Sweden officially announces transfer of 16 Gripen JAS 39C/D fighter jets to Ukraine by 2027, and sale of 22 Gripen JAS 39E aircraft by 2030, during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Stockholm on 28 May, according to Ukrainian and Swedish officials.

At a military base in Uppsala the two countries also signed a declaration on deepening defence cooperation. The aircraft represent the largest single component of a Swedish aid package exceeding 2 billion.

The Swedish Prime Minister emphasized that Ukraine's air defense needs reinforcement, and that his country is transferring the Gripens for Ukraine's long-term protection.

"Ukraine has very clearly identified the Gripen as its choice and priority for long-term air defense. Ukraine would like to acquire the latest model — the Gripen E/F. Ukraine will purchase 22 Gripen E-series aircraft. Negotiations are ongoing, and we will conclude them and be able to deliver these aircraft by 2030," said Kristersson.

He also noted that Sweden will transfer 16 Gripen C/D aircraft to Ukraine from its own stockpiles in early 2027.

Zelensky said Sweden is providing a support package for the defense of cities worth $2.7 billion — of which $2 billion will go toward aircraft and nearly $400 million toward drone production.

"We expect to receive the first capabilities, the first Gripens, within the next ten months. We will do everything on our end. I think we will receive the first Gripens with our Ukrainian pilots in December or January," he said.

According to the President, Ukraine will receive the aircraft with a full weapons package, which will help defend against Russian guided aerial bombs.

What Is the Gripen E

Developed in the 1980s by a Swedish consortium including Saab and Volvo, the JAS 39 was built to combine the roles of reconnaissance aircraft, bomber, and fighter in a single airframe — and to operate without fixed airbase infrastructure. According to Militarnyi analyst Kushnikov: "The Swedes lived under the conditions of the Cold War and proximity to the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. Understanding that fixed ground infrastructure could be struck quite quickly, they built a doctrine of dispersal and maximum survival of their forces under those conditions. [Gripens] can successfully take off from motorways, be quickly prepared for a sortie, equipped without hangar infrastructure, and deployed on tasks straight off the wheels."

The Gripen E — the variant Ukraine intends to acquire — features a new active electronically scanned array radar, an updated electronic warfare suite, a more powerful American-made engine, a cannon, and additional weapons hardpoints. Fewer than 15 have been produced to date, with roughly eight operated by Brazil and three by Sweden in a test configuration. Kushnikov placed it alongside the F-16 Block 70, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Dassault Rafale as a peer-class aircraft.

Scale of the Order

The potential 150-aircraft order — for which Ukraine signed a letter of intent in October 2025 — could become the largest single order in Saab's history and the largest arms purchase ever made by Ukraine, which would make it the world's second-largest Gripen operator by fleet size. Sweden itself is waiting on 60 jets; Brazil has ordered more than 100.

Saab currently produces between 20 and 30 Gripen E aircraft per year, according to Militarnyi. Analyst Vadym Kushnikov estimates Ukraine will not receive all aircraft before 2030 under an optimistic scenario. Professor Andrii Kharuk of the National Academy of Ground Forces suggested the first batch may arrive in the older Gripen C/D configuration, given the high cost of modifying already-produced airframes to the E standard.

Why Ukraine Chose the Gripen

Three factors drove the selection.

Fleet unification. A single Gripen type can replace five distinct Soviet platforms currently in service: the Su-24M bomber, Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft, Su-25 ground-attack jet, and the Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters. Ukraine's Air Force Vision for Development to 2035, published in 2020, had already named the JAS-39E/F Gripen or F-16 Block 70/72 as its target platform.

Cost and survivability. At approximately $10,000 per flight hour — versus roughly $30,000 for the F-16, according to Kushnikov — the Gripen is the cheapest aircraft in its class to operate. In conditions of repeated Russian strikes on Ukrainian airfields, its ability to operate from highways and without hangar infrastructure is a concrete tactical advantage.

