By Kit Klarenberg, Substack, 9/28/26

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It’s rather forgotten today how Washington’s post-9/11 imperial adventurism was not restricted to military intervention. A core component of the Bush administration’s “Freedom Agenda” – under the auspices of which calamitous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere were waged – was overt sponsorship of civil society-led coups throughout the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia. Citizens of these regions, and the world, live with this meddling’s destructive consequences to this day. The seemingly never-ending – and ever-escalating – Ukraine proxy war is a particularly visceral legacy.

The 1983 creation of the National Endowment for Democracy, a US state entity avowedly concerned with executing overtly what the CIA once did covertly, ushered in a new era of “spyless coups”. Working in close conjunction with USAID and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, NED ever after provided funding, training and material assistance to NGOs, ‘independent’ media outlets, opposition groups, and other initiatives in service of regime change, across every corner of the world.

Come 9/11, NED and its confederates had devised a supremely cunning, cost-effective template for toppling troublesome governments – be they left-wing, nationalist, or even former US puppets who’d stepped out of line. The previous October, longtime Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was brought down in what the Washington Post dramatically dubbed “an extraordinary US effort to unseat a foreign head of state, not through covert action of the kind the CIA once employed in such places as Iran and Guatemala, but by modern election campaign techniques.”

At the anti-Milosevic effort’s forefront was Otpor! (Serbian: Resistance!), a rebellious NED-funded youth activist group. Through a mix of civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, rock concerts, street theatre, and graffiti, they fomented mass public opposition to the Yugoslav President. When election day came and official results pointed to Milosevic’s victory, an NED-funded “parallel vote tabulation” purported to expose major fraud, sending millions to the streets of Belgrade to peacefully demand the President’s resignation. Milosevic duly capitulated, in the face of seemingly overwhelming people power.

The supposedly heroic struggle of Otpor! and other US-supported anti-Milosevic groups was immortalised in a slick ‘documentary’, Bringing Down A Dictator. Milosevic’s fall provided a precise blueprint for future ‘color revolutions’ – so-called because frequently, the Empire-supported activists who led these mob putsches prominently adopted specific colours for their banners, branding and logos. Initially, US officials eagerly associated themselves publicly with this upheaval. Meanwhile, the mainstream media routinely published remarkably illuminating post-mortems of the revolts, extensively exposing Washington’s guiding hand and oft-enormous financial outlay.

Nonetheless, politicians, pundits and journalists alike universally framed colour revolutions as ultimately spontaneous uprisings by liberal, progressive elements with legitimate grievances, who yearned for democracy and freedom. In reality, they almost invariably produced corrupt, repressive governments that ruled via intimidation and brutality, including political assassinations. Post-colour revolution regimes also typically conducted sweeping privatisation and other ravaging ‘reforms’, destroying living standards for average citizens by prostrating their countries to the EU, IMF, NATO, World Trade Organization, and other mechanisms of Western economic, military, and political subjugation.

Slobodan Milosevic’s NED-orchestrated ouster is nicknamed the ‘Bulldozer Revolution’, due to iconic scenes during the upheaval of a wheel loader helping anti-government agitators occupy state buildings. However, its driver quickly turned against the “Revolution”. Subsequent “shock therapy” decimated Yugoslavia’s mixed market economy, causing his successful independent business to fail, and him to go bankrupt. He subsisted until his dying day on meagre state welfare payments. For most participants, subsequent colour revolutions were similarly an object lesson in being careful about what one wishes for.

‘External Shove’

In February 2005, President George W. Bush gave a swaggering address in Bratislava, Slovakia. He hailed how “in recent times, we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty.” This included Georgia’s November 2003 Rose Revolution, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution the next year, and Iraq’s Purple Revolution a month prior. “The advance of freedom is the concentrated work of generations,” Bush declared. He looked ahead to Moldova, and “inevitably” Belarus, “someday proudly [belonging] to the country of democracies [sic]”:

“Eventually, the call of liberty comes to every mind and every soul. And one day, freedom’s promise will reach every people and every nation.”

Moldova’s forced transformation into a staggeringly corrupt effective EU-US colony took many years. Belarus conversely remains stubbornly resistant to “freedom’s promise”, as defined by Brussels, London, Washington, and other centres of imperial power. Still, President Bush’s confidence was well-founded. Since he took office, waves of insurrectionary unrest unleashed by his government’s “Freedom Agenda” had systematically swept away designated enemy governments one by one annually. Indeed, within weeks of Bush’s speech, Kyrgyzstan’s insufficiently pro-Western leader fell victim to yet another colour revolution.

