By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 11/5/25

Richard Bruce Cheney (Dick Cheney) died on November 4^th at the age of 84. His death was greeted with a flood of commentary, much of it negative, regarding his political and business career. This essay will discuss an area that has not received enough attention: Cheney’s role in privatizing and outsourcing US military and intelligence functions. Under the banner of “cost saving” and “efficiency” Cheney advocated increased privatization and outsourcing of functions that had always been traditionally performed by military personnel, such as security, logistics, and even intelligence. Under Cheney’s guidance as vice president, these functions were increasingly contracted out to private companies, under the banner of increasing government efficiency.

Cheney promoted cost-plus contracts, advocated loosening oversight over these contracts, and a closer relationship between the military and private defense contractors. These changes led to a flood of outsourcing that now consumes up to 50% of defense and intelligence budgets. This massive increase in outsourcing also occurred during a corresponding massive increase in defense spending as wars of choice spread and cost savings failed to materialize.

US defense and intelligence now rely on private companies for the most essential of functions. The outsourcing and privatization of these functions has resulted in a system riddled with potential conflicts of interest and characterized by a complete lack of accountability. In essence, Cheney championed a system that prioritized privatization based on fake claims of efficiency and cost savings at the expense of transparency and cost control. Worse, it produced hundreds of politically powerful private companies, financially dependent on military contracts, who now lobby for increased military spending and for more war.

How Dick Cheney’s political career began

Larry Johnson wrote an essay on Cheney as a symbol of “everything that is wrong with Washington. He became wealthy, not because he was brilliant or creative, but because he had the right connections.” Those connections were, among other political operatives, with Bruce Bradley and Donald Rumsfeld. These men helped Cheney get his first political job, become Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff from 1975 to January 20, 1977, and then get elected to Congress from 1979 to 1989. This history set Cheney up to be selected as Secretary of Defense in the George H. W. Bush administration from 1989 to 1993. It was as Secretary of Defense that Cheney advocated military and intelligence outsourcing and privatization.

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney’s direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services (BRS) $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies — like itself — could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

The BRS report that advocated privatization was leaked. The privatization proposal did not go over well with either the public or the military in the early 1990’s. Privatization was not politically popular, but it still became a reality during the war on terror.

KBR, BRS, Halliburton, and Dick Cheney

BRS had it’s start as a construction company in Texas in 1919. The company became close to Lyndon B. Johnson as he began his political career in 1937 by providing financial support for Johnson’s political campaigns. The relationship with Johnson helped BRS secure government contracts allowing the company to grow. In December of 1962, BRS was purchased by another Texas company, Halliburton. Please keep this in mind as Dick Cheney would serve as CEO of Halliburton beginning in 1995.

Lyndon Johnson was elected to the US Senate and become majority leader in 1952. During this time BRS was awarded contracts with the US military in Vietnam. From 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company-built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases in Vietnam.

In 1992 George H. W. Bush lost the presidential election to William Jefferson Clinton and Dick Cheney was out of a job. This was rectified in 1995 when Cheney was appointed CEO of Halliburton. Under Cheney’s guidance, Halliburton acquired M. W. Kellogg as part of its purchase of Dresser Industries. In 1998 Halliburton merged Kellogg with Brown & Root (BRS) forming Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR).

The merger of Kellogg and Brown & Root into KBR should also be noted because once Cheney became Vice President, KBR would go on to become the U.S. military’s largest contractor during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, providing staff and services to aid the lengthy U.S. occupations, including the costly efforts to rebuild both countries.

Cheney selects himself as Vice President

George W. Bush served as Governor of Texas for two terms, defeating a popular governor Anne Richards in 1994. Richard’s defeat marked a significant shift in Texas politics. Since then, no Democrat has been elected to statewide office. Bush proved to be a popular governor and had little trouble securing the Republican nomination for President in 2000. As a candidate, Bush ran as a president who would promote a “humble foreign policy” to secure a more peaceful world.

Bush was faced with the decision of who should be his vice president. He selected Dick Cheney to conduct a search and interview prospective candidates. Cheney, after a long and very detailed search, decided that he, Dick Cheney, would be the best Vice President. Thus, was born the Bush/Cheney ticket in 2000.

