By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 3/13/26

DAY 12: Things seemed to be settling down a little bit as the fog of war becomes a little thinner. As we were writing yesterday the permits-for-passage system is expanding pretty quickly. In addition to India, Tehran has granted a permit to Bangladesh and already 70% of India’s imports are bypassing the Straits of Hormuz.

Oil traffic through the streets used to be 20mn barrels a day however from our calculations it appears that 6.5mn barrels a day is getting out via the westward pipelines and Iran itself is exporting at least 1.5mn barrels a day. The supply coming out of the gulf is down heavily but at least half of the pre-war levels of exports are reaching the market.

The markets have calmed and are taking a more realistic perspective on the conflict. Despite the IEA suggestion to release the largest amount of oil additives from reserves the price of oil rose above $100 again as the IRGC target oil tankers Our top story is Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei made his first public statements yesterday – we still haven’t seen or heard from him personally as all that was issued was a written statement – that calls for domestic unity and warned of further escalation if the US and Israel do not back off.

Traders are also cutting through Trump’s bluster. The failure to open the Straits of Hormuz and the inability of the US Navy to escort tankers means that expectations that this war will be over in a month are fading fast. The forecast for $150 oil is becoming mainstream.

As I argued yesterday, I think Trump has already painted himself into a corner with the need to end this war by the end of the month. That clearly isn’t going to happen. Terrain issued a three-point list of demands on March12 which includes an American withdrawal, the payment of reparations and security guarantees that Israel will never attack Iran again. As the month wears on surely the Trump administration will become increasingly desperate as it realizes it’s wandered into a cul-de-sac and caused what is now being called the “biggest energy crisis ever.” In separate news, I also took a look at the debacle surrounding the release of the mooted €90bn EU loan to Ukraine. At the start this was hailed as a major success as it provides most of the funding Kyiv needs to continue the war for the next two years. However, thanks to the row with Hungary over oil pipelines, the money has not been released. Moreover, looks increasingly likely not to happen at all.

The EU loan was already the second line of defence after the preferred solution to confiscate Russia’s frozen $300bn of reserves failed in December.

Now it looks like this second line of defence is also going to collapse. The Nordic countries are suggesting to go to the third line which is bilateral $30bn loans.

No one wanted to use this option because it comes out of the national budget and is taxpayers money. Moreover, it only funds Ukraine through to September so the EU plan A is “cross your fingers and hope Orban loses” in the Hungarian general elections in April.

At the moment, Kyiv is living hand to mouth. The IMF just signed off on its $8.1bn a new 48-month $8.1bn Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and immediately released $1.5bn in the first tranche but Ukraine is back in the position of facing a macroeconomic collapse as soon as April if this mess is not sorted out before then.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is sounding increasingly desperate and frustrated. He’s taken to calling out his EU partners for failing to come up with the needed support. He’s done an incredible job, but Ukraine simply doesn’t have the cash to continue without help.

Russia has earned somewhere between $2bn and $6bn since the war started in excess oil revenues. That’s going to help but the energy crisis will need to go on for six months to make a real impact on the Russian budget.

The Ministry of Finance is in the process of adjusting this year’s budget and is planning for the worst. MinFin is calling for 10% spending cuts. The macro team running Russia is amongst the most prudent and conservative in the world. It has done an amazing job of keeping the economy on track despite the massive shocks and distortions. This crisis has only played to Putin’s advantage just when he needed it most. It will significantly ease the economic pressure on Russia’s economy and also starve Ukraine of essential ammunition at a time when the battle for Donbas is raging. Ukraine has practically run out of Patriot interceptor missiles and its skies are open.

Based on battlefield reports it appears that Putin has wound down the assault as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has been retaking territory. However, given the peace negotiations are on hold for the meantime I think Putin is just taking his foot off the pedal because advances and assaults are part of his negotiating mechanisms not a military goal per se. If there are no talks then there’s no need to throw a lot of soldiers into the meat grinder. Putin doesn’t intend to take the Donbas by force. He only winds up the assaults when they’re about to sit down with the Ukrainians in some nice hotel somewhere.

By Glenn Diesen, Substack, 2/24/26

Thank you for the invitation, it is a great privilege to speak here today. I want to address how the conflict in Ukraine takes place on both the battlefield and in the information space, and why we should be concerned about the media manipulating narratives and demonising Russia as the adversary.

