I was on vacation last week and am now battling the flu, so I’m gradually trying to get caught up on the news. – Natylie

Russia Matters, 9/12/25

1. NATO fighter jets have shot down Russian drones over Polish airspace for the first time, after what Warsaw described as an “unprecedented violation” of its territory, which prompted the alliance to hold emergency consultations per the NATO treaty’s Article 4. The intrusion exposed what some Western officials and analysts described as serious gaps in NATO’s eastern air defenses, with alliance jets downing only four of the estimated 19–23 drones.¹ Western analysts, such as former SACEUR Ben Hodges, believe the attack was a deliberate rehearsal to test NATO’s systems.² If Vladimir Putin’s intention was, indeed, to test NATO’s air defenses, the Russian president “would be most pleased with the result,” according to Financial Times. Test or not, the incident brought Europe “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II,” according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Donald Trump suggested the incursion “could have been a mistake,” but Tusk dismissed this³ while Polish President Karol Nawrocki called the incident “an unprecedented moment in the history of NATO and Poland.”⁴ While Russian warplanes have long tested NATO’s responses by flying near or even into the airspace of alliance members, forcing them to scramble jets, the Sept. 10 incident was the first time the U.S.-led bloc has engaged directly with the Russian armed forces since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to WSJ. By contrast, Russia’s Defense Ministry played down the incident, insisting its drones did not intentionally cross into Poland and claiming that electronic jamming caused the breach. If Belarus’s Defense Ministry is truthful in its claim that it “warned” Poland about “unknown aerial vehicles” approaching their borders, then it raises questions about the ability of the leader of NATO’s eastern flank,⁵ which Poland is, to cope with a hypothetical air war with Russia on its own.⁶
2. On Sept. 6–7, 2025, Russia launched its largest aerial assault of the war against Ukraine, firing between 805 and 823 projectiles—including over 800 Shahed drones and up to 13 missiles—across the country. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted at least 747 drones and several cruise missiles, marking their highest recorded single-night shootdown. Despite the significant interception rate, strikes caused up to five deaths, destroying residential buildings and, for the first time, damaged Kyiv’s Cabinet of Ministers. A Russian Iskander ballistic missile was confirmed in the Kyiv attack. Russia’s Defense Ministry denied striking civilian targets, despite mounting evidence.
3. In the period of Aug. 12–Sept. 9, Russian forces gained 160 square miles of Ukrainian territory, which marks a 34% decrease from the 241 square miles these forces gained in the period of July 15–Aug. 12, 2025, according to the Sept. 10, 2025, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. As of Sept. 9, 2025, Russian forces occupied 44,943 square miles of Ukrainian territory, which constitutes 19% of Ukraine’s territory (an area roughly equivalent to the U.S. state of Ohio), according to the card.  Russian forces have also reduced the rate of casualties they suffer while advancing by 31%, according to ISW’s analysis of the Ukrainian General Staff’s estimates. The rate went from 99 casualties per square kilometer gained from January through April 2025 to 68 casualties per kilometer gained from May through August 2025. Russia has also seen its losses of tanks decline recently. Oryx estimates that the past summer saw Russia lose 83 tanks in Ukraine, down from 252–274 tanks in the same periods of 2022–2024.

***

Russian drones over Poland no reason to panic and start a war

By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 9/10/25

It seems unlikely that the handful of Russian drones that entered Polish air space did so accidentally.

There have been previous incidents, but they involved individual drones very close to the Ukrainian border. Yesterday there were over a dozen, according to reports, with debris landing in several cities, including hitting one house, after NATO was scrambled to shoot them down.

It is appropriate therefore that under Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, NATO members consulted over this and responded.

This was however not an “attack.” None of the drones hit a significant target, or seem to have been intended to do so. The Russian move was most likely intended as a warning to the European “coalition of the willing” to abandon its hopes of establishing a “reassurance force” in Ukraine, and add weight to President Putin’s statement that such a force would automatically be subject to Russian attack.

It was probably also a warning to the U.S. not to provide air cover or a “backstop” for such a force.

We should remember that during the Cold War, there were a number of far more serious violations of air space by both sides, some of them leading to NATO planes being shot down and American and British airmen killed. These incidents led not to threats of war, but careful attempts to de-escalate tensions and develop ways to avoid such clashes.

There are two ways of looking at this, and they are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, it was undoubtedly a provocative act by Russia, which has provided the opportunity for more hysterical outbursts by Western hawks about alleged Russian plans to attack NATO, more calls for increased aid to Ukraine, and more allegations that “Russia does not want peace” (it does, but — just like Ukraine — on terms that meet its basic conditions).