To run as vice president, Cheney had to leave Halliburton. His exit package included $34 million plus various other forms of compensation and stock options. This means that Cheney likely profited from the subsequent contracts awarded to KBR.

The 2000 election between Bush and Al Gore ended in a virtual tie. While that election is beyond the scope of this essay, it took months to resolve and was eventually decided when a 5-4 unsigned per curiam decision in the US Supreme Court halted the effort to recount the votes in Florida, handing Bush the presidency.

Cheney selects the Bush cabinet

As the new president-elect, Bush set up a transition team to organize the new Bush Administration and select cabinet members and appointed positions. Bush assigned Cheney the task of heading the team and reviewing and recommending candidates. As a result, Cheney filled the Bush Administration with people of his choice which included his long-time cronies such as Donald Rumsfeld, as well as various warmongers and neoconservatives, some of whom had worked on a study for Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu called “Clean Break”. Clean Break, among other recommendations, advocated enhancing Israel’s security by overthrowing several regional governments, especially Sadam Hussein in Iraq.

As a result, Cheney became the most powerful and consequential vice president in US history, essentially able to control the flow of information to the new president and indirectly control the range of available options. As a result of the various Cheney manipulations, the first Bush administration should be seen as a study of how to take over and indirectly control a presidency. The results proved to be a disaster for our country.

Cheney’s legacy

Cheney was an unabashed warmonger intent on promoting the “war on terror”, the Iraq War, and outsourcing as many military functions to private companies as possible. The result? 911 was not properly investigated, the Patriot Act was passed without debate, and we were lied into a disastrous war in Iraq by the “war on terror.”

As one of the primary architects of the war on terror, Cheney’s death toll could be in the millions. Cheney played a leading role in bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia. He supported the firing depleted uranium shells in Fallujah leading to contamination and babies being born with deformities to this day. Cheney said he had no regrets about Iraq and that “we made exactly the right decisions”.

Cheney was a self-described “proponent of enhanced interrogation techniques”, such as waterboarding. These barbaric practices proved not to work. Tortured prisoners do not provide reliable information, they will say what the torturer wants to hear. This meant the US was getting false information from prisoners in Guantanamo, some of whom turned out to be innocent.

Here’s Seymour Hersh: “With his early appearances on Sunday morning talk shows and his frank talk about the need to go to what he called “the dark side,” Cheney expanded CIA, NSA, and military intelligence operations here and abroad that shredded Constitutional limitations. Congress and the press and the public rolled over and endorsed the violations in ways that continue to have impact today.”

“The most highly classified data in the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq involved the constantly expanding authority for US special forces and covert troops in the field to assassinate suspect targets at will. Cheney and Rumsfeld were directly involved in such illegal actions, as I repeatedly reported in the New Yorker.”

“” He was smarter and more pragmatic than any president he served. He quietly shaped foreign policy behind the scenes and left few footprints.”

It should be pointed out that many of the actions Herch describes were carried out by private contractors.

Cheney should be seen as the poster boy for the failure of the post-9/11 wars. In particular, the Iraq War. It was his amassed power and special cadre of operators known as neoconservatives inside the Old Executive Office building and E Ring at the Pentagon, who used strategy and treachery to dominate the politics and intelligence necessary to accomplish the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and to proliferate a Global War on Terror that lasted well beyond both Cheney and George W. Bush’s tenure in office.

By all accounts it was the lies he promoted over weapons of mass destruction that propelled the rush to war in Iraq, followed by the blunders in choosing personnel, in failing to anticipate the Iraqi insurgency, in overlooking the loss of lives, or the cost of war. Cheney’s tenure included new method of warfare marked by extrajudicial killing, torture, secrecy, and endless war that discredited US leadership, and has transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever.

Conclusion

In Bush’s second term, Cheney’s power was finally curtailed as the reality of what had transpired began to set in, and Bush’s popularity continued to wane. By then, the damage was done, to the country, our finances, to our military and intelligence capability, to the Middle East, and to the public’s perception of the competency of US leadership.

By Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 10/22/25

Mark Episkopos is a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University. Episkopos holds a PhD in history from American University and a masters degree in international affairs from Boston University.

