Unknown drones recently flew in close proximity to Danish and Norwegian airports, prompting speculation among some that they were Russia’s delayed hybrid retaliation against NATO for backing Ukraine’s drone flights in proximity to Russia’s own airports over the past few years. No evidence has emerged in support of that hypothesis, but Zelensky still dishonestly passed off such claims as fact during his speech at the latest Warsaw Security Forum.
According to him, “there is growing evidence that Russia may have used tankers in the Baltic Sea to launch drones – the drones that caused major disruption in Northern Europe. If tankers used by Russia are serving as drone platforms, then such tankers should not be free to operate in the Baltic. This is de facto Russia’s military activity against European countries, so Europe has the right to close straits and sea routes to protect itself.”
His proposal for NATO to close the Danish Staits to Russian shipping on this pretext, which would amount to an illegal blockade that could thus legitimize offensive action by Russia in self-defense, was predictable given Ukraine’s and some of its patrons’ interest in escalating the bloc’s tensions with Russia. In fact, it might even be the case that this was the false flag that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service twicewarned could soon be staged by the UK and Ukraine, albeit ultimately taking a different form.
They assessed that those two might orchestrate potentially forthcoming provocations in the Baltic that would then be blamed on Russia in order to justify cracking down on its sanctioned energy trade that the West dramatically describes as being conducted by a “shadow fleet” transiting through that sea. While no US ship was targeted with Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes nor were such mines fished out of the Baltic, Scandinavia’s Russian drone scare still arguably fulfills the same role.
Skeptics might insist that Russia resorted to “plausibly deniable hybrid retaliation” against NATO, yet it’s illogical that Russia would risk anything that could justify the same escalation that Putin’s restraint has thus far avoided, the same goes for the earlier drone incident in Poland. Ditto that for the associated accusation that it violated Estonia’s maritime airspace. All these incidents were spun by the West as deliberate Russian provocations and preceded escalatory proposals misportrayed as “retaliation”.
The Polish and Estonian ones were exploited to get Trump to greenlight NATO downing Russian jets on the basis of them violating the bloc’s airspace, which might embolden some to attempt this on false pretexts, while the Scandinavian ones were exploited to call for closing the Danish Straits to its shipping. Both concern escalations in the Baltic, which could amount to an illegal blockade that obstructs the free movement of Russian planes and ships there, thus also placing unprecedented pressure on Kaliningrad.
This insight strongly suggests that Scandinavia’s Russian drone scare was indeed a false flag to justify cracking down on Russia’s “shadow fleet”, though it’s presently unclear whether any NATO members will cross the Rubicon by seriously making any such move like closing the Danish Straits to its shipping. In any case, Zelensky’s proposal proves that he’s trying to manipulate Trump into a disaster of epic proportions together with some of his like-minded NATO patrons, but hopefully Trump won’t fall for it.
“The Participants [the RF and NATO members] undertake not to create conditions or situations that might represent or be regarded as a threat to the national security of the other Participants.”
“The Participants exclude the deployment of medium- and shorter-range ground-based missiles in areas from which they are capable of hitting targets on the territory of other Participants.”
“The Participants that are member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall make commitments that exclude further NATO expansion, including the accession of Ukraine, as well as other states.”
“The Participants that are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization undertake to not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine, as well as other states of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia.”
Four days later, at a meeting with the Defense Ministry, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Moscow was prepared to take action to protect its key security interests and prevent US missile systems, which had been inching closer and closer to Russia’s borders, from being deployed to Ukraine:
If this infrastructure moves further, if US and NATO missiles appear in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be reduced to 7-10 minutes, and for hypersonic weapons no more than five. For us, this represents a most serious challenge to our security.
[…]
We have issued a proposal that would rule out further NATO expansion in an easterly direction, as well as the deployment of offensive weaponry in countries adjacent to us … We need long-term, legally binding guarantees.
[…]
In the case of the continuation of the clearly aggressive line of our Western colleagues, we will take adequate retaliatory military-technical measures, responding to unfriendly steps.
As promised, Russia took military-technical measures after NATO rejected the treaty.
In his February 24, 2022 address announcing the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, Putin explained that “[NATO’s] military presence in territories bordering on Russia, if we permit it to go ahead, will continue for decades to come, or maybe forever, creating an ever-mounting and totally unacceptable threat for Russia.” Military intervention was necessary in order to deter NATO from further eastward expansion, which would represent an existential threat to Moscow:
We cannot stay idle and passively observe these developments. This would be an absolutely irresponsible thing to do for us.
[…]
I reiterate: We are acting to defend ourselves from the threats created for us and from a worse peril than what is happening now.
Putin ended his address by promising that Russia would “respond immediately” to any outside attempts to interfere with the SMO. Any state or foreign actor caught trying to hinder Moscow from protecting its legitimate security interests in Ukraine would “face consequences … such as you have never seen in your entire history.”
