By Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone, 3/6/26

“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.

With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis.

Trump’s generalized fears of assassination were well-founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 by a 20-year-old engineering student named Thomas Crooks who managed to fire eight rounds at the former president from a rooftop, slicing his ear and missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Two months later, a drifter named Ryan Routh was arrested after hiding for hours in the shrubbery outside the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh had been spotted after pointing an assault rifle toward a Secret Service agent as Trump played golf 400 yards away.

Officials have yet to produce any evidence that Iran played a role in either of these attempts on Trump’s life. Yet since those fateful events, Israel-aligned Trump advisors, Israeli intelligence, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself have gone to extreme lengths in order to tie Tehran to the plots. More shocking still is the fact that the FBI has manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on US soil with highly sophisticated teams of hit men.

The man accused of leading the most significant of these operations, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in a Brooklyn, NY federal court. After the US granted him a visa despite his presence on a terror watchlist, Merchant was in the constant company of an FBI confidential informant who ultimately steered the contrived plot to its conclusion. He never stood a chance of realizing his plans, and did not appear serious about doing so.

Independent journalist Ken Silva puts it succinctly in his forthcoming investigative book, “The Trump Assassination Plots”: “A closer look at the Merchant case reveals that at the very least…it was a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump. More nefariously, records and whistleblower disclosures indicate that Merchant may have been the patsy in a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents.”

Authorities arrested Merchant on July 12, 2024 – just one day before Crooks attempted to kill Trump in Butler. Hours after the failed Butler assassination, FBI agents interrogated Merchant about whether it was in fact Iran that had Crooks under its control.

At that point, Trump was still campaigning to be a “President of Peace. On the campaign stump, he warned that his opponent, Kamala Harris, “would get us into World War III guaranteed.” Trump vowed to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia in one day, and distanced himself from pro-war Republicans who sought regime change in Iran.

Pro-war elements in Trump’s coterie exercised multiple points of leverage to reverse the president’s anti-interventionist instincts. Ultra-Zionist billionaires supplied vital and well-documented influence over Trump’s policies by keeping his campaign war chest flush. But Trump remained an erratic personality whose petty grievances kept his aides in a perpetual state of uncertainty.

It was only by exploiting Trump’s deepest psychological vulnerability – his fear of an assassin’s bullet – that Israel and its cutouts in his administration were able to secure their influence over the president, keeping him on the warpath against Iran.

The assassination escalation trap

On June 3, 2020, as the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, deboarded an airplane at Baghdad International Airport, on his way to peace talks with Saudi officials, a US drone killed him with a Hellfire missile. The strike had been ordered by Trump following a sustained campaign of military escalation against Iranian allies orchestrated by his National Security Council Director John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

As journalist Gareth Porter reported for The Grayzone, by the time Trump authorized Soleimani’s assassination, Netanyahu was planning unilateral strikes on Iran aimed at drawing the US into direct conflict. Trump issued orders to kill the general under sustained pressure by Pompeo and Bolton, two pro-Israel hardliners. Both former Trump officials have lobbied for the Israeli and Saudi-funded Mojahedin El-Khalk (MEK), a cult-like exiled militia that has carried out numerous assassinations of Iranian officials at the behest of Israel’s intelligence services.

By killing Soleimani, Trump set the US on a collision course for all-out war with Iran – just as Netanyahu had hoped. What’s more, the president invited the prospect of violent retaliation against himself and his national security advisors.

So long as Trump feared the specter of IRGC agents lurking behind every corner, it stood to reason that he was more likely to authorize a regime change war on Iran. And so the FBI went to work, concocting a series of plots that helped forge Trump’s belligerent attitude toward Tehran.

Brought to you by the FBI: Iran’s plot to kill John Bolton

The first major Iranian plot arrived in 2022, when the Department of Justice filed charges against an Iranian national, Shahram Poursafi, for supposedly hiring a hitman to kill Bolton. However, the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant, and the plot was largely contrived by the Bureau. Poursafi, for his part, could not be arrested because he lived in Iran.

As journalist Ken Silva reported, the FBI officer who oversaw the manufactured plot to kill Bolton, Steven D’Antuono, was the same official who ran the Detroit field office that relied on paid informants to concoct the 2020 plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In a 2025 federal appeal court ruling, the judge acknowledged that defendants in that case “are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan” to kidnap Whitmer. The FBI’s D’Antuono also oversaw the probe into the suspicious planting of pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the course of his failed investigation, he misled Congress about having received “corrupted” evidence.

Though Bolton was never in danger from Iran, the FBI-contrived plot began to fuel paranoia among Trump administration veterans. Pompeo now believed that he too was being targeted by Iranian assassination teams. In his 2023 campaign memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” the former CIA director claimed Poursafi had also paid $1 million to a hitman to kill him.

However, Pompeo provided no additional details on the plot, which was never mentioned in DOJ documents charging Poursafi for attempting to kill Bolton. According to those affidavits, Poursafi sent just $100 to the FBI’s confidential human source before the DOJ concluded its investigation.

Iran’s hapless hitman granted special visa, introduced to FBI informant

In April 2024, as Trump launched his comeback presidential campaign, an itinerant salesman named Asif Merchant arrived from Pakistan to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. He was quickly flagged as a “Qualified Person of Interest” who’d been placed on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist. Agents from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) team then discovered through a search of Merchant’s devices that he had visited Iran, where his wife and adopted son lived. Whether they’d received a tip from Israel, which furnishes reams of intelligence to the FBI on foreign Muslim visitors to the US, remains an open question.

According to JTTF documents obtained by pro-Trump reporter John Solomon, Merchant was “released without incident” and designated as “free to travel to desired destination.” In fact, the FBI had granted him a “Special Public Benefit Parole,” which, as Solomon explained, “would allow agents to try to flip Merchant as a cooperator or try to determine why he was coming to the United States and who he might be working with.”

The FBI whistleblower who provided Solomon with the documents on Merchant’s airport interview compared the “Special Public Benefit Parole” to the scandalous “Fast and Furious” program, in which President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice facilitated the delivery of automatic weapons from US gun dealers to Mexican cartels in order to supposedly surveil the gangs’ criminal activities.

Almost as soon as Merchant entered the US, the FBI introduced him to a confidential informant posing as a potential business partner and operating under the alias, Nadeem Ali. The informant had served as translator for the US military during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Though Merchant did not propose any crimes, the FBI wiretapped a meeting between him and the informant, Ali, in a hotel room on June 3, 2024. There, Merchant was taped making a supposed “finger gun” motion while mentioning an unspecified “opportunity.” This grainy minute-long hidden camera recording is presented as the linchpin of the DOJ’s indictment of Merchant.

