By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Substack, 10/22/26

Summer #5 of the Special Military Operation (SMO) was the “tide is turning” summer for Ukraine. This narrative was inspired by Zelensky’s 40 day “influence campaign” that involved blowing up Russian oil refineries and Internet shopping warehouses. Droning the Omsk refinery was the second Siberian hit following Summer #4’s Irkutsk airbase attack.

The strategic rationale for these actions was that with just a little more nudging at least one of three things would happen: the Russian people will rebel, the Russian government will collapse, and/or Russia will break up.

In Russia, there was no unified message for Summer #5 but a shared weariness and wonder that there was a #5. The closing of IKEA five years ago seems quaint. Everyone has thought deeply about the geopolitical situation and wherever they are on the spectrum, they are still here and they care about their future. Asked if he thought about the SMO, a 30ish IT professional said, “How can you not think about it, it is part of every day”.

Similar to Summer #1 , the foundation for day to day life shifted and a recalibration was necessary. In 2022, the adjustments were directly related to the SMO: sanctions, the loss of western brands, access to Internet sites and social media, inflation, money movement, stay or go etc.

In 2026, the need for recalibration focuses on the long-term future and follows three years of surprising stability and upward trajectories so expectations are higher. The issues that require a rethink are more related to domestic concerns in response to new laws on land (including new flood zone laws) and local governance, the viability of starting or growing a small business, how and where to invest savings, developing better work opportunities etc.

June

Vacation plans were influenced, as everything now, by the SMO or, according to Press Secretary Peskov, “the War”. Throughout Summer #5 it comes up in relation to a Medical Commission summons, a son’s interest in grad school, guys signing up so they have the money to build houses, a nephew who has moved from the front line to become a drone operator, and local deputies increasing the land allotment to returning veterans from 10 cotoks to 45. A wilderness expert described seeing new graves in an Altai village graveyard “…This is terrible for the native people with such small populations”. On a walk along the Katun River in the Republic of Altai a 7 year old, gave his take on the reason for all this disruption, “Russia and America cannot get along”.

Increased drone activity in the West and South made Siberia a desirable vacation destination. Throughout a hot, sunny, June, tourists screamed as rafts maneuvered through the beautiful but not very challenging Katun River rapids. A man in a red kayak wore rabbit ears during his daily training. Vacationing parents followed their children as they ran to the River and took turns posing on the rocks.

For local people, the Manzherok Village riverbank remains a favorite spot for brides and grooms, fishermen taking advantage of the late sunset to throw in their lines, and teenage pit bikers creating a scandal. Despite new laws limiting the sale of alcohol in the Republic, the lubricated joys of a perfect summer day occasionally overcome buddies who will spend a few hours passed out under a tree before heading home powered by an unsteady gait.

Mid-June, the people of Manzherok filled the House of Culture for their first meeting with the Governor (in office since October 2024). Instead of the expected public hearing, the meeting was a campaign event promoting United Russia’s 27 year old war hero candidate for the State Duma elections in September.

July

July 1^st, just as people had settled into a summer that only required factoring in ever increasing prices, drones, airport delays, and Internet disruptions, someone mentioned gas. By the 3^rd, a young wife and mother went to fill up at 2:30 in the morning and still had to wait 50 min. Two days later, a whole system for dealing with the gas situation had been established informally, spontaneously.

The system in Altai involved buying a couple of 20 litre canisters for your car and joining a social network chat that provided up to date info from travelers on where there was gas, what types were available, how much it cost, and how long the line was.

Then, you had to decide, time or money. 90 r a litre if you are willing to wait hours or cash only, 120-150 rubles a litre with no line. Regardless of up to 7 hour waits, there was never a line at the expensive gas station.

Before long small hotel owners in Altai were offering to stand in line for their guests as a marketing pitch, Instagram featured stories about lines being a great place to meet people, any description of a vacation began with how they filled the tank, and people started to envy friends with diesel cars.

By July 9^th the Altai Republic Government said gas stations must register cars and drivers could only buy 30 litres a day plus 10 in a can. Regardless of all these complications, cars in the Manzherok parking lot came from all over country. Extreme turbulence is nothing new anywhere in Russia. That is what makes the people resilient, it’s their core competence

In the midst of this, over 20 young data scientists, mostly from Moscow and St. Petersburg, attended the second annual Open Data Science summer camp in Altai (AltAI). One participant was delayed because he was attending the July 14^th launch of Expedition 75 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It was a perfect summer evening as the rest of the group gathered on the riverbank to watch traces of the launch travel across the clear sky and the lingering puff of smoke from the second stage rocket dropping.