On the other hand, the immediate European response is a reminder of the extent of European (though not Polish) military weakness, and that any European force in Ukraine would be utterly dependent on US support and guarantees.

Thus while the British defense secretary John Healey responded by warning of a “new era of threat” and promising to defend Poland, he also revealed that Britain has only 300 troops in Poland; its previous contingent of precisely six Typhoon fighter jets were withdrawn in July, and its Sky Sabre air defense system in Poland was removed last year for maintenance and has not yet returned.

So when Healey told the “E5” group (the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland) that he had asked the British armed forces “to look at options to bolster NATO’s air defence over Poland,” those options would seem extremely limited, and would also probably require reducing military supplies to Ukraine.

Amidst wild ravings from Poland and some British commentators (including calls for an “Article 5 response” – i.e. war), former NATO Deputy Commander General Sir Adrian Bradshaw struck a sensible note, which the U.S. and European governments would do well to follow:

“The point of the consultations is to do things which lower the tension and lower the potential for a slide into conflict, which none of us want. And it’s reasonable to assume that even Mr. Putin doesn’t want a conflict between the whole of NATO and Russia, because it would be disastrous for all of us. So we need to bear that in mind, but be seen to act with resolve…[I]f we don’t want to escalate in the military domain, then we must do so in the economic, political and diplomatic domains.”

***

The Reported Russian Drone Incursions Into Poland Might Have Been Due To NATO Jamming

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 9/11/25

It’s unlikely that Russia would risk rallying the West around a no-fly zone over Ukraine by staging a deliberate provocation against Poland or even just carrying out a recon mission in NATO airspace.

Poland claimed to have shot down several Russian drones on Wednesday morning that reportedly crossed into its airspace during the latest large-scale strikes against Ukraine. This occurred amidst the ongoing Polish, Lithuanian, and NATO drills involving 30,000 Polish troops and just ahead of the upcoming Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2025 drills. Some therefore suspect that this was either a deliberate provocation by Russia or a botched recon mission, but it might have just been due to NATO jamming.

It was recently argued that “There Might Be More To The Von Der Leyen-GPS-Russia Hoax Than Scoring Cheap Infowar Points” after the dramatic claim that Russia supposedly jammed her plane while it attempted to land in Bulgaria was debunked by Sofia itself and Western media. The alternative theory put forth was that this false narrative was meant to justify aggressive signals jamming in Kaliningrad, though this could also be directed towards Belarus given its hosting of the upcoming Zapad 2025 drills.

Such interference might have thus caused Russian drones to veer off course into Poland during the latest large-scale strikes against Ukraine. Aggressive signals jamming could also precede implementation of reported plans for imposing a no-fly zone over at least part of Ukraine in connection with the West’s security guarantees for that country. Although nowhere as foolproof as patrols over Ukrainian airspace and authorizing NATO-based Patriots to protect its skies, it would carry much less of an escalation risk.

Moreover, if NATO expected that its speculative signals jamming – possibly ramped up after the von der Leyen-GPS-Russia hoax, which might have been timed to coincide with the upcoming Zapad 2025 drills – would cause Russian drones to veer off course, then this might be part of a preplanned escalation. The objective could be to rally support for the abovementioned no-fly zone proposal or even begin the gradual process of implementing it on the pretext of “proactive defense” in light of this incident.

Over 3,5 years into the special operation, Russia would have by now presumably gamed out everything that could realistically follow the scenario of several of its drones crossing into Poland, with policymakers thus likely being aware that this could be exploited to advance the no-fly zone plot. The aforesaid insight accordingly reduces the odds that this was a deliberate provocation or a botched recon mission, either of which would have probably been carried out in force to make the cost-benefit tradeoff more worthwhile.

This is a similar logic as what was recently shared in this analysis here arguing that Russia probably didn’t deliberately target the Cabinet of Ministers building in Kiev so as to avoid fueling the no-fly zone plot. While that particular incident might have been randomly caused by drone debris, the latest one could have been planned to a much greater degree if NATO jamming was indeed responsible as conjectured. It remains to be seen, however, whether Poland will participate in any no-fly zone over Ukraine as a result.

Former President Andrzej Duda recently revealed that Zelensky tried to manipulate Poland into war with Russia over November 2022’s Przewodow incident, which he refused to fall for, while his successor Karol Nawrocki pledged ahead of the second round not to deploy troops to Ukraine. This policy continuity, which aligns with Poles getting fed up with Ukrainian refugees and this neighboring conflict, could foil NATO’s plans to manipulate Poland into this even though it might still agree to ramp up signals jamming.