According to the FBI, Merchant had outlined a highly complex plot which required the hiring of two hitmen, “twenty five people who could perform a protest after the distraction occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.”

For the elaborate flash mob-style assassination extravaganza, Merchant was asked by the informant to fork over a mere $5000. The Pakistani visitor had no means of scrounging up the fee, however, raising further questions about the seriousness of the plot. “I did not think I was going to be successful,” Merchant would later state in court.

Virtually penniless, Merchant was forced to gather the cash from an anonymous “associate,” according to the DOJ indictment. Next, the FBI informant took him on a winding journey from Boston to New York City, where he allegedly handed the money to two other FBI informants posing as hit men. The DOJ claims Merchant made plans to fly to Pakistan on June 12, but was arrested in his residence that day.

Merchant interrogated about Butler, kept incommunicado

The following day, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks arrived at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania where former president Trump was scheduled to speak. He flew a drone in the air for 15 minutes, surveying the area as he finalized plans to assassinate the candidate. In an odd coincidence, the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was offline all morning and into the afternoon — until roughly 15 minutes after Crooks flew his drone. When Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed atop a slanted rooftop 130 yards away and fired eight shots at the president, missing his head by an inch, until a local police officer fired back. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper who had inexplicably hesitated to fire for a full 15 seconds.

Thirty hours later, FBI agents flew to Houston to interrogate Merchant in his jail cell about a possible Iranian connection to the assassination attempt in Butler. An FBI source told the Washington Post the Bureau “took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks.”

The grilling continued even after Merchant was transferred to the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same prison where Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare’s CEO, is currently being held. There, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone but the guards who brought him food and his lawyers because, as then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco argued, he might use code words to initiate further assassination plots. “It appeared they thought I was some kind of super spy,” Merchant later reflected.

Not only was Merchant prevented from calling his family in Pakistan, he was blocked from reviewing recordings of conversations he held with undercover FBI informants, as the DOJ had marked them “Sensitive.” In March 2025, his lawyer protested that US Marshals repeatedly refused to allow him to meet with this counsel and review discovery at the courthouse. This, too, was justified on the basis of specious national security grounds.

However, as the journalist Ken Silva discovered, an internal memo by the Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters confirmed that Merchant had no contact with any Iranian intelligence assets in the US. “Law enforcement has not identified any IRGC associates of Merchant operating in the United States who could continue to orchestrate violent acts,” Peters wrote.

Indeed, the only Iranian assassins with whom Merchant appeared to have interacted inside the US were undercover informants working for the FBI.

Merchant “had never been close to realizing” Trump assassination

During his trial this March 4, Merchant’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, took the highly unusual step of allowing his client to take the stand. Merchant proceeded to present a version of events that contrasted sharply with the account he provided in his initial FBI proffer. For example, the defendant claimed he had been coerced into the plot by an IRGC agent, and went forward with a plan “to maybe have someone murdered” only because he feared for his wife and adopted son back in Iran.

After his arrest by the FBI, Merchant said he engaged in discussions with federal authorities about becoming an informant himself, but they ultimately broke down for unknown reasons.

“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” he insisted in Urdu, adding, “I did not think I was going to be successful.”

In its coverage of the trial, the New York Times concluded Merchant “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler.”

But back in 2024, as word spread of Merchant’s arrest, Israel-adjacent figures in Trump’s inner circle exploited the case to exacerbate the candidate’s anxiety about the Ayatollah’s wrath.

Israel-aligned forces blur Butler with Iran

Just three days after Trump’s campaign was nearly ended by a lone American assassin’s bullet in Butler, officials burrowed within the architecture of the national security state took measures to shift the focus to Iran.

“The Biden administration obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, and the information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter,” reported NBC’s Ken Dilanian on July 16, 2024. (Dilanian had been fired from his previous gig at the LA Times after he was exposed for allowing the CIA to review his reports before publication).

The unnamed officials were clearly referring to the plot which the FBI manufactured for Merchant. The revelation not only seemed like a cynical attempt to obscure the reality of the near-assassination in Butler, which was conducted by a friendless American man who had never left the country. It also suggested the FBI had been so focused on concocting Iranian plots on American soil that it ignored the years-long trail of YouTube comments left by the would-be assassin bluntly declaring his intention to kill US politicians and police officers, and his hopes to instigate a civil war.

Though FBI leadership misled the public about the nature of the Butler plot, falsely claiming, for instance, that Crooks was not communicating with others online, they were never able to connect it to Iran. This clearly frustrated Rep. Mike Waltz, a close Trump ally seated on the House committee to investigate the Butler plot.

“These plots from Iran are ongoing. And when Biden says nothing, Harris says nothing, the DOJ tries to bury it, what message does Iran get? They get that we can keep trying to take Trump out and have no consequences,” Waltz fulminated on Fox News in August 2024.

Referencing the FBI-manufactured Merchant operation, Waltz thundered, “You have multiple assassination plots from the Iranians. This Pakistani national was recruiting females as spotters. He had recruited hit men and had made a down payment. He was even recruiting protesters as a distraction.”

By this point, Waltz was on his way to a short stint as Trump’s National Security Council Director, where he would help direct a failed war on Iran’s allies among the Ansurallah movement in Yemen. (Waltz was demoted to US ambassador to the UN after he accidentally included the Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg in a private administration Signal chat where classified information about US attack plans on Yemen was shared).

Throughout his career, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu’s allies had quietly propelled his rise. As AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt remarked in private comments exclusively revealed by The Grayzone, Waltz was one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, as he had been groomed by the Israel lobby since he first ran for Congress.

For Waltz and other Israel-aligned figures close to Trump, connecting the Butler incident to Iran appeared to offer a direct path to conflict with Iran. As an unnamed high-level US official told the Washington Post, if Tehran had been found responsible for Crooks’ attempt to kill Trump, “it would mean war.”

Certain foreign actors were also working to steer the US toward blaming Iran for Butler. In the late summer of 2024, the Justice Department received an urgent alert from abroad which connected Crooks directly to IRGC plots to kill Trump. According to the Washington Post, the tip arrived through a “confidential human source overseas” – almost certainly Israeli intelligence.

After a thorough investigation, DOJ officials decided the tip was not credible. “Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,” one official told the Post.