Weapons compatibility. The Gripen can fire Swedish-made air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, the RBS-15 anti-ship missile, and American weapons already in Ukrainian service: AIM-120 air-to-air missiles, GBU-39 small-diameter bombs, and JDAM precision-guided kits. Kushnikov highlighted the Meteor missile in particular: "This is currently one of the few solutions in the arsenal of Western countries that can effectively strike enemy targets at distances of over 200 kilometres." Professor Kharuk also noted the Mauser cannon's potential for use against Shahed drones, adding that deploying Gripens against the launch platforms for Russian glide bombs would be even more impactful, as it could push those aircraft away from Ukrainian airspace.

Limitations

The Gripen has only five operators outside Sweden, compared with 30 for the F-16, limiting the accumulated experience base. The type has not been used in direct combat: Sweden's eight jets deployed to Libya in 2011 flew 650 sorties exclusively for air policing. Czech and Hungarian aircraft perform similar NATO policing missions. Kharuk concluded: "In all likelihood, these aircraft will undergo their real combat testing in the skies over Ukraine."

Belarus "is very unlikely to launch a ground invasion against Ukraine," yet Moscow and Minsk appear to be setting the informational groundwork to justify Russia launching drones at Ukraine from Belarus, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on 26 May. ISW reads Belarusian Security Council Secretary Alexander Volfovich's same-day claim of 116 attempted Ukrainian drone crossings into Belarus as preparing the pretext. Belarusian airspace would let Russia hit Polish-Ukrainian supply lines that Moscow cannot easily reach from its own territory.

Lukashenka security chief's claim and its framing

Lieutenant General Volfovich claimed on 26 May that Belarusian forces have allegedly "recorded" 116 Ukrainian drone attempts to cross the international border into Belarus over the past week. He also stated that some of those crossings were intentional Ukrainian strikes on Belarusian border facilities.

The claim follows weeks of Ukrainian warnings that Moscow has been pushing Minsk to take military action against Kyiv or against an unspecified NATO state.

Why a ground invasion is not what ISW expects

ISW sees little chance Belarus will mount a ground push into Ukraine. The think tank reports no signs of Belarusian troop concentrations on the Ukrainian border at the scale a ground operation would require. Moscow itself does not have the spare combat-ready forces it would need to back a Belarusian incursion.

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Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, head of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS), has already drawn red lines on that scenario: he warned on 26 May that "the first 500 targets are already marked" if Belarus enters Russia's war. He directed the warning at Belarusian leader Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

What Belarus airspace gives Russia

Russian forces are already hitting western Ukrainian oblasts from Russian soil but lack the precision to strike moving targets, the ISW assessment notes. Operating Shahed-class drones and lower-cost Molniyas from Belarusian soil would put the M-06 highway from Kyiv to the Polish border within precision range. The same applies to the rail line that carries Polish supplies into Ukraine. Remote control from Belarus would also let Russian operators hit moving convoys and trains.

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Belarusian territory is already part of Russia's drone-strike chain. In February 2026, Ukrainian hackers exposed a six-month operation routing Russian Shaheds through Belarusian civilian cell towers and using signal repeaters installed on Belarusian rooftops to reach Kyiv, Rivne and Volyn oblasts. Ukraine dismantled that Mesh relay network later that month. By 2 May, Russia had shifted to airborne signal-relay balloons drifting from Belarus into Ukrainian airspace to keep its strike drones connected.

The Korosten precedent

A Russian drone operator based in Belarus already executed this kind of strike once. Ukrainian officials reported that on 22 December 2025, a Shahed-type drone derailed a freight train near Korosten, in Zhytomyr Oblast, northern Ukraine. Four railway workers were injured. The hit landed about 50 kilometers south of the Belarusian border.

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That strike showcased flying a Shahed remotely via FPV (first-person-view, remote-piloted) control onto a moving locomotive. A Ukrainian expert has since analyzed the technique as Russia's main evolving long-range drone threat. ISW frames the Korosten strike as Russia's operational template for its theater-wide campaign against Ukrainian rear logistics.

The Russian Orthodox Church has been quietly removing priests who refused to support Russia's war on Ukraine, an investigation by Systema, the RFE/RL Russian investigative unit, has documented. The church courts that hand down the verdicts operate behind closed doors with no procedural code, no defense lawyers, and prosecutors and judges drawn from the same circle. Patriarch Kirill personally signs off on the rulings.

