By Ted Snider, The American Conservative, 5/22/26

Iuliia Mendel was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s press secretary in 2019–2021. She says she “departed on good terms.” Others say her falling out with Zelensky was very bad.

Earlier this month, Mendel gave an extensive interview to Tucker Carlson. She made many explosive remarks, questioning Zelensky’s character and his commitment to democracy and fighting corruption. But her most significant comments were on Ukraine’s NATO aspirations and the negotiations in Istanbul in the early weeks of the war.

Mendel claims to have been present at a 2019 meeting in Paris during which Zelensky, she says, privately promised Putin “that Ukraine will never join NATO.”

And she claims she spoke to people on Ukraine’s negotiating team who told her that the negotiations in Istanbul “were almost done” before the U.S. and the UK discouraged them. This part of Carlson’s interview with Mendel has revived interest in the Istanbul talks, which, if they had succeeded, would have prevented catastrophic levels of death and destruction.

Some Russia–Ukraine war specialists I spoke to questioned Mendel’s reliability because of her falling out with Zelensky, because she was no longer in office, because of her history of making lurid claims, and because of the vagueness and innuendo in the Carlson interview. Others found her testimony credible and consistent with the known facts. Either way, it is important to distinguish—as Mendel often did—between what she heard first-hand and what she heard from others.

Mendel makes clear that she was not present for the talks in Istanbul and received her information from those who were. But her account of events is corroborated by participants in the diplomacy. In his new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire, Richard Sakwa observes that “seven out of the eight members of the [Ukrainian] delegation confirm that a detailed peace deal had been agreed in Istanbul.” The eighth didn’t because he couldn’t: Denis Kireev was assassinated by Ukrainian intelligence upon returning to Kiev from talks in Belarus.

David Arakhamia, head of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party in the Ukrainian parliament, was one of two heads of Ukraine’s negotiating team. Arakhamia has confirmed the existence of some kind of agreement that he claims to have initialed. He added that Russia was “prepared to end the war if we agreed to… neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.” Arakhamia evaluated the talks to have been a success, scoring them as achieving their goals “by 8 points out of 10.” 

Oleksiy Arestovych, then-Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine and a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul, says that the talks in Istanbul were successful and could have worked. He grades the talks even more optimistically than Arakhamia, saying that the Istanbul agreement was 90 percent prepared and that what remained was “the question of the amount of Ukrainian armed forces in peacetime.” He says that, upon returning from Istanbul, the Ukrainian negotiating team “opened the champagne bottle.” 

Oleksandr Chalyi, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and a member of the negotiating team, says that the delegations “concluded the so-called Istanbul Communique. And we were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement.” He adds that Putin “demonstrated a genuine effort to find a realistic compromise and achieve peace.” Putin, he says, “tried everything possible to conclude [an] agreement with Ukraine” and “really wanted to reach some peaceful settlement.” Chalyi says the two negotiating teams “managed to find a very real compromise” and that Putin made the “personal decision to accept the text of this communiqué.”

Consistent with these accounts, Mendel says that the Istanbul negotiations “were almost done.” But, she says, the talks were stopped when the U.S. and UK put an end to them. She tells the previously reported story of Britain’s then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveling to Kiev and urging the Ukrainians to continue fighting. Mendel adds the claim, without support or attribution, that Johnson also wooed Zelensky with promises of “influence” and “fame” as a great war hero.

Though that detail can be questioned, the basic plot is well-established. Ukrainska Pravda reported that on April 9, 2022, Johnson went to Kiev to tell Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “the West was not.” Arakhamia has confirmed the report, saying, “When we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.” 

Less reported than Johnson’s trip to Kiev is a previous long-distance call during which Johnson, Sakwa writes, told Zelensky that the U.K. “would not stand as a guarantor power and urged Zelensky to refuse the deal.” Far from going rogue, according to Sakwa, opposition to Ukraine’s making a deal “was the position adopted by Western leaders (Johnson, Biden, Scholz, Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi) in a collective phone call [they held] on March 29, the day of the Istanbul talks.”

The Western roadblock to a negotiated settlement has been testified to by virtually all involved parties. Israel’s then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, at the invitation of Zelensky, acted as a mediator. Bennet says that “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire,” but the West “blocked it.” According to Bennett, “a ceasefire was within reach at the time, with both sides prepared to make significant concessions. However, Great Britain and the USA, in particular, ended the process and opted for a continuation of the war.”

