By Riley Waggaman, Substack, 5/12/26

It’s hard not to notice that Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas MacGregor have made a lot of predictions throughout this war that have not panned out. I think both are speaking in good faith but obviously they need to be read and listened to with discernment just like any other source. – Natylie

Riley Waggaman is a journalist who lives in Russia.

On February 20, 2026, a “Flamingo” long-range cruise missile hit the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, a defense enterprise located in Russia’s Udmurt Republic—more than 1300 km from the border with Ukraine.

Moscow has very clear protocols for responding to these types of attacks: Russian state media publishes a comment from Scott Ritter about how it’s not a big deal and Ukraine is about to collapse anyway.

For example, when Ukraine began using US-supplied ATACMS missiles in 2024, Ritter proclaimed that “there [was] no magic weapon” that could prevent a decisive Russian victory.

“We are looking at the beginning of the collapse [in Ukraine],” TASS quoted Ritter as saying two years ago.

But something was different about this Flamingo strike…something was off.

The intern imprisoned in TASS’ basement and forced against his will to watch “Judging Freedom” in search of juicy Ritter soundbites, found… nothing. Not one soothing or even slightly reassuring word from Scott Ritter about a Ukrainian (British, really) cruise missile hitting a critically important defense enterprise situated 1300 km from the Ukrainian border. Unthinkable! the intern thought to himself. The intern knew that when his editors found out they would chain him to his computer and force him to watch Colonel MacGregor interviews. He lowered his head, a single tear trickling down his cheek.

Yes, it’s difficult to believe, but in a sharp departure from his weekly forecasts about Moscow’s soon-to-be total victory in Ukraine, Scott Ritter wrote, two days after the attack on the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, that Kiev was “develop[ing] the military capacity to strike Russia’s strategic interior in an effort to pressure Russia into ending the conflict on terms less than those previously set forth by President Putin”.

He continued:

If the Russian-Ukrainian conflict ends on such terms, then Russia will have conceded the very thing it said was a red line back in December 2021—the deployment of NATO-affiliated intermediate-range missiles on the soil of Ukraine.

It will represent a strategic defeat for Russia in every sense of the term.

What does Ritter mean by all this?

In December 2021, Moscow presented a list of security demands to NATO, including a prohibition on 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”.

This was not a polite request to NATO, but an ultimatum. The Russian government warned of “military-technical measures” should the trans-Atlantic alliance reject the proposed treaty (spoiler alert: NATO rejected the treaty). Russia launched its “special military operation” to “demilitarize” Ukraine two months later, in February 2022.

Ritter actually understated the importance of the missile deployment issue for Moscow: it was much more than just a “red line”. A red line triggers a response when crossed. (Not in the Not-War, of course. But we’ll return to this topic later.)

Among other objectives, the SMO was supposed to preempt the possibility of NATO deploying missiles in Ukraine. Unfortunately, after more than four years of appalling Slav-culling, the SMO has achieved the total opposite result. The missiles that have been deployed in Ukraine are not just “capable” of hitting targets inside Russia, but are in fact hitting targets inside Russia.

Naturally, it would be rather unfortunate if the SMO ultimately achieves what it was supposed to prevent. Currently we are heading in this direction. This is what Scott Ritter means when he writes ominously of “strategic failure” in Ukraine.

In fairness, “demilitarization” is an ongoing process—one that might take another 4+ years of thorough and methodical snail offensives. The battle for tiny hamlets in preparation for a frontal assault on Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk Oblast (located 70 km from Donetsk city—only a short walk to Zelensky’s HQ in Kiev) remains fluid and highly dynamic. Advances of several hundred meters could occur at any moment.

Also, let’s not forget that nearly three months have passed since Ritter warned that continuing to allow Ukraine to lob cruise missiles at Russia could lead to strategic defeat for Moscow. A lot can change in three months. We need a more up-to-date SITREP.

Gazeta.ru reported on May 5:

In Chuvashia, a Ukrainian Armed Forces attack killed two people, and the number of injured rose to 34. Twenty-eight apartment buildings were damaged in the city, and one business was also hit. A state of emergency was declared in the republic. The Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism investigation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Flamingo cruise missiles were used in the attack on Chuvashia.