A church court with no rules

Diocesan courts that defrock priests operate without a published procedural code, defrocked priest Andrei Kurayev told Systema. The accuser also acts as judge, hearings are closed, lawyers are barred, and defendants are not told the charges against them. The judges are appointed by bishops, receive no salary, and keep serving in ordinary parishes, leaving them fully dependent on those who appointed them, Kurayev said. 

These ecclesiastical courts existed in tsarist Russia and were destroyed by the Soviet regime. The Russian state restored them in 2004, but they only began to function under Kirill, who, in Kurayev's account, drafts the rules on the fly when he wants to remove priests he finds inconvenient.

"I don't know what Holy Rus is"

The charge that has cost several of the targeted priests their robes is the same: refusing to read the so-called Prayer for Holy Rus — a reference to a foundational Russian state mythos that falsely casts Moscow as the sole heir of Kyivan Rus — during the Divine Liturgy. Patriarch Kirill, a vocal backer of Vladimir Putin and the invasion, invented the prayer and recited it himself in September 2022, about six months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Moscow Patriarchate then made it mandatory across services nationwide, part of the same arc that ended in the church's March 2024 declaration of the war as a holy mission.

The prayer states that "those who wish to wage war have risen up against Holy Rus" and asks God to "grant us victory by Your power." It frames Ukraine, the country Russia invaded, as the aggressor.

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Father Aleksei Uminsky, a Moscow rector for more than 20 years, was called in three days before Russian Orthodox Christmas in 2024, handed a suspension decree, and within an hour** questioned by an unidentified disciplinary committee over his refusal to read a prayer supporting the war.

"I don't know what Holy Rus is," he answered.

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Church authorities suspended Uminsky, ordered him to remove his cross, and summoned him to trial. He fled Russia after being warned he would be arrested, and was defrocked with Kirill’s approval. Uminsky, 65, says former colleagues write to him in the same bind: they find it impossible to pray for the war but fear denunciation and church discipline.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople assigned Uminsky to a small church in Paris. He has a small flat above the church and no salary. He gives lectures and sermons on social media to make a living. He likened the separation from his former Moscow parish to losing his family.

From a Moscow cathedral to a Vilnius concert hall

The crackdown extends from Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East to Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. Vladimir Selyavko was defrocked in 2022 with several colleagues from the city’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral. He says the case may have started when a new bishop found printouts of their antiwar statements on his desk — and then judged them himself.

Selyavko, also reinstated by Bartholomew, now serves in a Vilnius church that was converted into a concert hall during the Soviet occupation. 

Today, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya paid her first official visit in Kyiv. It marks a milestone in relations between Ukraine and the Belarusian democracy movement.

Since Aliaksandr Lukashenka crushed the 2020 protests and handed Russia a staging ground for its 2022 invasion, Belarus's opposition has operated entirely from exile. Independent political parties have been banned. Most leading figures spent years in prison. The December 2025 prisoner releases—part of a deal involving the lifting of Western sanctions—brought several of them back into public life, along with renewed attention to where the movement stands on Ukraine.

The short answer: nearly unanimously in support. But the nuances matter, particularly for a movement that hopes one day to govern a country with deep historical, economic, and social ties to Russia.

Tsikhanouskaya: from diplomatic hedging to clear solidarity

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is the most internationally recognized figure in the Belarusian opposition. She entered politics in 2020 when her husband, video blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was disqualified and later arrested ahead of the presidential election. She had no prior political experience; her stated goal was to free political prisoners and secure new elections.

On Crimea, her early statements were deliberately cautious. In September 2020, she told Lithuanian broadcaster LRT that the peninsula was "de jure Ukrainian and de facto Russian"—acknowledging international law while stopping short of a direct claim. By April 2021, she had abandoned the hedge and directly stated that Crimea is Ukrainian. "When you speak indefinitely, it doesn't mean you're wrong—you're just speaking diplomatic language," she told Eurointegration. "Now I've said it clearly."