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was also asked to mediate by Zelensky. He seconds Bennett’s account: “The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed…. Everything else was decided in Washington. That was fatal.”

Turkey was host to the talks, and Turkish officials confirm this account. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says that the talks were on course to end the war, but that “there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia get weaker.” The deputy chairman of Turkey’s governing party, Numan Kurtulmus, says “the United States sees the prolongation of the war as its interest…. There are those who want this war to continue…. Putin [and] Zelensky [were] going to sign, but someone didn’t want to.”

Jean-Daniel Ruch, the Swiss ambassador to Turkey during the talks, was in Turkey at the time to consult on the idea of neutrality for Ukraine. He, too, says “the West pulled the plug on the negotiations that were on the edge of leading to a ceasefire…. we had a ceasefire close at hand, and then it’s the Americans, with their British allies, who said no.”

Even Victoria Nuland—America’s former undersecretary of state for political affairs and the Obama State Department’s point person on Ukraine policy—says that the Istanbul negotiations fell apart when “people outside Ukraine” questioned the agreement.

Iuliia Mendel’s second-hand testimony adds to the overwhelming evidence that a promising diplomatic path to end the war was blocked by the U.S., UK, and other Western nations.

By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 6/18/26

History in the Making

June 17, 2026, could be remembered as a day that changed the course of history. In a bewildering series of statements from the G-7 in Paris, France, President Donald J. Trump declared that peace with Iran and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz was necessary to prevent a world economic crisis. President Trump also acknowledged that the US was weeks from an energy cliff, and that he did not want to become the modern Herbert Hoover and preside over another Great Depression. In the words of the Wall Street Journal Trump Signs Iran Deal, Says He Wants to Avoid ‘Economic Catastrophe’.

Here’s Trump later on the 17^th:” The alternative would be a worldwide depression. Stupid people want to have a worldwide depression. They are stupid people. Number one, the strait would never open.”

Perhaps without recognizing the symbolism, Trump signed the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran later that same day, 3 days early, at the Palace of Versailles in France. This palace was where the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, officially ending World War 1. The Treaty is viewed with ignominy as setting in motion events that would eventually lead another World War.

The remaining hurdle is Israel opposition to peace, and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The MOU calls for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. Israel has refused. Israel and her allies will try to upend this peace effort.

The effect of the war on Iran has not only been to drive a wedge between the US and Israel, it has also revealed the weaknesses of the US military to the world. This is directly related to the fact that the US Military Industrial Complex is essentially a money laundering operation that has resulted in the US falling behind its rivals in military technology–despite spending trillions.

Tucker Carlson: “You probably never imagined that the end of American Empire would come in a little over a 100-day conflict with a little rogue state on the Persian Gulf that has the 34th largest economy in the world, a country called Iran. You just couldn’t imagine that would happen.”

By March 4^th the war was going so badly for the US and Israel that Will Schryver predicted: “No matter what happens going forward, or how the narrative is spun, ***Iran has achieved decisive strategic victory, ***and history will identify this conflict as a catalyst for accelerated decline of the American empire.”

Others say that Iran has simply “survived” not “won” and that the US will now begin to prepare for the next confrontation. Iran will have to race to match the US preparation while the pseudo continues and stays just under the threshold of total war. Meanwhile, the US will have to contend with Israeli warmongering while holding a ready excuse to restart the war i.e. that Iran is not abiding by the agreement.

To Iran’s credit, while other countries have merely survived confrontation with the US, Iran demonstrated that she can compete with the US and force a climbdown–this is a first.

Trump’s Concessions and Statements

Nuclear enrichment: “It’s a little hard when other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that,” Trump said. “You have to use a little common sense.”

Nuclear program: Iran gets to keep its nuclear program for civilian purposes

Iran’s ballistic missile program: “Missiles aren’t the problem,” Trump told reporters. “They hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”

Iran’s frozen assets: The country has billions of dollars in overseas accounts that the US has blocked banks from releasing. Part of the justification for years is the claim that Iran, because Iran opposed Israeli atrocities, is a leading state sponsor of terrorism by funding proxy groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Here’s Trump’s response: “It’s not our money, it’s their money — and we froze it at a certain point in time,” Trump said. “I guess we’re going to have to give it back, you know. If we didn’t give it back, nobody would ever invest in the dollar again.”