Rarely are foreign policy scholars and analysts blessed with as crystalline a case study in abject failure as the Western approach to Belarus since 2020. From promoting concrete security interests, advancing human rights to everything in between, there is no metric by which anything done toward Minsk can be said to have worked.

But even more striking has been the sheer sense of aggrieved befuddlement with the Trump administration for acknowledging this reality and seeking instead to repair ties with Belarus.

A recent New York Times report cited several experts who charged the White House with rushing to give away the farm to Minsk for nothing that they can put their finger on. But anyone who has reached this conclusion hasn’t looked very hard, or, as it were, not in the right places. The administration’s Belarus strategy has so far been remarkably effective and, if consistently pursued over the coming months, promises greater successes still.

Critics of the White House initiative to engage Belarus are keen to inveigh against the country’s authoritarianism, an argument curiously seldom deployed against U.S. cooperation with dozens of partners across the Middle East and Africa whose domestic politics hardly fits the liberal-democratic mold. One need not venture so far from Europe to happen upon the glaring inconsistencies of a “values-based” approach to Belarus. Azerbaijan is hardly any more aligned with the Western liberal-democratic model than Belarus, yet the very same European champions of democratization in Minsk have not the slightest qualms about striking deals with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku.

European leaders could respond, with full justification, that concrete interests are served by maintaining good relations with Azerbaijan, but the same has always been true when it comes to Belarus’ importance in Eastern European security issues. Even within a narrowly selective democratization framework, it’s been well established that the only way to advance a substantive dialogue on civil society with Belarus is through engagement, whereas punishment and isolation drives Belarus away from the West and thereby produces the opposite effect.

There is no government on either side of the Atlantic that does not accept, even if tacitly or grudgingly, the basic diplomatic principle that it is necessary to engage countries that differ from the West — itself far from a monolith — in their norms, values, and institutions. On what basis, then, is Belarus one of the few to be held to another standard? European leaders would counter that Belarus is different because it provided passage and logistical support to Russian troops in the opening stages of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This argument shifts the debate from values back to security, which is where it should have always been.

The Europeans are quite correct that there are legitimate concerns stemming from what scholars have called the “Belarusian balcony,” or Belarus’ capacity to act as a staging ground for hybrid attacks or a full-scale confrontation between NATO and Russia. Such concerns are felt especially acutely by Belarus’ Western neighbors, Poland and Lithuania. But the best and only viable way to address these challenges is through sustained dialogue with Belarus, not by pushing for a change in government or punishing Minsk until it cuts ties with Moscow. The latter strategies were tried for the past five years and have been revealed as deeply counterproductive for reasons fully explained in the latest Quincy Institute brief on Belarus.

To the extent that the Europeans are interested in a stable Belarus-West relationship that reduces risks of escalatory spirals on NATO’s eastern flank, their current policy is akin to kicking in a wide open door. President Alexander Lukashenko has built his brand of “multi-vector” foreign policy precisely on the idea that Belarus’ sovereign interests are best advanced by hedging between Russia and the West not just to secure the best terms for itself but to assert itself as a regional stabilizer.

Minsk has long sought positive relations with the West as the only possible counterweight to what would otherwise be its one-sided dependence on Russia. Lest this be dismissed as an exotic arrangement, consider that the precedent for this style of hedging was set by NATO members themselves.

Turkish President Recep Erdoğan and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, for instance, have developed their own nuanced relationships with competitors, including Russia and China. These governments have layered their national interests on top of NATO’s overall priorities in ways that are not always complementary but are nonetheless accepted as part of their sovereign foreign policy decisions. There is no reason why Belarus, a Russian military ally, cannot engage in similar hedging behavior in its dealings with the West.

The White House, contrary to many skeptics’ claims, is not trying to conjure a diplomatic opening ex nihilo. Rather, it is exploiting a window for substantive diplomacy that has existed for decades. That window is premised on the crucial understanding, lacking under previous administrations, that severing Belarus’ tight-knit military, economic, and diplomatic ties to Russia is not just unviable but unnecessary. Lukashenko was well positioned to provide a backchannel for the kinds of signaling and trial balloons that paved the way for the Alaska summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin in August. The White House rightly perceives that Minsk, beyond the POW exchanges and other services it is rendering now, has — by dint of geography if nothing else — a major postwar role to play in supporting a peace deal.

