Russia Is Going to Do Something Really Stupid and Dangerous

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, September 24, 2026

 

Why would the Trump administration invite Vladimir Putin back onto American soil? “We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president, but with other world leaders,” Marco Rubio said of the White House’s offer to host Putin in Miami for this year’s G-20 summit. For its part, the Kremlin remains noncommittal.

 

The offer comes as the administration, at least when it comes to the war in Europe, is once again giving appeasement a try. The president is dispatching his all-purpose negotiating duo, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to Moscow to cajole Putin while its principals, including Trump himself, scold the Ukrainians for so effectively imposing pain and pressure on their invaders’ homeland. If only Ukraine would give up the highly defensible Donbas, Kushner muses publicly. Then we’d have peace in our time.

 

The last time the president welcomed the Russian despot to America, it went about as well as almost all bilateral summitry with Moscow’s representatives typically goes. Which is to say, poorly. Putin presented his unacceptable terms to the president — surely, his final territorial demands in Europe. But Europeans with some historical education, along with Trump’s more sensible advisers, persuaded the president to walk. And to Trump’s credit, he did. But “the spirit of Anchorage” has been invoked by the Russians ever since, mostly to hector America and the West for failing to live down to the Kremlin’s expectations.

 

More curiously, the invitation comes against the backdrop of Russian “grey zone” attacks on NATO members. Indications suggest that Moscow plans to do something even stupider and more reckless in the near future.

 

An alarming report published this week in the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo revealed that, according to what the CIA conveyed to Lithuanian intelligence, Moscow is preparing an ambitious attack on Western Europe. The U.S. has reportedly observed unusual container ship traffic emanating from Russia, and some suspect those containers could be loaded with small explosive suicide drones that would be deployed against targets in Spain, France, or Italy. Russia’s goal would be to destabilize these countries ahead of their respective elections next year, potentially activating indigenous “radical forces” in these countries that would pressure their government to abandon Kyiv.

 

This threat was reportedly relayed to Europe around the time CIA director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow, and the Continent is taking it seriously. “The nature of Russian aggression and threats in Europe is changing,” French President Emmanuel Macron said last week after he convened an emergency meeting of his Defense Council. “No one is safe.” The E.U.’s chief military adviser, General Seán Clancy, warned that Moscow’s “activity is now becoming almost ever-present” in Europe. “There is a low but growing risk that Russia will launch a limited military attack against one or several NATO countries bordering Russia,” the head of Danish intelligence, Thomas Ahrenkiel, said this week. Indeed, even though the threat from Russia probably doesn’t rise to the level of a ground operation inside NATO territory, the prospect cannot be ruled out.

 

That’s the sequence of events that you talk yourself into when little is going your way, and you need to radically revise the status quo, even at the risk of inviting unpredictable consequences. Russia is heedless of the potential for miscalculation — for one of its attacks to require a response from the NATO alliance, hazarding a cascading cycle of violence. Indeed, the Kremlin’s appetite for risk is only growing.

 

Russian forces are executing strikes on passenger trains near the Polish border with the aim of intimidating the high-ranking Western officials who transit into Ukraine via Poland. Acts of sabotage in Europe believed to be directed by Russia have become a near-daily occurrence. Russian assets have penetrated deep into European airspace, likely to test the Atlantic Alliance’s response to a coordinated incursion. The German government believes the Kremlin was behind an attempted explosive drone attack on the Leipzig/Halle Airport last month — an operation nearly as brazen as the 2024 plot in which Russian operatives allegedly attempted to plant explosive devices on U.S.-bound cargo planes designed to explode over the Atlantic Ocean. This month, the Justice Department implicated Russians with connections to Moscow’s domestic and military security services in a scheme to recruit Americans to conduct acts of sabotage and even assassinations on the Kremlin’s behalf.

 

In response to all this, the White House is extending a hand of friendship in Putin’s direction. Clearly, the Trump administration is as bereft of innovative solutions to the crisis in Europe as Putin seems to be. But Moscow is likely to interpret the administration’s overture as a signal that its pressure campaign is working. That will only embolden the Kremlin, which should be the opposite of the West’s intentions.

 

Perhaps the administration wants to talk while the time for talking isn’t yet behind us. It seems, however, that they’re mostly talking to themselves. Vladimir Putin isn’t listening.

Don Jr.’s Wedding Trap

By Shane Harris

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

If you were a Russian intelligence operative trying to penetrate the American president’s inner circle, you could hardly have done much better than Umar Kremlev did last May. Kremlev, a boxing promoter from outside Moscow, rented a private island in the Bahamas for Donald Trump Jr. to host his uber-luxe wedding celebration. Four of President Trump’s children, along with their spouses, were sequestered with Kremlev and a gaggle of other Russians during a party that went on for three days, according to an investigation by ProPublica published last week.

 

The guest list of family and close friends included the president’s two sons-in-law: Jared Kushner, one of his key interlocutors with Moscow, and Michael Boulos, whose father is a senior adviser to Trump on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. A VIP party like that is what spies call a target-rich environment. “It’s an intelligence service’s dream to have so much time with these people, when alcohol is flowing and people’s guards are down,” Marc Polymeropoulos, who used to oversee the CIA’s clandestine operations in Russia, told me. When foreign agents gain access to such a setting, he said, “they are building relationships, gaining assessment data on targets, and perhaps even setting future contact, all precisely part of the recruitment cycle.”

 

Kremlev shelled out for one night on a private island, as well as a fireworks display, which together can cost upwards of $170,000—a pittance, given the potential payoff. The president, who didn’t attend the wedding, defended the gift, claiming that he, too, had thrown wedding parties for people. “With all of that being said, I understand that Don’s paid him back,” Trump told reporters on Friday, although he didn’t say how much money his son planned to reimburse the Russian. The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia of California, has started an investigation. And yesterday, a Republican senator, John Curtis of Utah, called on his colleagues to investigate the wedding reception and issue a subpoena for Trump Jr.

 

Kremlev, who did not respond to a request for comment, has been sanctioned by Ukraine but not by the United States. He owes his position, and apparently his wealth, to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Current and former intelligence officials in the U.S. and Europe who have spent their career working against Russia told me that his gift to Trump’s son should be viewed as the continuation of a long-standing state effort to influence and potentially compromise people in the president’s orbit.

 

Kremlev, born Umar Lutfulloyev, grew up in a suburb of Moscow and has family roots in Tajikistan. After a few criminal convictions for extortion and battery in the early 2000s, he got into the boxing business. At age 28, Lutfulloyev changed his name to Kremlev, which essentially translates to “the Kremlin’s man.” Around this time, he joined the Night Wolves—ostensibly a patriotic biker gang but really more of a paramilitary and propaganda arm for Putin. The Russian president has previously mounted a bike and joined the gang on rides in the Crimean peninsula, an occupied territory of Ukraine. In 2014, following Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Night Wolves, whose members allegedly “conducted intimidation and criminal activities” in the country.