From Naked Capitalism: “As BBC’s Siavash Ardalan writes, Trump’s responses to the reporters’ questions to justify the agreement with Iran were bizarre and unprecedented in their own way: They asked him how he could allow $300 billion in investment in Iran. He said, “We’ve already inflicted $2 trillion in damage on Iran; $300 billion is nothing in comparison.”

“They asked why he’s giving Iran tens of billions of dollars. He said, “If we don’t return their own money to them, other countries will be afraid to put their money in our banks, and then the dollar’s position will weaken.”

“They asked why the missile issue isn’t in the agreement. He said, “We’ve already destroyed 85% of their missiles anyway; the rest are buried underground, and besides, we sell air defense systems to the countries in the region, so they won’t worry about Iran’s missiles.”

“They asked if he’s not worried that Iran will say, “We’re only producing nuclear energy for civilian purposes.” He said, “You can’t tell everyone else to produce electricity with nuclear power while only Iran can’t.”

“Finally, he said, “If we continue sanctioning Iran, 91 million Iranians will die of hunger—what’s the point of that, really?”

Oh, and he joked that “If [the Iran deal] works out, I’m going to take the credit; if it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming [Vance].”

Israeli Defiance and Regrets

Bottom line: The US and the world economy turned out to be more important than overthrowing the Iranian government, placating Israel, or helping Israel achieve her dream of Greater Israel and world domination.

Israel was reportedly blindsided by the new ceasefire and instead believed that the war would resume. White House leaks of disagreements between Trump and Netanyahu have also accelerated, creating more tension.

Today in Haaretz there is an article accusing Israel of being a terrorist state committing crimes against humanity–written by former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. Moreover, the global social, political, and economic barriers that prevented people from freely discussing Israeli savagery and the fact that Israel is and has been a terrorist state have fallen. All over social media you can find discussions of historical and current events. This was not happening before October 7, 2023, the Gaza genocide, the war on Iran, and the brutal invasion of Lebanon. The world has been shown that Israel’s military shoots babies in the head and children in the genitals–among many other atrocities–when will this brutality end?

Tamir Hayman, former head of the Israeli military intelligence agency (Aman); “This agreement gives Iran the ability to dominate the Middle East. If we had known that things would end this way, it would have been better not to start this war at all.”

From Dr Andreas King: “Sealed inside their own echo chamber, Israelis convinced themselves of a myth of military hegemony, total impunity, a small state that could play global superpower. This has been the narrative of defiance within Israeli discourse since 7 October. The bubble is slowly bursting. Hamas is still standing. Hezbollah fought the IDF to a stalemate. Iran extracted major US concessions without firing a shot. And Israel is more isolated than at any point in its history. The “regional great power” was always just borrowed American muscle. They were just the last to notice.”

Although Israel’s GDP is the size of New Jersey, only the passage of time will determine whether this peace initiative will succeed. The Israeli/Zionist lobby in the US and the entire western world is very rich and very powerful. Their power should not be underestimated.

How Quickly Can Traffic in Hormuz Be Restored

It’s not like flipping a switch. It was reported that 3 of the largest oil companies in the world could not arrange tankers–Petro China, Sinochem, and Indian Oil. Why? In PetroChina’s own words: “There are tankers available, but the problem is it’s too expensive and there is no guarantee you can exit the strait.” Also, Freight rates 3 times the pre-war level, and there are insurance clauses that require special Hormuz guarantees because there is no assurance a loaded 2-million-barrel ship can safely exit the Strait.

There are other problems that will need to be addressed. These tankers have been sitting in the gulf full of crude for four months. This means the oil may not be in good condition. Here’s Larry Johnson: “The heat produces thermal degradation, sedimentation, and in some grades, partial polymerization of heavier fractions. More practically, the cargo specifications that a refinery contracted for may no longer be met after months of heat exposure and water separation issues in the tanks. Before those cargoes can be delivered, they will need to be tested, and some will need blending or reprocessing before any refinery will accept them.”

“The ships themselves have been idle for four months. Engines need to be brought back online carefully. Hull fouling — the accumulation of marine growth on the hull during idle periods — significantly reduces speed and fuel efficiency, meaning transit times will be longer than normal. Some vessels will require port inspections before they can legally sail under their flag state rules. Port- scheduling, berth availability, and refinery run rates all have to be coordinated.”