But in the wake of the shooting in Butler, the constant chatter about looming Iranian threats had indelibly altered Trump’s outlook. Reporters who followed Trump on the campaign trail described a palpable sense of panic from the candidate and his inner circle about IRGC-directed hitmen stalking them at every stop.

“Ghost flights” for Trump triggered by imaginary Iran missile threats

With the Trump campaign already consumed with anxiety, the FBI delivered an alert that sent them spiraling into the depths of paranoia.

According to the Bureau, Iran had placed operatives inside the country with access to surface-to-air missiles. This dubious warning prompted Trump’s already militarized security team to take an extraordinary step. Fearing that Iran would down the famous “Trump Force One” airliner at any moment, Trump was placed on a “ghost flight” owned by his golf buddy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, while the rest of his campaign traveled on the main jet.

Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.

Journalist Ken Silva has revealed that the FBI alert which prompted Trump’s use of a “ghost plane” was based on a cynical deception. As Silva explains in his forthcoming book on the assassination plots surrounding Trump, federal investigators had discovered that Routh, the would-be assassin at Mar-a Lago, had attempted to purchase a rocket launcher, and may have been in contact with Iranian nationals during his time in Ukraine. The Bureau likely massaged that information into the bogus report it provided the Trump campaign, conjuring up imaginary Manpad-toting IRGC operatives to exacerbate the candidate’s fears.

Once he entered the Oval Office, Trump was encircled by Israel-aligned advisors and staunchly committed to the belief that Iran had attempted to eliminate him on the campaign trail. As commander-in-chief of the US military, he was hellbent on revenge.

Netanyahu nudges Trump with Butler plot

On June 15, 2025, days after launching an unprovoked war on Iran, Netanyahu took to Fox News to manipulate Trump into joining the assault. The Israeli leader appeared to know exactly which psychological vulnerabilities to exploit.

“These people who chant death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Netanyahu declared, asserting without a shred of evidence that Iran was behind both the Butler assassination attempt and the one at Mar a-Lago.

“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” a visibly startled Fox News host Bret Baier asked.

“Through proxies, yes. Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him,” stated Netanyahu with a cocksure gaze.

One week later, Trump authorized a series of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel’s military assault. Though Trump arranged a ceasefire soon after the attack, Israel’s influence over his administration – and over his psyche – guaranteed that another, much more violent round of conflict was just over the horizon.

In a graphic promoted by the White House’s official Twitter/X account on July 21, 2025, Trump implied that he had begun to turn the tables on his would-be Iranian assassins: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter,” he declared.

Israel claims to eliminate would-be Trump assassin in Iran

By March 2026, Trump was back to war with Iran. Within four days, the US-Israeli joint assault had predictably expanded into an open-ended regional war following the failure of an opening series of decapitation strikes to induce regime change.

On the afternoon of March 4, the glowering US “Secretary of War” and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth appeared before a lectern at the Pentagon and vowed to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over the people of Iran.

As his cartoonishly violent screed built to a crescendo, Hegseth issued a dramatic announcement: “The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”

Though Hegseth did not name the figure, an Israeli journalist who functions as one of Netanyahu’s favorite stenographers, Amit Segal, revealed that Israel had assassinated an IRGC official named Rahman Mokadam who was supposedly responsible for directing a plot to kill Trump. But once again, the details of the plot revealed layers of FBI chicanery, confidential informants masked as “co-conspirators,” and a compromised witness.

In fact, the supposed assassination plan which Mokadam was accused of directing did not initially focus on Trump. Instead, the target was said to be Masih Alinejad, an Iranian expat and regime change activist on the US government payroll. The only evidence that Trump was a possible target at all came from the claims of a convicted drug dealer and con man named Farhad Shakeri, who had also been a defendant. Shakeri spoke to the FBI by telephone from Iran, providing dubious information in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for an unnamed associate in the US.

It was during these remote interviews that Shakeri seemingly claimed he had an IRGC handler who had directed him to kill Trump. But according to the FBI’s criminal complaint against him, that handler’s name was “Majid Soleimani,” not Mokadam.

The FBI agent who interviewed Shakeri clearly recognized his penchant for fabulism, writing that “certain of Shakeri’s statements appear to be true and others appear to be false.” Shakeri had indeed lied throughout his interviews, yet the agent still concluded that “it appears” he was planning to kill Trump. He did not explain why he considered the confession credible, and the allegation about a plot to kill Trump was notably absent from the grand jury indictment filed a month later.

After killing Mokadam on March 4, the Israelis went straight to the president to boast of their supposed achievement – and reignite his anxiety about Iranian assassins.

As Amit Segal noted, “Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.” In doing so, the Israelis reinforced Trump’s sense that he had been hunted by Iran – and that by fighting their war, he was saving his own skin.

As it had in the past, the White House posted a video on its official Twitter/X account proclaiming Trump’s triumph over Iranian assassins: “I WAS THE HUNTED, AND NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”

Thomas Crooks may have narrowly missed Trump’s cranium in Butler, Pennsylvania, but Israel had found a way into the president’s head.

***

Iran War Cost Tracker

https://iran-cost-ticker.com

By Dr. Warwick Powell, Substack, 2/17/26

Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Professor working at the intersection of China, digital technologies, supply chains, financial flows and global political economy & governance.

Preface: as we near the fourth anniversary of the formal initiation of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, I reflect on the state of the war, its trajectory and likely cadence through a quantitative lens. It’s something I have been doing on-and-off for a few years now, which led me to conclude a while ago that the collective west has already experienced a debilitating strategic defeat, even as the fighting continued. Wars are system-on-system propositions, and the west’s fragilities in terms of repair, replenishment and replacement capabilities has been fully exposed. My core evaluation remains, and this essay explains some of the reasoning for this focusing on the raw ledger of the situation as it presents itself in Ukraine. I won’t be the least surprised to see the war transition to what some call a ‘dirty war’ with increased frequency of assassinations, sabotage and general terror replacing formal battlefield engagement. Meanwhile, representatives of the protagonists arrive in Geneva to continue talks.

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Introduction

Attritional warfare, where victory emerges not from decisive manoeuvres but from the sustained erosion of an opponent’s capacity to fight, lends itself to mathematical modelling. In the Russian-Ukrainian War, now entering its fifth year as of February 2026, the dynamics have shifted decisively toward this mode since mid-2022. The conflict’s outcome hinges on the relative rates at which each side can replenish losses in personnel, equipment, and munitions compared to the damage inflicted by the adversary.