 

It was in the Night Wolves that Kremlev met Alexey Rubezhnoy, a former member of the FSB, Russia’s main security agency. Rubezhnoy is the current head of the Presidential Security Service, in charge of physical protection for the famously paranoid Russian president. According to Proekt, an independent Russian media outlet that specializes in investigative reporting, Rubezhnoy put Kremlev in position to take over the International Boxing Association, which now serves as an instrument of Russian soft power and a focal point for the Russian government’s rhetorical attacks on LGBTQ people and transgender athletes. Rubenzhnoy also lobbied Putin to nationalize a chain of car dealerships and for Kremlev to lead the company, Proekt reported. The 43-year-old Kremlev is frequently described in the press as an oligarch, a broadly applied term that, if it means anything these days, describes someone who owes his fortunes to the leader of Russia.

 

Kremlev is just the kind of person the CIA would want to recruit because of his proximity to Putin and Russian state leadership. Yet there he was, ingratiating himself with Trump’s eldest son, who is also a close ally of Vice President Vance and one of the most influential figures on the American political right.

 

“Espionage is a people business, and access is its holy grail,” John Sipher, a former CIA officer who worked in Moscow and spent his career focused on Russia, told me. Trump Jr.’s Russian guests, he said, had “myriad opportunities for cultivation and exploitation. A shared contact, stray comment, or a business proposition or follow-up meeting can provide information and access that may be leveraged in countless ways.” From the point of view of the U.S. government, which tries to prevent compromising encounters with politically influential Americans, “this is the stuff of counterintelligence nightmares,” Sipher said.

 

***

 

Kremlev’s past and his current connections are well known to the U.S. government and its partners. The Ukrainian government has sanctioned him, citing his close relationship with Putin, Rubezhnoy, and Russian security agencies. Kremlev is also heavily involved with Healthy Fatherland, an organization run by his wife’s twin sister, which Ukraine has sanctioned for its alleged role in the kidnapping and “rehabilitation” of Ukrainian children. A Ukrainian intelligence official told me that its domestic security agency has a thick file on Kremlev. In 2021, for reasons that remain unexplained, U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied a waiver for Kremlev to enter the United States.

 

Before Kremlev took over the boxing association, it was run by Gafur Rakhimov, an Uzbek businessman whom the Treasury Department publicly identified as an organized crime figure in 2012 because of his alleged membership in Brother’s Circle, a Russian criminal network involved in international heroin trafficking. Treasury sanctioned him again five years later for providing material support to another notorious group, Thieves in Law, which originated in Stalinist prison camps in the Soviet Union and is akin to the Italian Cosa Nostra. Rakhimov’s career is a manifestation of the blurry lines in Russia between organized crime, international sports, and the state security apparatus.

 

The U.S. designations, as well as concerns about the International Boxing Association’s ties to the Russian banking system, prompted the International Olympic Committee to block the association from organizing the sport at the 2020 Tokyo Games. In 2023, USA Boxing withdrew from the IBA, which Kremlev now ran, citing his governmental ties as well as the association’s financial dependency on sanctioned companies. Gazprom, a Russian state-owned energy corporation, had been its largest sponsor.

 

What Trump Jr. knew about Kremlev’s history is still unknown. When reporters pressed his father, the president suggested that his son “didn’t do a background check.” Within the West Wing, another tough headline elicited some groans and eye rolls, as well as quiet acknowledgment that the ProPublica report would, yet again, spark questions about the relationship between Russia and the Trumps.

 

For an administration that is generally neither moved nor shamed by questions about ethics, the wedding party triggered a response, albeit a mild one. “I mean, just how dumb can you be?” one outside Trump adviser asked my colleague Jonathan Lemire, on the condition of anonymity so as to not alienate the president's family. One Republican who has been disappointed with the president’s consistent deference to Putin at the expense of Ukraine grimly noted that the wedding had been a savvy play by Moscow to further engender goodwill with the first family. They took this as proof, if any more was needed, that Trump would likely never back Kyiv in the war.

 

Maybe Trump Jr. didn’t know much about Kremlev. But Russians have long seen Trump Jr. as a conduit to his father, and they have tried to exploit him for political and business purposes.

 

Back in 2006, Trump Jr. and his sister Ivanka went to Moscow to cultivate potential business contacts. During that trip, a real-estate developer reportedly arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s chair during a tour of the Kremlin. By his own account, Trump Jr. traveled to Russia half a dozen times over the next year and a half. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” he said at a real-estate conference in New York in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” which he also called a “scary” place to do business.

 

In 2013, Trump Jr. was the main negotiator on behalf of his father’s company with Russian figures who wanted to construct a Trump-branded tower in Moscow. The deal didn’t materialize, but it laid a foundation for future contacts between the presidential campaign and the Russians that emerged three years later. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump Jr. took a meeting in Trump Tower in New York with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who offered incriminating material about Hillary Clinton. When Trump Jr. learned that the Russian might give him dirt on his dad’s opponent, he memorably told an associate, “I love it.” But Veselnitskaya didn’t deliver, and the meeting, in retrospect, looks more like an effort to bring the future president around to pro-Kremlin foreign policy.

 

When exactly Trump Jr. and Kremlev first met is unclear. The Russian claims it was a couple of years ago. What’s known for sure is that they appeared together on a panel last September at an IBA event in Istanbul. Trump Jr. criticized transgender women and recalled his childhood love of boxing. An appearance onstage by the president’s son and a Russian who’d been sanctioned by Ukraine would not have escaped Moscow’s attention. It was the beginning of an apparent friendship that led to Kremlev subsidizing Trump Jr.’s wedding fete less than a year later.

 

***

 

Kremlev wasn’t the only Russian heavyweight at the party. He was joined by Alexander Lagutin, whom ProPublica described as a businessperson who served in top roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Also at the wedding party was Elena Sobol, whom ProPublica called Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA. Sobol didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Lagutin couldn’t be reached.

 

The attendance of what ProPublica described as a “large contingent” of Russians at a wedding party of only about 50 people was conspicuous. “‘What are they doing here?’ one person recalled thinking,” according to the news organization. After the story was published, Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina, acknowledged Kremlev’s largesse, describing it in a social-media post as “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend.” “It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from,” they wrote. “Friendship doesn’t require a political motive.”

 

Maybe not. But former intelligence officers told me they believe that it’s no mystery why Kremlev was willing to foot the bill for his friends’ big day. “Money motivates—and that generosity can be a means of buying access, cultivating obligation, stealing secrets, and securing influence,” Steven Cash, a former CIA officer who was also the director of the Counterintelligence Program at the Department of Homeland Security, told me. “When the president’s family accepts lavish benefits from someone close to Putin, private financial interests become a national-security concern.”

