By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 9/24/26
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski out did himself yesterday on the doom and gloom story, telling a reporter that he has been spending the weekends at the dacha laying in supplies of rice and making jam out of the garden fruits in preparation for the presumed nuclear winter that will follow Russia’s invasion.
The rhetoric is getting extreme, although to be fair he said this to a Polish journalist and there is a very long and much beloved tradition of making homemade jam (varenye) at this time of the year. It features in Chekov’s play, The Cherry Orchard I think, so it has serious cultural credits and will play well with a general audience; the Polish equivalent of: “I like a pint in the pub” for the Brits. Still, I don’t believe he made extra jam so he will have something to eat when the fighting starts, but of course comments like this just tick the tensions up a notch.
The main event yesterday were the speeches at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and Zelenskiy introduced a new meme: “patient zero,” referring to Putin. As in the index patient you need to find when a new epidemic breaks out so that you can make a vaccine more quickly.
I don’t think it will catch on, but a nice try and colourful image. The nuts and bolts of his meetings in New York didn’t go well at all. He looked nervous and twitchy in his meeting with Trump unlike the Ankara Nato summit on July 8 where he was brimming with confidence.
At that meeting Trump promised him a Patriot missile license, but at this meeting Trump has totally walked that back after the likes of Boeing refused to share their tech with Ukraine, afraid they would out produce, out innovate and undercut the US firms (which they probably would).
In fact, there was no talk of missiles at all. Previously, Trump was badgered into promising “some” missiles “every month.”
Zelenskiy was asking for 300. But even the “some” talk has disappeared.
What Zelenskiy did get was an order to stop hitting Russian refineries because of the growing diesel shortages. He refused.
And there was some vague talk about an “energy ceasefire” but that was pointless, as there were no Russians in the room. Any “plans” to stop targeting energy don’t mean anything without the Russians and presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov made it clear Russia is not going to stop calling the talk “rhetoric” – which is exactly what it is.
This was probably Bankova’s last chance to get some real help from the West before the winter started and Zelenskiy made no progress.
Even more damning than Trump’s rebuff – I think its fair to say that the US participation in this conflict is now definitely over – was the tongue lashing that Zelenskiy got from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who told him “no more money until you pull your reform sock up” (but with whatever the German equivalent of that is: Sockenhochziehpflicht?)
This is a very serious problem indeed and is not getting enough attention. At his Independence Day speech in August, Zelenskiy said that there is a $27bn hole in the defence budget (and a $32bn hole in the overall budget) and with the US out of the game the only place MinFin can find this money is from the EU. VDL did send €6.1bn the day after Zelenskiy speech and this morning the Danes signed off on another €3bn to tide Ukraine over, but Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said that the government will be unable to pay wages as soon as next month.
Zelenskiy also met with IMF director Kristalina Georgieva, who promised a little help too, but that is after she cancelled the second tranche of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and wrapped it into the third tranche in December for the same problem – foot dragging on pushing through reforms.
Everyone has a long list of reforms that need to be made and aren’t (details in our story here) but the bottom line is both the IMF and EU are demanding real progress on anti-corruption reforms. The reason is obvious: the metastasizing Energoatom corruption scandal which has now implicated pretty much everyone who works in Bankova.
The funding issue has not been resolved. Indeed, no remedy has even been suggested. Bankova has asked for next year’s tranche of the €90bn to be brought forward but VDL said a definite “no” to that unless reforms are put through and soon. Even the €6.1bn she did send is almost the last bit of this year’s tranche and there is little left in the pipeline without remaking the whole support plan.
So, the headline on Zelenskiy’s trip to New York should be something like: “No new support for Zelenskiy as Ukraine faces economic collapse.”
Or something like that.
As we reported in April, Ukraine was facing a macroeconomic collapse in April before the €90bn deal was approved, and it is back there again. Plus it has no defence ammo. Plus Putin is clearly about to bomb the last of Ukraine’s power sector flat. Plus his own party looks increasingly rebellious as it won’t pass the needed reforms. However, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Operation Vivaldi is looking good and making real progress in pushing the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) back from the Fortress Belt cities, so there is that.