The rocket’s destination was the International Space Station. Onboard were two cosmonauts and one astronaut, an American making his first flight. The Russian engineers and the American Surgeon will spend the next eight months researching human health and long-duration physiology, materials science and in-space manufacturing etc. So far, they are getting along fine.

August

By August, gas was no longer a topic of conversation or a hassle. The quietest campaign in Russia’s history of elections continued. In the Republic you only saw posters and mailbox stuffers from one candidate, United Russia’s. No one talked about it.

The Ukok Plateau is an Altai border district single digit kilometers from China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it is an official “zon pokoya”, a quiet zone that provides tranquility and freedom from disturbance. There is no cell service, no Internet, land lines, wires or pipes. Ukok is a harsh, high altitude, windy steppe filled with geological (melting glaciers), archeological (kurgans/burial grounds), and spiritual wonders.

Artist/philosopher Nicholas Roerich believed that Ukok was the gateway to the spiritual kingdom of Shambala. It gained international attention in 1993 with the discovery of the 2,400 year old tattooed Princess of Ukok. The movement to return her from the Museum to her burial ground was revived this summer. Supporters believe she guarded the gates of the underworld keeping evil out. “Today, the number of armed conflict hotspots across the planet is growing and we face the imminent threat of a Third World War—a nuclear war! Such a conflict would be the last for humanity; there would be no victors.” Activists believe peace will only come when the Princess is at rest.

It has been a record breaking year for the Kochyi (To Roam) tour organizers with their weekly excursions to the Plateau. Our group consisted of 3 couples and 7 women from Moscow and Siberia who work in banking, real estate, IT, and healthcare. Everyone agreed on two things, no talk about work and time to be alone.

The only way in or out is through a mountain pass made up of small and medium sized rocks with a steep drop to one side. It is only open to the public in July and August. A Land Cruiser and similar high priced all-terrain vehicles can do it but more common are ultra non luxurious Soviet UAZ vans or “Bukhankas”, so called because of their bread loaf shape.

Our group traveled in three Bukhankas driven by their owners Valera, Ruslan, and Bayram. They all live in Kosh Agach, the district center, and each one is a gear shifting Mozart. Valera was the elder, Bayram works in a gas station during the off season, and Ruslan helps in the store his wife owns. He used to keep a herd of horses on the Plateau but it didn’t make sense financially. Ukok drivers are a brotherhood with a code. You stop, check in, and share a cigarette with the drivers of all moving or stationary vehicles.

I traveled in Valera’s van and no amount of mastery could compensate for the brain rattling lack of shock absorbers with nothing to hold on to. The only relief came when our Bukhanka broke down, which was often. The drivers’ routine of smoke, discuss, crawl under the van, and Valera says “what will be will be” before starting the motor continued for two days. The morning of day three Valera was gone and we were told to divide up between the remaining two vans.

The Valera refugees experience was transformed from fate driven “what will be will be” grim misery to party wagon fun. Not only had Ruslan and Bayram put in shock absorbers, their Bukhankas had state of the art sound systems cranking a mix of ethnic and Russian music. Ruslan waved his right arm in the air like a lasso to the music and explained that trips to Mongolia for cheap, better parts was of no interest to “what will be will be” Valera.

When we returned to civilization every cell phone was turned on as soon as a signal bar appeared. Nothing new on the geopolitical front, the headline news was the first death this century by a bear in Altai. Hours after her boyfriend proposed, a 29 year old woman was dragged out of their tent and killed. The tent was pitched in a hotel campground by Teletskoye Lake.

Typically, there are 20-30 bear attacks annually in Russia. This year 59 attacks have been reported with 22 people killed. Experts say bears are surfacing because a hot, dry summer produced less nuts and berries and there is an explosion in the bear population because no one wants to hunt them. In Altai, to this must be added massive and escalating development that is disturbing their habitat.

Fall #5

The quiet election came and went. United Russia won In the Republic. The turnout was 45% of registered voters. 49.17% (36,406 people) of those who participated voted for United Russia. 78% or 128,132 people either stayed home or voted for someone else.