 

Kremlev knew what he wanted when he paid for the party. The worrying question now is what Trump Jr. might give him in return.

 

 

Russia’s Attempted Attack Inside America Should Be a Turning Point for Trump

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

 

Moscow has grown increasingly brazen amid a campaign of sabotage and provocations targeting the West. The tempo of attacks on Western targets is also increasing, as is Moscow’s appetite for risk. The gravest recent offense involved a Russian drone strike on a train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson just miles from the Polish border. Former CIA director David Petraeus was another potential target of Russian aggression, as the New York Times reported:

 

David Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director, could hear the Russian drones above his train, which had just passed through Ukrainian customs on its way to Poland on Sunday morning. He and other passengers were quickly evacuated. Not long after, he heard a huge explosion.

 

A former U.S. Army general, Mr. Petraeus is used to explosions, but he said: “For those who have not been under fire, this was terrifying.” A jet-powered Russian drone, identified by photos taken afterward, had detonated after striking the locomotive of the train next to his, he said.

 

“This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians,” he said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

 

This is the sort of reckless attack that, if it had succeeded, could inspire a cascading reaction from the West that might take on a logic all its own. Rather than intimidate the West into submission, the Kremlin’s miscalculation could compel the West to respond proportionately, after which Russia would respond with its own face-saving response against Western assets. And on it goes as we ascend the escalation ladder. The stakes in this game are quite high.

 

More troublingly, Russia does not seem to be limiting its campaign of subterfuge to the European continent.

 

In a press release late Tuesday night, the Justice Department detailed charges against Kremlin assets who set out to commission targeted killings and other terroristic acts inside America. Although not yet in custody, the defendants are accused of serving as “high-ranking” officials within the “RIS network,” which has links to Russia’s domestic security and military intelligence services. Their goal was to spill blood and sow chaos inside the U.S.

 

Via the DOJ:

 

Most recently, this summer, the RIS Network recruited an individual based in the United States (“U.S. Resident-1”) to surveil and murder a prominent Russian dissident they believed to be residing in the United States. Among other things, SUAREZ sent U.S. Resident-1 two locations associated with Victim-1 to surveil; provided U.S. Resident-1 with explicit instructions on how to conduct surveillance; and promised U.S. Resident-1 between $1,000 and $1,500 to carry out the pre-operational surveillance. In turn, U.S. Resident-1 conducted the requested surveillance and passed back to SUAREZ multiple photographs and videos of locations associated with Victim-1. SUAREZ and CASTRO further offered U.S. Resident-1 $40,000 to “eliminate” or “disappear” Victim-1 and, when U.S. Resident-1 told them that he did not want to carry out the murder by his own hand, asked U.S. Resident-1 if he knew “someone [who] can do the work.” SUAREZ also told U.S. Resident-1 that he had “people in Mexico” who could otherwise carry out the murder, but they were delayed in doing so. In addition, SUAREZ attempted to recruit multiple other individuals within the United States to conduct pre-operational surveillance and murder Victim-1 and other potential targets within the United States, and offered them substantial sums of money to carry out the targeting of the U.S.-based victims.

 

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg couldn’t have been more succinct in his summary of the Russian plot. “These defendants allegedly operated as part of a global assassination network that reached into the United States,” he said, “attempting to recruit U.S. citizens and foreigners to carry out killings at the behest of the Kremlin.”

 

This development might provide the Trump administration with an opportunity to focus on the real threat to international security in Eastern Europe. This week, the president chided the Ukrainian government for executing long-range drone strikes on Russian petroleum processing facilities. Trump accused Kyiv of contributing to high diesel fuel costs in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

The problem isn’t Ukraine’s response to Russian aggression. The problem is the Russian aggression. The conquest of Ukraine would only be stage one in the Kremlin’s ultimate quest to break the NATO alliance and eject the U.S. from its presence in Europe. That has been Moscow’s grand strategic objective since 1945. The Kremlin’s violation of U.S. sovereignty represents an opportunity for this White House to open its eyes to the real threat to American interests. The Trump administration should take it.

Trump’s Scapegoating of Ukraine Is Dishonorable

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

 

One of the challenges with writing about the war in—and on—Ukraine is that so little changes.

 

I don’t mean the fighting on the ground, though even there, when viewed from a distance, it doesn’t look as though much has shifted in a long while. Russia has gained very little territory in the last year (even as it has suffered an estimated 500,000 casualties over the last 12 months). All of that to gain 0.3 percent of Ukrainian territory (and net zero gains in the last six months). Though distance can be deceiving, the fighting on the ground has actually been far more dynamic, with evolving tactics, strategies, technologies, and geopolitics.

 

What I mean about so little changing has to do with the moral considerations. Ukraine is the victim of a lawless, brutal, unprovoked invasion by a politically backward and dysfunctional would-be empire ruled by a murderous autocrat. That assessment was obvious on February 24, 2022, when the full-scale invasion was launched, and it was obvious in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.

 

The challenge of writing about the war is that once you’ve said that, saying it again just feels repetitive. This is a bigger problem than one columnist’s selfish desire to say something new. The longer the war has dragged on, the more the war just seems like part of the status quo, the background noise of our politics. This is cruelly unfair to the Ukrainians, because what seems like the “normal” state of things is anything but. Russia targets civilians as a matter of policy. It murders old women in their beds, children in playgrounds, young couples in cafes. It does this almost daily, and it tries to do it almost hourly.

 

Which is why recent comments by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and his unofficial personal envoy, are so infuriating. “President Putin laid out his line of what he wants to achieve,” Kushner said at the Yalta European Strategy conference on September 5. “If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously, you know, we have the rest of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right now does not want to do that.”

 

Kushner further said he was, as a U.S.-backed mediator, looking for “creative solutions” to the war. He wants to downplay the importance of territory in exchange for potential economic deals that benefit everybody—including presumably the United States and, I assume, Kushner and others in the Trump orbit.

 

Put aside the grotesque suggestion that Ukrainians are the stumbling block for not wanting to give up yet more territory Russians have failed to win on the battlefield, land that countless Ukrainians have given their lives to defend. Strategically, such a concession would be close to an invitation to suicide. It would require pulling back some 45 miles and forfeiting a Ukrainian “fortress belt” of fortified cities that form the spine of their forward defenses. It would put the rest of Ukraine that much closer to Russian artillery and drones, and force the Ukrainians to defend less defensible ground.

 

Proponents of such a “deal” argue that it would be worth it for peace. But if you think Russia honors such deals, you haven’t been paying attention. And if you think the Ukrainians have reason to trust Putin, well, I don’t know what to say to you.

 

The idea that Ukraine is the stumbling block to peace suffuses this administration. Vice President J.D. Vance, who has never meaningfully changed his view that he “doesn’t really care” what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other” is evidence of that. But so is President Trump.

 

Just this week, Trump excoriated Ukraine for targeting Russia’s oil infrastructure because it’s creating problems for him. “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing,” Trump said. “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel.”