He would not be the last. Prior colour revolutions had enthusiasticallyemphasised the importance of techniques of nonviolent resistance. Many of them were crafted by Gene Sharp, who was intimately enmeshed within the US military and intelligence establishment for much of his life. However, Kyrgyzstan’s NED-created regime change army, KelKel – directly modelled on Otpor! – attacked police, torched government buildings and even carried out bombings. Their ferocity was actively encouraged and promoted by US-funded TV stations locally. Such belligerence subsequently became a colour revolution calling card.

That colour revolutions represented a formal weapon of war in the Empire’s post-9/11 arsenal was enthusiastically spelled out by arch-neoconservative Max Boot in late December 2004. He gushed how Ukraine’s Orange Revolution days earlier, which brought a pro-Western government to power, was “one of the most inspiring events” of that year. Boot declared the “triumph” and “miracle” of the revolution “should dispel the quaint notion still prevalent in many Western universities and foreign ministries that democracy is a luxury good suitable for rich countries”:

“These revolutions reveal the hollowness of the cliché that ‘democracy can’t be imposed by outsiders’…sometimes, when dealing with an entrenched dictatorship, this requires military intervention of the kind that occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. More brittle regimes can be brought down by their own people, but even they often need a little external shove…There was nothing nefarious about the US intervention in Ukraine.”

Boot boasted how Washington had “spent $58 million on democracy promotion in the last two years” in Ukraine. He proposed Kiev receive “expedited NATO and European Union membership,” to finish off the Orange Revolution. “In the meantime, we need to apply elsewhere the lessons of Ukraine” Boot demanded, suggesting “an obvious candidate for a similar transformation is Iran.” He explained, “it’s hard to think of a higher priority than the overthrow of the mullahs,” encouraging the Bush administration to formally assist “liberating Iran” via colour revolution.

‘USAID Help’

Such was the time’s insurrectionary fervour, in January 2006 USAID went to the extraordinary extent of publishing a glossy magazine, Democracy Rising, revealing in detail Washington’s central role in fomenting “grassroots” rebellions as far afield as Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon. Dedicated sections on colour revolutions to date were replete with stunningly forthright passages. A section on Georgia’s November 2003 Rose Revolution described how NED had financed regime change training for local “lawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, NGOs, political party leaders, and others.”

The purpose was to give Georgians “a sense that they should regulate the government.” The Rose Revolution was avowedly” “the climax of these efforts.” One recipient of US financial support remarked, “without foreign assistance, I’m not sure we would have been able to achieve what we did without bloodshed.” Meanwhile, several pages were dedicated to the Orange Revolution. It noted how thousands of Ukrainian journalists were given training in “investigative reporting”, bankrolled by NED and USAID.

An alumni told Democracy Rising this sponsorship “created a feeling that others stood with them ‘in the trenches’.” Concurrently, NED-affiliated Freedom House flooded the coffers of NGOs “that sponsored voter education, mobilized voters to get to the polls and observed elections.” These organisations “also held meetings, youth dances, rock concerts and karaoke to attract young voters,” and “ran public service ads on TV stations, informing people about their right to vote.” Meanwhile, “democracy trainers from Serbia, Slovakia, Russia and Croatia” were flown into the country.

In the second round of Ukraine’s presidential election, NED-financed NGOs claimed to have been inundated with tens of thousands of reports of fraud from voting stations all over the country, while exit polls they produced pointed to widespread rigging having denied pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko landslide victory. Vast protests, combined with opposition-organised general strikes, widespread civil disobedience and occupations of government buildings forced a rerun. A US-funded think tank apparatchik asserted:

“USAID help for the poll was absolutely important – the poll results after the second round made people go to the street.”

Yet for all the hype and self-assurance of Democracy Rising, its publication came at a time when colour revolutions were increasingly being viewed with hostility and suspicion at a state and public level throughout the Global South. In every case, the radical outcomes promised by colour revolution leaders and advocates failed to materialise, while US rhetoric about the commitment of resultant pro-Western regimes to democracy and freedom was a perverse fraud.

In Ukraine, US-installed Yushchenko implemented economic austerity, slashed regulations and social spending, bailed out criminal banks, broke open state industry and natural resources for foreign plunder, attacked the rights of Russian speakers, and began preparing the country for locally-feared NATO membership. Within just nine months of entering office, his coalition government – comprised of Orange Revolution activists – collapsed due to deeply corrupt battles with feuding Ukrainian oligarchs over control of key media and industrial assets.