At an October St. Petersburg “RusHydro” conference, Altai Republic Governor Andrey Turchak presented a new concept for a massive transportation and energy corridor. It will connect the Arctic to Chinese and Asian Pacific region markets through the inland waterways of Siberia. The final leg of the corridor requires building a railroad across the length of Altai through the Ukok Plateau to China. The Governor recognizes, “The most sensitive issue is the environment. The Katun River and the natural landscape as a whole has sacred significance to residents”.

As an unseasonably dry and warm fall lingers in Siberia, bears are now solidly on the list of things we need to worry about. Gas is not a problem but there are occasional Yandex pay or taxi outages. The last of the villagers’ garden harvest has been gathered, pickled, and stored and the land prepared for spring planting. The first snow has fallen and melted with only white caps remaining on the mountaintops as we wait for Winter #5.

Thanks for reading Siberia Calling!

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RT, 10/23/26

Russia remains ready to negotiate a lasting settlement in Ukraine but will achieve its objectives regardless, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin on Thursday. He also outright rejected “schizophrenic” claims in Western media that Moscow could be seeking a war with Europe.

Putin’s comments followed nearly three hours of talks with US envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. Witkoff brought new peace talk proposals following his own discussions with Vladimir Zelensky, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Chief of Staff Bjoern Siebert, and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in Oslo.

The new diplomatic engagement comes after Putin’s October 9 agreement with US President Donald Trump on Russian diesel supplies, whereby Washington eased fuel export restrictions while engaging with Moscow on broader economic cooperation.

Lasting peace, rather than a temporary pause

Putin confirmed Russia’s readiness to resume trilateral contacts with the US and Ukraine, focusing on security arrangements for both countries after a final settlement. The goal is to achieve definitive peace agreements, rather than “a suspension of hostilities for some short period,” he stressed.

The Russian leader also stated that he agrees with Witkoff’s argument that such discussions would also need to address Europe’s wider security architecture.

Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov previously suggested the talks could resume around mid-November, potentially in Abu Dhabi.

Putin said an agreement was possible, but insisted that “all the goals of the special military operation will be achieved” one way or another.

Europe’s ‘political schizophrenia’

European claims that Russia poses a military threat and preparations for confrontation amount to “political schizophrenia,” Putin said, arguing that European populations do not want war with Russia and explicitly rejected suggestions that Moscow is preparing to attack them.

“We do not want, we are not preparing for any war with Europe,” he said.

Putin described inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia as unrealistic, expressing hope that its opponents would recognize that peaceful relations better serve their own populations.

‘Historic Russia’ and the territorial question

Asked about Zelensky’s recent comments to Fox News that he would be willing to give up 25% of his territories in order to freeze the conflict on the current battle lines, Putin rejected the premise.

“It is not their territory, it is the territory of historic Russia,” he said, citing residents’ votes for independence and subsequently for reunification with the Russian Federation.

He acknowledged that the issue remained disputed, but argued that describing these developments as Ukraine losing territory was inappropriate.

Fighting ‘to the last Ukrainian’

Putin called it “incomprehensible” that Kiev expects that “the entire world should pay them, fight for them, supply them with weapons, ammunition, equipment,” and stressed that Russia has no desire to fight Ukraine.

“If Ukraine’s current leadership wants to wage war, let them fight. But why do they think everyone should pay for it and supply them with weapons?” Putin questioned.

He noted that much of this desire for war can be attributed to foreign countries that want to fight against Russia in order to weaken it and have promised support to Kiev.

However, Putin stressed that these foreign entities are prepared to fight until “the last Ukrainian” and questioned whether Ukraine’s leadership similarly treats its citizens as expendable cannon fodder.

Putin accused Ukrainian authorities of rounding up men “like stray dogs” and forcibly sending them to the front, undermining motivation. He also argued that nationalist groups that carry out this so-called “busification” do not always bear the frontline burden themselves.

He recalled that, according to official figures, there have been half a million deserters in Ukraine and over 300,000 criminal cases opened, adding that the actual numbers could be significantly higher.

Shared history and missed opportunities

Putin said Moscow had sought a negotiated resolution with Kiev since 2014, including through the Minsk agreements intended to settle the Donbass conflict. He blamed Ukrainian authorities for repeatedly rejecting opportunities to reach an agreement before Russia’s military operation began in 2022.