 

Trump—who endlessly insisted on the campaign trail that he could “end the war in Ukraine in one day”—doesn’t demand Putin stop murdering Ukrainians. He instead demands that Ukrainians not fight back in a way that inconveniences Trump amid a surge in oil prices overwhelmingly caused by the war Trump started with Iran.

 

It is victim-blaming on a geopolitical scale and utterly dishonorable.

 

Honor matters in foreign policy, regardless of what supposed foreign policy “realists” claim. Iranian honor, twisted and fanatical though it may be, is why Iran hasn’t bowed to Trump. And Ukrainian national honor is why the Ukrainians don’t want to be erased by a bullying neighbor that says they shouldn’t exist. And it should matter for America, even it doesn’t matter to the coterie of “dealmakers” who care more for profit.

 

And that is worth repeating.

Don Jr. Will Regret It

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

 

Recall all the juice that the Trump campaign wrung out of Hunter Biden’s obvious corruption and his father’s complicity.

 

The Burisma contract and the influence peddling around it, the inflated prices that were paid for his “artwork,” the seven-figure loans from well-heeled Democratic donors – Trump made hay out of it all. Given the mileage the GOP got out of Hunter’s indiscretions, it’s reasonable to assume that the president’s adult sons would have at least tried to cultivate even the mere appearance of propriety. That assumption was proven inaccurate long ago. Indeed, Don Jr. is tempting fate with his contempt for the prospect that his actions will beget undesirable consequences for himself, his family, and the Trump administration.

 

The latest offense is entirely inexplicable. According to ProPublica’s reporting, Don Jr.’s wedding celebration — an extravagant affair set on a private island and backlit by a five-figure fireworks display — was financed entirely by Umar Kremlev. The Russian oligarch maintains active ties with Vladimir Putin’s regime, and he oversees the International Boxing Association — two outfits that are mired in their own corruption scandals. The reporting was later angrily confirmed by Don Jr.’s wife, Bettina Trump, who insisted that their “dear friend” paid for only “two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.”

 

Skeptics are justified in concluding that it’s unlikely the couple’s dear friend, who only “speaks limited English,” wasn’t forking over a mid-six-figure gift without expecting some kind of reciprocity. Even if the whole affair was entirely above board, the impertinent display will fuel Democrats’ campaign of investigations into the Trump family’s financial dealings if the party retakes the House gavels next year.

 

This is hardly the only sordid spectacle for which House Democrats will hold Don Jr. to account. From his ties to cryptocurrency mining ventures to the Pentagon contracts awarded to firms in which he holds a stake, the president’s opponents will make their investigations into Don Jr.’s many enterprises into a performance. And given the president’s son’s antics, it might be a compelling presentation.

 

If the president or his sons are properly apprehensive about the discomfort Democrats will impose on the Trump clan if they retake the House, they’re not acting like it. Don Jr. should enjoy his honeymoon. Indeed, he should make it a long one. With Democrats back in power, he’s going to have a long and arduous 2027.

Russia’s Threats to Europe Extend Beyond Ukraine

By Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau & David J. Kramer

Friday, September 11, 2026

 

Russia’s war against Ukraine, initiated in 2014 and then launched on a full-scale basis in 2022, is the gravest security crisis on the European continent since World War II.

 

But it’s not the only Russian threat on the continent. Russia’s gray-zone, or hybrid, war against the rest of Europe beyond Ukraine poses additional, serious challenges to NATO and U.S. interests.

 

Russia has been testing NATO’s resolve and solidarity since 2006, when ex-Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko died after being poisoned with polonium in downtown London. It continued the next year with a massive cyberattack against Estonia that left NATO unsure how to respond. And in the years since, this campaign has only intensified.

 

Russia has carried out or attempted assassinations on NATO territory, and its drones and missiles have violated member nations’ airspace. According to a senior NATO military official, NATO has scrambled fighter jets nearly 700 times in two years to intercept Russian aircraft. Russia has weaponized migration, manipulating migrant flows to destabilize and pressure NATO allies. It has threatened to attack NATO states that aid Ukraine, most recently the United Kingdom and Germany. Germany has blamed attacks aimed at critical infrastructure, including an explosion at a train station and two separate incidents targeting power stations, on Russia, as well as attempts to damage aircraft at Germany’s Leipzig airport with explosive drones. Even U.S. interests in Europe are not safe from Russia. In a September 3 Russian missile attack against Ukraine, Russia badly damaged a Coca-Cola plant.

 

In response to Germany’s claim of Russian responsibility for the drone threats at Leipzig airport, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared “the beginning of a real war with Germany.” This typifies Russia’s approach: Blame the targets and victims of its aggression. It does it with Ukraine by absurdly accusing the government there of being run by Nazis. It’s doing it with Germany and others who provide support to Ukraine to help Kyiv defend against Russia’s brutal war.  

 

Russia’s poke-and-prod approach also seeks to divide NATO and expose as hollow its Article 5 guarantee—the core NATO principle that means an attack against one shall be considered an attack against all. Its increasingly complex alignment with other autocracies like China, Iran, and North Korea adds to the level of danger.

 

And every day, as casualties mount and drones and missiles kill civilians in Ukraine almost four and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demonstrated that he has no interest in peace. Immediately after a brief ceasefire to enable U.S. envoys to visit both Moscow and Kyiv last weekend, Russian forces resumed their brutal aerial campaign against Ukraine.  

 

The Saturday visit to Moscow by U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner followed two other known meetings between U.S. and Russian officials. In August, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow, reportedly to warn his Russian counterparts against an attack on a NATO member state and to argue that Russia’s war against Ukraine was going poorly. Putin refused a meeting with Ratcliffe, perhaps because the CIA director was delivering a message Putin didn’t want to hear. By contrast, Putin warmly welcomed Witkoff and Kushner, whom he’s met on numerous past occasions.

 

In between the Ratcliffe and Witkoff-Kushner visits to Moscow, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent invited—over the objections of European members—Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to North Carolina for a meeting of G20 finance ministers, the first time Russia was represented at such a gathering since its full-scale invasion.

 

We both served in the State Department with a combined three decades of experience (including stints at NATO and the Pentagon for Elizabeth). Experience has shown us, time and again, that adversaries pay close attention to what we say, as well as what we do. They notice divisions and hesitation; they exploit ambiguity. They play with words. Russia certainly does. We cannot give Russia reason to doubt our commitment to our allies.

 

We are past the warning stage. The lights are blinking on the dashboard. The Trump administration, together with NATO allies, needs to provide Ukraine with the military assistance it needs to win the war, not just defend itself. It’s also imperative that Russia and other adversaries understand that America is committed to freedom and stands in solidarity with all of our allies in Europe and beyond.