Yushchenko was summarily booted out in the January 2010 presidential election, finishing fifth in the first round with just 5.5% of the vote. As imperial house journal Foreign Policy lamented years later, the Bush administration’s much-vaunted colour revolutions all turned out to be “terribly disappointing.” Each and every time, “elite corruption still continued apace” and “promises of far-reaching change never really materialized.” Damningly, “maladies that typified the preceding regimes quickly came to describe” the governments created by colour revolutions themselves.

‘Revolution Business’

That’s quite some euphemism. In Georgia, longtime Soros acolyte Mikheil Saakashvili granted himself unilateral power in key policy areas, before brazenly exploiting his position to harass and jail business and political rivals. Saakashvili’s targets would be raped and/or tortured in prison, their ordeals filmed for primetime broadcast on local TV networks. Grave questions abound over his personal involvement in several suspicious deaths, including government ministers’. He was voted out in October 2012, despite NED’s best efforts.

Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution installed Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who proceeded to run the country as his personal fiefdom for five years. Bakiyev’s relatives profited exorbitantly from legally questionable privatisation of state industries. For example, his family signed a highly controversial $1.8 billion deal to supply fuel to a local US military base, close to Kyrgyzstan’s total GDP in 2003. Elsewhere, Bakiyev’s brother oversaw Bishkek’s security apparatus – arbitrary detentions, bogus convictions, torture, and murders of opposition activists, journalists, and politicians became commonplace.

Bakiyev was himself chased out of not only the presidential palace but Bishkek itself in April 2010, following a massacre of anti-corruption protesters in which up to 100 were killed and at least 450 wounded. Thereafter, Kyrgyzstan was plunged into economic and political chaos for a decade, with numerous governments collapsing along the way. The freest and most stable Central Asian state prior to the Tulip Revolution, it is only since 2020 – following another Anglo-American coup – the country has regained some semblance of stability.

A key player in that upheaval was British ambassador Charles Garrett. He arrived in Bishkek from Macedonia, where as this journalist has revealed from April 2016 he steered what was known as the “colorful revolution”. Illegally obtained, deceptively edited wiretaps seemingly implicating government officials in shocking crimes produced huge protests, featuring widespread arson attacks and brutal clashes between demonstrators and police. Garrett distributed cash to NGOs and activists involved in the unrest from his diplomatic pouch, encouraging them to cause mass havoc.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, NED, and USAID were also colorful revolution participants. Some protesters even proudly wore “Soros Army” shirts. Despite a huge public counter-revolutionary fightback, the tumult paralysed the Macedonian economy and state, leading to the installation of a doggedly pro-Western, dangerously dysfunctional administration that engaged in industrial scale graft, jailed political opponents on bogus charges, and changed the country’s name despite near-unanimous public opposition. Meanwhile, existing economic problems, including crippling brain drain, were gravely exacerbated.

The unfailingly disastrous results of colour revolutions surely contributed to White House officials abruptly and firmly distancing themselves from the entire enterprise, before the Bush administration’s second term was even over. Publicly, the “Freedom Agenda” was quietly forgotten. The President – who in October 2004 openly mandated financial assistance to Belarusian opposition activists, and once bombastically praised the Rose Revolution as an example to be followed throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia – went so far as to deny the US was in the “revolution business” at all.

‘Alternate Reality’

Colour revolutions have continued apace ever since, with the same strategies being recurrently applied the world over, to varying degrees of success. All along, non-Western governments – in particular China, Iran and Russia – have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of and opposition to colour revolutions, in some cases passing legislation seeking to curtail the operations of foreign funded organisations on their soil. Yet, the mainstream media long ago adopted a rigid Omertà on Washington’s culpability for civil society-driven destabilisation overseas.

In a striking example of this paradigm shift, in November 2004, before the Orange Revolution was over, The Guardian published a revealing report exposing the “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev.” The outlet stated unambiguously the revolt was “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.” NED, the State Department and USAID were all fingered as unabashed culprits.

Fast forward to July 2015 however, and a Guardian article on Russia’s banning of NED under foreign agent laws quite amazingly relied on a brief quote pulled from the Endowment’s official website to describe its operations. In the intervening time, the Maidan Revolution overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, setting Kiev on the warpath with Moscow. Washington’s irrefutable involvement was strenuously denied at the time by the mainstream media, and has been ever since.