He described Ukrainians as a people closely related to Russians, pointing to genetic research that has shown they are “one people.” However, he acknowledged that some wished to identify differently and said Russia accepted that reality.

“We are ready even now to negotiate and seek solutions to this difficult, complicated situation,” Putin said. “Everything can be agreed upon.”

By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 10/25/26

The recent article in The Atlantic by Shane Harris titled “The Man in the Middle of Trump’s Deeply Conflicted Ukraine Policy” provides an interesting, yet unsurprising, take on the strategic contradictions prevalent in American foreign policy. At the center of it is CIA Director John Ratcliffe, whose organization is deeply involved in the ongoing proxy war against Russia while serving a president who appears to be seeking an exit from this conflict through some kind of a diplomatic accommodation with Moscow.

The article’s fundamental weakness lies in the assumptions underpinning the author’s interpretation of the conflict. It consistently conflates tactical success for strategic victory, treats Western intelligence assessments as authoritative and does not provide any consideration to the consequences of America’s active involvement in a war against a nuclear-armed power. The result is an article that exposes the intellectual limitations of Washington’s national security establishment while legitimizing the very consequences that serious journalism ought to critically examine.

The Illusion of Russian Strategic Failure

The essay’s most questionable argument is that Russia has “failed to make meaningful advances” suggesting that its military campaign is a strategic failure. Western mainstream media has been regurgitating this narrative since February 2022. It is therefore unsurprising.

This interpretation also reflects a persistent misunderstanding of attritional warfare. Territorial capture is not the only determinant of military success. In a prolonged conflict, the more consequential variables include industrial production, ammunition and weapons stocks, force regeneration, operational endurance and the ability to impose unsustainable costs on the adversary. Russia’s territorial advances have been slow but methodical, focusing on dismantling one fortification after another in Ukraine’s extensive defensive network in the Donbas. Furthermore, it is able to finance its campaign as opposed to Ukraine that is fully dependent on Western economic, military and intelligence support.

In my previous essays, I examined these dimensions of modern warfare through the lens of Soviet and Russian military doctrine. These essays argue how the conflict has evolved into a contest between military learning systems in which the ability to absorb battlefield lessons, adapt tactics, accelerate technological innovation and regenerate combat power may prove more consequential than territorial acquisition.

This understanding is also deeply rooted in Soviet military tradition, especially the concept of the correlation of forces, which will be discussed in a forthcoming essay. This framework goes beyond just a numerical comparison of military forces to assessing the relationship between military capabilities, political cohesion, strategic endurance and industrial resources. It discusses why battlefield outcomes must be understood in the context of the larger material and institutional systems that sustain military power.

Clearly, none of these factors seem to matter to Harris as he provides no comparable assessment of Russia’s military position. Any serious analysis must examine not just territory capture, but how effectively the Russian military system is learning, adapting, regenerating and sustaining itself relative to its opponents. Without that analysis, pronouncements about Russia pursuing a lost cause remain conjecture instead of credible strategic judgment.

Conflating Tactical Damage with Strategic Victory

Harris argues that Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries have “hobbled its economy and choked Putin’s war machine”. There is no doubt that attacks on refineries have caused serious disruption in Russia. The International Energy Agency has documented impacts on petroleum product exports. However, Harris makes another significant leap from damage to refineries to Russian military capabilities being paralyzed. Disruptions to refining throughput does not necessarily mean that military fuel has been proportionally reduced. Neither does it mean that reductions in the export of petroleum products has curtailed Russia’s ability to finance its campaign. For any of these conclusions to be valid, there would need to be some evidence of impact on military logistics, industrial adaptation, fuel allocations, repair capacity and state revenues. Harris provides no such evidence.

Harris also does not acknowledge the international consequences of such attacks. Russian fuel supplies are part of an interconnected global energy market. As the turmoil in the Middle East has demonstrated, disruptions to energy supplies have repercussions far beyond the country concerned. Furthermore, President Trump’s desire to curtail Ukrainian attacks on refineries may reflect electoral considerations but can also be understood through the strategic and national interests of the United States. Consumers are facing rising prices and a prolonged global economic downturn. Reducing such concerns to presidential opportunism substitutes political characterization for serious analysis.