American interests toward Belarus extend beyond finding additional ways to advance the Ukraine peace process. The White House cannot conclusively accomplish its goal of retrenching away from Europe and prioritizing other theaters while NATO’s eastern flank remains a powder keg. Progress on a U.S.-led normalization track with Belarus can set the stage for a much-needed dialogue between Minsk and its Western neighbors building into a new set of security agreements.

This understanding can eventually be formalized into a binding commitment by Belarus not to enable, facilitate, or engage in aggression against any of its neighbors, something Minsk has consistently averred it has no interest in, as part of a normalization deal. An agreement along these lines does not violate any of Belarus’ treaty obligations to Moscow, which are purely defensive in nature, and carries positive deescalatory spillover effects for long-term deconfliction and confidence building between Russia and NATO.

If carried to its conclusion, the U.S.-Belarus track can be a template for a model of low-risk, low-cost American regional engagement that strikes a sustainable balance between U.S. ends and means. It would, in its novelty and boldness, amount to something that can be called a Trump Doctrine for NATO’s eastern flank.

By Lucy Komisar, The Realist Review, 10/14/25

Lucy Komisar is an investigative journalist based in New York. She won the Gerald Loeb, National Press Club and other awards for her expose in the Miami Herald of Ponzi fraudster Allen Stanford. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and many other publications in the U.S. and Europe. Her website is https://thekomisarscoop.com/

A few days ago, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton replied to my question about Ukraine at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She and John Sullivan, who served as Ambassador to Russia under both Presidents Trump and Biden, revealed themselves to be either liars or so ignorant of reasons for the U.S. Ukraine war as to be utter fools. [The full video can be found here].

This was a fly-on-the-wall event where you get to hear the delusions of the people who shape US foreign policy. The CFR meeting was hosted by the Dean of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, Keren Yarhi-Milo, who talked about the biases commonly found among policymakers and the intelligence community when they try to understand the intentions of US adversaries. She spoke about mirror imaging, which is what happens when you think that the adversary thinks in exactly the same way that you do; she spoke about the inability to empathize, she spoke about other biases that lead us to misunderstand and misperceive the intentions of our adversaries. She said it happens in the United States, repeatedly. All important.

But then Keren Yarhi-Milo veered into arm-chair psychology, telling the audience that in her view, ”[if] you want to understand the Ukraine, the decision to invade Ukraine, what’s driving this, you have to really understand Putin’s psychology, and the reference point, and how it’s all about, in his mind, regaining the Soviet empire.” So she knows what is in Putin’s mind, though he has never said that!

At the event, Ambassador John Sullivan, who also served as Deputy Secretary of State under Trump, echoed Yarhi-Milo, asserting that “you have to really understand Putin’s psychology” when evaluating his policy in Ukraine. He said, “I once had a conversation with my then-boss Secretary Blinken. And we were talking about what Putin is like. And, you know, he’s often compared to a gangster. And I didn’t want to make an ethnic reference, or if I made one it would be one that would be from my own tribe. So I’m from South Boston. And I started talking about Whitey Bulger.”

Bulger was a mafioso, murderer and a crook. Is that how Sullivan really feels about the Boston Irish?

“And I mean, you’ve got to understand, you can’t understand Putin unless you really understand where he’s from, what he’s about. He’s a tough kid from Leningrad, right? And not understanding who—his sense of grievance, his sense of loss.” He adds: “He is committed to the proposition that the great geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century was the demise of the Soviet Union. …He doesn’t lament the demise of Soviet communism. He famously says, if you’re not nostalgic for how we lived in Soviet days you don’t have a heart, but if you want to return to Soviet communism you don’t have a brain. I mean, it’s hard to be the richest person in the world with a billion-dollar palace in Sochi.”

So, Putin is like the Bulgar of the American politics, not Russia?

In fact, there is no evidence that Putin is richest person in the world (that seems to be Elon Musk) and there is also no evidence of this palace. But who cares about evidence! And even his “you don’t have a brain” quote contradicts what Putin said! But who cares!