Following the Ukraine proxy war’s February 2022 eruption, The New York Times took vigorous aim at independent journalists for spreading the “conspiracy theory” Maidan was US-orchestrated, dubbing the proposition an “alternative reality” and “Russian disinformation”. This is despite every prominent Maidan actor – including the individuals who started the demonstrations – receiving NED or USAID funding, leaders of US-bankrolled organisations in the country advertising their intention to overthrow Yanukovych years prior, and the Endowment spending $20 million in Ukraine in 2013 alone.

After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, NED removed its grant records on Ukraine, listing its investment in a panoply of initiatives in the country over many years – a preponderance of which ultimately targeted Russia, one way or another. In mid-2024, the Endowment undertook the unprecedented step of purging its grant records for the entire world. Today, brief entries on different geographical regions describe in vague terms the Endowment’s specific aims locally, and overall sums being spent. The crucial questions of where, and on what, aren’t clarified.

NED going underground makes the task of tracking and exposing contemporary colour revolutions difficult, but not impossible. In September 2025, mass rioting ignited in Nepal. Major news outlets without exception reported the fiery agitation as an organic burst of righteous anger by the country’s disaffected “Gen Z”, motivated by corruption, unemployment, and state censorship of social media. Publications barely acknowledged demonstrators committed serious crimes, including torching Nepal’s parliament and the Prime Minister’s official residence, which sent occupants fleeing in helicopters.

Based on publicly available information, the clear insinuations of a colour revolution could be discerned. An NGO that organised the protests, Hami Nepal, had clear links to organisations known to be in receipt of NED funding. Subsequent leaks amply demonstrated the Endowment and USAID expended substantial sums over the years preceding the coup training young Nepalese citizens how to protest, found NGOs and political parties, and “advocate concerns” publicly on issues including corruption. This included the very individuals now in power in Kathmandu. Evidently, the post-9/11 “Freedom Agenda” never actually ended.

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YouTube link here.

By Larry Johnson, Substack, 9/24/26

Sounds like Professor Pape is trying to impose his pet theory onto a conflict that he only has a superficial understanding of. – Natylie

Thanks to Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism who flagged a recent interview that Professor Robert Pape did with Mario Nawfal. During the interview, Pape argued that Vladimir Putin is caught in an “escalation trap.” In his telling, Russia launched a preventive war in February 2022 to seize Kyiv and roughly 60 percent of Ukraine. That plan collapsed, and the fallback, betting that NATO would break, is now producing the European counterbalancing coalition Moscow most feared. It is a tidy theory. It also rests on a premise about Russian intentions that the record does not support, and once that premise goes, the trap goes with it.

What the force tells you about the objective

Start with arithmetic, the kind any planner of military operations does before anything else. Russia invaded with roughly 150,000 to 190,000 troops, including separatist forces. The standard rule of thumb for occupying a hostile population, from James Quinlivan’s RAND work, is about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. For a country of more than 40 million, even occupying 60 percent of the territory would require several hundred thousand troops, several times what Russia sent. Moscow’s General Staff can do this arithmetic. A force that size is a coercive instrument, not an occupation army.

The pattern of the operation fits coercion. Russian forces approached Kyiv from the north but never attempted to assault or encircle a city of three million. The pressure was aimed at the government, not at taking the capital block by block. Talks began within days, in Belarus on February 28, and moved to Istanbul in March. Pape’s supporters point to the airborne assault on Hostomel as proof of a plan to seize the capital. But a failed coup de main against an airfield is not evidence of an intent to occupy 60 percent of a country.

Istanbul: the objective was achieved

The strongest evidence against Pape is that the coercion worked. By the end of March 2022, meetings in Belarus and Turkey, together with video conferences, had produced the Istanbul Communiqué, a framework for a settlement. Ukraine accepted permanent neutrality in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and its allies, with Russia also as a guarantor. Russia, for its part, agreed to a process to settle the Crimea dispute diplomatically.

That was the core of what Moscow wanted, and the Ukrainian side confirmed it. David Arakhamia, who led Ukraine’s delegation, later said Russia was prepared to end the war if Ukraine accepted Finland-style neutrality and committed not to join NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed to me, Judge Napolitano and Mario Nawfal directly that the talks produced a tentative agreement, and that its terms were brought to the table by the Ukrainian delegation, not imposed by Moscow.

As a gesture of goodwill, Moscow withdrew its forces from north of Kyiv. Western commentary treats that as a retreat forced by battlefield failure. It is at least as consistent with the claim that the pressure had served its purpose.

How the deal died

Then the politics changed. Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kyiv on April 9, 2022, and according to Arakhamia told the Ukrainians not to sign anything with Russia and to “just fight.” Two days earlier, Lavrov had already complained publicly that Ukraine’s new draft departed sharply from the key provisions agreed at Istanbul on March 29. Washington and London had decided Russia was weaker than they had thought and that it could be bled. Ukraine walked away.