Then there’s all the damage to oil and gas production throughout the gulf. Many well have been closed in and will take time to restart. The gas facilities of Qatar have been heavily damaged and will take time and money to repair.

Some estimate it could take months, if not years to even come close to what the gulf was producing before the war. Any additional interruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would rattle shippers and extend the timetable for delivery of oil and normalization. This means that Iran retains considerable economic leverage.

The Efforts to Lock in Intelligence Sharing with Israel

These efforts include–Section 622 – a provision buried in the Senate’s intelligence authorization bill that would lock in expanded intelligence sharing with Israel and make it nearly impossible to scale back.

Under the amendment, intelligence sharing with Israel can’t be suspended or reduced unless the president personally determines there’s a “specific and identifiable national security concern.”

There is also a bill in the House. The Bills are H.R. 7540. The house bill has a similar section. Section 224 is now section 219. The Senate Bill is 3855 Section 622. Call Congress 202 224-3121

The Risk that the US Israeli War on Iran Would Fail Was So Well Known It was Repeatedly Discussed by this Substack!

In an essay dated February 24^th this Substack asked: Could the US Face A Reckoning? The essay expressed concern about what would happen if the war in Ukraine or a war on Iran went badly.

An essay on this Substack dated February 24^th noted that 80% of Americans opposed an attack on Iran. The essay also stated: “it does not appear that the US military is in optimum shape to confront Iran. I also doubt the US has a definitive handle on Iran’s current capabilities.”

On February 28^th, the US followed Israel to war on Iran by conducting an illegal, surprise, unprovoked attack, even though ongoing negotiations were making substantial progress towards reaching an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. In an essay dated the same day this Substack noted that Iran declared “No Red Lines” and attacked US bases in 6 countries along with Israel, simultaneously, within 90 minutes of the first US/Israel strike. The bases and facilities attacked were in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq, marking one of the most significant escalations in regional conflict in decades. The attack destroyed the AN/FPS-132 radar in Qatar, “America’s Giant Eye”. Over the course of the war, Iran would destroy US bases, radars and similar facilities, blinding the US and demonstrating conclusively that the 800 US bases the US has built around the world, at great cost, cannot be defended.

In an essay dated March 7^th this Substack asked: “Has the Reckoning Begun? The essay noted important facts about Iran, namely: that Iran has a population of over 90 million highly educated people including a lot of engineers; that Iran was a large country, four times bigger than Iraq, and as large as the entire western US; that Iran was mountainous creating a natural fortress; that Iran was strategically located overseeing the Strait of Hormuz which at its narrowest point was only 21 miles wide–already oil tankers were no longer exiting the Strait; that Iran had adopted a “Mosaic Defense” dispersed throughout the country with the authority to operate independently in the event of an attempted decapitation; and finally, that Iran had built and developed an enormous underground military infrastructure–“entire missile cities, air bases, command posts, and logistics tunnels — built deep underground”. The essay also noted: “How many there are and where they are located is still unknown. These facilities could become an impenetrable shield that ensures the preservation of combat potential even during intense strikes.” The essay concluded with a discussion of the severity of Iranian strikes on US assets in the region, while noting that the damage “to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordon and the United Arab Emirates was severe.”

As a result of these advantages, the militaries of both the US and Israel could not force their will on Iran.

This Substack discussed, early and often, the risk to the global economy from the energy and other shortages resulting from the war and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

How Iran Sees It

Dr. Ghalbaf: “We negotiate from Victory! The enemy chased the ceasefire. Iran said no at first then dictated the terms. This is nothing like JCPOA. Today the talks rest on battlefield victory both enemies and friends have acknowledged with Iran’s armed forces having beaten a fully equipped enemy. Negotiation as a method of struggle. No weaknesses, no hollow slogans, while the talks went on.”

Conclusion

Iran’s response to being attacked by the US and Israel was very deliberate and highly strategic. Iran was forced to conduct the war in a way that avoided the threat that the US or Israel would use nuclear weapons. In the face of sneak attacks that murdered their Ayatollah and many of their leaders, Iran refused to respond in kind. Instead of attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, Iran attacked radars, listening posts, and military bases and facilities. When Israel and the US attacked schools, Iran did not. Iran’s attacks, on energy resources were in response to attacks on Iran’s energy resources by the US or Israel.