For once, Clinton got closer to the truth when she said, “… it’s been our experience, and certainly the research shows, that you introduce, through this over-personalization, volatility. And really, the volatility becomes a greater driver than your credibility, your ability to really read this person, to manage this person, to try to shape the events.” But she didn’t challenge Yarhi-Milo or Sullivan on Putin. And she certainly didn’t like me raising the point when I asked her question:

My name is Lucy Komisar. I’m a journalist.

I was very impressed with the Dean’s analysis of how one should look with empathy and look at the other side. And then I saw in the discussion of Russia absolutely the opposite. I didn’t hear anybody talk about Kissinger and Kennan talking about not moving NATO one inch to the east, the 2014 American-sponsored coup that threw out an elected Ukraine head of government because he was too pro-Russian, the new government bombing the Russian speakers for eight years.”

David Westin of Bloomberg News, serving as moderator, then broke in:

There’s a question here, right? I’m sorry, ma’am, is there a question in here? Is there a question? This is a speech. I’m sorry.

[Here I would note that my comment was way shorter than others were allowed to make without interruption. But then again, those didn’t challenge the speaker.]

After the unasked for interruption, I continued:

Let me finish. That the Soviet Union, anybody that wanted it—that talked about it being collapsed, that it was a tragedy, but anybody that wanted to have it come back had no brain. Why did you not talk about any of these facts? And instead of that do a lot of armchair psychologizing about Putin and his motives?.

Enter Hillary.

Secretary Clinton, clearly annoyed by my daring to question the prevailing wisdom she has dedicated her career to crafting and selling replied:

First of all—(applause—of course there was applause, this was the Council after all)—I reject the premise of your question. I think you have gone into a lot of misstatements. (More applause). I don’t agree at all about a lack of empathy and understanding. You know, both John and I have spent a lot of time with Putin trying to understand. And what we finally understood is that he wants to destroy the West and destroy the United States.

…And you may disagree with that. You may have a more benevolent view of what he did, invading—you know, first of all, making up Chechen war, invading Georgia, invading Ukraine twice, threatening his neighbors, being Assad’s air force. I could go on and on. So you have your view. I do not think it is the view supported by history. And certainly not the view of what we’re seeing today.

I would commend to you, if you’re willing to read it, a recent study out of the University of Munich talking about what if Putin could win. Because there’s no doubt, with his latest drone activity and what he’s trying to do to intimidate everybody from Poland to Romania to Denmark to Italy, he is sending a message that you had better back off from supporting Ukraine, a free and independent country that has every right to chart its own sovereign future—just like Poland did joining NATO, just like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania did joining NATO. Putin and Russia don’t have a veto over what free and independent nations can choose for themselves. It’s time he understood that and got over both his history and the greater history that has kept him imprisoned and kept Russia poor, an extractive commodity market that could do so much more on behalf of its own people. And you and I have a disagreement. (Yet more applause).

A few comments are in order.

I found Clinton’s remarks deeply misinformed, especially since it’s clear that it was Washington that started this new Cold War. As former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his 2014 memoir “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” that, “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick [Cheney] wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat.”

There is no time here to go into her nonsense about the drones (some of which are coming from Ukraine and Poland); the Russian invasion of Georgia which actually was a response to Georgian aggression; and the war in Ukraine which was clearly provoked after 8 years of Ukraine’s war on their own ethnic Russian citizens. Her remarks about Romania, Denmark, Italy: Any evidence? And if Russia is so poor how can it invade Europe? And how is it that its extractive market-based economy have a higher growth rate than the U.S. and Europe?

And then there is, given her record, the biggest question of all: Why would anyone believe (much less applaud) what Hillary has to say on these matters?

After Clinton’s diatribe, Westin, good establishment lackey that he is, added:

I will add only that I am so happy for the Council and for the United States of America where we can have this sort of discussion… There are a lot of places in the world we could not have had this sort of discussion, which is only beneficial.

Clinton replied, Absolutely.

Well.