Since Russia's full-scale invasion, her position has hardened into something closer to a strategic doctrine. "There will be no free Belarus without a free Ukraine, and there will be no safe Ukraine without a free Belarus," she said in a 2023 DW interview, noting that hundreds of Belarusian volunteers were fighting in Ukrainian ranks. By 2025, she was describing Russia's war as "a war against freedom itself." Her office and the United Transitional Cabinet have supplied drones and equipment to the Kalinouski Regiment—a unit of Belarusian volunteers fighting for Ukraine. In August 2024, the regiment's deputy commander, Vadzim Kabanchuk, formally joined her transitional cabinet. In January 2026, she held her first full bilateral meeting with President Zelenskyy.

"We, Belarusians, know what Russia is. We know its imperial appetites. We know what tyranny is. We understand that today Ukraine is fighting not only for itself, but for all of us — including for a free Belarus", Tsikhanouskaya stated in an address marking the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion.

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Siarhei Tsikhanouski himself traveled to Russian-occupied Crimea in 2017 and was added to the Myrotvorets data base, a visit he later attributed to political indifference—he was not politically involved, and hadn't thought seriously about who the peninsula belonged to. In prison, he revised his position. In a 2021 statement, he declared Crimea should belong to Ukraine both de jure and de facto. After his 2025 release, he was unambiguous.

"I fully support Ukraine. President Zelenskyy has had to bear such a terrible burden. What I went through is nothing compared with what he has endured. He is a hero to me. I support him fully and unconditionally", he said at a press conference.

Babaryka: support for Ukraine, prolonged silence on Crimea

Viktar Babaryka was another major 2020 presidential candidate, and the most complicated figure in this picture. He was arrested on 18 June 2020 and sentenced to a lengthy prison term that ended only with his release in December 2025 in exchange for sanctions relief. A former head of Belgazprombank—a subsidiary of Russia's Gazprom—he had argued for a neutral Belarus that would exit the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a position that placed him at odds with Moscow despite his professional ties to it.

On Crimea, Babaryka long avoided a direct answer in public. In May 2020, asked who the peninsula belongs to, he quipped to Nasha Niva: "There's a beautiful answer: 'To Greece.'" After his December 2025 release, he again declined to answer the question directly—even as he voiced general support for Ukraine in a video call with Zelenskyy. His refusal sparked sharp discussion on Belarusian social media. Dissident and blogger Ihar Losik, who just like Babaryka, spent more than five years in prison commented on such statements in the following way:

“Even in incommunicado detention, there were different ways to learn about the events of the war in Ukraine, and after my release, everyone I spoke to was surprised at how I knew almost everything. [...] But my views on ‘whose Crimea is it’ and ‘who is the aggressor’ were not formed after the war, nor after my Ukrainian relatives went to fight as volunteers from the very beginning and were killed there by Putin’s forces. I believe that every adult and educated person should have made up their mind back in 2014, when Putin occupied Crimea and Donbas and shot down the Malaysian Boeing. It is surprising that even in 2025, despite many years in prison, someone still cannot answer these simple questions,” wrote Ihar Losik on Facebook.

Only later, in a February 2026 interview with Zerkalo, did Babaryka explicitly say that Crimea “legally and justly belongs to Ukraine,” while admitting that his 2025 answer had been “wrong.” He lives in exile in Berlin and declared his intention to return to politics. Babaryka's case is the partial exception to the broader shift. His correction came late, and only after public criticism within the opposition itself.

Maria Kalesnikava: no ambiguity on Crimea, but nuance on sanctions

Maria Kalesnikava was part of Viktar Babaryka's 2020 campaign team and quickly became one of the opposition's most prominent faces. Arrested in September 2020, she was held for over five years before her December 2025 release.

Her position on Ukraine was the most unequivocal of the major figures. In an interview after her release, she told Zerkalo that Crimea is unambiguously Ukrainian and that she had held this view since 2014. In a video call with President Zelenskyy, she voiced full support for Ukraine's fight for freedom and sovereignty.

She has also taken a distinct position on the internal opposition debate over sanctions, arguing they should be limited in scope to prevent Belarus from falling into deeper economic dependence on Russia—a view that has generated controversy within the exile community.