Throughout the war, Iran conducted itself with dignity and integrity–they have shown themselves to be educated, honest, and honorable people. They have earned my respect, and hopefully, the respect of the world.

---

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 6/12/26

The odds of Russia agreeing to this under any circumstances remain abysmally low.

Zelensky recently met with the British, French, and German leaders, whose countries comprise what’s known as the E3, in London. They then released a joint statement in which they reaffirmed their vision for a lasting peace, the third point of which “includes the deployment of the Multinational Force – Ukraine” (MFU) once a ceasefire is reached. While it remains unclear what countries would participate in this mission, which Russia has repeatedly warned against, it’s a safe bet that at least those three will.

Casual observers might have missed it, but “The Brits, French, & Germans Are Now Right On Russia’s Doorstep”, the first two have nukes, and the French just extended their nuclear umbrella over a swath of Europe, all of which contributes to exacerbating Russia’s already high threat assessment of them. It’s also by now known that Russia would consider any foreign forces in Ukraine under any conditions to be legitimate targets. Whether or not it would actually strike them, however, remains a matter of debate.

Russia’s primary goal nearly four and a half years into the special operation is to obtain full control over Donbass, at least per what an RT contributor described as the quid pro quo agreed to during the Anchorage Summit whereby Putin allegedly promised to cease hostilities if Ukraine withdrew from there. It’s thus hypothetically possible that it could further compromise by agreeing to the deployment of the MFU if Zelensky made his withdrawal from Donbass dependent on receiving this “security guarantee”.

At the same time, however, there are reasons for Russia to reject any such arrangement even if the MFU only intends to deploy a superficial force west of the Dnieper (at least at first). For starters, the formal presence of any NATO forces in Ukraine could serve as the tripwire for expanding what could otherwise be a localized border skirmish into a hot NATO-Russian war. This is especially so if their troops function as “human shields” at the Ukrainian bases or critical infrastructure against which Russia might retaliate.

Second, the aforesaid scenario could be triggered by a Ukrainian false flag provocation, which Russia would have no power to prevent if Kiev goes through with it. For example, all that it could take is a Russian drone that was captured intact after earlier being brought down by electronic warfare one day hitting an MFU position, which could then set into motion the full-fledged war that was warned about. Russia wants to preemptively avert this possibility since it truly doesn’t want a hot war with NATO.

And finally, “The EU Poses A Much More Credible Threat To Russia Than The Inverse” even without any of its forces having formally deployed to Ukraine, so this threat would only grow if that happened. Even worse, Russia recently warned about the 1941-like threat posed by Germany’s remilitarization, so the deployment of its troops there would be psychologically unnerving for it. Russia might therefore not only strike them like it’s threatened but could even launch a preemptive strike against European NATO too.

For these reasons, while it’s still hypothetically possible that Russia might agree to the MFU’s deployment west of the Dnieper (at least at first) in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing from Donbass, such an arrangement would arguably lead to more problems than it would solve. The odds of Russia reaching such a compromise with the West are thus extremely low. The E3 should accordingly heed Russia’s repeated warnings against the deployment of foreign forces to Ukraine under any conditions.

By Brian McDonald, Substack, 6/1/26

Last week, the Guardian gave us a curious little snapshot of the accelerating decline of political thinking in Western Europe. Timothy Garton Ash’s “How to Defeat Putin” essay, three days later presented as a ‘View from the Council’ by the EU-funded lobby group ECFR, begins, as these things often do, with the sensible premise that the bloc needs a serious Russia strategy, but it ends somewhere much darker, with a prescription for saving democracy by making it less democratic.

It’s all part of the recurring contemporary sickness where the author wants the EU to become more authoritarian in order to defeat authoritarians. We can call it ‘Von der Leyenism,’ rooted in that peculiar strain of Western European thought which believes not everything associated with 1930s Germany was bad, and there were more than a few redeeming features. An old trick, dressed up in a clean shirt, which insists we must police speech to defend freedom and pretty much akin to fucking for virginity. All built on the belief that dissent should be treated as treason, provided the dissenter uses the wrong vocabulary and comes from the wrong side of the political tracks.