 

For nearly eight decades, NATO has symbolized the ideal of deterrence, ensuring that any adversary understands the consequences of aggression. That, for example, a country that attacked Estonia, Poland, or Finland knows it would not be taking on that country alone—it would be starting a conflict with NATO. This idea is the heart of Article 5, but Article 5 only has meaning if our adversaries believe the United States will honor it. One hopes that Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow disabused Russian officials of their wishes that the United States will not follow through on its NATO commitments.

 

Any ambiguity about Article 5 isn’t leverage, but a weak link in that chain of solidarity. If Moscow assesses that readings of NATO obligations rest on political moods, deterrence simply crumbles. The probing and testing will become more frequent and may end in dire choices for the alliance.

 

On the anniversary of September 11, we should also clearly recall the one time in NATO’s history when Article 5 was invoked—in our defense.

 

After the devastating attacks in New York and Washington, and the crash in Pennsylvania, NATO was there. NATO aircraft patrolled American skies, and, in the years to come, our European and Canadian allies deployed thousands of their forces with us in Afghanistan. Men and women from NATO countries, large and small, fought shoulder to shoulder with us, and thousands died there.

 

NATO, of course, is changing: European allies are spending more on defense, building their own military capacity, and assuming greater responsibility for their own security, including assuming a leadership role in supporting Ukraine. These are certainly steps that needed to happen—and more should be done.

 

But Europe’s increasing investment in defense does not relieve the United States of its obligations. A stronger Europe, partnered with the ironclad American commitment to NATO, both makes the alliance stronger and reestablishes deterrence.

 

Russia and its malign partners must understand that starting a war with a NATO ally would be a terrible mistake. After all, Russia is no match for the United States and Europe if the latter two stick together and support each other.

 

A peaceful and secure Europe has been one of the United States’ great strategic advantages since the end of World War II. The greatest threat to such a Europe arose when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In defending its land and freedom from Russian takeover, Ukraine contributes to European security by standing between the rest of Europe and a Russian military on the march. During his visit to Moscow, Ratcliffe reportedly urged his Russian interlocutors to recognize that continuing the war Putin started would end badly for Russia.

 

While not a member of NATO, Ukraine is most deserving of Western support not just to stay in the fight but to help it win the war Russia started against it. Supporting Ukraine helps secure the rest of Europe, plain and simple.

Russia does not have to like NATO, but it must believe NATO and the United States when we say, with no ambiguity, that an attack on one will bring a response from all, and that the United States keeps its word. Russia should clearly understand what will happen if it attacks a NATO ally because, simply, that’s how we make sure it never does.

In Response to Russian Aggression, Germany Should Trigger NATO’s Article 4

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, September 02, 2026

 

Western intelligence services have long had high confidence that Russian military intelligence was behind a sophisticated, transnational terrorist event inside Germany in the summer of 2024. Had the plot in Leipzig succeeded, a series of homemade explosive devices would have detonated aboard U.S.-bound private cargo aircraft, potentially igniting a crisis the like of which the world has not seen since the Soviet attack on a Korean airliner in 1983.

 

The German government now believes that Russia was also behind a second event in Leipzig last month, in which several explosive-laden drones were deployed against Ukrainian and private cargo aircraft in and around the Leipzig/Halle Airport. The attack bore a signature “known to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine,” said German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt. All evidence implicates “people being involved who acted on behalf of Russian state entities,” he added.

 

These are only some of the most dangerous episodes of what are believed to be a Russian-directed campaign of “sabotage and malign activity.” Indeed, since the second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Associated Press has tracked about 200 such incidents. In recent weeks, though, the tempo of attacks has increased, as has the attackers’ boldness.

 

Within days of the initial reports indicating that the German government would point an accusatory finger at Russia, its terrorist tormentors ramped up their activities. On Tuesday, unknown attackers deployed explosive “projectiles” armed with conductive materials designed to short-circuit power lines against a Brandenburg substation. Several more unexploded bombs were later discovered in the area. Within 24 hours, another bomb exploded in a passageway inside an Augsburg train station, injuring two German teenagers. In what may be a related event, officials are reportedly investigating a third “act of premeditated vandalism” targeting a power substation near Bergheim.

 

It all contributes to Berlin’s conclusion that Germany is the target of a campaign of “grey hybrid warfare” conspicuously timed to coincide with its accusations against Moscow.

 

In response to what European officials regard as a Russian campaign of state-sponsored terrorism, Germany will close the Russian consulate in Bonn and, eventually, a cultural center in Berlin. The German government will summon Russian diplomatic entities for consultation, and it plans to address the violations of its sovereignty with the North Atlantic Council and the EU’s council of foreign ministers. Berlin will not, however, invoke Article 4 of the NATO charter, which compels member states to convene in response to a direct threat to the alliance’s collective security.

 

Despite the German government’s desirably honest appraisal of who attacked it and why, the German foreign minister’s remarks betray the pusillanimity that has for decades typified Western Europe’s response to Russian aggression. “There is no overreaction on our part, but there is a response when we are attacked,” Germany’s top diplomat, Johann Wadephul, said. “Russia must understand that Germany is a stabilizing force in Europe — one that is always ready to negotiate but will not be intimidated in any way.”

 

Invoking NATO’s consultation provisions would not be an “overreaction” to any number of recent provocations, any one of which has the potential to spark an international incident with momentum and logic all its own. That is precisely what NATO is for. Demonstrating that the alliance is serious about its mission is not incitement. Indeed, it is one of the few things that deters Vladimir Putin’s Russia from miscalculating its way into a conventional conflict with the West.

 

Article 4 has been invoked many times in recent years, none of which resulted in the activation of NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense provisions. Within days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what was once the Eastern Bloc — Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia — invoked Article 4. Poland did the same in September of last year after the alliance deployed fighter jets to down a series of Russian attack drones that penetrated deep inside Polish territory. Thirteen days later, the alliance responded to Estonia’s request for Article 4 consultations when three Russian fighter jets pierced its airspace.

 

The German government is no longer being coy about the nature of Russia’s threat to it and the whole of Europe. That’s desirable, but it’s not enough. Until Western Europe discovers the kind of courage its Eastern neighbors evince when confronted with Russian aggression, Russian aggression will persist. And each of Moscow’s subsequent provocations will grow bolder until one goes too far, compelling NATO to respond or concede that it is little more than a paper tiger.

 

Deterring Russian recklessness with a muscular response to actions like these isn’t an “overreaction.” It’s a rational and reasonable response, and a necessary one if the alliance’s goal is to convince Putin not to test the alliance’s resolve in ways that may spin out of his — or anyone else’s — control.