Hours later, the Russian government confirmed that Chuvashia—located approximately 1200 km from the Ukrainian border—had been targeted by cruise missiles.

The situation has not improved since Ritter penned “The Flamingo Effect” on February 22. If anything, the threat of long-range Ukrainian (NATO) missile attacks has become part of the new normal in Russia, alongside mobile internet shutdowns and “falling drone debris” somehow capable of turning oil refineries into ash.

Speaking of “drone debris”…

Although the Flamingo represents “a tangible demonstration that the deep Russian rear is no longer invulnerable” (source: Russian Z-patriot news portal Military Review), the low-accuracy, relatively high-cost missile does not currently represent the greatest threat to “mainland” Russia: this dubious distinction goes to drones. Russia is being swarmed with drones.

Drones are hitting Belgorod. They’re hitting Kursk. They’re hitting Crimea.

They’re blowing up ports, refineries, and critical infrastructure from the Baltic to the Black Seas. From Ust-Luga to Novorossiysk. The oil refinery in Tuapse was hit multiple times, resulting in a days-long inferno that caused oil to rain from the sky. Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl….PERM (which also reported “oil rain” after being attacked).

As I type this article, at this very moment, Perm is bracing for another drone attack.

What to do? Ritter explored this prickly conundrum three months ago:

Russia is at a crossroads.

In the short term, Russia needs to find a solution to the Flamingo threat to Votkinsk and other strategic defense industries located in the Ural regions that are now under threat of attack (a solid rocket motor production facility in Perm, for example). Given the role played by Europe in designing, funding, and manufacturing the Flamingo, a response limited to striking targets inside Ukraine would achieve no fundamental change.

Missiles would still be built, and these missiles would continue to be launched at strategic targets deep inside Russia.

If Europe is not deterred once and for all from delivering this kind of military assistance to Ukraine, then Russia will be at risk of dying a death by a thousand cuts.

Ritter then insinuates that the Russian government is considering the use of tactical nukes. It’s not exactly clear if he thinks tactical nukes might be used against Ukraine, or its European sponsors, or both.

Instead of nuking Europe, Russia resumed oil supplies to NATO states via the Druzhba pipeline in April.

Ritter was close. At least he got the “Europe” part right?

Ritter wants you to believe that Moscow, which provided NATO with gas from a pumping station in Kursk Oblast OCCUPIED BY THE UKRAINIAN MILITARY, would all of a sudden decide to NUKE Europe.

He’s honestly just the inverse of the clowns on CNN: both scream about how Putin wants to nuke all the gay people. NO! Putin wants to give the gay people gas. As much gas as they want, and at a generous discount! THIS IS FACT.

I feel obliged to mention that Ritter’s 4-year grift-narrative about the Brilliant War of Attrition That Has Murdered Hundreds of Thousands of Ordinary Slavs For No Good Reason Whatsoever makes absolutely zero sense if Ritter is now acknowledging that the long-term threat posed by Ukraine’s rapidly developing military capabilities means Moscow might need to drop a tactical nuke on London if it wants to avoid “dying to a death of a thousand cuts”.

The longer the war goes on, the better—right?

Four more years.

By Leonid Ragozin, The American Conservative, 5/9/26

If you were exclusively on a mainstream Western media diet in recent weeks, you’d be excused for thinking that the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime now lies on its deathbed. Signs of “public discontent” are all over the place, you see. Silicon-lipped beauty blogger Viktoria Bonya attacked the government on YouTube. So did the notorious Kremlin propagandist Ilya Remeslo, fresh from a stint at a psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, the former defense minister Sergey Shoygu might be plotting a coup, according to CNN.

But if you talk to people inside Russia, as this author does on a daily basis, you’ll find them perplexed and doubting the West’s sanity upon hearing about this fresh bout of “Russia is finished” sentiments.