This essay synthesises key analytical findings from open-source data, outlines the methodology used to derive estimates of collapse timelines, and presents the raw data ranges underpinning these projections. The goal is not to forecast an exact endpoint – warfare defies such precision – but to demonstrate how known parameters allow us to sketch reasonable trajectories and cadences. By aggregating disparate estimates into a coherent framework, we can discern patterns: gradual depletion accelerating into non-linear collapse, with a plausible window of 6-9 months from now before Ukraine’s defensive sustainability falters irretrievably.

This approach draws on historical precedents, such as the World War I models of Frederick Lanchester, adapted to modern data. It reveals a ledger tilted against Ukraine, driven by Russia’s superior replenishment and fire dominance, exacerbated by recent Western aid constraints. Yet, the analysis underscores some degree of uncertainty: data biases, doctrinal adaptations and external variables like aid surges could alter the cadence. What follows is a dispassionate examination, grounded in numbers, to illustrate how such estimations emerge.

Key Analytical Findings

The core insight from quantifying the war’s attritional phase is that Ukraine’s effective combat power – a composite of manpower, machinery and munitions – is depleting at a net rate that outpaces its replenishment, while Russia’s holds steady or grows marginally. This imbalance, compounded by recent reductions in Western support, points to a tipping point where Ukrainian force density thins below viability, triggering rapid territorial losses and operational collapse.

Based on integrated projections from November 2025 to February 2026 data, the estimated window for this tipping point is 3-6 months from now (May-August 2026), followed by a 3-4 month cascade to functional exhaustion. Overall, this yields a 6-9 month horizon to “floodgates opening,” where advances accelerate from the current 0.3-1 km/day to 5-10 km/day, as seen in historical breakthroughs like the 2022 Kherson retreat. The cadence is non-linear: initial depletion appears stalemated, with monthly losses of 10,000-20,000 lethal units (a term normalising soldiers at 1 unit, tanks at 10, etc.), but once below 73% of peak strength (around 400,000 units), losses surge 2-3 times due to exposed flanks and reduced fire support.

Trajectories vary by data optimism / pessimism. Using Western-leaning estimates (lower Ukrainian losses, higher aid inflows), the threshold arrives in July 2026, with collapse by October. Russian-sourced figures (higher inflicted damage) accelerate this to April-May, with endpoint by August. Recent developments sharpen the grim end: US missile stockpiles, depleted to 25% of Pentagon requirements, have prompted prioritisation of domestic needs under the Trump administration, reducing deliveries. Germany’s February 2026 announcement of exhausted stockpiles further cuts munitions inflows by 20-30%, equivalent to an additional 100-200 daily unit losses for Ukraine.

These findings highlight sustainability as the decisive factor. Russia’s net daily gain of 700-900 units sustains its force at 680,000-700,000, enabling methodical pressure without overextension. Russia also has a reserve army of similar scale not yet mobilised. Ukraine, starting February at 450,000-500,000 units (down from 550,000 in November), nets -100 to -900 units/day, a trajectory that compounds subtly until critical. Aid like the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL, ~$15 billion in 2026 from Europe) might add 50-100 units/day temporarily, extending the window by 1-2 months, but production lags (e.g., 60 Patriot missiles/month globally) cannot offset Russia’s 10:1 fire advantage.

The broader implication: the war’s cadence follows a predictable arc in attritional models: slow grind to threshold followed by exponential decay. This allows estimating not just endpoints but inflection points, such as when air defence failures (current stocks cover dozens of salvos against 450 monthly threats) amplify Russian strikes by 10-20%. Absent major escalations, like full NATO intervention, the math suggests Ukraine crosses the ledger’s wrong side by late 2026, with territorial concessions becoming inevitable to preserve residual forces.

This will open the pathway for Russia to successfully push towards, and claim Odessa and perhaps even being in a position to hasten a change of regime in Kiev. My own estimation is that the war will only come to a formal end when these two conditions are met, which will enable formal negotiations to proceed to not just surrender terms but more significantly from Russia’s point of view, a number of critical treaties that go to regional security architecture re-engineering. (See my essay from this time last year, explaining these.)

Methodology and Caveats

The methodology employs a modified Lanchester model, a framework from early 20th-century operations research, to simulate combat dynamics. At its heart, it tracks two variables: each side’s effective force level over time, influenced by replenishment rates and the opponent’s inflicted losses. Forces are aggregated into “lethal units” for comparability – personnel count as 1 unit each, armoured vehicles as 10 (reflecting firepower), and munitions as 0.01 per shell (approximating strike equivalence). This normalisation allows modelling the war as a system of differential equations, where Ukraine’s force U(t) changes as: net replenishment minus losses proportional to Russia’s force R(t), and vice versa.

For transparency, the base model assumes linear attrition until a threshold, then introduces non-linearity. Replenishment (r) includes recruitment, repairs and aid inflows minus decay (e.g., equipment wear). Effectiveness coefficients (α for Ukraine’s impact on Russia, β vice versa) embed doctrinal factors: Russia’s mass artillery yields higher β (0.0012-0.0025 losses per Russian unit-day), while Ukraine’s precision strikes give α around 0.0018-0.0020. Initial conditions are set from theater estimates (U_0 ≈ 550,000 in November 2025, adjusted downward by observed attrition).

Numerical integration – discretising time in daily steps – projects forward: U_{t+1} = U_t + r_U – β R_t, iterated until U hits θ U_0 (θ ≈ 0.73, based on historical density for coherent defence). Post-threshold, a multiplier γ (2.5) amplifies losses, simulating breakthroughs. This yields time to tipping (t*) and full collapse (to 50% force, proxy for operational failure).

Data inputs draw from diverse sources: Western (ISW, CSIS, Oryx) for optimistic ranges, Russian (MoD briefings, mil-blogs) for pessimistic, balanced per stakeholder representation. Recent updates incorporate February 2026 reports on US/German aid constraints, adjusting r_U downward.

Caveats abound, underscoring that this is estimation, not prediction. Data biases: Western sources may underreport Ukrainian losses (500-700/day) to sustain support, while Russian claims (1,200-1,800) inflate for propaganda; truth likely middles. Unmodelled variables include morale (potentially accelerating collapse), weather (winter slows cadences), or black swans like drone surges or some successful third party mediation. Aid is volatile: PURL could ramp, adding months; full cutoff subtracts them. The model assumes constant parameters, but adaptations (e.g., Ukrainian drones flipping local α) could localise deviations. Threshold θ is empirical, drawn from past phases (e.g., Pokrovsk encirclements at ~70% density), but varies by terrain. Finally, aggregation into lethal units simplifies: a tank’s value isn’t fixed at 10, and munitions efficacy depends on targeting.