Veterans of the Belarusian dissident movement

Long before the 2020 protest generation, an older cohort of Belarusian dissidents had been sounding the alarm about Russian imperialism—and building concrete ties with Ukraine. For most of the post-Soviet period, however, their analysis was considered the concern of cultural nationalists rather than serious political analysis. The political mainstream, including the moderate opposition, focused elsewhere: on free elections, civil society, and the prospects of economic reform. The threats these dissidents named—to the Belarusian language, to Belarusian sovereignty, from Russian imperial ambition—were widely viewed as marginal issues, not strategic ones.

Zianon Pazniak, who ran against Lukashenka in 1994 and has lived in exile ever since, warned of Russian imperial ambitions that same year—nearly three decades before February 2022. He held a moment of silence for assassinated Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev at a 1996 rally, left Belarus immediately afterwards, and never returned.

In exile, he remained a famous but also controversial opposition politician, often known for getting into conflicts with other opposition politicians and accusing them - including Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya - of being “agents of the regime”. He is therefore now seen as having comparatively little influence on the Belarusian opposition movement. However, Pazniak remained firm in his support for Ukraine and Belarusian volunteers fighting for Ukraine. In January 2023, he visited Kalinouski Regiment fighters in Bakhmut. Pazniak has consistently argued that Belarus is de facto under Russian occupation and that the war in Ukraine is simultaneously a war for Belarus's future.

Pazniak co-founded the Belarusian Popular Front, whose alumni include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and Pavel Sevyarynets, both released from prison in December 2025 after years of detention.

Sevyarynets was also one of the first leaders of the youth organization Young Front and later of the political party Belarusian Christian Democracy, both with longstanding pro-Ukrainian profiles. When a fellow Belarusian Christian Democracy member, Ales Charkashyn, died fighting for Ukraine in 2015, Sevyarynets attended the funeral and knelt at his tomb. The chairman of Young Front, Dzanis Urbanovich, joined Ukraine's territorial defense forces in 2022 along with six other organization members.

Mikalai Statkevich has a significantly dramatic story. A veteran dissident who left the Communist Party in 1991 in protest at the crackdown on Lithuanian independence, he had spent years warning that Russia intended to absorb Belarus. In 2019, together with Pavel Sevyarynets, he organized protests against the intensified integration process with Russia in Minsk. Arrested in May 2020, he was due for release in September 2025 but refused deportation to Lithuania, preferring to remain in Belarus. He was promptly rearrested, then released in February 2026 following a stroke.

Nobel laureate Bialiatski, commenting on Statkevich's conduct, said:

"You need incredible resilience to endure what he endured—I deeply respect it. And I think the question of Ukraine and Crimea was never a question for Mikalai. He's a person with a clear, firm position."

These figures had been making the case for decades. Their warnings—about Russian imperial ambitions, about the structural link between Belarusian and Ukrainian sovereignty—were widely viewed as cultural nationalism rather than mainstream political analysis until the events of 2020 and 2022. Today, most of the opposition agrees with them.

Free Belarus, free Ukraine: the opposition's shared logic

Five years ago, much of Belarus’s opposition tried to avoid drawing hard lines on questions like Crimea or Russia. That space is gone.

War, prison, and exile have forced choices that once seemed politically inconvenient. For most opposition figures, supporting Ukraine is no longer just a statement of values—it is a recognition of reality. As long as Russia props up Lukashenka, change in Belarus remains out of reach. And as long as Ukraine is fighting that same Russia, the two struggles are inevitably linked.

There are still differences in tone and emphasis. Belarus’s future leaders will have to reckon with a country deeply tied to Russia, and not everyone is ready to close every door. Babaryka’s hesitation shows that calculation hasn’t disappeared.

But the direction is unmistakable. Across generations, the opposition has largely aligned around a simple idea: Belarus cannot be free while Russia’s war continues—and Ukraine cannot be secure while Belarus remains under Lukashenka.

What was once a slogan now reads more like a strategy. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's visit to Kyiv will reveal the potential of this strategy.

On 24 May, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka against involvement in Russia's war on Ukraine, AFP reported. The call was the first since 26 February 2022, days into Russia's full-scale invasion. It came as Russia hit Ukraine with another massive missile and drone strike, including its third Oreshnik launch.