Some of the most insightful literature about political propaganda comes from Walter Lippmann following his work for the US government during the First World War. Lippmann recognised that liberal democracies tended to present conflicts as a struggle between good and evil, to mobilise public support for war. The great risk, according to Lippman, was that once the public believed the adversary was pure evil – then the public would also reject any workable peace. Because, in a struggle between good and evil, compromise is appeasement, and peace demands war as the good must defeat the evil.

This is deeply problematic because the point of departure in international security is the recognition of the security competition, as efforts by one country to enhance its security can diminish the security of others. The first step toward a common peace is therefore to place ourselves in the shoes of our opponents and recognise mutual security concerns.

However, in a struggle between good and evil, even understanding the opponent becomes treasonous. We should therefore be terrified that our political leaders and media no longer even discuss the security concerns of adversaries. Those attempting to see the world from the other side are simply denounced as “Putinists”, “Panda-huggers” or “Ayatollah-apologists”. If the generations before us had this level of maturity, it is highly unlikely that we would have survived the Cold War.

It is evident that the media does not always report on objective reality. Convinced that they are fighting the good fight, the media socially constructs its own reality. For example, recognising the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces threatens to reduce public support for the war effort. Similarly, recognising that sanctions do not work threatens to reduce public support for sanctions. So, the media ignores reality and stays loyal to the narratives to ensure that the public is committed to the conflict, but (as Lippmann noted) thereby also removes all pathways toward a workable peace.

Russia must play a dual role in our media. It is both hopelessly backwards and weak, yet also an overwhelmingly powerful threat to West. We are told that Russia is unsuccessful in Ukraine, yet it can conquer Europe if not stopped. This communicates to the Western public that the adversary is very dangerous, yet also reassures the public that Russia can easily be defeated if we just keep the war going.

The foundational narrative in the media has been the “unprovoked invasion” by Russia

This implies that Russia is an expansionist and imperialist power, as opposed to responding to legitimate security threats. There is no debate about the narrative of an “unprovoked invasion” in the media as any challenge to this narrative is smeared and censored for allegedly “legitimising” the invasion.

The “unprovoked invasion” narrative is dangerous because it implies that any compromise is appeasement that rewards the aggressor which incentivises more aggression. Thus, we are told that peace demands supplying weapons to elevate the costs.

As with almost every other conflict after the Cold War, the media describes the opponent as another reincarnation of Hitler to remind the public that war is peace, and diplomacy is appeasement. As the former NATO Secretary General proclaimed: “Weapons are the path to peace”.

I say this is a dangerous narrative, because if this conflict was provoked, then we are escalating and getting directly involved in a war against the world’s largest nuclear power, which considers this to be an existential threat.

Since the 1990s, many leading diplomats warned about the consequences of expanding NATO. NATO expansion Western politicians, intelligence chiefs, ambassadors and other entailed cancelling agreements for a pan-European security architecture and instead redividing the continent, restarting the logic of the Cold War, and fighting in the shared neighbourhood over where to draw the new dividing lines.

(none other than) George Kennan stated in an interview in 1998 that NATO expansionism would start a new Cold War and he predicted: “Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are —but this is just wrong”. However, the media cannot recognise the obvious, that NATO expansion provoked this conflict, BECAUSE it risks legitimising Russia’s military actions.

NATO countries crossed the ultimate red line by pulling Ukraine into the NATO orbit and developing it into a frontline state against Russia. Angela Merkel once recognised that offering Ukraine a membership action plan would be interpreted by Moscow as a “declaration of war”. The former British ambassador to Russia, Roderic Lyne, said the following about pulling Ukraine into NATO: “It was stupid on every level at that time. If you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it”. CIA Director William Burns, had also argued that attempting to pull Ukraine into NATO would likely trigger a Russian military intervention, which Burns noted was something Russia would not want to do. This seems like excellent definitions of the word “provoked”.

Yet, in February 2014, NATO countries backed a coup to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit. Our media nonetheless sold the coup as a “democratic revolution” even though Yanukovych was elected in a free and fair election, his removal and even the Maidan RIOTS did not have a majority support among Ukrainians, and it violated the Ukrainian constitution.

For a brief moment, in 2014, the Western media reported that the new authorities in Kiev were attacking Donbas and killing civilians who rejected the legitimacy of the coup. CNN even questioned if the people of Donbas would ever again allow Kiev to rule over them. Yet, soon thereafter, full media conformity was implemented and the resistance in Donbas was portrayed as merely a Russian operation – opposing Ukraine’s democratisation.