These limitations mean trajectories are probabilistic ranges, not fixed paths. The value lies in sensitivity: tweaking r_U by +100 units/day (e.g., via Japanese Patriot backfill) delays t* by 30-60 days, showing how data parameters inform cadence adjustments. This framework thus enables reasoned estimation, revealing the war’s underlying arithmetic without claiming omniscience.

Raw Data Ranges

The projections rest on raw data compiled from open sources as of February 2026. Ranges reflect divergences: Western estimates (e.g., Ukrainian General Staff, CSIS, Kiel Institute) tend lower on losses/higher on aid; Russian (MoD, Rybar mil-blogs) higher on inflicted damage. Aggregates focus on theatre (frontline) capacities; global stocks are larger but delivery-constrained.

Manpower (Theatre Active Strength):

• Ukraine: 450,000-550,000 (Western: ~500,000 frontline, rotations strained; Russian: ~450,000 effective, implying higher cumulative depletion). Cumulative losses since 2022: 400,000-1,200,000 (Western ~500,000; Russian ~1.2M).
• Russia: 600,000-700,000 (consistent across sources; total committed ~1.2M). Cumulative: 800,000-1,200,000 (Western ~1.16M; Russian lower, ~600,000).

Daily casualties: Ukraine 500-1,800 personnel (Western 500-700; Russian 1,200-1,800); Russia 900-1,200 (Western higher; Russian ~1,000).

Recruitment: Ukraine 5,000-10,000/month (net ~0 due to losses); Russia 25,000-30,000/month (net +700-900/day).

Machinery (Operational Tanks/AFV/Artillery):

• Ukraine: 2,000-2,500 (losses ~10,000 cumulative; aid ~2,000 delivered). Refurbishment: 50-100/month (net negative from attrition).
• Russia: 7,000-8,500 (losses ~30,000-35,000 cumulative, but ~1,000/month refurbished from stocks).

Daily equipment losses: Ukraine 20-50 (Western lower); Russia 30-60.

Munitions (Artillery Shells, Missiles):

• Ukraine: Stock 500,000-1,000,000 (low; daily use 2,000-3,000). Production/Delivery: 20,000-40,000/month (US/EU ramp to 100,000 delayed; PURL adds ~50,000/year but queued). Air defence: Patriot stocks ~200-300 interceptors (covers 20-30 salvos vs. 450 threats/month); production diversion via PURL delays replenishment.
• Russia: Stock 4M-6M; production 4M-5M/year (~12,000-15,000/day). Fire ratio: 5:1-10:1 advantage.

Recent constraints: US inventories at 25% (1,000-1,500 Patriots total; production 740/year, 75% to Ukraine via Europe). Germany: €20B+ exhausted, no more direct transfers; contingent ~35 PAC-3 (~1 week’s defence).

Net Replenishment and Effectiveness:

• Ukraine r_U: -100 to +100 units/day (pre-February; now -100 to 0 from aid cuts). β (Russian effectiveness): 0.0012-0.0025 (up 10% from air gaps).
• Russia r_R: +700-900/day. α (Ukrainian effectiveness): 0.0018-0.0020.

Threshold: ~400,000 units (73% of Nov 2025 peak). Post-threshold multiplier: 2-3x losses.

These ranges, when integrated, produce the 6-9 month window: base depletion 900-1,500/day to threshold in 50-170 days, then 50-90 days to halving. Cadences emerge from sensitivities – e.g., +50 units/day from PURL extends by 30 days – showing how parameters bound trajectories without dictating them.

Conclusion

This quantitative lens illuminates the Russia-Ukrainian War’s attritional logic: a slow, compounding imbalance leading to abrupt shifts. Key findings sketch a 6-9 month collapse window; the methodology provides the tools for such estimates, and raw data ranges highlight the evidential foundation. By focusing on flows over events, we gain insight into cadences – gradual until non-linear – enabling informed trajectories amid uncertainty. The math doesn’t predict; it frames possibilities, reminding us that wars end when ledgers demand it.

By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 3/8/26

Introduction

The history of the CIA and the US intelligence community is one of spectacular intelligence failures. For example, both the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the collapse of the Soviet Union came as complete surprises. Iran’s first Ayatollah, Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini, was exiled in Paris and gave regular sermons where he openly described plans to overthrow the Shah. These sermons were available of cassettes all over Iran. I understand the CIA never translated any of these sermons. When I traveled to the Soviet Union in 1988, the currency was weak, goods and services were scarce, yet US intelligence never suspected that Soviet state could dissolve.

It now appears the intelligence community also failed to anticipate how an attack on Iran would impact energy flows, the Gulf states, and the entire global economy. A classified report by the National Intelligence Council was leaked to the Washington Post yesterday. The report concluded that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment, but the report failed to mention any of the potential knock-on effects, either to transportation in the Persian Gulf where 20% of the global energy flows, or to US military bases, US allies, and the global economy.

It appears the decision was made to initiate a regime change war against Iran without an honest assessment of US preparedness, Iran’s capabilities, or the economic impact of conducting a war in the Persian Gulf. Worse, it appears the US was unprepared to initiate such a war and failed to assess the potential risk to US allies, US bases, and US assets in the Gulf.

This essay will discuss the potential economic and military consequences of this war of choice on Iran. As yesterday’s essay discussed, Iran has been preparing for this war for decades. This does not mean Iran will succeed, but it also implies the US and Israel could fail. Iran is a large well-armed nation larger than western Europe. Iran occupies a strategic location in the middle of a vital logistics hub of the globalized supply chain. Each day the Straits of Hormuz remains effectively closed, will help to build a tsunami of economic consequences.

How’s the War Going

I spent hours trying to get a firm answer to the question of whether the US and Israel had achieved air supremacy over Iran. Several sources said yes–but this does not appear to be correct. The best available evidence indicates that the US and Israel are still using standoff weapons and are not attempting to overfly Iran. According to Larry Johnson, this means the US and Israeli planes “are flying close to Iran’s western border and releasing primarily the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile aka JASSAMs. These missiles have a range between 230 and 600 miles depending on the variant (AGM-158A JASSM (baseline): ~370 km [230 miles] and AGM-158B JASSM-ER (Extended Range): ~980 km [610 miles]).”