But support for Ukraine seems to be fading fast. Another story to come out of the UNGA is 51 countries signed a statement condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, presented by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas (who else?) to show the world is “united” behind Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian people. Except no one in Africa signed it. No one from Latin America signed it. Even the US didn’t sign it. If you remember the first motion to condemn the war in Ukraine in March 2022 only five countries rejected it and the bulk of the other 193 countries went along with it.
Most of the Global South sat on the fence in that vote. In this vote most of the Global South have come down on Russia and China’s side. It’s only the Global North that is behind Ukraine, and even then only half heartedly. It’s telling that in the same week of the UNGA that France chose to cut a bargain with Baku to get two of their spies out of jail (because that is what they are) in exchange for lifting sanctions on Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov. That turns the whole sanctions regime into a bargaining chip where national interests are more important than geopolitical principles. And Macron has been one of the most vocal and active of the EU’s Ukraine champions until now.
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Russia Could Make An Energy Truce Conditional On Resuming Pipeline Exports To Europe
By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 9/25/26
Zelensky recently proposed a partial truce with Russia that would include, among other things, eschewing attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. The strategic context concerns Russia’s ramped-up systematic strike campaign against Ukrainian power plants, gas stations, ports, and most recently, locomotives, all of which aims to cripple its military logistics by winter for achieving a Russian breakthrough. The Kremlin therefore doesn’t have any interest in accepting this lopsided arrangement.
That could change, however, if Russia makes at least the energy dimension of Zelensky’s proposal conditional on resuming its pipeline exports to Europe. It’s not just Ukraine that’s poised to experience its must difficult winter in years but the EU as a whole too according to the European Commissioner for Energy and Housing in a recent interview with the Financial Times. This is due to the global fuel crisis brought about by the Third Gulf War and Ukraine’s spree of attacks against Russian refineries this year.
Ukraine desperately needs relief from Russia’s systematic strikes against its energy infrastructure this winter, the EU desperately needs more energy amidst the global fuel crisis during the same season, and Russia is unlikely to turn down the influx of revenue even if the windfall is only for several months. A deal could take the form of resuming gas exports to Germany via the one undamaged Nord Stream pipeline possibly together with oil and gas exports to Poland (and beyond) via the Druzhba and Yamal pipelines.
The resumption of Russian pipeline exports to Europe, even if only for the winter, would restore some of their pre-2022 complex mutual interdependence for raising the odds that the energy truce is respected. The EU will still survive the winter even without Russian pipeline imports, and Russia can continue funding its military operations even without pipeline exports to Europe, but Ukraine might not survive without relief from Russia’s systematic strikes against its energy infrastructure.
Accordingly, the EU could sever its imports from Russia if Russia violates the energy truce, while Russia could sever its exports to the EU if Ukraine does so instead. While skeptics might suspect that Russia has more to gain from violating the energy truce due to Ukraine’s increasingly desperate military-strategic situation, Russia has a greater interest in jointly building the new continental security architecture with European NATO (E-NATO), which it can’t do without a relative normalization of ties. All of this is sensible.
If an energy truce is agreed to on the condition of Russia resuming at least its Nord Stream exports to Europe, then the “snowdrop diplomacy” formula proposed here could be advanced, which might see the mutual drawdown of E-NATO forces from the Baltic States in parallel with Russian ones from Belarus. The US might then purchase Nord Stream from Russia as has been floated, and perhaps also the Belarusian parts of Druzhba and/or Yamal, for upholding this new order and facilitating a grand deal over Ukraine.
The resultant security architecture could have partial buffers in the Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine, while the western flank of the “cordon sanitaire” would have a US-backed Polish-led Intermarium counterbalance a German-dominated militarized EU. Poland would also still be the US’ LNG hub in Europe since the US would probably raise the price of the Russian pipeline gas under its control to keep its own gas competitive. This balance of interests is realistic and should thus be seriously considered.