What Macron told Lukashenka

Belarusian state-run news agency Belta confirmed the call took place at Paris's initiative. AFP, citing a source close to Macron, reported the warning. Macron stressed "the risks for Belarus of allowing itself to be drawn into Russia's war," the AFP source said. The French President also pressed Lukashenka to take steps toward improving Belarus's relations with Europe.

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Two readouts, one confirmation

Belarus's presidential press service made the conversation public, but the French presidency has not. The Minsk readout, published by Le Temps, said the leaders discussed regional issues and Belarus's relations with the EU, particularly with France. French TV TF1/LCI separately described the conversation as fruitful.

Belarus, the Oreshnik, and NATO's eastern flank

The call came on the same Sunday Russia hit Bila Tserkva in Kyiv Oblast with the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile. The strike marked Russia's third use of the weapon against Ukraine. 

Belarus hosts the Oreshnik on its territory and borders three NATO members—Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. The two leaders had not spoken since the early days of Russia's invasion, which was partly launched from Belarusian soil.

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Nuclear drills, briefings, and Belarus's deeper involvement

Russia and Belarus conducted joint nuclear drills between 18 and 21 May. Ukraine's foreign ministry condemned the exercises as a violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy briefed Macron and other Western leaders on Russia's plans for Belarus on 22 May. 

Macron also published a post condemning Russia's latest Oreshnik strike and citing the "hopelessness" of Russia's aggressive war. 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told President Donald Trump on 22 May she will resign effective 30 June, citing her husband Abraham Williams's recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Trump named Principal Deputy Director Aaron Lukas—a career CIA officer who served on Russia and Europe at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration—as acting DNI from 1 July.

Her departure removes the highest-ranking US official who publicly broke with the intelligence community's own assessments of Russia, and who used her position to limit how that intelligence reached America's allies. It does not, on its own, change Trump's pressure on Kyiv to settle the war on terms favorable to Moscow.

A career CIA officer steps in

Lukas's profile is the institutional opposite of his predecessor's. He spent more than 20 years at the CIA, first as an analyst and then as a clandestine operations officer. From 2020 to 2021 he served as Deputy Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council under the first Trump administration. Briefly, in 2020, he was chief of staff to acting DNI Richard Grenell. Trump nominated him as Principal Deputy DNI in February 2025—Gabbard's deputy by design, not by her choice.

White House officials had heard rumors for weeks that Gabbard was on her way out. Two weeks ago, she was denying it. Laura Loomer, a Trump confidante and a vocal Gabbard critic, was first to report the resignation. Gabbard is the fourth cabinet member to leave Trump's second-term administration, after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi were fired, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned.

The Five Eyes block and the CIA feud

Gabbard's tenure was defined, more than anything she said in public, by what she did with the intelligence she controlled. In August 2025, CBS News reported she had signed a memo on 20 July ordering US agencies to stop sharing intelligence on the Russia–Ukraine peace negotiations with the Five Eyes alliance—the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The directive walled off America's closest intelligence partners from the talks Trump was simultaneously asking them to support.

In December 2025, she went onto her personal X account to assert that the intelligence community had concluded Russia "does not even have the capability to conquer and occupy Ukraine, what to speak of ‘invading and occupying’ Europe." Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin investment-fund CEO and Putin associate, replied with public praise, calling her work "exposing the deep-state warmonger machinery."

Her record on Russia and Ukraine predates the cabinet

In February 2022, days before Russia's full-scale invasion, Gabbard called Joe Biden a "warmonger" who wanted Russia to invade Ukraine to start a new Cold War for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. She wrote on X that the way Biden could "very easily prevent a war with Russia" was by guaranteeing Ukraine would not join NATO.

In March 2022, weeks into the invasion, she promoted unfounded claims about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine—talking points that mirrored a Kremlin justification for the attack—and later clarified her remarks under pressure. As DNI, she launched an investigation into 120 US-funded biolabs, dozens of them in Ukraine.

Her record is not perfectly linear. In April 2022, she posted a Facebook video addressed directly to Putin, calling his attack "reprehensible" and "a huge geopolitical error which has already cost Russia dearly," and urging him to pull Russian forces out of Ukraine.