The supply of standoff weapons and interceptors for the US and Israel is running low. Wars are won on logistics. This means the US and Israel initiated a major war without an adequate supply of weapons. After a meeting yesterday at the White House President Trump issued a statement, that said production of “Exquisite Class” weaponry would be quadrupled and added that expansion had already begun three months earlier. The statement named BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell Aerospace, L3Harris Missile Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, while Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman publicly signaled support afterward.

I have several questions. First, where will the inputs to make these weapons come from? China dominates rare earths and other needed inputs. I doubt China will help the US make weapons that could ultimately be pointed at them. Second, what kind of numbers are we talking about? Finally, what is the time frame, days, months, years? The US started a major war 7 days ago! It is a bit late to be worried about an adequate supply of weapons.

If the US and Isreal run out of standoff weapons, and excluding the use of nuclear missiles, gravity bombs will have to be released from fixed wing aircraft flying over the target. I would imagine Iran has anticipated this and may even have weapons in reserve to target those aircraft. What would happen if Iran shot down a B-2?

The US and Israel keep climbing the escalation ladder. The US bombed a refinery in Iran. Iran bombed a refinery in Israel. The US then bombed a desalination plant in Iran. Iran bombed a desalination plant in Qatar. The Middle East is dry; every country depends on desalination plants for the water they need. Iran is also in a drought. It may seem strategic to bomb Iran’s desalination plants, but Iran will respond by bombing plants in Israel and the Gulf states. Without water none of the Gulf states, including Iran, are viable.

Today the US bombed a refinery in Tehran. The result was a terrible explosion and fire. This means the US deliberately destroyed oil storage facilities in a highly populated area. Is the oil infrastructure of the entire gulf is now a target? Some are trying to excuse the implications of this escalation, but it smells of both depravity and desperation.

Here’s Andrew Korybko: “ A sky-high flaming pillar emerged in the aftermath, toxic smoke clouded out the sun, and blackened rain fell on this city of around 10 million people. The environmental consequences alone could push Tehran to the breaking point after it’s already been struggling with a severe water shortage that earlier led President Masoud Pezeshkian to consider an evacuation.”

What will the US and Israel do next, use nuclear weapons on Iran’s underground bases? This seems to be where this war is heading. But how effective would nuclear weapons be? Here’s a blogger named Patarames: indicating that these underground bases may be difficult for even nuclear weapons to destroy: “Granite rock formations can withstand a 300 kiloton contact explosion delivered by the warheads of a thermonuclear ballistic missile (~ 100 m) if the depth / overlapping surface is about: 300 m, if anchor bolts and mesh lining of tunnels are used. This is typical for very deep missile storage areas and low-risk transit tunnels that can withstand damage. 100 m when using high-class concrete lining. This is typical for critical areas with sensitive equipment and personnel. 30-50m in the presence of high-strength concrete structures for entrance areas. Such transit sections can withstand damage and chips / debris, and they just need to remain passable.”

Obviously, the use of nuclear weapons would be an unacceptable level of escalation for the US and Israel and would represent clear proof that the war is being lost. We also do not know how other nuclear powers will react. The use of nuclear weapons against Iran could result in a global nuclear war.

Given the fog of war and all the censorship, it is difficult to evaluate how the war is going. For example, there are claims that most Iranian missile launchers have been destroyed and that Iran is running out of missiles. This assumes we know how many launchers and missiles Iran has. In fact, is little proof that either missiles or launchers are running low. There is even evidence that most of the launcher’s hit were decoys.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence that the US and Israel cannot intercept Iranian’s latest missiles. MIT Professor Postol claims his studies show an interception rate of 5% or less. Meanwhile, the US and Israel are using interceptors costing millions, that are in short supply, to try and knockdown drones that cost thousands. Iranian has thousands of drones, and drones do not require launchers. It seems clear that Iran is using old missiles and slow drones to exhaust the supply of interceptors across the Middle East.

US bases and radars all over the Middle East have all been either destroyed or seriously damaged. There are also videos showing extensive damage to Israel. The extent of the damage is difficult to verify since Israel has imposed an information ban under penalty of five years in prison. Israel has also expanded the war by invading Lebanon. The invasion does not seem to be going well either. Hezbollah has responded and this means Israel is fighting a two-front war.

Finally, there are indications that there are many more US casualties than we have been told.

The Economic Cost

The military cost to the US is in the billions if not trillions. Aside from the cost of the current war, the US spent decades and billions to build a string of bases across the Middle East, protected by a string of sophisticated radar facilities. All of this is now in ruins. Iran spent the first few days targeting these bases and radars. As a result, the US must now rely on AWACs and satellites for targeting and interception data. The inability to protect US bases in the Middle East implies that the string of 800 US bases all over the world are also vulnerable. The US spent trillions building these bases over the years. Events of the last week point to the need to re-examine the US national security strategy including the entire national security complex. This includes the US Navy since Frigates and Aircraft Carriers are also vulnerable to modern weapons. What would happen if a carrier was sunk?

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran has created an unprecedented economic and logistical crisis for the five Gulf states, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. This strain is not just from the lack of earnings but also from the fact that these countries must import 90% of the food they consume and would be uninhabitable without electricity.

Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain are almost 100% reliant on the Strait for their exports, earnings, and imports. Now that the Strait has been closed for a week, these states will have to rely on their stock and bond assets and their sovereign wealth funds to maintain government spending.

Oil storage tanks in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar are now full and this means production in their oil and gas fields has been shut down. Even if the Strait is opened soon, it will take time to restart production and reinstate revenues. Meanwhile, they have suffered a complete loss of daily revenue.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait have declared force majeure. All contracts to supply oil and gas are now on hold. Qatar provides roughly 20% of the world’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). A prolonged closure would not only starve Qatar of revenue it would also cause an energy catastrophe in Asia and Europe, potentially leading to a global recession.

Any closure of the Strait for weeks or months would trigger a significant fiscal deficit, threatening the funding of major projects, including support for other wars.

The impact on international aviation is also significant. Following Iranian strikes on Dubai International and Abu Dhabi airports, commercial air traffic has been significantly curtailed. The UAE and Qatar have built massive tourism and logistics sectors. Unlike 1973, these economies are now service based; without flights, their non-oil GDP (hotels, shopping, transit) are also without revenue.

These five states import nearly 90% of their food. While they hold a supply of grain reserves, they lack non-Gulf ports to resupply once those stocks begin to dwindle.

There are ongoing efforts to re-route oil deliveries, but capacity is limited. Only the UAE has a significant port outside the Strait (Fujairah). However, the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline can only handle 1.5 million barrels per day—a fraction of the region’s output.