Pretty much all of my interlocutors are strongly anti-Putin and antiwar. In my intelligentsia circle, you need to walk miles to find anyone pro. People do complain about the ongoing economic slowdown, pointing to the closure of some of their favorite small businesses, like boutique fashion brands that had only recently emerged. They are aghast at the Russian government’s (so-far unsuccessful) attacks on popular messaging services and perturbed by mobile internet interruptions in the center of Moscow caused by the Ukrainian drone threat. 

But unlike Ukrainians, who live in constant fear of Russian strikes and of press gangs roaming the streets in search of fresh recruits, people in Russia are still enjoying much the same kind of lives as before the war, with living standards comparable to poorer EU member countries (check IMF’s GDP PPP charts).

More than anything, Russians of all political convictions are flabbergasted by the onslaught of irrationally xenophobic and jingoistic pro-Ukrainian propaganda they subject themselves to whenever they turn on their VPNs and check feeds on X and Facebook. What Western government-backed online mobs like NAFO mostly achieve is confirming the Kremlin’s narratives about the West’s inherent hatred of Russia and intent to wipe it off the face of Earth.

Clearly, those Western politicians and opinion makers—like former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who believed that a proxy war against Russia (in Johnson’s own terminology) would upend Putin’s regime were badly wrong and succeeded only in pushing Ukraine under a Russian bulldozer.

So, what would it really take to change Russia for the better?

As an 18-year-old student in 1991, I took part in overthrowing a political regime in Russia. I joined the defense of the White House—the one in Moscow, not Washington, and the seat of Boris Yeltsin’s government at the time—against the coup by hardline Soviet civilian and military leaders.

Our victory resulted in the collapse of the communist system and subsequently of the USSR. The events were driven by public euphoria, particularly on the issue of independence movements in Soviet republics. To give an idea, one of the largest Moscow rallies of 1991—and arguably in the history of Russia—was in support of Baltic independence. As for Ukraine and Belarus, they appeared to us too stubbornly Soviet for refusing to go along with shock therapy reforms which Yeltsin’s government embarked on first thing after dissolving the USSR. 

The mass uprisings and burst of optimism became possible for one reason: While Soviet people of 1991 had many realistic fears, including economic collapse, military dictatorship, and Yugoslav-styled civil war, the last thing they feared was the West. Opposite from terrifying, the West was a beacon of hope, if not a freshly adopted political religion.

This effect wasn’t achieved by the U.S. funding Osama bin Laden when he helped Afghan Mujahideen fight the Soviets, nor by the Iran-Contra affair, nor by propping up Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile or fighting Vietcong. 

Rather, it was attained through soft power—music, films, quality goods, enviable lifestyles, and an effort by a myriad of Americans and Europeans, often on the left-wing and antiwar side of the aisle—to build bridges and friendships with us, Soviet people. What we saw through our rose-tinted glasses at the time was the West of “We Are the World,” of U2’s album The Joshua Tree, and of transcontinental U.S.-Soviet “TV bridges” hosted by Phil Donahue and Vladimir Pozner.

When the Soviet system collapsed, we definitely didn’t feel defeated, no matter what America’s Cold War hawks said at the time. Instead, there was a sense of victory, achieved jointly with the West.

That sentiment changed radically by the end of the 1990s when economic hardships and domestic security threats sobered people up, while the West had firmly adopted a policy of radical eastward expansion explicitly aimed at isolating and containing, rather than integrating, Russia (read Mary Sarote’s Not One Inch for details). 

In 1999, NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia prompted Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov to write an op-ed which opened with the latest polling data: 64 percent of Russians now feared NATO and 70 percent believed the attack on Belgrade posed a direct security risk to Russia. Luzhkov, then seen as a presidential hopeful, pointed out that NATO’s expansion and its rising appetite for war were encouraging “sieged fortress” sentiments in Russian society that could lead to self-isolation. He called for social mobilization to overcome the deep economic crisis that dogged Russia throughout that decade and “to revive a strong Russia.”

Although his views at the time were moderately pro-Western, Luzhkov was pictured by Western and Russian media alike as a Communist revanche figure. He was eventually forced out of the race in favor of a little-known intelligence officer chosen as a successor by Boris Yeltsin’s family and preferred by the West—Vladimir Putin.