The phrase “see off our own nationalists” is the big giveaway here, and it exposes the real agenda. If it meant defeating them at elections by addressing voter concerns, it’d be fair enough because that’s how politics is supposed to work. But we all know the new toolbox involves lawfare, censorship, surveillance, deplatforming, financial pressure, spook interference, media campaigns, and the endless insinuation that any party outside the Brussels-approved centre is somehow carrying a matryoshka doll stuffed with Kremlin cash.

For the plan to succeed, liberal democracy would have to be replaced with a new form of “managed democracy,” this time with Western branding. Basically, Russia’s Surkovism of the 2000s remodelled with better tailoring, gender quotas, fewer cigarettes, less rap, more diversity, rainbow flags, pronouns and far duller nightlife.

The tragedy is that the author almost remembers the real lesson of the 20th century Cold War, but then races straight past it as if he were a colt wearing blinkers in the 2.40 at Sandown. The West outlasted the Soviet Union because it offered a better life and not because it could police thought more efficiently. Even the children of Khrushchev and Stalin moved to America, but the Kennedy clan and the Roosevelts didn’t scurry off east pining for the kommunalnaya kvartira of Leningrad.

The West boasted freer institutions, higher living standards, more open debate, more space for the individual and a deeper sense that tomorrow might be yours to shape, rather than something handed down from a committee of grey men who addressed each other as ‘comrades’ and had a strange habit of kissing each other full on the lips.

The entrapped Eastern-bloc youth didn’t look across the Iron Curtain and envy NATO communiqués, what they envied were supermarkets, freedom to travel, universities, jazz records, jeans, nicer cars, uncensored books, Michael Jackson, and the possibility of living without a little censor lodged permanently in the skull.

That’s what made the West attractive, but now look at the programme being offered by the liberal oped writing class. It involves a permanently securitised EU, cut off from cheap Russian energy and raw materials and committed to rearmament, sanctions, industrial strain, falling living standards and endless moral instruction. Does Ash seriously believe this is supposed to become the great attractive pole of the twenty-first century? And on the basis of what? Would it be expensive electricity, deindustrialisation, high youth unemployment, rising inequality, migration crises and a political class that calls voters dangerous when they complain?

Germany is the obvious warning flare because, for decades, its successful model rested on cheap energy, advanced manufacturing, solid infrastructure, a cohesive society and access to both developed and developing markets. Since 2021, that model has been battered as factories are under pressure, energy costs have risen, the country is absorbing more and more migrants (very often of questionable utility to wider society) and the old industrial certainty has gone thin around the edges while even the rail network is falling apart. Yet instead of asking whether EU members can really prosper while permanently severed from Europe’s biggest country, the half-continent’s strategic class reaches for another lecture.

What they fail to grasp is that the EU can’t censor and moralise its way into attractiveness and nor can it build unity by dishonestly pretending that populism is exclusively a foreign infection. The EU’s top dogs prefer the lie that voters have been hypnotised by Moscow because they can’t process the truth which is that more and more of them no longer believe the current political class (that means them) is up to the job. And while calling their opponents agents, dupes, racists, ‘pro-Russians’ or extremists is easier than answering them, it’s also suicidal.

Now, none of this means Western Europe should be weak and its various countries should, of course, defend themselves. They should have armies that function, borders that mean something, industries of substance, clear identities and leaders capable of speaking to Washington, Moscow, Beijing and Kiev without sounding like interns at a think tank panel.

But a serious EU would also understand geography, and accept that Russia isn’t a passing weather system, but rather it’s Europe’s largest country, a nuclear power, a major resource base and a permanent fact of the continent. Trying to exclude Russia from the European project while drawing in every other ex-Soviet state was always a ludicrous form of wishful thinking, and it’s also had structural implications for Russia itself. If the EU had behaved differently it could have waited out the Putin generation, which is understandably aggrieved by the Soviet collapse and the humiliation of the 1990s.

Then it could have dealt with a more internationally-minded and liberal-minded leadership, which didn’t even remember the USSR, that was certain to follow. We should never forget that just a month before the first Maidan protests in Kiev, Alexey Navalny came second in a Moscow mayoral election, but after the EU and the US wholeheartedly supported the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, Russia’s elites concluded, whether we like it or not, that the West’s commitment to democracy and rules was only a sham.