The risk of “regime change” to 5 ‘sultanates’ in the Gulf rises with each day the Strait remains closed.

But the economic issues go well beyond the Gulf and this war also has the potential to impact the economy of the US and world. Craig Tindale wrote a very important essay discussing the potential economic impact of this war and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz on the global economy. His essay: Systemic Risk: A 12-Order Cascading Analysis of a Zero-Flow Strait of Hormuz Closure is a must read. Here’s part of it:

“The modern world order, having organized itself around efficiency, cost minimization, and logistical precision, has created a machinery of dependence so extreme that the interruption of one narrow corridor can propagate outward into a general crisis of civilization.”

“What appears at first as a maritime blockade is in fact the exposure of the entire global system as a hierarchy of brittle interdependencies.”

“Oil and LNG fail as inputs into electricity, fertilizer, shipping, chemicals, mining, manufacturing, and state finance. “

“As an example, the global polyester chain begins in petrochemicals. A severe disruption to hydrocarbon and petrochemical feedstocks cascades into PTA, MEG, polyester resin, filament, and fabric production, causing acute shortages, price spikes, and factory stoppages across synthetic-heavy apparel segments. The industry does not vanish overnight, but the low-cost, high-volume apparel model starts to break down.”

“From this follows a chain whose logic is cumulative: fuel inflation becomes fertilizer inflation; fertilizer inflation becomes food inflation; food inflation becomes urban instability, sovereign subsidy exhaustion, and ultimately hunger. In this sequence, food shortages are not a secondary humanitarian issue. They are one of the central political outcomes of the crisis, because modern populations do not experience systemic breakdown first through grand strategy, but through unaffordable bread, intermittent power, empty pharmacies, and possibly the collapse of public order. A globalized Arab Spring.”

“In this framework, hyperinflation emerges as the social expression of real physical bottlenecks. When energy-importing states are forced to acquire dollarized fuel at any price, when currencies weaken, when fertilizer and transport costs reprice an entire harvest cycle, inflation ceases to be cyclical and becomes coercive.”

“It enters every household budget and every state ledger at once. The result is the destruction of planning itself: firms cannot quote, governments cannot subsidize, and populations can no longer calculate the future. Under such conditions, credit markets seize up, foreign-exchange reserves drain, sovereign spreads widen, and the boundary between economic crisis and political crisis disappears.”

“Modern technical systems amplify rather than dampen this disorder. The loss of sour crude becomes a sulphur and sulphuric acid crisis; that chemical crisis becomes a copper and cobalt crisis; the metals crisis becomes a transformer, switchgear, and grid crisis; the grid crisis becomes a semiconductor crisis; and the semiconductor crisis becomes a compute and data-centre crisis”.

“Thus, the closure of a maritime strait reaches, by entirely material means, into the server rack, the hospital network, the payment system, the electrical substation, and the defence-industrial base. The myth that digital civilization floats above heavy industry is, in this scenario, extinguished. Compute is shown to rest on copper, transformers, stable voltage, LNG, and ships.”

“For humanity, the systemic risk is total in scope, even if unevenly distributed.”

“The most immediate suffering falls on import-dependent and fiscally weak societies: blackouts, food insecurity, unemployment, debt default, regime stress, and mass unrest. Yet the advanced economies do not escape. They experience industrial contraction, infrastructure delays, AI and semiconductor bottlenecks, strategic stockpiling, and the permanent repricing of security over efficiency. What begins as a supply shock ends as a transformation of the political economy. States abandon the fiction of neutral markets and move toward command allocation, export controls, emergency powers, and militarized trade corridors. Market price gives way to strategic rationing. Globalization does not simply slow; it hardens into armed blocs.”

“The ultimate conclusion is grim: the terminal danger in this model is not one shortage, nor one recession, nor even one war-risk premium. “

“It is the transition from a globally integrated commercial order into a world system governed by scarcity, coercion, and administrative triage.”

“In such a world, hunger, hyperinflation, sovereign failure, technological stagnation, and geopolitical militarization are not separate crises. “

“They are the normal operating features of a civilization that has discovered, too late, that its efficiency was built on concentrated fragility. The closure of Hormuz, under this analysis, is the event through which the modern world recognizes that its supply chains were never only economic structures, but the hidden constitution of social peace itself.”

Does this Mean US Stocks and Bonds Are Mispriced?

The Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, are in now in crisis. They have suffered a serious loss of oil, gas, and tourist income. Their infrastructure has been damaged and could be further damaged should this war continue. They need cash flow. Several countries have announced that they will no longer honor commitments made to President Trump for investments in the US totaling over $2 trillion. In addition, these countries control enormous investments in US stocks, bond, and real estate. They, and their sovereign wealth funds, may have to liquidate some of these investments to maintain spending. Forced selling is not good for asset prices.

At a minimum, the damage done to the Gulf states and to the global economy means that global liquidity will have to be channeled closer to home and the global flow into the US Treasury market or into the US stock markets may slow.

On Friday the price of West Texas Intermediate hit $91 a barrel. I understand a galleon of gas is selling in some areas of California for $8 a galleon. Some estimate that oil prices could hit $150 a barrel. This will create serious problems for the US and the global economy. The US is a major energy producer and can also rely on Canada, Mexico and Venezuela for energy supplies, but the US cannot escape the impact of high prices.

The rest of the world, especially Europe, are not so lucky. Europe has said it wants to end the import of oil and gas from Russia. Russia just said, OK, we will sell our energy to East Asia. Some commentators have theorized that Russia will be eager to help Donald Trump ease energy prices. Maybe. But Russia also knows that the US has armed and funded Ukraine and has also provided Ukraine with ISR targeting information that has killed Russian soldiers and has been used to attack the Russian mainland. Why would Russia want to bail out the US now?

The US stock market is priced for perfection with 40% of the S&P based on 7 stocks along with an AI bubble in progress. History shows the market depends on a constant stream of investment from abroad, 401K’s, share buybacks, liquidity from US budget deficits, and central bank support.

This Substack had speculated that China could blockade Taiwan, reduce the import of high-end chips, and crash the AI bubble. Well, a blockade is no longer necessary. Taiwan has only a few days of energy supplies. Should the war continue, Taiwan may have to curtail chip production.

Conclusion

This Substack has spent the last 10 months reviewing and discussing several serious issues facing the US economy including the extreme debt levels of the US government and US society. Other essays have questioned the valuations of US stocks, real estate, and bonds. The US must roll over several trillion of US Treasury securities this month. The next few weeks will reveal how the US and the global economy will perform during the economic crisis created by the Israeli and US attack on Iran. Perhaps the US has finally bombed one country too many.