But Luzhkov’s words turned out to be prescient. The reason these warnings from him and a plethora of Western dignitaries, like U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, were ignored is a certain Western delusion best captured by a cover headline in the Atlantic from 2001, one year into Putin’s presidency: “Russia is finished.”

That arrogant sentiment informed many ill-fated decisions—Ukraine’s and Georgia’s invitation into NATO at the Bucharest summit in 2008, the endorsement of a forced removal of a democratically elected Ukrainian president at the end of Euromaidan revolution in 2014, and the aggressive crossing of Putin’s red lines in the run-up to Russia’s all-out invasion in Ukraine in 2022.

Fast forward to 2026 and Russia feels less “finished” than ever. Instead, it has evolved into a tech-savvy 21^st-century autocracy with a highly modernized war economy. It has successfully adapted to a conflict in which it sees itself as an underdog confronting the mighty Western military industrial machine, which makes it not too concerned about inevitable setbacks. Most importantly, every alternative to Putin seems to pose risks of civil war and state collapse.

To be sure, the country is going through what every Russian would admit to be a difficult period, but Putin’s Russia is showing far fewer “cracks in the regime” than the U.S.-led West, currently torn between Trump-style right-populism and Biden-style left-liberalism.

As the Atlantic’s “Russia is finished” cover turns 25 this month, there is a nagging feeling that it is the West’s own hostility and appetite for conflict which has been the main factor in the rise of Russia’s high-end, 21^st-century authoritarianism. Conversely, it is a return to the era of detente and soft power which could reverse this trend and change Russia for the better. But how many Ukrainians and Russians need to die in a senseless and avoidable war to prove the obvious?

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 4/9/26

The true total of US national security spending in 2027 will exceed $2.5 trillion, far beyond the already record-shattering $1.5 trillion military budget President Trump has requested, according to veteran defense analyst Winslow Wheeler.

Wheeler, who spent decades working in Washington for senators and the Government Accountability Office on national security issues, reached the figure by factoring in the Pentagon budget, military-related spending from other US government agencies, the national security share of interest accrued on the US debt, among other factors (full table of his work at the end of the article).

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has said that the $1.5 trillion military budget request for 2027 is a $445 billion, or 42%, increase over this year. The OMB said the $1.5 trillion includes $1.1 trillion in “base discretionary budget authority” for the Pentagon, plus a request for $350 billion in “additional mandatory resources through reconciliation.”

More than $150 billion in supplemental military spending was included in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which President Trump signed into law last year, to pad the Pentagon budget, and the Trump administration is seeking to secure the $350 billion for the 2027 budget in a similar way.

Trump is also looking for additional military spending to replenish stockpiles of US air defense interceptors and other munitions used in the US-Israeli war against Iran, which is expected to be worth somewhere between $80 billion and $200 billion and would be counted as part of the 2026 spending if it’s pushed through Congress soon.

Wheeler said that he labeled the supplemental spending bills as “slush funds” to “characterize the lack of specificity in congressional legislation for how the funds are to be allocated within the major categories shown here, compared to historic discretionary appropriations.”

At the beginning of his term, Trump suggested he was interested in reducing the military budget, but he went on to dramatically expand US military interventions and seek unprecedented levels of military spending.

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By Vitaly Ryumshin, RT, May 2026

The West’s Overton window on Russia is slowly beginning to reopen. A revealing example emerged this week in Italy. At the Venice Art Biennale, organizers decided to reopen the Russian pavilion for the first time in four years. More importantly, it wasn’t handed over to representatives of the émigré opposition or anti-Kremlin proxies, but to actual Russian delegates who travelled from Moscow.

Predictably, the decision provoked outrage. The European Commission reportedly sent angry letters to the Biennale organisers and the Italian government. Ukraine imposed sanctions on those involved in running the pavilion. Activists quickly descended on Venice, including members of Pussy Riot, the punk group banned in Russia as extremist, who staged demonstrations against the event.

What’s striking is that, despite the pressure, the Italians refused to back down. Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco openly accused critics of censorship and narcissism. The Russian pavilion remained open.