In the nearly four years that have passed since Putin made these remarks, NATO has added two new members and turned Ukraine into a base of operations for daily attacks on Russian territory. The weapons used to carry out these attacks have been steadily increasing in range and lethality. Last month, Kiev received authorization from Washington to use US long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Commenting on these developments at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday, Putin said he was tempted to give Finland a very rude hand gesture for joining NATO, but did not want to offend the women in the audience.
He was similarly displeased about Kiev receiving approval from Washington to use US missiles, manned by US specialists, to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory. Such attacks would be perceived by Moscow as “a new stage of escalation” that would harm US-Russia relations.
“Would [US military specialists using long-range missiles deployed to Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia] pose damage to our relations, where we see light at the end of the tunnel? Of course,” Putin said.
Who could have imagined that Putin would be making such statements more than three and a half years after announcing the start of the SMO, promising historic consequences for anyone who intervened on the side of Ukraine? As it turns out, Russia’s prestigious Valdai Club—the same international forum that Putin spoke at yesterday—predicted this exact scenario.
In an article published in November 2021, three months before the launch of the SMO, Ivan Timofeev, program director for the Valdai Club, explored the probable outcomes of Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
Timofeev imagined a scenario in which Russian forces would strike Ukraine in several directions at once. With the help of uncontested air superiority, the Russian military would either encircle Ukrainian troops in the East, or force them to withdraw to Western Ukraine. Kiev would be declared the capital of a Russia-backed Ukraine, which would include the fully liberated Donbass:
The new state would be recognized by Russia … solving several historical problems at once. An immediate threat to the southwestern borders would be removed. Full control over the Sea of Azov and the land corridor to the Republic of Crimea would be ensured. Two Ukrainian states would appear on the map, one of which is “friendly and fraternal”.
A variation of this scenario involved taking full control of Ukraine, although Timofeev believed this would lead to a prolonged insurgency by Ukrainian nationalists.
Ultimately, Valdai’s program director concluded that military intervention in Ukraine would not resolve Moscow’s core security issues. Instead, a military operation aimed at deterring further NATO aggression would likely exacerbate preexisting problems:
Such a military conflict is unlikely to be ended by any clear agreement. Victory over the Ukrainian military will not lead to a quick peace. The war could develop into a long and sluggish confrontation, especially if part of the territory (for example, Western Ukraine) remains under the control of the Ukrainian military.
[T]he conflict will inevitably lead to a sharp change in the approach to providing Ukraine with modern models of weapons and military equipment. In the United States and in the West as a whole, the new situation will be considered an emergency, and all possible means will be used to equip the Ukrainian military. In this case, all possible conventional weapons will be supplied. Large-scale military aid of the West will drag out the conflict. […]
In other words, the costs of a possible war significantly outweigh the benefits … [A war] would not solve key security problems, while creating many new ones.
Unfortunately, Timofeev’s pessimistic assessment was far too optimistic.
Russia is not battling an insurgency in Lvov. After nearly four years of war, the Russian military is fighting for control of Pokrovsk, a town located in Donetsk Oblast. Assuming Pokrovsk is eventually taken, the Russian military will then have to turn its attention to Ukraine’s major strongholds in Donbass: Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka. Then it will be necessary to capture Zaporozhye and Kherson, capitals of Russian regions currently occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Then there is Kharkov. Then ….
In other words, there’s considerable work to be done if Moscow hopes to achieve, at the bare minimum, the worst case scenario in Ukraine as outlined by the Valdai Club.
The Ukrainian news-outlet Ukrainska Pravda has a new report about the state of the Ukrainian forces at the frontline. The Russian forces are winning the war bit by bit while the Ukrainian army is in constant retreat. The report is discussing several issues which prevent the Ukrainians from holding the line.
While most of UP’s pieces are published in Russian/Ukrainian and English this one has yet to receive a translation. Below summaries and excerpts of it (edited machine translation):
The most urgent need directly on the front line remains infantry. At the current stage of the war, when the work of heavy equipment is maximally complicated, the role of soldiers in the trenches increases significantly. When they are not enough, it is not easy to organize a defense.
Due to the lack of people, many units cannot hold their positions, fully repel Russian attacks, adequately rest and conduct the necessary rotation. As a result, field commanders are forced to choose priority areas, leaving other sectors less protected.
In consequence there is no longer a real frontline. The lack of infantry leads to gaps through which Russian forces can slip into the rear of the Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian mortar troops and drone pilots who are nominally stationed five kilometer behind the frontline suddenly find themselves in direct contact with enemy troops:
A consequence of the problem described above is that infantry positions are increasingly literally deserted. Therefore, the distance between neighboring positions can be 200-300 –, 500-700 –meters, and sometimes even a kilometer. … The formation of a huge number of holes between Ukrainian infantry positions and the penetration of these holes by the Russians deep into our defenses has formed another trend of the current stage of the war – the lack of a stable line of engagement. … Due to the lack of fighters on the first line, drone and mortar operators, who stand 3-5 kilometers from the front edge, are forced to become infantry. … In the worst cases, which UP is also aware of, the Russians even reach artillery positions. These are 10-15 kilometers from the contact line.