In another video she argued Ukraine is not a democracy because Kyiv imprisoned the head of an opposition party. The opposition figure she meant is Viktor Medvedchuk—a personal friend of Putin, who is godfather to Medvedchuk's daughter. The Ukrainian TV channels being shut down Gabbard cited as evidence of authoritarianism under Volodymyr Zelenskyy were all linked to Medvedchuk. Those details were not in her remarks.

The day-to-day pressure on Kyiv is not Gabbard's project. The 20-point peace plan being advanced by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff predates her, sits outside her remit, and continues. Russia still demands roughly 5,000 square kilometers of Donbas it never captured. Ukraine has said no. The deadlock has not moved.

On 22 May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized Russia's aggressive public campaign against the Baltic states as "concerning" at a NATO Foreign Ministers' meeting in Sweden. He said that "you always worry that something like that can spark into something bigger," the US Department of State reports. 

Recently, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, claimed that Ukraine was “launching drones from the territory” of Baltic countries, including Latvia. He also threatened Latvia with retaliation, even though the country is a NATO member. 

"We understand these countries feel threatened by it, obviously, for obvious reasons. So it’s a concerning thing because you always worry that something like that can spark into something bigger," Rubio stated. 

NATO allies discuss Russian threats against Baltic states ahead of Ankara summit

"We’re obviously engaged in – with our Allies in NATO on that regard in terms of what’s happening, and we keep up to date," he said. 

He did not characterize the Russian rhetoric as a violation of NATO commitments, did not commit to specific protective measures for the Baltic states beyond unspecified "talks" with NATO. 

The Helsingborg meeting is the last senior-level NATO ministerial before the alliance's Ankara summit in July 2026, PBS News reported.

Russia threatens NATO member Latvia over alleged Ukrainian drones launches

Russia's UN Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia claimed earlier this week that Ukraine "launches drones from the territory" of Baltic states, specifically naming Latvia, and threatened Latvia with a retaliatory strike, UNIAN reported.

Latvia is a NATO member state, covered by Article 5 mutual-defense provisions. Meanwhile, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has stated that Russia is attempting to redirect Ukrainian military drones toward NATO countries. 

Earlier, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Russia's public threats against the European Union's Baltic member states "absolutely unacceptable." She assigned direct responsibility for endangering eastern-flank populations to Russia and Belarus.

Russia is working on a secret military project codenamed "Skythen" to station nuclear missiles on the seabed, German broadcasters WDR and NDR reported on 21 May 2026 after a months-long investigation, according to tagesschau.

The project would let Russia hide ballistic missiles at depths of several hundred meters and remotely activate them, the broadcasters said, citing Western intelligence sources. Hidden launch platforms would be hard for NATO to detect or strike in wartime.

What investigators uncovered

WDR and NDR analyzed satellite imagery, Russian scientific databases, and historical documents, and spoke to military officers and experts during the investigation, the broadcasters said. Intelligence services have been monitoring a Russian ship called the "Zvezdochka" in connection with the project.

The "Zvezdochka," a 96-meter, 18-meter-wide specialized vessel, is based in Severodvinsk, a shipbuilding city in northwest Russia on the White Sea, WDR and NDR reported. It is built to move heavy equipment on the open sea with cranes and loading ramps, including in icy northern waters. A special submarine called "Sarov" may also be used in the project.

The "Skif" missile

NATO has identified the missile being developed for the project as the "Skif," a modified version of the "Sineva" missile that arms Russian submarines, WDR and NDR reported. "Skif" missiles can reportedly be launched from the seabed and have a range of up to several thousand kilometers.

First tests are said to have taken place several years ago. Viktor Bondarev, former commander-in-chief of Russia's Aerospace Forces, told a Russian news agency in 2017 that "Skif missiles, which hide on the seabed, are part of the arsenal of the Russian armed forces."

Strategic rationale and Cold War precedent

Helge Adrians, a naval officer and guest scientist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), said the seabed approach would let Russia maintain nuclear deterrence with fewer submarines. "Positioning intercontinental missiles on the seabed and keeping them operational has two significant advantages, in my view," Adrians told WDR and NDR. "First, neutralizing them appears very difficult. Second, this procedure offers the possibility of saving submarines and their personnel."

The Pentagon studied a similar concept in 1980 under the codename "Orca," with a model sketch of a missile silo anchored at the seabed that would detach, rise to the surface, and release the missile in case of war, WDR and NDR reported.