We have now learned that on the first day after coup, American and British intelligence agencies set up a partnership with the new intelligence chief in Kiev to rebuild Ukrainian intelligence services from scratch as a proxy against Russia. Ukraine’s General Prosecutor argued that the US was running Ukraine as a fiefdom after the coup. Members of parliament were arrested and some stripped of their citizenship, the media was purged, the Russian language purged, and the Orthodox Church was purged. Civilians in Donbas were killed for year after year. Nationalists and Western-financed NGOs undermined the Minsk-2 peace agreement, and set clear “red lines” for Zelensky to not implement the peace mandate he received in 2019. A top advisor to the former president of France, argued that the signing of the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in November 2021 “convinced Russia that it must attack or be attacked”. Had Russia or China done any this in Mexico, we would surely have defined it as provocative. (yet we cannot recognise Russian security concerns – to solve the crisis)

To sell the story of a Russian war of conquest, the media from day one promoted the notion of a “full-scale invasion”, suggesting that Russia used its full military might to conquer Ukraine as opposed to forcing Ukraine to restore its neutrality.

For this reason, the media cannot inform the public that the low Russian troop levels and initial actions were completely inconsistent with conquest, they indicated the intention of keeping Ukraine out of NATO. The media cannot inform the public that on the first day of the invasion, Zelensky confirmed that they had been contacted by Moscow to discuss peace negotiations based on Ukraine not joining NATO – which Zelensky agreed to. The media cannot inform the public about how even Zelensky said in March 2022: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.”

The media cannot inform the public about the sabotage of the Istanbul peace negotiations, after which the Turkish Foreign Minister concluded: “I had the impression that there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.

Instead of discussing a European security architecture with the goal of mitigating the security competition and preventing Ukraine from being a battlefield in a redivided Europe, the media demonised Russia as pure evil and sold the story that even diplomacy should be rejected, even as hundreds of thousands of men died in the trenches.

The media pushed narratives of Ukraine winning, of Russian efforts to restore the Soviet Union, downplaying the losses of the Ukrainian army, ignoring the de-russification policies, and the brutal conscription of Ukrainian men. Even as Ukraine now faces disaster, and we could end up in a direct war, there is no willingness to recognise that Russia has legitimate security concerns. Instead, the media remains committed to the narrative of an evil Russian enemy, and the logical conclusion is thus further escalation rather than exploring paths to a workable peace.

If we want to understand why it has become near impossible to discuss peace, look toward the irresponsible and dangerous media coverage, and remember the warning of Walter Lippmann about simplifying complex conflicts into a fight between good and evil.

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YouTube link here.

By Gordon Hahn, Website, 3/2/26

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed on March 5^th that Russia made compromises in the agreement concluded at Anchorage between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. However, he did not reveal the nature of those compromises nor the issues on which they were made. At a roundtable of ambassadors, Lavrov seemed to be responding to elite and or general public criticism of the Kremlin’s insufficiently hard line in relation to the talks and/or the claim made by some that the Abu Dhabi-Geneva peace talks or process is a cover for unidentified aggressive Western or Ukrainian designs. As I explained in a previous article, the U.S.-Israeli use of negotiations apparently as a cover to lull Iran into complacency and then attack the country and indeed to ‘decapitate’ its leadership, would encourage suspicions in Russia that the West was doing the same with the Russians to one or extent to another. In fact, I noted that the Russians had already had a fully similar experience when, during the peace discussions with the U.S., Ukraine attacked President Putin’s Valdai residence with drones likely using CIA intelligence and other data to do so:

The Iranian War and Its Implications for Russia

Gordon M. Hahn·Mar 2

On February 28th U.S. President Donald Trump made the fateful decision to initiate war with Iran. The combined American-Israeli attacks led to the decapitation of the Islamic Republic and Iranian retaliatory strikes against U.S. bases across the region, hitting at eight Middle Eastern states. While the U.S. and Israeli are engaged in a short war of choice, Iran is engaged in an existential war and will make it as long as it needs to fight off the threat. Russia will enjoy some short-term gains from the Iranian crisis, but it has a strong interest and some levers to shape and to help end the conflict along with its chief ally, China. The war could spill out of control in untold, unimaginable ways. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has an interest in a regional or global war or the defeat of its strategic ally. They will support Teheran to the extent possible without provoking the eccentric, unpredictable American president, while seeking ways to end the war as soon as possible. The war threatens the US-Russian rapprochement and Ukrainian peace ostensibly sought by Trump.