This isn’t a call for the EU to surrender to Moscow, but rather a suggestion that it build a European security architecture that includes both Russia and Ukraine, because no stable order can be built by pretending one of them can be wished away.

If the EU continues to become poorer, more censorious, less free and more frightened of its own voters, it will keep heading down the road to ruin.

By Matt Bivens, Substack, 6/8/26

Half a year ago, the Russians were hopping mad, and reporting that a swarm of more than 90 military drones had just tried to blow up President Vladimir Putin’s home.

The Russian president was not there that day. But his family — long-time girlfriend Alina Kabayeva and their two sons Ivan, about 11, and Vladimir, about 7 — may well have been. (Putin and his first wife of 30 years had an apparently amicable divorce in 2014. The Kremlin has never officially acknowledged Putin’s second family, and so never commented on who was at home the day the drones arrived. But Russian media strongly suggested Kabayeva and the children were there.)

Putin telephoned America that morning to complain, and later that morning Donald Trump was upset on the Russian president’s behalf.

“President Putin told me about it. Early in the morning he said he was attacked. It’s no good. It’s no good,” Trump told reporters then. “I was very angry about it.”

“It’s one thing to be [on the military] offensive,” Trump added. “It’s another thing to attack his house.”

But as reviewed here two months ago, within just a few days, Trump and the U.S. government abruptly reversed this position. The CIA “assessed” that no such attack had ever happened. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also called the story “a fabrication.”

Were the Russians making this whole thing up?

The attack was alleged to have targeted a Russian government complex on the shores of Lake Valdai in the Novgorod region. Russian media report the residence has sports facilities and even its own ice hockey rink, as well as massive air defenses, and that Putin’s family spends most of their time there.

In response to skeptics, the Russians pointed indignantly to video footage of the drones they had shot down, and on Jan. 2 took the extraordinary step of summoning a U.S. military attache to Moscow to formally present a navigation chip they said they’d recovered from one of the drones, urging American decryption specialists to examine it for themselves.

Did our intelligence services actually examine this evidence? No one’s ever said.

But President Trump, who had initially been sympathetic and upset after receiving that early-morning earful from Putin, within days stated he didn’t believe Putin any more. He said he now doubted claims that anyone had ever tried to drone-bomb Putin’s home.

“I don’t believe that strike happened,” Trump told reporters. “We don’t believe that happened, now that we’ve been able to check.”

In the midst of all this, American special forces attacked Caracas and kidnapped the Venezuelan president, followed quickly by the U.S.-Israeli assassination of the Iranian leadership and the Iran war debacle. The question of whether Ukraine +/- the CIA had just tried to kill Putin and / or his wife and children in their home was forgotten.

Yet the story will not go away.

It was too big an event, and it is in the minds of all of the major actors in the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just referenced it in an open letter to Putin. That letter was billed as proposing a one-on-one meeting, but it was too larded with insults and threats to qualify as a peace overture.

Zelensky’s letter opens with the observation that Ukrainian drones had just attacked a high-profile annual economic conference in St. Petersburg that Putin himself had attended. Those drones — which, it should be remembered, are often if not always guided to their destinations by U.S. / NATO satellites and targeting teams — blew up oil refineries and military facilities all over the city this past weekend.

Zelensky shared a 26-second video montage of those attacks on his social media:

“[O]ur long-range drones paid a visit to the opening of your [economic] forum in St. Petersburg, covering a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers. As you know very well, that distance is not the limit of our capabilities,” Zelensky said in his open letter to Putin, and then continued in a taunting manner:

“We often hear that you are comfortable with this war. Of course, not in those cases when it comes to the security of your residence in Valdai or your parade in Moscow. Your own life is valuable to you.”

This seems very close to a direct admission by Zelensky that Ukrainian drones did indeed attempt to assassinate Putin and / or kill his family at his home in Valdai. (It also sounds like a threat to try again.)

Recall that immediately after the news broke of the Valdai residence attack and Trump pitched a fit, Zelensky called such talk of an attack on Putin’s home “a fabrication.”

Six months later, it’s now an operation he boasts publicly about.

Nor has Putin forgotten.

At an otherwise mundane press conference last week, Putin was asked about the headline-for-a-day that a drone had crashed on the roof of an apartment building in Romania. No one was seriously hurt. The drone was either Russian or Ukrainian and clearly had gone off course, but the event was instantly hyped as a possible Russian attack on our glorious NATO ally Romania!