This is the point Pape’s framework cannot absorb. If Russia’s goal was a neutral Ukraine obtained through negotiation, the war did not go on because Moscow’s plan failed. It went on because Russia’s adversaries rejected the settlement.

No plan B, but a fast pivot and a new army

With hindsight, Russia clearly had not prepared a plan B for Ukraine walking away. That was a real planning failure. But the Russian military adjusted quickly. It concentrated on the Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea, and the fall of Mariupol in May gave it the first major result of that phase.

The bigger adjustment came in September 2022. After a large number of contract soldiers left the army in August and the Kharkiv counteroffensive exposed how thin Russian lines were, Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists. That was the start, not the end, of Russia’s response. From that point Moscow set about building a much larger army, as the Russian officers I have interviewed have described in detail, including Gen. Apti Alaudinov, Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky, Gen. Andrei Gurulev and Col. Eduard Basurin.

The mobilization was followed by a sustained recruitment campaign and an expanded annual draft. By Medvedev’s count, more than 452,000 men signed military contracts in 2023. Roughly 450,000 followed in 2024, and more than 422,000 in 2025. Year after year, Russia has added at least 350,000 new soldiers. Putin’s decrees tell the same story: authorized military strength rose from about 1.15 million in 2022 to 1.32 million in December 2023, then to 1.5 million effective December 2024. By 2026, according to my sources, Russia’s army had reached that 1.5 million active-duty figure.

That is not the behavior of a state that expected a quick war and is now improvising its way out of a trap. It is the behavior of a state that decided in the autumn of 2022 to fight a long war, and built the force to do it.

Why the timeline matters

The goals never changed. Putin announced them on February 24, 2022: the demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine. What changed after Istanbul was the method, from coercion toward a negotiated settlement to attrition. Moscow has never attached a timeline to that effort.

Pape’s trap depends on the assumption that Russia needed a quick victory and is now stuck with worse and worse options. An attrition strategy with no deadline, backed by an army that has grown every year since 2022, is not a trap. It is a choice. Moscow’s theory of victory since late 2022 has been to exhaust Ukraine’s manpower and the West’s willingness to supply it, not to break NATO by a specific date. Four and a half years later, Russian forces are still advancing, and Ukraine’s reserve and mobilization problems are structural, not temporary.

Pape’s answer is European counterbalancing, backed by an EU economy he puts at about eight times Russia’s. That ratio only holds at market exchange rates, which badly understate what Russia’s economy can actually produce. On purchasing power parity, the measure that matters in a war of production, Russia is the fourth largest economy in the world: about $6.9 trillion in 2024 by the World Bank’s count, behind only China, the United States and India, and ahead of Japan and Germany. The EU as a bloc is still larger, but on that basis the gap is roughly half of Pape’s figure.

GDP understates Russia’s position in another way. Russia has a resource base that Europe cannot match, from oil, gas and coal to metals and fertilizer, and a defense-industrial base that Europe has let wither for thirty years.

Artillery shells, the basic currency of this war, show what that means in practice. Russia produced an estimated 400,000 122mm and 152mm artillery rounds in 2022. By 2025, estimates put its annual output at about 4.2 million. A 2026 Estonian intelligence report goes further, estimating that Russian factories produced about seven million artillery, mortar, tank and rocket rounds in 2025. On top of that, Russia has received millions of rounds from North Korea.

Europe started from almost nothing. At the beginning of 2024, according to Rheinmetall’s own internal estimate, all Western European manufacturers together could produce about 550,000 shells a year. NATO’s own assessment was that Russia produced as much ammunition in the first three months of 2024 as the entire alliance did in a year. The EU pledged to reach a capacity of two million 155mm shells a year by the end of 2025, a target, not proven output. Even adding US production, which is aiming for about 100,000 rounds a month in 2026, allied programs might yield about three million shells this year, still less than Russia’s estimated output in 2025.

That is the real measure of the balance Pape is counting on. A bloc whose economy is several times Russia’s is still being outproduced in the one commodity that decides an attrition war. Balance-of-power theory may be right that Europe will eventually arm itself. It says nothing about whether that happens in time to change the outcome in Ukraine.