Link to YouTube video here.

from Geoffrey Roberts:

When Stalin told a delegation from the Finland-USSR society that he proposed to give Finland more time to pay its reparations to the Soviet Union, the Finns said that would be generous.

Stalin replied:

“It’s calculation, not generosity – a generosity of calculation. When we treat others well, they are nice to us. Our generosity makes up for the policy of Tsarist autocracy. Its policy towards Finland, Romania and Bulgaria made their peoples enemies of Russia. We want neighbouring countries and peoples to have a good attitude towards us.”

“Это не великодушие, а расчет, великодушие по расчету. Когда мы к другому хорошо относимся, и они к нам хорошо относятся…Своим великодушием мы рассчитываемся за политику царского самодержавия. Царское самодержавие своей политикой по отношению к Финляндии, Румынии, Болгарии вызвало вражду народов этих стран к России. Мы хотим, чтобы соседние страны и народы к нам хорошо относились”.

Reference courtesy Vladimir Pechatnov.

Geoffrey Roberts

Member of the Royal Irish Academy

Emeritus Professor of History, University College Cork

www.geoffreyroberts.net

By Nate Bear, Substack, 8/28/25

I am republishing this essay with Nate Bear’s permission. Nate is very passionate in describing the Gaza genocide and what it means for the future of liberalism. To quote Nate Bear: “Gaza should, and I believe will, mark the end of liberalism.” I just ordered a book by Philip Pilkington titled: “The Collapse of Global Liberalism: And the Emergence of the Post-Liberal World Order.” I have not had time to read the book, but the idea that 500 years of “liberalism” is ending cannot be discounted. What will or should replace liberalism is the question. There are several appealing aspects of “liberalism”, including freedom of speech and association, due process, equal justice under law, and the rule of law, but these concepts are increasingly under assault as wealth and power, not majority rule, dominate what’s left of our “democracy”. Let me know what you think of Nate Bear’s essay and ideas. – Sylvia Demarest

The September deadline set by France, the UK, Australia and Canada for Israel to stop its genocide and commit to a two-state solution is fast approaching. And looming alongside this deadline is a final crisis of legitimacy for western liberalism.

Firstly, let’s just reflect on how utterly absurd these conditions are: we’ll recognise your right to your own independent state ONLY IF YOUR HOLOCAUSTERS KEEP HOLOCAUSTING YOU. They are making the creation of an entity which, legally, according to the 1948 partition agreement should have existed for the last seventy seven years anyway, contingent on more slaughter.

The pitiful centrist impulse to triangulate every issue has never been more pathetically, tragically and infuriatingly on show. The belief that you can carrot-and-stick your way to a liberal sweet-spot solution on every issue, even an actual holocaust, is such an odious reflex.

Gaza should, and I believe will, mark the end of liberalism. You can’t support an openly declared final solution, announce two years later that recognition for the victims is literally contingent on the final solution proceeding, while continuing to trade on the same old lines about human rights, equality, justice.

Gaza has shown it all up as a sham. The events of the last nearly two years have driven a stake through the dank, rotten heart of this liberal ideology.

The truth is that (neo) liberalism encases supremacist attitudes in pro-social language and symbols despite being, today, an inherently and aggressively anti-social, racist and violent ideology. I don’t particularly want to get into history, definitions and changing use here. You can argue that classical liberal thinkers like Thomas Paine or John Locke would be horrified by genocide, permanent war and the surveillance state.

But what is inarguable is that liberalism in the twentieth century, particularly the second half of the twentieth century, has been dominated by violent centre-right and centre-left liberals. These groupings and their acolytes broadly agree on free markets, freedom of suffrage (what they call democracy), some forms of social justice and equal rights, and they agree on a geopolitical story of the world. They both identify the same good guys and the same bad guys and also believe in the need to forever expand the military and surveillance state to defeat the bad guys. And both these parties, from those in western Europe to those in North America, believe that to do this, killing lots and lots of people is frequently justified.

No one with any understanding of recent history could deny this.

Over the last eighty years, liberals of the centre-right and centre-left, Democrats and Republicans, Labour and Conservative parties, have dropped nuclear bombs on Japanese cities, sanctioned the murder of one million civilians in Indonesia, and from Vietnam to Korea to Libya to Iraq have invaded, raped and pillaged.