The New York Times published a full article about this single drone that wandered out of a neighboring war zone. The Times said the drone crash “wounded two people” who had to be “admitted to hospital”. This was later described as a 53-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy. The Times provides a link to a statement (in Romanian) that says the woman has first and second degree burns on her legs, and the boy unspecified burns on his forearms. So, minor burns. It must have been terrifying to have the roof of your apartment blasted open out of nowhere. That said, such minor injuries themselves would not usually merit “admission to hospital”. If, as an ER doctor, I tried to admit a case of first-degree forearm burns to Pediatrics anywhere in America, they’d have laughed me out of the building. Maybe they do things differently in Europe.

Although The New York Times was able to devote six reporters, a 30-second video, and more than 1,300 words across 26 paragraphs to this curiosity — “drone of uncertain provenance flies off course on May 29, hits roof of building, causes no major injuries” — it still has yet to mention the May 22 U.S.-backed Ukrainian drone attack on the teachers college at Starob*lsk that killed 21 Russian teenagers and injured, sometimes severely, more than 60.

But even more interesting (and pathetic, and illustrative) is the way The Times handles comments made by Putin about this Romanian drone kerfuffle.

After many paragraphs of emotive drama — a drone hit a building! Everyone was scared! — followed by repetitive insistence the drone had to be Russian, and that this was “Russia’s recklessness,” and that “Russia’s war of aggression has crossed yet another line” — The Times finally turned to the Russian reaction:

Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, declined to take responsibility for the drone accident, suggesting that this could have been a stray Ukrainian drone.

“No one can speak of the origin of this aerial vehicle until it is fully examined,” he told a televised news conference in Kazakhstan. Russia would hold its own investigation if Romania would hand over the debris of the drone, he said.

But what Putin actually said was more interesting.

In a somewhat testy exchange with Russian reporters (a transcription and video are posted in English on the Kremlin website), he basically says it was clearly an accident; and the way to figure out whether it was a Russian or Ukrainian drone would be to examine the remnants of the drone itself.

As he made this glaringly obvious point, Putin then added a sarcastic fling at the West by recalling the attack of six months ago on his official residence in Valdai. He reminded listeners that, when the West expressed doubts that his home and family had just been targeted, Russia had replied by offering up the remnants of one of the downed drones, in a formal ceremony of hand-off to American diplomats:

“If they provide us with objective data [about this Romanian drone] — as we once did with representatives of the U.S. administration, by handing over information and drone fragments from an attempted strike on one of the residences of the President of the Russian Federation to be examined — then … we will conduct an objective investigation. Only then will we be in a position to assess what has actually happened.”

How interesting that The New York Times team edited out any reference to Putin’s reminder that we’d recently tried to assassinate him.

Apparently it still bugs Putin.

But The Times doesn’t thinks that’s news you need. You’ll have to do without the reminder that we probably tried to kill Putin and his wife and two kids, as you struggle to decide how much longer, as a U.S. citizen and voter, you want to spend billions of dollars on weapons to blow apart not just the Donbas, but now even Moscow and St. Petersburg, all while you yourself are targeted by city-vaporizing Russian missiles that could be here within 15 minutes. Good luck!

In summary: In recent days both Zelensky and Putin have again referenced an attack on Putin’s home and family carried out by U.S.-supported Ukrainian drones. This is the same attack that Trump initially believed in but then scoffed at, after the CIA formally told him it never happened.

But it clearly did happen.

Which suggests that the CIA is giving false briefings to the president.

Is anyone in Congress or major media ever going to ask the CIA or the so-called “community” of intelligence services about this? For example, was this an American-approved assassination attempt, or a rogue Ukrainian operation? If a rogue Ukrainian operation, did it still have U.S. logistics and targeting support?

Remember, Trump has long wanted to end the Ukraine war, at least in theory. But many in Western security state circles want to fight on to the last Ukrainian. The attack on Putin’s home in Valdai this winter came exactly as Trump and Zelensky were meeting in Florida to talk about peace, and the attack itself was seen by some as an attempt to derail those negotiations. Maybe it was.

And maybe, if a U.S.-Ukrainian drone attack had killed Putin’s sons, then today we’d all be wondering how we’d ever been so irresponsible, and asking why we’d ever let things escalate so horrifically.