Only a year or two ago, such a scenario would have seemed impossible. During the height of the Ukraine conflict, even the slightest positive gesture towards Russia in the West was treated as morally unacceptable, as evidence of “sympathy for the aggressor.” Any deviation from the approved line had to be condemned immediately, and those responsible risked public ostracism.

Now the atmosphere is gradually changing. Russia is cautiously being allowed back into international cultural and sporting life. The Venice Biennale is only the latest example.

Earlier this year, Russian athletes at the Paralympics in Milan were once again allowed to compete under national symbols. The pattern was similar as Ukraine protested loudly and Western activists demanded restrictions. Yet the International Paralympic Committee ultimately sanctioned Ukraine’s most disruptive athletes rather than reversing the decision. Russia’s return proved highly successful: six athletes won 12 medals, and the team finished third overall.

Taken together, these episodes suggest that attitudes towards Russia inside the EU are beginning, however slowly and reluctantly, to soften.

It is hardly surprising that Italy is at the forefront of this shift. From the beginning of the conflict, Rome adopted a distinctive position. Officially, Italy supported collective Western European initiatives. In practice, however, it maintained a noticeably more restrained attitude towards Moscow than many of its allies. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was among the first major EU leaders to openly raise the question of restoring official contacts with the Kremlin.

Italian society reacted calmly. That is no accident. For decades, Italy has maintained close cultural and economic ties with Russia, and ordinary Italians have generally viewed Russians favourably.

A similar dynamic can increasingly be seen elsewhere in Europe, although in many countries it is still drowned out by the aggressive rhetoric of political elites. France offers a good example. While Emmanuel Macron continues discussing the “containment” of Russia at European summits, French audiences have enthusiastically embraced a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin performed in Russian.

More broadly, Western Europeans increasingly recognize an uncomfortable reality: Russian culture cannot simply be erased. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and Chekhov are not merely “Russian” figures in a narrow national sense. They are part of world civilization. Attempts to cancel them always looked intellectually shallow and culturally self-destructive.

And this is precisely where the growing demand for normalization comes from. Once people accept that Russian literature, music, and art remain legitimate parts of European cultural life, it becomes harder to argue that everything contemporary Russia produces must remain permanently quarantined as well. One thing inevitably leads to another.

Another important shift is also visible. The West no longer treats Ukraine’s position as morally unquestionable in the way it once did. There was a period when every statement from Kiev was amplified as if it carried unique ethical authority. Zelensky and his officials were treated less as political actors than as moral arbiters, but that mood has faded.

Even if the EU’s illusions about Ukraine have not disappeared entirely, expectations have become more grounded in reality. Western Europeans increasingly understand that Kiev’s total rejection of everything Russian is not simply a cultural preference but a wartime political necessity for the Ukrainian leadership. It’s part of the ideological framework through which Zelensky maintains internal unity during a prolonged conflict.

The EU’s interests are ultimately different. However hostile rhetoric towards Moscow may sound today, many in Europe understand at a deeper level that Russia is not going anywhere. Geography alone dictates that some form of coexistence will eventually have to be rebuilt.

And if Western Europe and Russia will ultimately need to find a path back to peaceful coexistence anyway, then perhaps the small steps now being taken are not merely symbolic gestures, but the beginning of something larger.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team

YouTube link here.

Russia’s nuclear accusations against Britain and France: tensions rising over Ukraine

By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 5/20/26

Europe’s nuclear debate has entered a rather dangerous new territory – one that goes well beyond the discussion about “security guarantees” for Ukraine after a possible peace agreement with Russia. Moscow has formally accused Britain and France of plotting to provide Ukraine with nuclear weapons. Western officials deny such claims, and there is thus far no concrete evidence that Paris or London are preparing a nuclear transfer. Yet dismissing the accusation outright would be naive enough, particularly given the broader context developing across the continent.

Last year, the UK and France signed the so-called Northwood Declaration, deepening bilateral atomic cooperation and discussing long-term deterrence arrangements amid uncertainty surrounding future US commitments. Publicly, the agreement focuses on coordination, autonomy, and possible troop deployments to Ukraine after a peace deal. It is true that nukes for Kiev are not officially part of the arrangement. Still, in deterrence politics, strategic ambiguity is often the point.