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In particular Lavrov said: “At the moment, we see no reason to suspect that these negotiations are also a “cover,” since we are in direct contact with our American colleagues. But our political scientists, analysts, politicians, and members of parliament, who are not involved in this, by definition, closed process, are beginning to draw parallels and ask how these negotiations can end. They say that because of the actions of the United States, the “spirit of Anchorage” has been destroyed.” The Russian foreign minister went on to say: “The main thing in Anchorage was a concrete understanding reached on the basis of proposals made by President Donald Trump and his negotiating team. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly commented that we have accepted these proposals, including those aspects of these proposals that are already a serious compromise for us.” (https://mid.ru/ru/press_service/minister_speeches/2084269/).

In this way, Lavrov revealed that the Russians made compromises to agree to the Anchorage agreement proposed by the U.S. However, the nature or issues regarding the Russian compromises were left for us to guess. Over the months since Anchorage various media reports have reported that Moscow had dropped its demands for all the territory of Zaporozhe and Kherson oblasts in southern Ukraine and would settle with the withdrawal from and ceding of all of Donetsk Oblast. Luhansk is already under full Russian control. This revelation and the suspicions about Russian territorial compromises are unlikely to assuage those criticizing President Putin for: too soft an approach in his ‘special military operation’ (SMO); the careful tactics and resulting slow advancement of Russian troops; the unwillingness to destroy all the key decision-making centers in Kiev such as the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, the Defense Ministry, the SBU headquarters, the Office of the President building, the Verkhovna Rada parliament building; and the refusal to decapitate the Maidan regime that many Russian elites, including himself, regards as illegitimate and terrorist at least in its actions.

In a recent statement expressing his condolences to the Iranian people in the wake of U.S.-Israeli ‘decapitation’ of the Iranian regime by assassinating Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Putin characterized the attack as “a cynical violation of all the norms of human morality and international law” (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/79238). It is not unlikely that in composing this message he had in mind the criticism being leveled against him for refraining from issuing similarly heinous orders to his military and intelligence forces. Whatever the reason for Putin’s restraint in conducting the SMO – retention of the moral high ground or basic ‘human morality,’ a personal abhorrence of excessive violence and/or a desire to maintain the viability of international law either as a legal or political instrument for Russian foreign and security policy and practice – he is still unable to shake his reputation on the more hard line part of Russia’s political spectrum as being too soft when confronting sufficiently neofascist-infested Maidan Ukraine and dealing with a West that has repeatedly broken promises and agreements with Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Thus, the breaking of the ‘spirit of Anchorage’ is nothing new, but it does push Russian patience towards the breaking point. Given the numerous provocations from Kiev and its Western sponsors during the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War it is surprising that Putin has been able to remain so patient. Putin may have to toughen his line, but he is unlikely to toughen against the U.S. The Europeans are a far less dangerous target for a political or economic press that might assuage some of his critics.

There is also a cultural factor driving the political tectonics here. The historical legacy of the Great Patriotic War against Nazism and its deep imprint on Russian political and strategic culture makes the presently cautious warfighting under the SMO a culturally and thus politically risky gambit. Similarly, approach of accommodation of the West perceived as being adopted by him violates Russia’s security vigilance culture formed over many centuries of less than friendly Western (and others’) policies directed against Russia. On the other hand, the risks of a more aggressive war raise the prospect of public and elite opposition from the other end of the spectrum of calculus. A far greater number of ‘body bags’ returning home can provoke criticism for having begun the SMO in addition to that for the slow-attrit-then-advance tactics that some claim is prolonging the war and also increasing Russian casualties.

Some in the West assert, many hope that disgruntlement and grumbling in Moscow represents the threat of a coup should the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War drag out much longer. Economic collapse is said to be imminent, and some in Moscow would argue that requires an escalation to victory and an end to the SMO. One often astute observer recently ventured to say that if Putin receives Steven Witkoff in the Kremlin one more time ‘he will be out.’ I think matters are still quite a distance from crisis politics. The politics of war are always a hazardous affair, but Putin’s position in this respect remains relatively secure. There is no pre-coup situation in Moscow. This stands in sharp contrast to that of Putin’s main foe in the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy.