Trump Continues His Willful Blindness with Putin and Russia

By Jim Geraghty

Wednesday, September 02, 2026

 

We can question whether the U.S. wanted to see Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Bishkek this week, and calling Vladimir Putin his “friend.” But at least Modi had the guts to say out loud something Putin didn’t want to hear, to his face, with the cameras rolling:

 

“Every day that the war continues, humanity is, in effect, set back a step, whilst every step towards peace gives all of humanity real hope for peace. We need to move from endless war to an ​end to the war, ​to a cessation ⁠of hostilities,” said Modi as Putin looked at the floor and tapped his feet.

 

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Russia has secretly helped Iran develop supersonic cruise missile technology that experts say could give Tehran a new way to threaten U.S. Navy vessels in the Middle East, citing leaked Russian correspondence, travel records, and military patents.

 

Back in late July, President Trump assured the country and the world that Russia and China were not helping Iran with their weapons:

 

President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies. Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President Putin, despite the horrible War going on in Ukraine (The relationship remains, as it does with President Zelenskyy), told me that he would not sell Weapons to Iran. He understands that I do not sell Weapons to Ukraine, but to NATO Countries. They pay full price, and how those Weapons are distributed, I have no idea. Therefore, two major Countries that people speak of often in terms of Iran are, in my opinion, not participating. If they did, it would be very bad for them — Certainly not in their best interests. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

 

Last week, amidst a worsening trend of Russian hybrid warfare against NATO member countries in Europe, President Trump stated, flatly, that Russia would not attack a NATO country:

 

Q: Mr. President, has Vladimir Putin agreed or committed to not attacking a NATO territory?

 

Trump: I’ve had good talks with him; he’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory.

 

This is willful blindness.

World War 2.5

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, August 27, 2026

 

It’s not often that the director of the CIA swings by Moscow for a tête-à-tête. The last time it happened before this week was November 2021, when William Burns felt obliged to warn the Kremlin in person that we knew what it was planning for Ukraine.

 

The physical presence of America’s top spy was obviously meant to communicate the gravity of the White House’s concern. Hence the suspense surrounding CIA chief John Ratcliffe’s surprise visit to the Russian capital yesterday: What unknown yet undoubtedly alarming development might have led the Trump administration to order its own extraordinary intervention?

 

Could Vladimir Putin be considering an atomic solution to the Ukrainian stalemate?

 

“The escalating spiral of strikes is leading a growing number of Russian officials to the conclusion that Putin could eventually opt to use tactical nuclear weapons as a last resort in Ukraine,” sources close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg. Yet as much as that prospect might delight vatniks and/or Tucker Carlson, it’s probably idle saber rattling (for now). Firing off a small nuke or two at the widely dispersed Ukrainian front line would likely gain Russia less militarily than it would cost in terms of international isolation.

 

Another theory: Maybe, contra Burns, Ratcliffe was dispatched not to threaten the Russians but to feel them out on a devil’s bargain aimed at curing the president’s migraine in the Persian Gulf. For instance, “if you can get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, we’ll pull out of NATO.”

 

With Trump all things are possible, but the director of the CIA would be an odd choice to deliver that message. A grand bargain with Russia in which Europe ends up stabbed in the back is the sort of deal the president would relish brokering himself, one would think. Or, at least, something he’d farm out to a Putin-friendly toady like Steve Witkoff.

 

By the very nature of his agency’s work (not to mention its cooperation with Ukraine), Ratcliffe is the guy you send when you’re taking an adversarial position toward the Kremlin. A more likely explanation for his visit is that he was there, à la Burns, to try to deter the Russians from some dangerously reckless new action they’re planning in their near-abroad.

 

Like attacking NATO.

 

That was in fact the purpose of the visit, according to the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this month the paper reported that U.S. intelligence now has reason to believe Putin “could try to test NATO’s resolve with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years,” with options ranging from cyberattacks to a “small-scale land incursion.” The fact that Ratcliffe felt moved to warn Russia now suggests that the timeline for the expected provocation skews more toward sooner than later, though. And if you’ve been following the news overseas, you know why.

 

Numerous weapons factories in Ukraine-supporting European countries have been targeted in mysterious acts of sabotage this year, mirroring Ukraine’s attacks on Russian logistics sites. Germany recently discovered three drones carrying explosives at Leipzig’s airport, a hub used to ship military supplies to Kyiv. And last month Russian military officials visited Kaliningrad, a small Russian exclave located between Poland and Lithuania, allegedly to oversee “readiness planning and procedures for a mobilization of the region’s residents, with details on how to house, feed, and arm them.”

 

Coincidentally, last week NATO staged an unusually large air exercise near Kaliningrad, part of a “flurry of activity” by the alliance in the Baltics lately. Today Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, is meeting with the head of NATO and the North Atlantic Council to discuss … something, possibly America’s defense posture in Europe, possibly matters more urgent. And news broke yesterday that Germany is negotiating with Britain to invest in the latter’s nuclear deterrent, part of a plan to extend Europe’s nuclear umbrella eastward toward Moscow.

 

It all seems ominous—except for the fact that the battered Russian military is in no condition to test Europe, right? By one estimate Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties in Ukraine, including upward of 500,000 deaths. Ratcliffe himself claimed last month that the average Russian soldier lasts just 20-30 minutes on the battlefield before being killed or disabled. Surely a country that’s choking to death from trying to bite off a piece of its much smaller neighbor isn’t about to sink its teeth into NATO. Why is the CIA chief so worried that it might do so, let alone do so soon?

 

The answer to that question is another question: If not now, when?

 

Now or never.

 

Strange as it may sound, in many ways this is an opportune moment for Putin to confront the West. The point of a Russian incursion in the Baltics wouldn’t be to defeat NATO militarily, which is implausible given the two-front war Moscow would be compelled to wage. The point would be to defeat it strategically—that is, to gamble that the alliance would fold rather than fight, provided that the incursion is small enough.

 

A likely target is the Suwalki Gap, a corridor that runs through Poland and Lithuania and connects Kaliningrad with Russia’s ally Belarus. Taking it wouldn’t necessarily require a huge force. In one war game conducted last year, a contingent of 15,000 Russian troops successfully seized a Lithuanian city there. “The U.S. didn’t invoke Article 5 and Germany dithered, ultimately leaving Russia victorious in its territorial snatch and in its goal of undermining NATO,” Newsweek noted of the outcome.

 

But why would Russia try it now? Because: Even more so than usual, an overextended White House is compelled by circumstance to think twice before involving America in any new wars.

 

Set aside the president’s own fecklessness and ideological sympathies, to which we’ll return later. Logistically, the U.S. is in no position at the moment to wage a two-front war of its own. “In a potential conflict with Russia, weapons such as the Precision Strike Missile and Army Tactical Missile Systems … are crucial to repel a land invasion,” the Journal explains. Thanks to Trump’s folly in Iran, we’re a little short on both.

 

Considering how unpopular that folly has become with American voters, any president would be leery of thrusting the country into a second military conflict—especially one that would have us fighting Iran and Russia simultaneously, the closest the United States will have come to a world war since 1945. (So much for Trump the dove.) With the midterm election impending, Putin isn’t crazy for surmising that the White House would sooner betray NATO than foist another conflict on a disgruntled electorate.