Following Westin’s assertion that at the Council one could have this discussion, I was threatened by the Council director of meetings that I could be defenestrated (removed from membership) for asking my question. This is relevant in an era where from cancel-culture to deportations, free speech in the U.S. is under attack.

Here is her email:

Subject: 10/8 CFR Event
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2025 21:16:34 +0000
From: Nancy Bodurtha NBodurtha@cfr.org
To: LK@Dear Lucy:

Following your disregard of the moderator at last evening’s discussion with Secretary Clinton, Dean Yarhi-Milo, and Ambassador Sullivan, I write to remind you that CFR’s code of conduct is explicit in the expectation that members exhibit the highest levels of courtesy and respect toward speakers, moderators, staff, guests, and one another. CFR reserves the right to drop or suspend members for any conduct that is prejudicial to the best interests, reputation, and proper functioning of the organization.

Sincerely,
Nancy

Nancy D. Bodurtha
Vice President, Meetings and Membership
Council on Foreign Relations
58 East 68th Street, New York, New York 10065
tel 212.434.9466
nbodurtha@cfr.org www.cfr.org

Here is my response:

Following my remarks, Westin said: “I am so happy for the Council and the United States of America where we can have this sort of discussion. There are a lot of places in the world where we could not have had this sort of discussion, which is only beneficial.”

I guess you don’t agree. Should I ask him if my question was “prejudicial to the best interests, reputation, and proper functioning of the organization”? Of course, there are countries where questions like mine would not be allowed. Was your message to me directed by Mike Froman or your own idea? BTW, NOBODY intimidates me!

—and—

The best interest of the Council is to promote diversity of views and expression, not to try to shut down minority views.

Lucy Komisar

***

Council officials should inform Nancy Bodurtha that it is not appropriate to threaten journalist members for asking challenging questions of powerful political figures. I would add that it is actually hard to know if my views are those of the “minority” since CFR members have often thanked me for questions they did not raise themselves.

Intellinews, 11/7/25

Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold their positions in the eastern city of Pokrovsk and nearby Myrnohrad, where Russian troops are intensifying their offensive in what could become Ukraine’s most serious battlefield setback in months, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.

According to Bild, Ukrainian officers described the situation as “critical”, saying Russian forces had captured about 80% of Pokrovsk and were closing in on the remaining Ukrainian positions. “Putin is now throwing all his forces at this region. The situation is extremely dire,” one senior Ukrainian officer told the publication. “We’ve lost 80% of the city… The guys in Myrnohrad are in an even worse situation; they’re effectively surrounded.”

Military sources cited by Bild said between 300 and 1,000 Ukrainian troops remain encircled near Myrnohrad, struggling with limited supplies and evacuation options. Russian forces have reportedly broken into Pokrovsk’s city limits and are pushing to complete the encirclement, despite Kyiv’s official claims that Ukrainian units are holding their ground.

“The Ukrainians’ garrison surrounded in Myrnohrad now occupies about 42 sq km. In my estimation between 300-1000 Ukrainian troops remain in the pocket but the condition of these men is likely very poor considering the inability to get supply in or medevac out,” military blogger Ayden posted on X.

According to the report, Russia is also gaining the upper hand in the drone war. Ukraine has deployed a record number of drone units along this section of the front, but Russian forces have greater resources. Russian drones are reportedly patrolling Ukraine’s main supply routes, and, thanks to a larger number of long-range unmanned aircraft, are able to penetrate several kilometres deeper into Ukrainian territory. This allows them to “hunt Ukrainian drone operators with near impunity,” The Economist explained.

It remains unclear whether Russia can sustain this tempo of attacks. However, the anticipated collapse of the Pokrovsk defence suggests that Russian forces have found a formula that works, the publication said.

The battle for Pokrovsk — a strategic transport hub in the Donetsk region — has been raging for more than a year. Its loss would mark a major symbolic and tactical defeat for Ukraine, potentially opening the way for Russian advances deeper into Donbas and dealing a blow to Ukrainian morale ahead of winter.

Western analysts, including those writing for The Economist, note that Russia has gained a technological edge in drone warfare on this front, deploying greater numbers of long-range drones that can target Ukrainian logistics routes and operators.