And while Gaza is of a piece with recent liberal history, I don’t think we can see it as simply another mass murderous episode in western imperialism. Because what has emerged over the past two years is something unique.

Gaza breaks what was already an ultra violent mould.

Never in the modern era have we seen two million people be cut off from the outside world, trapped, unable to leave, starved and systematically murdered while made homeless and living in tents. Never in the modern era have we seen everything be taken from a people, every university, bakery, school, cafe, office, park, restaurant. Every standing home. We’ve not seen a state destroy so much infrastructure that it has ended the ability of an entire society to function as such. No running water, no sewage systems, no grid electricity. Almost everything in Gaza has been turned to dust and rubble. Never have we seen a starving people trapped in a tiny patch of eviscerated land and watched as their holocausters baited them with food, only to gun them down for fun. Guns supplied by our governments, with our money. Never have we seen so many doctors, nurses and journalists torn apart by jets from the sky while holding nothing but the tools of their work, their stethoscopes and cameras. Jets supplied by our governments with our money. Never have we seen people with Down’s Syndrome ripped apart by attack dogs or teenagers assassinated by drones while in wheelchairs.

No, this is heinous and new, even by western imperialism’s barbarous standards.

You have to go back to ancient Greece or the crusades and the sacking of cities to find something comparable.

The fact that the resistance continues to inflict casualties on the invaders under these conditions is a marvel of the human spirit and should be celebrated as such.

And we certainly haven’t seen violence, war crimes and unspeakable atrocities on this scale captured so frequently on camera in such fine-grained graphic detail.

On top of this, every single stage of this genocide was openly declared by Israel. Israeli politicians said there were no civilians in Gaza, that everyone was guilty, that they’d starve them, burn them and destroy everything. They said the goal was to drive them out of Gaza, to ethnically cleanse Gaza. They said it brazenly, week after week. And then they did it. And they did it with the support of liberals. Trump has overseen eight months of genocide. Biden and Harris oversaw fifteen months. The Conservative party oversaw nine months of genocide. Starmer’s Labour Party has supported Israel through thirteen months of slaughter. The liberals in Australia and Canada don’t even have the excuse that it started on someone else’s watch. They’ve backed this genocide from the start.

Then a few weeks ago, when this dishonest threat to recognise Palestine was made, Israel’s finance minister said they’d step up the holocaust in response and make sure there was nothing left to recognise. Knowing they wouldn’t be stopped, they proceeded to do just that, with zero reaction from the complicit liberal cowards in London, Ontario, Canberra and Paris.

Liberalism doesn’t have a future after this. Not an energised one, at least. Gaza signals the final crisis of legitimacy for liberalism and its supposed international order. Spiritually, it’s over. It will take time for pro-genocide liberals to face the consequences, time for their political groupings to be defeated and made irrelevant. International institutions ruled by liberals will not evaporate over night. But no one will now take their orders from liberals. No one will be lectured to about democracy, human rights, and freedom. The global multilateral institutions run by pro-genocide western liberals will find it increasingly difficult to maintain their legitimacy in the post-Gaza holocaust era. The global south has been watching, and through the expansion of BRICS and the formalisation of new agreements, is now organising. Domestically, as we saw in the US last November, liberal bases in the west will no longer come out in sufficient numbers to keep reanimating the corpse of liberal technocratic management.

The centre could never hold. Among the dead of Gaza lies the liberal project, the only deserved victim of this genocide.

We are left then with two possible futures: a radically pro-social and communitarian one, focused on justice and equity for all, or an authoritarian cesspit of racism, war, and eugenics, administered by the tools of the outsourced surveillance state. We know these are the choices, because we’ve already seen it play out. Trump’s victory was in fact the first sign that Gaza heralded these binary futures. The causes of Harris’s loss were contested by liberals, but the polls in the weeks after were clear: her support for genocide was a priority issue for enough people who otherwise would have voted for her, and Trump snuck through.

Without viable pro-social, anti-imperial alternatives, expect this pattern of pro-genocide liberals losing to proto-fascists to be repeated throughout the west.

The answer in the face of these frightening dynamics is, obviously, not to run back to the genocidal warmongering liberals who landed us here.

The answer is to help shape those radical alternatives.

The stakes couldn’t be clearer, the lines sharper than ever.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel Davis, Military.com, 8/25/25

Earlier this year, speaking at a press conference in Qatar, President Donald Trump categorically declared that “nobody can beat us.” He continued, “We have the strongest military in the world, by far. Not China, not Russia, not anybody!”