 

The timing is opportune for Russia in another way. After four years of combat in Ukraine, it’s used to war and can hit the ground running if it chooses to extend hostilities westward. Europe isn’t, and can’t—for now.

 

That window of opportunity for the Kremlin is slowly closing, though, as Germany’s interest in a nuclear deterrent demonstrates. Europe is rearming, spooked by Putin’s brutality in Kyiv and America’s romance with postliberalism; the day is coming when NATO will be able to repel Russia even without U.S. support. The day is also coming when our romance with postliberalism will end and an Atlanticist will return to the White House, more willing to defend the liberal Western order against Moscow than the current occupant is.

 

Realistically, then, if you’re Vladimir Putin, your dream of breaking NATO might have a shelf life of as little as two years. So why wait? In particular, why wait until after the Ukraine war is over, when relieved Russian citizens will expect a period of quiescence to recover from their nightmare? If the rumors are true that the Kremlin is about to order a huge new military draft to replenish its manpower, why not capitalize on the surge in forces to test Europe now?

 

As Tablet writer Park MacDougald put it, the Russian leadership believes “that the West, which sustains Ukraine, is not psychologically, morally, or politically prepared for war. Russia is, and that gives Russia an asymmetric advantage.” The West will be prepared again someday. But not today.

 

Attacking Europe would do something else for the Kremlin, supplying a rationale for an ongoing national trauma that’s conspicuously lacked one for years.

 

Although they’d never admit it, the average Russian must be wondering what the point is of a conflict that’s dragged on longer than it took the Red Army to smash the Nazi empire and seems to be getting worse for their country over time. How can a few miles of the Donbas be worth four and a half years of wanton bloodletting and the incremental depopulation of Russian males?

 

Seizing European territory would give Putin an answer. We’re not fighting Ukraine, we’re fighting the entire West. And we’re winning. We took the Suwalki Gap. We broke NATO. We’ve achieved something that even Stalin and the Soviet Union never dared attempt.

 

The idea of extending the fight westward might appeal to Russians emotionally too, as they must realize that the explosions that now routinely rock their country wouldn’t be possible without material support from Ukraine’s European allies. “Moscow increasingly views the Ukrainian strikes as attacks by NATO states because alliance members supply Kyiv with weapons and intelligence,” sources told Bloomberg. Turnabout is fair play in the Kremlin’s eyes: If the Ukrainians are going to try to cripple the Russian military by targeting its supply lines, Russia will respond in kind by targeting the nations supplying Ukraine.

 

That’s the message that the explosive drones found at Leipzig’s airport were undoubtedly meant to convey. A modest invasion of the Baltics would convey it in a much grander way.

 

Escalating to de-escalate.

 

There’s one more reason Putin might want to test NATO sooner, not later. Even if he orders another military draft, the war is likely to get harder for him if it drags on.

 

Russian citizens have begun pulling their money from banks for fear that the cash-hungry government will start seizing their savings to fund the conflict. Hopes that a friendly American president might squeeze Ukraine to surrender to the Kremlin have faded amid Trump’s preoccupation with Iran and his admiration for the Ukrainian drone offensive. And Ukraine’s military capabilities continue to grow: Very soon, with help from its European friends, the country will begin striking deep inside Russia with homemade ballistic missiles.

 

It’s all (or mostly) downhill from here. The poor prognosis for the Russian economy led one European consultant to tell CNBC, “If I were Putin, God forbid, I would probably decide that it is in my interest to escalate now and try to finish the war on my terms, than wait until the money ends sometime in the future.”

 

It seems counterintuitive that a nation that desperately needs a war to end might choose to expand it, but there’s logic to it. It’s known in military doctrine as “escalate to de-escalate,” which we’ve discussed here before.

 

“Escalate to de-escalate” is a close cousin of “the madman theory” made famous by Richard Nixon. The idea in both cases is to scare the hell out of your enemy by making them believe you might do something so wildly reckless (usually involving nuclear weapons) that they see little choice but to appease you. A “small-scale land incursion” by Russia into the Baltics would be a perfect example. Instantly it would force the West to the brink of its most dangerous military conflict since World War II, risking all-out war with Moscow …

 

… unless, of course, certain concessions were made that convinced the Russian army to withdraw peacefully from NATO territory and end its offensive against Ukraine.

 

Cut off all military support to Kyiv and convince Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a peace deal coughing up the Donbas and we’ll give back the Suwalki Gap. How’s that for a de-escalatory bargain?

 

Europeans wouldn’t want to accept that offer, fearing that doing so would encourage Russia to stage additional not-so-small-scale land incursions in the future (see, e.g., Ukraine 2014 and Ukraine 2022), but they might not have a choice if the president of the United States wanted to accept it. Do we think he’d accept it?

 

I’m not sure.

 

There are obvious reasons he might, starting with the fecklessness and ideological sympathies I mentioned earlier. Trump has always craved détente with authoritarian Russia; no president since the Cold War has been more reluctant to confront Moscow militarily than he is. He’s also a ripe target to be terrorized by an “escalate to de-escalate” ploy, as he’s been bleating about the Ukraine war as a prelude to World War III since his last presidential campaign—and chastised Zelensky about it to his face during the latter’s infamous Oval Office visit in 2025.

 

The president is also chronically aggrieved at Europe, more so than ever lately after America’s NATO allies declined to join his silly war in Iran. It’s easy to imagine him reacting to news of a Russian invasion of Poland with a shrug: “They didn’t help us with the Strait of Hormuz, why would we help them with Putin?” I wouldn’t even put it past Trump to dial up the Kremlin and offer to recognize their authority over the territory they’ve seized if they can persuade Iran to reopen the strait. He’s a fan of quid pro quos, you may have heard.

 

If nothing else, he might decline to join a military effort to oust Russian troops for simple fear of what war in Europe would do to the U.S. economy. Which wouldn’t be the first time that he sold out to a rogue regime to spare himself a presidential legacy of economic hardship.

 

Still, to believe that Trump would meekly surrender to a Russian incursion into Europe means believing he’d compound his current show of weakness in Iran with a second, more consequential show of weakness toward Putin. That seems unlikely. You can’t obsess about “strength” as much as the president does and run around losing—or ducking—fights repeatedly. If you do, some of the kids on the schoolyard whom you’re hoping to bully in the future might begin to draw certain lessons about you.

 

There are also plenty of Russia hawks in Congress and more than a few in and around the White House, of whom Ratcliffe appears to be one, who’ll egg him on to show some spine. If Trump were planning to sit idly by while the Kremlin stages a sneak attack on Europe, it’s strange that Ratcliffe would have been deputized to formally warn them against doing so, no?