A collapse in Pokrovsk’s defence could also have political repercussions, bolstering Moscow’s leverage in any future peace talks and testing US President Donald Trump’s stated ambitions to broker an end to the war, according to a BBC report.

Ukrainian officials have not confirmed the extent of territorial losses, but local reports suggest the situation on the ground remains fluid and extremely tense.

***

Russian commander details advances in key city of Kupyansk

RT, 11/8/25

Russian forces have advanced further in the battle for the encircled city of Kupyansk in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, according to the commander of an assault unit involved in the operation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that some 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been surrounded in Kupyansk and Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic. Kiev has not responded to Putin’s call for the blocked forces to surrender. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky continues to deny the dire situation on the ground.

In a video published by the Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday, the commander of the 121st Regiment of the 68th Motorized Rifle Division, call sign Lavrik, said that his unit “continues its mission to liberate the western part of Kupyansk from the Ukrainian military.”

On Friday, his troops took control of Lesya Ukrainka Street, with mopping up operations ongoing in three other nearby streets, he said.

At least ten Ukrainian soldiers who tried holding on to their positions in the area were eliminated, according to Lavrik. Kiev’s troops entrenched in a strip of forest on the southern outskirts of Kupyansk have also been struck, he added.

“We are moving forward. Our spirits are high,” the commander said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a separate statement on Saturday that its forces “continue to destroy the encircled enemy grouping” in Kupyansk.

Zelensky, who previously denied any encirclement and accused Moscow of exaggerating its progress on the battlefield, claimed on Thursday that Ukrainian troops had been able to advance by more than a kilometer within Kupyansk. He did not say where exactly the gains were made.

Kupyansk has been a major contested logistics hub in the conflict’s northeastern front. Russian forces claimed partial control of the city in September, publishing a video of its servicemen in the center near the administration building, stadium, and TV tower.

Lavrik said on Thursday that he expects the full capture of Kupyansk by the Russian military within a week.

By Ted Galen Carpenter, The American Conservative, 10/21/25

An especially damaging example of Washington’s lack of strategic empathy or even basic consideration regarding another major country has been its belligerent display of power and contempt toward Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Most analysts who examine the onset of this “second cold war” have concentrated on the rising Russian–Western tensions over Ukraine, especially since that country’s U.S.-backed Maidan Revolution in 2014.  

The focus on Ukraine during the post-2014 period is understandable, given that a full-scale proxy war between NATO and Russia over Ukraine’s geopolitical status is now taking place and alarming threats are being hurled from various capitals. But the deterioration of relations with Moscow on the part of the United States and its key European allies began long before 2014 and has involved issues not directly related to Ukraine. Moreover, policymakers in Washington deserve most of the blame for the onset of the second cold war, an outcome that is doubly tragic because it was so unnecessary. 

Moscow’s acceptance not only of Germany’s reunification but of a united Germany’s membership in NATO signaled the potential for an entirely new era in Russian–Western relations. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance confirmed the Kremlin’s new, much less aggressive political and security orientation. Any lingering doubt about the possibility of warmer relations should have vanished at the end of 1991, when the USSR itself dissolved and a noncommunist Russia became the principal successor state.

Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in both George W. Bush’s administration and Barack Obama’s administration, candidly describes in his 2014 book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, some of the serious U.S. policy missteps. Gates recalled that in one of his early reports to Bush, “I shared with him my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and then in the dissolution of the Soviet Union….” In an even more candid comment, Gates added: “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after Bush 41 [George H. W. Bush] left office in 1993.”

Saying the bilateral relationship had been “mismanaged” is putting matters gently. Indeed, even during the elder Bush’s tenure, hawkish elements within the U.S. policy hierarchy worked hard to sabotage a Western rapprochement with Russia. The elder Bush’s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, suggested that the United States not be content with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but work to fragment Russia. Fortunately, the president and some other key advisers, most notably Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, opposed such an openly confrontational approach. Instead, they soothed Moscow and led Kremlin leaders to believe that Washington would not make any move to expand NATO beyond the eastern border of a united Germany. How sincere they were about easing Moscow’s security concerns remains uncertain to this day.