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Iran War Cost Tracker:

https://iran-cost-ticker.com

Russia Matters, 3/6/26

A February 2026 Levada Center survey shows that while most Russians still back the war in Ukraine, support for peace talks has reached a record high—revealing a widening gap between the desire for “peace” and what that peace would entail. While 67% now say peace negotiations should begin, and only 24% want military action to continue—the highest and lowest readings, respectively, since Levada began asking this question in 2022—other polling underscores that many Russians favor talks only on terms Ukrainians are unlikely to accept. For instance, a February 2026 Russian Field survey finds large majorities of Russians deem it “mandatory” for any peace deal that Donbas be recognized as Russian, Ukraine forgo NATO membership and Western sanctions on Russia be lifted, while a January 2026 KIIS poll shows 57% of Ukrainians categorically reject withdrawing troops from Donbas even for Western security guarantees. A separate question in Levada’s February survey finds 57% of Russians consider strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure “rather justified,” versus 20% who say they are unacceptable; opponents mostly cite civilian suffering, while supporters frame the attacks as retaliatory or necessary to weaken Ukraine’s economy and military. See graphs on the Levada poll at the end of the digest.*

By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 2/20/26

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

A long-simmering factional war inside Ukraine’s political and security elites is now surfacing more openly. Former army chief Valery Zaluzhny accuses President Zelensky of intimidation as debates over elections and peace talks return. The timing raises questions about succession, leverage, and a looming political reckoning in Kyiv. The far-right and oligarchic elements further complicate the picture

The factional war within Ukraine’s political, military, and security elites is intensifying. And it is increasingly unfolding in public, albeit still underreported in mainstream Western media. The latest development has to do with former commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, who has accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of ordering SBU searches of his office in 2022 as a means of intimidation. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) denies it. In any case, if true, why reveal this now? The timing is anything but accidental.

Zaluzhny’s accusation surfaces precisely as discussions around elections, a possible ceasefire, and even a “land for peace” formula re-enter Western and Ukrainian debates. This is thus not a belated accusation driven by conscience, but more likely a political move in a struggle over succession, immunity, and narrative control. One does not survive Ukrainian elite politics by speaking out unless protection or leverage have already been secured.

This struggle is not limited to Zelensky versus Zaluzhny. It also involves the intelligence faction centered on lieutenant general Kyrylo Budanov, whose growing influence has alarmed both military commanders and oligarchic networks. Budanov has been Ukraine’s Head of the Office of the President since January 2, 2026, having previously led the country’s military intelligence (HUR). He also served in the Foreign Intelligence Service. Ukraine’s so-called “deep state” is a battlefield right now.

One may recall that frictions between Zelensky and Zaluzhny were already visible in early 2023, when Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the general had allegedly engaged in independent peace discussions with Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, bypassing the President altogether. Zelensky, according to Hersh’s US intelligence sources, was regarded as a “wild card,” unreliable and increasingly isolated.

In fact, Zelensky is arguably a political survivor. In late 2023, there were talks about the West favoring Alexey Arestovich intrigues against the Ukrainian President, Arestovich being a former adviser to the President’s office, with intelligence connections. In 2024, Ukraine’s exiled opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk said Zelensky could be ousted, having alienated allies domestically and abroad.

And yet the Ukrainian leader has managed to stay. Back in 2022, Zelensky openly declared his vision of Ukraine as a “big Israel”, meaning a heavily militarized, securitized state defined by permanent mobilization and internal surveillance. That was not mere rhetoric: it foreshadowed the consolidation of power, the banning of opposition parties, and the further normalization of security-service intimidation: all of this in turn being the entrenchment of a process that began in 2014, with the Maidan revolution.

Thus far, Western capitals have turned a blind eye to these measures, out of geopolitical expediency, with European Union officials discussing Ukraine’s accession (despite all civil rights issues pertaining to minorities). Be as it may, this tolerance is eroding. Under President Donald Trump, Washington for one thing is clearly signaling fatigue with an open-ended proxy war, so as to be able to pivot elsewhere. The burden is increasingly being shifted onto Europe, which in turn now faces its own strategic anxieties, including tensions with the US itself over American Greenland threats .

This changing external environment partly explains the renewed internal panic in Kyiv. Elections, peace talks, or a forced transition would expose unresolved rivalries, corruption networks, and extremist power centers that have been blatantly whitewashed for years (in the West), not to mention their far-right problem.

The oligarchic dimension further complicates matters. Zelensky’s own rise was inseparable from Ihor Kolomoysky, despite later efforts to distance himself under US pressure. Corruption remains endemic (Ukraine ranked at 104 out of 180 countries by Transparency International in 2023), high enough to undermine military logistics and energy resilience. When Zelensky publicly suggested (last year) that roughly half of the $177 billion allocated to Ukraine never reached Kyiv, he was accusing and warning the West, for leverage, most likely.

The thing is that corruption, by its very nature, cuts both ways. Any serious inquiry into Western misuse of funds would inevitably rebound onto Ukrainian elites themselves, including offshore arrangements revealed in the Pandora Papers.

Meanwhile, armed and paramilitary ultra-nationalism remains a systemic factor. From the integration of the Azov Battalion into the National Guard to the political influence of figures like Dmytro Yarosh, neo-Fascist groups, albeit a minority (in number) have nonetheless shaped post-Maidan Ukraine’s security apparatus. Yarosh famously warned Zelensky he would “hang on a tree on Khreshchatyk” if he sought a peace deal.

Adding to this volatile mix, with the release of some of the Epstein files, more information is surfacing pertaining to human trafficking networks and Ukraine-based ethically dubious biological research. All of that has the potential to draw scrutiny about top Ukrainian authorities, thus increasing the crisis.

Ukraine’s crisis therefore is no longer only about the battlefield. It is about succession, survival, and the inevitable reckoning postponed since 2014. Ending a war, especially an unwinnable one, is difficult enough, even with Trump’s previous promises of ending it “in one day”.

Ending it while armed extremists, rival security services, oligarchs, and foreign patrons all pull in different directions is harder still. The West after all has armed and financed far-right nationalists in Ukraine for over a decade (they are now deeply involved with the country’s deep state), while waging a secret CIA war there. These networks do not go away easily.

To sum it up, whether Zelensky survives this phase politically is an open question. Whether Ukraine emerges more stable afterward is even less certain.