,

“The question, as before, is this: who can launch these missiles…? Can only Ukrainians launch them, or do American soldiers have to do that? Who is determining the targeting of these missiles? The American side or the Ukrainians themselves?”

Peskov added that “a very in-depth analysis” is required. 

U.S. guided-missile destroyer targets Libya’s Mediterranean Coast, March 19, 2011. (U.S. Navy, Wikimedia Commons)

This is a moment of truth, since with Tomahawks arrival in the war zone, Trump will be climbing the escalation ladder at a juncture when indications are that Ukraine has strengthened its capability lately, launching a series of successful drone strikes against Russian refineries.

They triggered fuel shortages, driving gasoline prices to record highs and prompted Moscow to restrict exports to stabilise its domestic market.

The locus of the proxy war in Ukraine may altogether change going forward. Germany is willing to pay for the procurement of the Tomahawks. Russian expert opinion is that there is no magic weapon capable of changing the dynamic of the war. But beneath that high threshold, there are other compelling realities.

The West’s last throw of the dice may well be to stoke up social discontent within Russia, as parliamentary elections are to be held not later than Sept. 10, 2026. The West’s assessment, rightly or wrongly, is that the majority opinion in Russia favours an early end to the war. 

The discords within the transatlantic alliance worked well for Russia so far. Also, Trump exhibited little appetite for military adventurism [except perhaps in Venezuela] or foreign entanglements. American foreign policy, once dominated by containment and the domino theory, had gone into reverse.

However, now it seems that although the White House ceased to be hostile, the U.S. will still continue to supply intelligence to Kiev and allow Ukraine to buy its advanced weaponry with the Europeans footing the bill. 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote in the Financial Times two weeks ago urging the E.U. to transfer Russia’s frozen reserves (roughly $300 billion) to Ukraine exclusively for procurement of weapons. It effectively means Ukraine should be able to hold the line.

The crunch time comes when or if NATO toughens its rules of engagement on its eastern flank to make it easier to shoot down intruding [alleged] Russian aircraft. No doubt, the alliance has become firmer in its messaging towards the Kremlin over past week.

President Donald Trump on a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the White House on Aug. 18, 2025, before the U.S. president met with with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and European and NATO leaders in the Oval Office. (White House/Daniel Torok)

But there are indications also that Washington and Moscow are communicating. Neither side is looking for confrontation. As things stand, it is very much possible that Trump may not agree ultimately to the supply of Tomahawks to Ukraine. 

On the other hand, in the changed circumstances and growing uncertainties about a negotiated settlement, Russia may be left with no option but to go all out for a military solution. After all, even if there is going to be a negotiated settlement on paper, it may not add up to much. 

The so-called Helsinki Accords (1975) were painstakingly negotiated through a two-year period in Geneva and every European country, and the U.S. and Canada signed it, but exactly one year later, this was what Henry Kissinger told President Gerard Ford:

“We (U.S.) never wanted it but went along with the Europeans … It is meaningless — it is just a grandstand play to the left. We are going along with it.” 

In the final analysis, all that the Helsinki Final Act achieved was to draw international attention to the human rights situation in the Soviet bloc and open ties between the East European countries and Western Europe, which of course led to the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland and an overall loosening of the cohesion of the Warsaw Pact, which culminated in the collapse of the Berlin Wall. 

M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat. He was India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Views are personal.

This article originally appeared on Indian Punchline.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Tags: Aircraft 

By Connor Echols, Responsible Statecraft, 10/10/25

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel sparked controversy in Europe this week when she appeared to blame eastern European states for helping to instigate the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Merkel claimed in an interview with Hungarian media that, in June of 2021, she began to feel that Russian President Vladimir Putin “was no longer taking the Minsk Agreement seriously,” referencing a series of treaties that aimed to end the war between Russia and Ukraine in the Donbas. “That’s why I wanted a new format where we could speak directly with Putin as the European Union,” she said.

But that proposal stalled due to opposition from the Baltic states and Poland, who “feared we would not be able to develop a common policy towards Russia,” according to Merkel. “Then I left office and Putin’s war began,” she said.

The comments provide rare, new insights into the deterioration in Western relations with Russia that reached a crescendo in February 2022, when Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Merkel’s account adds credence to arguments that the West failed to pursue all diplomatic avenues to prevent the war, which has now turned into a protracted conflict.

Eastern European leaders responded to the interview with indignation, arguing that efforts to negotiate with Putin were in fact to blame for the war. “I consistently told her that you cannot deal with Putin ‘in good faith,’ but she believed that the Baltic states were wrong,” said former Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins, who served in that role from 2019 to 2023. “Putin acts the way he acts, and the only options for the West are either to submit or to resist.”

“Russia’s war against Ukraine is driven by one thing and one thing only: its refusal to accept the Soviet Union’s collapse and its unrelenting imperialist ambitions,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. “Russia alone is to blame for this aggression.”

Notably, Merkel didn’t place all of the blame on eastern Europe. The former chancellor also cited the pandemic as an aggravating factor in the deterioration of Western ties with Russia. “If you cannot meet, if you cannot discuss differences face to face, you won’t find new compromises,” she said.

Merkel appeared less hopeful about the possibility of diplomacy with Russia today, after more than three years of war in Ukraine. “Times have changed now, and we need to think about what position will best help us achieve peace,” she said. In Merkel’s view, that means that Europe will have to act “as a real deterrent” to Russia by strengthening its military position and supporting Ukraine.

ACURA, 10/7/25

It is with deep sadness that we inform you that our stalwart Board Member, David C. Speedie, passed away on Thursday, October 2nd, at the University of Virginia Hospital. David was being treated for prostate cancer, and was scheduled to begin chemotherapy shortly. However, in spite of the accurate diagnosis, the cancer had become metastatic and difficult to control.

David was Senior  Fellow and Director of the Program on US Global Engagement at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Policy in New York from 2007 to 2017.  Prior to that he chaired the Program on International Peace and Security at the Carnegie Corporation in New York from 1992 to 2007. David had also served as Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government.

He was a thoughtful and tireless advocate for global peace who had a keen interest in improving US Russia Relations.  A prolific writer and lecturer on the need for diplomacy and cross-cultural understanding, David traveled to Russia frequently.  He was a close associate of our founder, Stephen F. Cohen.

Those who knew David will remember him not only as a brilliant man but as a decent and empathetic one.  We will miss David greatly.

-Krishen Mehta for the Board