In any case, President Bill Clinton’s administration adopted a noticeably less accommodating stance toward Russia. This phase of Washington’s Russia policy was characterized by a lack of strategic empathy and tone deafness. Key policymakers, such as Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, and Czech-born U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, were thoroughly marinated in the Cold War era’s anti-Soviet conventional wisdom. They transferred their ingrained hostility toward the USSR to a newly democratic Russia with scarcely any hesitation.

Albright and her supporters were exceptionally receptive to requests from anti-Russia figures in Poland, the Baltic republics, and other Eastern European countries to join NATO—especially after she became Secretary of State in 1997. It was hardly a secret that Boris Yeltsin’s administration (and most other Russians) would regard NATO expansion into Central and Eastern Europe as an extremely hostile act. Indeed, Yeltsin warned Clinton about the danger of a negative reaction from both his country’s population and political elite during a private summit discussion.  

Instead of heeding Yeltsin’s warning, Clinton submitted a treaty to the U.S. Senate approving the addition of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to the alliance. NATO expansion was underway. Meanwhile, Washington and its European allies also were beating up on Serbia, Moscow’s principal remaining political ally in Eastern Europe. As former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock points out, Russian public opinion shifted from being strongly favorable toward the United States to being strongly hostile during the 1990s because of such actions.

Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, endorsed subsequent phases of NATO expansion, ultimately bringing the rest of the former Warsaw Pact countries into a U.S.-led, blatantly anti-Russia military alliance. There were other, more mundane military measures that also antagonized Moscow. Gates specifically stated that “U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries” constituted a “needless provocation.” Indeed, the “rotations” soon were so continuous as to constitute de facto permanent U.S. garrisons in those two countries—something that U.S. officials had repeatedly assured Moscow informally was not Washington’s intention.

Not content with the level of provocation that the multiple rounds of NATO expansion had caused by incorporating former Warsaw Pact members and establishing an ongoing U.S. military presence in those new Eastern European members, Bush then proposed to offer Georgia and Ukraine membership in NATO. By that time, though, Moscow’s objections to U.S. policy were becoming loud and emphatic. Even some longtime key U.S. allies, most notably France and Germany, balked at adding corrupt and politically volatile Georgia to NATO. They also argued that it was at the very least premature to suggest bringing Ukraine into the fold. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2007 address to the Munich Security Conference should have made it quite clear that the Kremlin would not tolerate NATO membership for either Georgia or Ukraine. 

Moscow then exploited a clumsy bid in August 2008 by Washington’s Georgian client regime to suppress the de facto independence of two secessionist entities: South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia responded to Georgia’s ill-advised military offensive by sending Russian troops pouring into that country. The Kremlin’s action was a milestone confirming that Moscow would no longer passively accept further NATO expansion. Putin’s use of force in Georgia should have made it clear to all concerned that his warnings were not a bluff. 

Instead, the United States and its NATO allies continued to ignore or dismiss such indicators. Recklessly, they next proceeded to assist anti-Russia factions in Ukraine to overthrow the elected, pro-Russia government in Kiev and install an obedient pro-NATO replacement. Russia responded by seizing the strategically crucial Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and supporting separatist Russian speaking populations in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Moscow also sent a modest contingent of its own troops into the Donbas to back the secessionist factions. The Western powers embraced an escalatory strategy of their own, both by imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia and by supporting Kiev’s increasingly brutal crackdown on the Donbas rebels. 

Russian–Western relations gradually but inexorably deteriorated thereafter and then utterly plunged in February 2022 when Russia expanded its invasion of Ukraine, while NATO members began to give huge quantities of military hardware and economic aid to Kiev. The confrontation between Russia and NATO took the form of a proxy war with disturbing potential for escalation into a direct conflict, making the second cold war even more dangerous and volatile than the original. 

Examining the early stages of the West’s post-Cold War confrontation with Russia underscores how easily it could have been—and should have been—avoided. Policymakers in the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations deserve history’s harshest judgement for sheer ineptitude in the arena of foreign affairs. [Not sure why the Biden administration was not included in this list for dismissing Russia’s last ditch attempt at avoiding war by requesting negotiation with Washington and NATO on Russia’s legitimate security concerns in December of 2021. – Natylie]