We do have a strong military, but we are woefully unprepared to fight a modern war. That’s because, despite all of the major technological advances in warfighting in recent years, manpower is still absolutely critical, and understanding how those boots on the ground interact with emerging drone warfare is still in its infancy in the U.S. military.

Ground warfare has evolved over the past three and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine. I’ve spent considerable time studying this conflict from strategic, operational and tactical angles, and I’ve conducted multiple interviews with combatants on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides. The picture that emerges explains not only why Russia’s progress is slow and Ukraine is gradually losing ground, but also why the U.S. would face serious challenges if forced into a similar fight today.

Some have argued that Russia has failed to completely conquer Ukraine because Russian generals and soldiers are of poor quality. That conclusion ignores the genuinely game-changing nature of drones on the conduct of land warfare.

There isn’t one category or type of drone that is game-changing by itself, but rather the categories of drones and the ways they can be employed in concert with other drones and legacy platforms and soldiers. There are primarily four main classes of drones: first-person view (FPV) drones that fly explosive charges directly into vehicles or soldiers, bomber drones that fly over a target and release bombs, missile-carrying drones, and reconnaissance drones.

Despite endless talk about game-changing weapons, only the widespread deployment of drones has truly altered the nature of this war. Armored vehicles remain essential for transporting infantry to the front, but they can’t move in large numbers without suffering catastrophic losses. Traditional armored charges – such as the type I participated in during Desert Storm’s Battle of 73 Easting – are deadly in today’s battlefield conditions. Russia has increasingly turned to motorcycles to improve frontline mobility – not because they offer protection, but because their speed and maneuverability improve their chances of defeating drone attacks. No armored vehicle can dodge an FPV or fiber optic-guided drone, but a motorcycle might.

As a result, every inch of ground in modern war is contested: by various types of drones, artillery strikes, missiles, rockets, air attacks, armored vehicle cannons, and infantry attacks. Both sides in the Russia-Ukraine War have suffered high vehicle losses. Fighters from both Russia and Ukraine have told me that stepping out of a trench – for any reason, even to eat or relieve themselves – is extraordinarily dangerous.

Any movement above ground can be spotted and targeted by drones within minutes. Reconnaissance drones scan likely targets and guide attack drones to strike. Others simply loiter above the battlefield, waiting for an opportunity.

This is why manpower is still the decisive factor: Drones and air attacks can be devastating, but it takes boots on the ground to either take territory or hold it. This is where Russia’s biggest advantages have come into play in this war of attrition. Russia has millions more men of military age to draw from than Ukraine, and Moscow has chosen to limit its manpower losses and play up its firepower advantages.

Rather than launching costly frontal assaults, Russian forces now frequently flank Ukrainian positions and cities, saturating them first with artillery and glide bombs, then using drones to pin down defenders, and only then send in the infantry to seize territory.

This has sobering implications for the United States and NATO. We do not know how to fight this kind of war. Only recently has the Pentagon begun taking drone warfare seriously – something that should have happened after the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Better late than never, perhaps, but the deeper problem is cultural and doctrinal. We still think in terms of maneuver warfare, “shock and awe,” and rapid dominance. Those concepts no longer apply in peer-on-peer conflicts like this one.

Russia needed nearly two years to discard its outdated views on modern war. It adapted. We haven’t. Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military even mocked the U.S. Army’s newly updated field manual for the “Tank Platoon,” saying flat-out that our doctrines are detached from current battlefield realities.

Today’s U.S. armed ofrces no doubt have skills, quality personnel, and good equipment. But we are far behind in understanding how to fight modern wars. It took both Russia and Ukraine the better part of a year and a half to fully recognize how all the classes of drones have changed the nature of war. Both sides paid an exorbitant price in blood to learn those lessons.

The U.S. Army has studied the conflict and just last month published a compendium on examining the changing nature of war. That’s useful and good. But intellectual knowledge alone won’t help you in the next fight. We’ve got to make profound and fundamental changes now to have a chance to avoid disaster when next we fight on the ground. If the Pentagon was taking this seriously, leaders wouldn’t have merely published a report. They would be urgently changing our fighting doctrine, systems of equipment, types of ordnance and the like to enable and equip our troops to successfully wage war in this new world of conflict.

Yet there is little evidence they’ve done any of those things.

History is filled with the wreckage of once-powerful armies that failed to change with the times and suffered avoidable defeats in subsequent wars. If we are to avoid that sad tradition, major changes must be made, immediately and with urgency. Otherwise, we will pay in blood later for what we should have done today.