 

My guess is that the president would approach a Russian incursion into NATO territory the way he’s approached U.S. backing for Ukraine, splitting the baby by reducing America’s support without ending it altogether. Kyiv doesn’t get free weapons from us anymore, but it does still get intelligence. NATO wouldn’t get any American troops to help push the Russians out—RIP, Article 5—but Trump probably would pledge intelligence, some weapons, and perhaps a few fun bonuses like access for Ukraine to Starlink inside Russia to help with long-range targeting.

 

But before the fighting got going, he and his team would be desperately trying to broker a ceasefire in which Russia withdraws in exchange for, say, promises of an urgent international diplomatic effort to settle the war in Ukraine plus sanctions relief to ease the pressure on the Russian economy.

 

I suspect Putin would take that deal, having scored a moral victory by dividing America from NATO. Trump would take it too, as it would revive his dream of midwifing a compromise to end the war and give him a chance at a diplomatic win after the Iran debacle. And Europeans? They’d have to decide whether rejecting his proposal, risking a total break with America and having to fight Russia alone, is preferable to grudgingly acquiescing. As ever, the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

The New Security Math in Reykjavík

By Kevin D. Williamson

Friday, August 28, 2026

 

The small island nation of Iceland—population about that of Wichita, Kansas—will vote on Saturday on the question of whether to reinstate talks, suspended more than a decade ago, about joining the European Union.

 

This is not mainly a matter of economic calculation: As a member in good standing of the European Economic Area, Iceland already enjoys the major economic benefits of EU membership—free movement of goods, services, capital, and people—but retains control of its own currency and enjoys somewhat wider policy discretion than it would as a full EU member.

 

Both those Icelanders in favor of and those opposed to further European integration—the issue is nearly 50/50 in the latest poll, a bare majority in favor—present the question as one of sovereignty. Iceland already is obliged to follow the majority of EU rules, most of which are economic in nature—“economic” defined very broadly, encompassing environmental and consumer-rights regulations as well as those strictly related to trade and commerce—and those in favor of pressing toward full EU membership argue that Iceland’s interests would be better served, and its sovereignty made more fully operational, if the country had a vote as an EU rule-maker rather than persist as a passive EU rule-taker, beholden to Brussels but with minimal influence. Those opposed argue that Iceland, with its tiny population, would continue to have only a small voice in the European Union, while full EU membership would impose on Iceland’s sovereignty to a greater extent than does EEA membership. There are reasonable arguments on both sides.

 

My own view was, until recently, that Iceland’s arrangement probably should be what EU membership looks like for all the member states: access to a liberal trade bloc and recourse to the necessarily imperfect instruments of cross-border policy harmonization. (I never thought much of the euro and still don’t: Even back at the turn of the century, when the single currency was adopted, the existence of relatively efficient foreign-exchange mechanisms together with the serious costs and risks associated with imposing a unified monetary policy across a group of socioeconomically diverse countries seemed to me to make the euro a very mixed bag, whatever its symbolic value in forging a sense of “European” identity.) But that calculation assumed a fact no longer in evidence: the durability of a U.S.-led security alliance among the world’s liberal democracies.

 

Iceland has no military to speak of, but the country had little need for a security guarantee from the European Union when it had one from NATO, of which it is a founding member. With all due respect to our European allies, the European Union has had, and continues to have, limited credibility in war-fighting. When Iceland suspended its negotiations with the European Union in 2013, it would have seemed a preposterous fantasy that an American president might ruthlessly undermine NATO, or even abandon it, while threatening to occupy and annex the sovereign territory of another NATO country. And it still is preposterous, but it is a preposterous fact, the work of our preposterous president.

 

Of course, it does not reassure the Icelanders that our evidently senescent commander in chief says “Iceland” about every third time he means to say “Greenland,” the desired annexation of which he continually revisits.

 

Economic sovereignty is not the only kind of sovereignty in question.

 

Full EU membership would be, at best, a second-best outcome for Iceland. But second-best outcomes are all that is available when Washington effectively cedes much of the field to Moscow and Beijing—while demonstrating a persistent American inability to achieve American ends when confronting a third-rate power such as Iran. The American disability demonstrated in Iran began as a political fact rather than a military fact, but as the Trump administration wages relatively effective war against the American military—chasing out the most experienced and talented senior officers, depleting material resources, abandoning multinational training work, etc.—the American lack of resolve is becoming an American lack of capability. When we’ve run through all the missile interceptors without providing for their replacement, it will be of little comfort to know that our secretary of defense does a pretty impressive bench press for a middle-aged man.

 

Becoming the 28^th member of the European Union would not do as much to restore Iceland’s security as would the reestablishment of American credibility, but, on the other hand, joining the European Union is something Iceland can do under its own steam. There must be at least a few South Koreans, some of them military commanders, who wish that their country had a similar option. Germany and France may not field the fiercest militaries in the world, but many threatened nations would rejoice to have such allies, the financial and technical support of which has done a good deal more to help Ukraine survive than has, say, J.D. Vance’s insipid hectoring of Volodymyr Zelensky.

 

A lifeline isn’t as good as a battleship, but one makes do as one must, and Iceland, which is closer to Russian Arctic territory than Chicago is to Boston, has not much room for error.

The Gray Zone Descends on Leipzig (Again)

By Andrew Stuttaford

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

 

As a reminder, the term “gray zone” describes an action or series of actions that are not quite war, and not quite not war, either. I wrote a bit the other day about how the pace and intensity of Russian operations within this zone had been increasing, noting among other developments the dispatch of an explosive-laden drone (it contained twice as much Semtex as the device that blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie) to Leipzig Airport. Mercifully, it was headed off by a vigilant bus driver.

 

The same day, reports The Guardian, a second drone possibly collided with a DHL cargo plane, which had to land elsewhere. No sign of a drone was found, but inspectors found damage to the tail section of a type that suggested it had been hit by something. One theory is that a drone could have been sucked into the engines after the collision and shredded into small pieces.

 

We’ll never know, I suppose.

 

And now, however, there’s this:

 

German investigators uncovered a third drone and suspected military explosives thought to be connected to an attempted attack on Leipzig airport, local media have reported.

 

The drone was discovered in Kabelsketal, just to the west of the airport, along with about 50g (1.8oz) of a suspected military explosive on 14 August, 10 days after the unsuccessful sabotage. Leipzig airport is a cargo and military logistics hub used by Nato and Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines for transporting military supplies.

 

Germany’s Chancellor Merz has said the government would soon provide information about who it believed was behind the drone attacks.

 

That shouldn’t take long, but proving it may take longer.

 

Merz has also promised that those responsible would “pay.”

 

But how?

 

One aspect of gray-zone operations is that the absence of hard proof of those responsible makes it more difficult to justify (publicly anyway) retribution. And their scale is typically set at a level too low to be treated, formally anyway, as an act of war — although that, judging by the growing seriousness of these incidents, is something that seems to bother Russia less and less.