Russia sent a force too small to occupy most of Ukraine, negotiated within days, and reached a framework agreement within five weeks. When the West persuaded Kyiv to walk away, Russia shifted to an open-ended war of attrition and spent four years building an army to fight it. That is not a state trapped by the failure of a plan to conquer 60 percent of a country. It is a state that tried coercion first, adapted when it failed, and is fighting on its own timeline.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack

10/11/26:

U.S. President Donald Trump has announced an immediate “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine on October 11, 2026, claiming both sides had agreed to stop targeting each other’s energy infrastructure.

There is no concrete evidence that a functional energy truce is in effect, and both official statements and field events contradict the claim.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the announcement “came as news” to him, though he noted Ukraine would be ready to comply if Russia officially agreed to a reciprocal halt and clarified the terms. Combatants have continued hitting energy-related targets on both sides despite the announcement. For instance, Russian forces launched large waves of drone and missile strikes into Ukraine, while Ukrainian forces have maintained long-range strikes against Russian oil infrastructure and refineries (such as facilities in Syzran).

While the Kremlin has previously expressed general openness to the concept of pausing energy strikes, Russian officials have tied any agreement to broader demands, including the lifting of Western sanctions on Russian seaborne energy exports. Independent think tanks and analysts describe the proposed arrangement as largely symbolic or non-existent in practice.

President Trump made a similar claim in September 2026 that both nations had agreed to halt energy attacks, which also broke down immediately as strikes persisted.

As for the diesel deal, there is a growing chorus of expert opinion in favor of the view that the deal will do relatively little to boost diesel production, and it is the shortage of production, not the hiccups of war distribution, that is the major factor behind rising prices.

See Matt Randolph on Forbes: The Art Of The Tiny Deal: Trump’s Diesel Deal With Putin Does Nothing (Randolph), and Larry Johnson on Sonar21: The Other Hormuz Shocks: LNG and Helium. Economic effects of the Persian Gulf cutoff, from first-order to tertiary (Johnson).

10/10/26:

The main challenge to and opportunities for the US-Russia diesel agreement announced by President Trump yesterday center on: the reactions of Ukraine and Europe, damaged Russian refinery infrastructure, severe legislative and political backlash, and domestic market scale limitations.

Zelenskiy has already howled his disapproval, as one would expect, and he has confirmed that he will continue the renewed Ukrainian onslaught on Russian refineries that had picked up again from October 1 (unless Russia agrees to stop its strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure). This, of course, raises the question as to where all this Russian diesel that is destined for the US is going to come from in the event that there is insufficient Russian refining capacity. Russia recently halted diesel exports because it wanted to protect – to continue to be able to supply at reasonable prices – Russia’s domestic market. If Russia is unable to boost its refining capacity very significantly it runs the risk that it will not be able to supply the US, after all, or that it may have to allow domestic prices to rise significantly, or that it will have to send more crude to countries like India for refining there, and this too would likely have a negative impact on prices. If could also simply send crude oil to the US, since Russian oil is more favorable for refining into diesel and aviation fuel than much of US shale oil, but I understand that US refineries are already working close to capacity, fed from, among other things, more oil from Venezuela.

The total amount of diesel that the deal envisages being sent to the US is 4.8 million metric tons, according to CNBC. The Atlantic Council says this is not enough to resolve global fuel shortages. Bloomberg has issued a calculation that puts the total amount being talked about at 13.5 million metric tons.

Ukraine will likely find support for its intransigence from Europe, but that support will be increasingly insincere, given that Europe is also short of diesel and needs to see a boost to global diesel availability and is coming dangerously close to the end of the possibility of Europe continuing to shoot itself in the foot by adopting policies that merely increase its fuel difficulties (such as planning to terminate all imports of Russian fuel, even LNG, by January). Why has it been doing this? Because it thought that that was what the US wanted it to do, because it has desperately wanted to see the US return in a full-blooded way to the battlefields of Ukraine, because Europe has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine and buying its weapons from US arms manufacturers and because this generation of European leaders are phenomenally brainwashed, inexperienced and stupid.

If Ukraine and Europe together plan on continuing to destroy Russian oil refineries (and we have to remember that it has not just been Ukraine doing this by itself, but Ukraine aided and abetted, significantly, by NATO, including US satellite intelligence and navigational support), then that will likely force the US – incredibly – to reenter the war on Russia’s side (!) or, in another TACO, to give in, again, to Zelenskiy and the Europeans.