Manufacturing the Specter of a Wider Russian War

Harris cites the alleged concerns of European intelligence officials that Russia might send forces into Estonia as it did in Crimea in 2014. He doesn’t consider how profoundly problematic this line of thinking is. Estonia is a NATO member with collective defense protections. Russia has avoided retaliating against NATO states for legitimate concerns around widening the conflict. Crimea was a completely different strategic environment. Moreover, Harris presents no evidence of Russian intentions for an attack on Estonia. There are no public statements, identified invasion preparations and no clear explanation of what strategic benefits would Moscow gain by expanding the conflict beyond Ukraine. In fact NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte contradicted this assertion by stating on October 14, 2026, that

“we see no imminent threat against NATO. If there is a build-up, like there was before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, then we will see it and we will deal with it…”1

European military and intelligence officials routinely make pronouncements about Russia threatening to attack Europe but consistently fail to provide any evidence.

Intelligence as an Unquestioned Strategic Good

Harris’s recount of the CIA’s role in building and training Ukraine’s intelligence apparatus after 2014 is revealing. He accords the CIA’s institutional perspective considerable weight while paying no attention to how Moscow interprets American intelligence operations on its borders. Understanding Russian threat perceptions and how continued CIA operations could have exacerbated them is essential to understanding the conflict’s origins and the difficulties in resolving it.

There is also the issue of whether intelligence agencies should develop institutional commitments to foreign partners that become difficult to reconcile with a change in an elected leadership’s foreign policy. Harris portrays continuity of CIA support to Ukraine as an unquestioned virtue, but does not give due consideration to whether that continuity might complicate the president’s efforts to change American strategy. It is a troubling inversion of democratic accountability.

When Intelligence Becomes Foreign Policy

The article’s biggest contradiction concerns the relationship between government institutions and the political leadership. Harris portrays the CIA’s continued support to Ukraine as a reassuring constant in face of Trump’s unpredictable diplomacy. His narrative implicitly elevates the CIA’s involvement in the conflict above the question of whether its activities are serving America’s changing priorities.

Intelligence agencies do not possess an independent mandate to determine American foreign policy. They must provide objective assessments and lawfully execute operations as authorized by the political leadership. Perhaps the systemic breakdown of this established process is what the article implicitly highlights. After all, for analysts who have been studying the US national security state and the wars of the past decades, it is not surprising that, in reality, the American public has no visibility into how intelligence agencies are fueling global wars and how accountable they actually are to the political leadership.

Harris also describes Ratcliffe’s reported mission to Moscow in August and suggests that “If Ratcliffe could help convince Putin that he was pursuing a lost cause, perhaps he’d finally come to the table.” This formulation contains a major analytical leap. It assumes that Putin’s intelligence advisors could be misleading him and that the Russian president is unaware of Russia’s military position. His narrative encourages readers to regard the CIA director as uniquely qualified to explain the military reality to the Russian leadership. This is difficult to substantiate. Russia possesses its own military intelligence services, reconnaissance capabilities, battlefield reporting systems and defense-industrial assessments. Harris provides no evidence that the assessments of these agencies are less reliable than those of the CIA.

The Absence of Strategic Thinking

Harris’s article provides an interesting glimpse into the contradictions and competing impulses prevalent across institutions in Washington. However, it falls short as compelling strategic analysis. It mistakes limited territorial movement for strategic failure, damage to infrastructure as military paralysis and the CIA’s operational aggressiveness for strategic effectiveness.

The deeper failure of American policy is that its longstanding ambition to weaken Russia and create political change in Moscow has produced neither the strategic transformation that it sought nor a credible pathway to peace. Washington now appears trapped between an intelligence establishment committed to sustaining confrontation and a political leadership that is unable or unwilling to impose a coherent political strategy. Equally disturbing is the extent to which publications such as The Atlantic compound this strategic failure when they subordinate independent journalistic scrutiny to the assumptions and narratives of the national security establishment.

Harris’s article celebrating the CIA’s operational effectiveness against Russia inadvertently raises the far more troubling questions of whether intelligence agencies have acquired sufficient institutional autonomy to perpetuate policies that elected leaders cannot control. Therefore, the real story is not the CIA’s supposed success against Russia, but the erosion of accountability, the absence of coherent political direction and a Washington establishment seemingly incapable of distinguishing the continuation of conflict from the pursuit of national interests.

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