I tend to doubt – for both practical and moral reasons – that Putin will sharply escalate. Despite numerous escalations from the Ukrainian and Western side, he has resisted declaring war on Ukraine and undertaking an actual ‘full-scale invasion’ and the kinds of attacks that would be commensurate with one. For the rest of this year, Putin is unlikely to escalate or make any more compromises on Ukraine, assuming he made any at Anchorage. The agreement hatched there may be a dead letter. He will certainly continue talks with Washington on improving U.S.-Russian relations, despite the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, which will also continue to receive weapons and intelligence support from Moscow.

Putin has always been a cautious balancer, finding the golden mean between the extremes—for example: soft rather than hard authoritarianism; controlled rather than no elections, free speech, freedom of association; mixed economy rather than a state economy; coercive diplomacy instead of solely coercion or diplomacy; and the SMO instead of outright war and a ‘full-scale invasion’ (https://gordonhahn.com/2017/06/14/putin-the-balancer-containing-and-balancing-russias-multifarious-forces-through-soft-authoritarianism/ and https://gordonhahn.com/2015/11/24/putin-the-risk-taker/). He will likely do the same now. However, if pushed, Putin will have no compunctions about acting firmly in the face of risks, and he will have major domestic support if and when he does so.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 2/23/26

Russia’s special operation against NATO-backed Ukraine just entered its fifth year. The last three anniversaries were reflected upon here, here, and here, and keeping with tradition, the present piece will review what happened over the past year and forecast what might be come in the next one. Generally speaking, Russia now faces five geostrategic challenges that are expected to shape its approach towards the US-mediated peace talks with Ukraine and its grand strategy overall, namely:

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* NATO Influence Is Poised To Expand Along Russia’s Entire Southern Periphery

Last August’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) along Armenia’s southern Syunik Province has the dual function of a NATO military-logistics corridor through the South Caucasus to Central Asia. Spearheaded by member state Turkiye with allied Azerbaijan serving as the launchpad across the Caspian, TRIPP threatens to revolutionize Russia’s regional security situation for the worse if these threats aren’t contained, especially if it emboldens Kazakhstan to follow in Ukraine’s footsteps.

* The US Supports The Revival Of Poland’s Long-Lost Great Power Status

“September 2025 Was The Most Eventful Month For Poland Since The End Of Communism” for the 18 reasons enumerated in the preceding hyperlinked analysis, which set Poland up to play a central role in the US’ National Security Strategy for containing Russia after the Ukrainian Conflict ends. It already has the EU’s largest army, is located in the middle of pivotal military-logistics corridors, and is very eager to revive its long-lost Great Power status and attendant historical rivalry with Russia at Moscow’s expense.

* The EU Is Unprecedentedly Militarizing And Upgrading Its Military-Logistics

De facto EU leader “Germany Is Competing With Poland To Lead Russia’s Containment” in no small part through the nearly $100 billion in defense procurement projects that it approved last year alone. The EU as a whole is also militarizing too with the help of the €800 billion “ReArm Europe Plan”. To make matters even more concerning for Russia, the “military Schengen” for optimizing the dispatch of troops and equipment towards its borders continues apace, with the Baltic States newly committing to join this too.

* India Seems To Be Undergoing A US-Friendly Grand Strategic Recalibration

India began aligning with some of the US’ interests after their trade deal as explained here, which could eliminate tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Russian budgetary revenue if India does indeed reduce its import of Russian oil like the US claimed that it agreed to. The same goes for India possibly eschewing new big-ticket military-technical purposes from Russia too. This US-friendly grand strategic recalibration might also put more pressure on Russia’s top Chinese partner and therefore reshape Asian geopolitics.

* Poland Now Wants Nukes & Turkiye Might Soon Declare The Same Intent

The US’ decision to let the New START lapse risks a global nuclear arms race. Poland was emboldened to declare its nuclear intentions while RT published a detailed report about how Turkiye might go down this route too. Both are historical Russian rivals, and seeing as how Poland envisages carving out a sphere of influence in Central & Eastern Europe and Turkiye envisages one in Central Asia as was noted above, them obtaining nukes would pose a huge threat to Russia and raise the likelihood of its containment.

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The five geostrategic challenges confronting Russia in the fifth year of its special operation are formidable but not insurmountable. As it’s always done, Russia is expected to ensure its sovereignty, security, and thus its survival through the creative interplay between its political, military, intelligence, diplomatic, expert, and civil society communities. They might opt to cut a deal with the US over Ukraine so as to focus more on tackling these challenges, but not at any cost, ergo why that hasn’t yet happened.