Over the last six month the Ukrainian army has changed its structure. Previously various brigades were attached to temporary operational commands (TUS,Tgrs) with each responsible for large parts of the frontline. The new model is based on a corp structure with several brigades assigned to a corp to serve under one permanent command. While the restructuring is officially finished most troops have yet to find their new home:
The key advantage of the transition of the Defense Forces to the corps system was called by supporters of the reform the emergence of stable management bodies. But this is exactly what has not happened so far, because there are still temporary TUS, Tgrs, etc. on the ground in one form or another.
Moreover, there are also questions about the transition to the implementation of tasks by corps exclusively in the designated areas of responsibility. In many sectors of the front, a full-fledged transition did not take place, while the General Staff already has plans to create even new structures, such as assault troops and troops of unmanned air defense systems as part of the air force.
In the context of a general shortage of personnel with the incomplete transition to the corps system, finding resources for new military formations will be quite problematic.
Despite having the just introduced a corp structure the newly created assault battalions were put under direct command of the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Syrski. Events in Ukraine recently took a look at those:
Undeterred by the total collapse of the Kursk operation in the spring of 2025, Syrsky remains fixated on the need for new offensives.
Now, the head of the army has created his own personal guard, totally willing to implement all his orders – the assault forces. The western-funded nationalist press has attacked Syrsky’s new project as ‘catastrophic’, claiming that the units involved have taken massive losses in the urge to demonstrate their loyalty to the commander-in-chief.
For whatever reason, these highly critical articles on the assault forces from the likes of BBC Ukraine and texty.org haven’t been translated to English.
Today we’ll take a look at what exactly these new assault forces are. It turns out that they are largely composed of units commanded by the fascist ‘Right Sector’. Syrsky chose these units because they unflinchingly took part in his Kursk adventure – in contrast to other commanders, who criticized Syrsky’s folly and were sacked as a result. …
The best general the Russians have, as Syrski is called by his critics, is also accused of micromanaging the fight at the frontline (edited machine translation):
In June 2025, Ukrayinska Pravda was the first to write about how Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky resorted to manual control of the front. Independently selects, and already removes, the corps commanders, decides which brigade and how much replenishment is being made, sets tasks for battalions, when they should be assigned by the brigade commander, and so on.
During these three months, the situation with the dependence of the front on the instructions of one person, according to the observations of Ukrayinska Pravda and the UP’s interlocutors in the Defense Forces, has only become more complicated.
At first, Syrsky began to regularly visit and “taxi” the actions of units on the Dobropolsky ledge, which is now being “cut off” by the defense forces. According to public references of the commander-in-chief himself, over the past 3.5 months, he went to meetings and meetings with local commanders as many as eight times.
The introduction of long range First-Person-View drones by Russia has cleared the typical rear of the frontline. Command and logistics had to move back further which makes their work more costly and ineffective:
Due to the activity of Russian aircraft and drones from about the end of spring – and early summer of this year, the support units of the Ukrainian army began to move away from the line-of-contact. … According to the decision of the Supreme Chief, all support units had to move 40-50 kilometers away from the contact line.
For logistics commanders, this decision means that with already limited resources – especially fuel-the logistics arm becomes longer and more complex.
“I used to spend 40 liters and a couple of hours to get a few tons of fuel. Now – 300 liters and almost a day,” – shares with UP one of the commanders of support.
The UP authors are pessimistic about possible changes:
[T]he military command at various levels turns a blind eye to fairly obvious problems within the Ukrainian army, and the presidential office, without which no solution in this country is complete, does not risk its ratings [..]
Meanwhile, the gaps between the infantry positions are getting bigger.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promoted Colonel Andriy Biletsky to the rank of Brigadier General. Biletsky has said the purpose of the Ukrainian right is to fight the “Semitic-led untermenschen [subhumans].”
“To confer the military rank of brigadier general on Colonel Andriy Yevhenovych Biletsky, commander of the 3rd Army Corps of the ‘East’ Operational Command of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” the presidential decree signed Wednesday said.
Biletsky is the commander of the Third Separate Assault Brigade and the founder of the Azov regiment. He is an outright white supremacist. “Ukrainians are part (and one of the largest and highest quality) of the European White Race. Ras-Creator of great civilization, the highest human achievements. The historical mission of our Nation, in this turning point, to lead and lead the White peoples of the whole world into the last crusade for its existence against the Semitic-led untermenschen,” he said in a 2007 speech.
The Third Separate Assadly Brigade webpage says it maintains “the same principles on which the legendary ‘Azov’ and the entire Azov movement are based. The foundation worldview principles of the Azovian units are Ukrainian-centrism, traditionalism, hierarchy and responsibility.”
Additionally, Zelensky awarded the Hero of Ukraine posthumously to Andriy Parubiy. Parubiy was assassinated in August. In 1991, he founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine that used the Nazi Wolfsangel as its logo.
Neo-Nazis, like Biletsky and Parubiy, gained power in Ukraine following the US-backed coup in 2014. Following the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, Parubiy rose to the position of speaker of the Parliament, and Biletsky founded the Azov Battalion.