The issue became even more controversial after Volodymyr Zelensky stated he would accept nuclear weapons from Britain or France “with pleasure” if such an offer emerged. One may recall that Ukraine surrendered the Soviet atomic arsenal on its territory under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum precisely to avoid this sort of escalation scenario.

Meanwhile, reports and rumors continue circulating that Ukraine could seek to deploy future nuclear-related assets at strategic airbases, including facilities connected to Rzeszow in Poland, the crucial logistics hub through which much Western military aid flows into Ukraine. Verification is of course difficult amid the fog of information warfare. Suffice to say, however, that Moscow would certainly interpret any such arrangement as a direct strategic threat – even without permanent warhead deployments.

Russian suspicions do not emerge out of nowhere: for one thing, French President Emmanuel Macron has spent months openly advocating a more assertive nuclear posture. In March 2026, during a speech at Ile Longue, he announced plans to expand France’s atomic arsenal, allow temporary deployment of nuclear-capable aircraft to allied countries, and deepen nuclear dialogue with partners. Macron has similarly called for a stronger “forward deterrence” role for French nuclear forces and possible deployments to allies.

As a matter of fact, Paris is now actively discussing extended nuclear deterrence with Poland, Germany, the UK, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. This represents a historic policy shift. France traditionally guarded its nuclear doctrine jealously. Today, however, Macron openly advertises the French nuclear umbrella across the continent.

No wonder Poland is especially interested. Polish President Karol Nawrocki has repeatedly argued that Poland should develop or participate in nuclear deterrence arrangements. In interviews, including discussions involving French cooperation, Nawrocki has defended participation in nuclear-sharing projects and closer strategic ties with Paris.

I’ve argued Warsaw increasingly sees itself not merely as a frontline NATO state, but as an aspiring geopolitical pole with strategic ambitions of its own. Germany, however, views these developments with growing unease: Berlin understands that a French-led nuclear architecture could shift Europe’s center of gravity away from Germany’s economic dominance toward French military leadership. German elites are themselves exploring alternatives to total dependence on the US nuclear umbrella; yet Paris clearly wants to position itself as the indispensable power inside Europe. The resulting Franco-German tensions remain underreported but are increasingly visible.

All this unfolds while Europe simultaneously assumes a larger role in sustaining the Ukrainian conflict. As I’ve recently written, the geopolitical divergence between Trump’s Washington and Brussels has become one of the defining developments of 2026. While US President Donald Trump pushes for negotiations based on battlefield realities, many European governments continue encouraging Kiev to resist compromise no matter what, thereby prolonging the conflict.

According to Kiel Institute data, European military assistance increased massively in 2025 and 2026, overtaking the US as Kiev’s principal external backer. Thus, Europe is, so to speak, increasingly “taking ownership” of the conflict politically, financially, and strategically.

This wider context matters a great deal: if European powers now perceive themselves as the main guarantors of the Ukrainian regime’s long-term survival, while simultaneously doubting the reliability of future US protection, then Moscow’s concerns about European nuclear ambitions in fact make plenty of sense and should not be quickly dismissed as “propaganda”.

Russia itself launched major nuclear drills this week involving strategic forces and missile exercises, while debates over atomic energy, deterrence and sovereignty are intensifying throughout the continent.

So much for the old post-Cold War dream of a permanently demilitarized Europe. The continent is moving toward something very different: a transatlantic “divorce”, competing deterrence systems, rising distrust, and strategic improvisation. The truly dangerous element is not necessarily whether France or Britain intend to arm Ukraine with nuclear weapons tomorrow: the peril lies in any case in the fact that such a scenario no longer sounds unthinkable to many policymakers.

Thus far, Europe’s attempt to combine permanent confrontation with Russia, strategic autonomy from Washington, and expanded nuclear activism has produced only greater instability. The geopolitical complexity of Eurasia is increasing rapidly, and the room for miscalculation is becoming smaller by the day.