This thought is as striking as an idea proposed by Professor Geoffrey Roberts to the effect that Ukraine may now consider that it’s best future ally will be Russia! This view has some merit in as far as, in additon to Trump’s most recent turn against Zelenskiy, the road for Ukraine into NATO is now blocked – everyone agrees – and the prospects for its passage into the EU look very shaky, while emerging problems in the relationship that Ukraine has with some neighboring countries such as Poland and Romania may also begin to reignite cultural affinities between Ukraine and Russia. These latter were always there, of course, especially so far as eastern Ukraine is concerned. I have less confidence to think there could ever be a reconciliation between Russia and western Ukraine, given the neo-Nazi and monist nationalist conceptions (backed by the US in 2014, leading to the coup d’etat that year). But one has to recall that the population is only half the size it once was and that half of the remaining population is made up of pensioners or near-pensioners.

But, back to the US and Russia, perhaps the US doesn’t need to reenter the war on Russia’s side. Perhaps it just has to do nothing – or, rather, more “nothing” than the “nothing” it has recently been doing – given that under Russian general Surovikin’s leadership in charge of the bombing of Dnieper bridges, together with ever more sustain Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports, energy facilities, warehouse, weapons production facilities, etc., Russia will simply win the war. Benefitting from an additional $4 billion dollars of revenue from diesel sales to the US, Russia will have plenty of motivation to do whatever needs to be done.

There is the little matter of the temporary general license issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control directly clashes with the newly enacted Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which was designed to cut off revenue sustaining Russia’s war in Ukraine., My understanding is that this merely gives Trump the capability of imposing Graham’s “bone-crushing” sanctions, but does not require him so to do. But there will be backlash from neocon lawmakers from the substantial warmongering elements of both parties – including members of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus – that have condemned the pivot as a reversal of pressure on Moscow, though the administration relies on executive waiver and licensing authorities to bypass immediate statutory blocks. It appears that Russia has already been granted a six-month waiver from US sanctions. The Treasury Department confirms that the Office of Foreign Assets Control had issued General License 135, authorizing the purchasae, shipment, and importation of Russian-origin diesel into United States and global markets through April 7, 2027. Russia is lifting its own ban on diesel exports with immediate effect.

The main opportunities.

The immediate influx of 300,000 tonnes of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tonnes in November, is aimed directly at reducing soaring global fuel prices. President Trump highlighted that bringing down diesel costs is an explicit priority to lower operating expenses for American farmers, truckers, and ranchers. The sudden deal is heavily leveraged by the Republican Party to ease voter frustration over the high cost of living just weeks before the critical November midterm elections.

Beyond energy flows, the Kremlin has noted that the phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin devoted “significant attention to the prospects of resolving the Ukrainian crisis”. The deal coincided with active talks involving U.S. envoys to negotiate an end to the war. The opening of energy dialogue acts as a doorway to address other highly sensitive international flashpoints, including the current situation surrounding Iran and broader bilateral state relations.

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Authorities in Irkutsk oblast claimed an “all-clear” after nearly 5,000 laboratory tests found no dangerous pathogens following the death of lab employee

Russia Matters, 10/9/26

Authorities in Irkutsk oblast claimed an “all-clear” after nearly 5,000 laboratory tests found no dangerous pathogens following the death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Anti-Plague Institute in this Siberian province. Officials said she died from community-acquired pneumonia, was vaccinated against the infections she studied and was not involved in a laboratory accident. Monitoring of contacts has ended, after approximately 200 people were initially quarantined. Authorities said no plague cases or wider outbreak were identified, although the exact cause of death had not been definitively established. This follows from reporting by Bloomberg, Meduza and The Moscow Times.

By Ted Snider, The American Conservative, 9/2/26

One day, the war in Ukraine will be over. When that day finally arrives, Ukraine may find itself transforming from the country that everyone fought over to the country that nobody wants to be burdened with. Ukraine has been caught in a tug of war, pulled between two sides that covet it: the United States and its European and Canadian allies to the west and Russia to the east. But after the war, Ukraine may find itself alone, abandoned by and disappointed in the West and with bitter memories of and animosity against the east.

In 2014, Ukrainian nationalists came to the conclusion that elections could no longer be trusted to deliver their monist vision of Ukraine in which the language, culture, and religion of the country’s ethnic Russian citizens had to be erased. So, for the first time in Ukraine’s history, they reversed an election with a coup. The central goal of that coup was to end Ukraine’s multivector foreign policy that balanced relations with Europe and Russia.

Reorienting toward the West meant economic cooperation with Europe and membership in the European Union. That political and economic goal was twinned with the security goal of membership in NATO. Membership in both was promised to Ukraine, and the West encouraged Ukraine to go on fighting Russia after its 2022 invasion, rather than negotiating a peace, in defense of its right to pursue those memberships. The war, the U.S. State Department explained at the beginning of the invasion, is “bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” It is about “core principles,” specifically, 

the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives have been destroyed in pursuit of those promises and goals. When the war finally ends, Ukrainians will have to rebuild their lives and rebuild their country. But the odds are good that their country will not be in the EU nor in NATO. If Ukraine faces west, they will find themselves abandoned and alone.

Russia long ago dropped its objection to Ukraine joining the EU, yet the path has not truly been cleared because the EU has refused to drop its own objections. Though most European leaders say they “strongly support” Kiev’s accession to the European Union, numerous problems including Ukrainian corruption and the country’s democratic deficit have thrown up roadblocks to membership.

Dreams of fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU membership have been dashed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demands for membership by 2027 have been revised to more realistic targets like 2035. Proposed compromises like “membership light” or “reverse enlargement” have gone nowhere. France and Germany have blocked them, and the plans never had the support of most member states.

Relations between Ukraine and Poland continue to deteriorate over Ukraine’s insistence on honoring its ultranationalist element, whose lineage traces back to groups that participated in the mass killing of Poles in the Second World War. Hungary, even after the ouster of its populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, continues to block Ukraine’s accession over its treatment of Hungarian minorities.

Promises of NATO membership lie even more shattered. “Irreversible paths” and bridges have been promised to Ukraine, but walking the path has been prohibited and the bridge has never been built. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both denied Ukraine membership in NATO. Biden said that “the likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely” and that “Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership.” Trump said there would be “no going into NATO by Ukraine.” Ukraine’s European friends have said the same. Germany’s then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership is “not even on the agenda.” Point number seven of Trump’s 28-point peace plan states that “Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.” 

Zelensky long ago said “it must be acknowledged” that Ukraine “cannot enter” the “supposedly open” NATO door and that, though “publicly, the doors remain open,” in reality, Ukraine is “not going to be a NATO member.” 

At the end of the war, Ukraine will be left to face a West that has grown reluctant to fund its economic reconstruction and that declines to extend an invitation to join its political and security unions. Ukraine, at that point, may turn to an unlikely option: Russia.

It will not be easy or smooth. But Geoffrey Roberts, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork, has recently suggested that, after the war,

the best friend that Ukraine is going to have is Russia and the Russian people. That is where Ukraine’s ultimate future lies: in reconstructing its relationship with Russia. While immensely difficult, it represents the only viable long-term path for the Ukrainian people.

Russia has continued to frame the Ukrainian people as a brotherly nation and not a people to be devastated or destroyed. Acknowledging that fact is not to excuse Russia’s invasion nor the devastation it has caused. It is to suggest that Russia’s goal may have been to stop Ukraine from being used as a military bridgehead on Russia’s border and that, to do this, Russia focused on the Ukrainian armed forces and not the Ukrainian people.

Nicolai Petro, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, tells the unexpected story that, during direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, “to the astonishment of the Europeans present” the Russian and Ukrainian delegates “started to make jokes and to get along. Because essentially, they understood each other better—far better—than either of them understood the Europeans.” 

Any turn to the east will take time. But Ukraine’s natural future may lie in repaired relations with Russia. That may be necessitated by closed doors to the west and smoothed by shared language and family ties as well as commonalities of religion, culture, and history with Russia.

Two factors could determine if this reconstructed relationship is possible. The first is the trajectory of the war. Ukraine and Russia are unlikely to mend relations if “the war is fought to a finish, involving Ukrainian societal as well as military collapse, including large-scale civilian casualties,” Roberts told The American Conservative. But relations between the two countries could recover if “a negotiated settlement saves Ukraine’s statehood, provides for its future security, and supports its postwar reconstruction.” That recovery could be hastened and strengthened if Russia becomes a primary partner in reconstruction and if future trade relations are built into a settlement. 

The second factor is who leads Ukraine after the war. After nourishing the people of Ukraine throughout the war with maximalist promises of recovering all of its territory and gaining membership in NATO, Zelensky may find it difficult to sign a peace deal that accomplishes none of that and, moreover, allows the possibility of warmer relations with Russia in the future.

But polls suggest that Zelensky may not be the leader after Ukraine is able to hold presidential elections. And both his two main rivals, Valeriy Zaluzhny and Kyrylo Budanov, may be more likely to negotiate such a peace. Budanov has said recently that he is “ready for any step that will end the war,” and in office he maintained dialogue with Igor Kostyukov, the head of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

At the end of the war, a devastated Ukraine will need somewhere to turn. With the long-promised door to the west closed, the badly-frayed but natural connection to Russia may be the only viable direction in which Ukraine can turn.