The US military ultimately abandoned the idea, citing difficulties in transmitting data to missiles at the seabed or testing their readiness without revealing their location, the broadcasters said.

Treaty restrictions and responses

A 1971 international treaty, the Seabed Treaty, prohibits the emplacement of nuclear weapons on the seabed in international waters, but does not cover a state's own coastal regions. The "Skythen" project would involve placement in Russian waters, the broadcasters said.

NATO and Russia's defense ministry declined to comment on the project; the Russian embassy in Berlin said it had no information about the matter.

The Philippines has shipped 40 portable power generators to Ukraine through an EU emergency-aid framework to keep hospitals and schools running during Russian-induced blackouts, the European External Action Service announced on 20 May.

The shipment is modest in scale but lands as Manila and Kyiv build a relationship that barely existed two years ago, when Volodymyr Zelenskyy made the first leaders' visit between the two countries in 32 years of diplomatic ties. The donation also moves through a framework the EU built specifically to absorb third-country aid for Ukraine — a channel that has gained importance through four winters of Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy grid.

The 6 kW units, supplied by Manila firm Highball Traders Inc, will travel from the Philippines to the Port of Gdansk in Poland and onward to Ukraine through Poland's Governmental Strategic Reserves Agency. The donation moves through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism's rescEU Donations Scheme and followed an 11 February meeting between Ukraine's ambassador to Manila, Yuliia Fediv, and Philippine Senator Erwin Tulfo, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

The generators are for civilian and humanitarian use only and carry no military application, the EU Delegation to the Philippines confirmed.

"These generators will provide much-needed relief to Ukrainian civilians, ensuring that essential services remain operational during power outages," Fediv said.

A bilateral relationship built in real time

Until two years ago, neither country kept a resident embassy in the other's capital. The shift began when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first-ever visit to the Philippines on 3 June 2024 and met Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Manila — the first leaders' meeting in the 32-year history of bilateral relations. Zelenskyy thanked Marcos for the Philippines' support of Ukraine's territorial integrity in UN resolutions and announced Ukraine would open an embassy in Manila that year. Ambassador Fediv now holds the post.

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Zelenskyy visits Philippines for first time, meets President Marcos

Manila has reciprocated. Philippine Ambassador Alan Deniega — a career diplomat based in Warsaw but accredited to Ukraine on a concurrent basis — presented copies of his credentials in Kyiv to Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Mischenko this spring. In September 2025, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro in New York and noted the importance of opening a resident Ukrainian embassy in Manila. Mischenko himself flew to the Philippines this month, holding security talks with Philippine Undersecretary of National Defense Ireneo Espino alongside ambassadors from the UK, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, and diplomats from the US, EU, Japan, Canada, Germany, Poland and Norway.

Moscow's invention

As Manila and Kyiv have deepened cooperation, Moscow has tried a different framing.

On 27 November 2025, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told state news agency TASS that "US representatives" had launched a campaign in the Philippines to recruit Filipinos for the Ukrainian army through a Florida-based firm called RMS International. She alleged training at a facility in San Fernando, Pampanga; $5,000 monthly pay; and Schengen work visas issued by the German embassy in Manila to route recruits through Germany and Poland into Ukraine. She showed no evidence.

Every named party rejected the claim. German Ambassador to the Philippines Andreas Michael Pfaffernoschke said the embassy "strictly refuses and denies those baseless allegations." Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro called the story fake news, relayed through President Marcos's spokesperson. Regional analysts assessed the story as almost certainly disinformation, part of a pattern of similar Russian claims surfacing across Southeast Asia.

The verified Filipino casualty

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Filipino mercenary killed in Russian army “meat assault” after just one week of training, Ukrainian intelligence says

The verified case runs the other direction.

In January 2026, Ukraine's military intelligence agency HUR identified the body of John Patrick, a Filipino national, among Russian troops killed during a "meat assault" near Novoselivka in Donetsk Oblast. Patrick had served in the 9th Assault Company, 3rd Battalion, 283rd Regiment of Russia's 144th Motor Rifle Division. He received one week of training before deployment. He did not speak Russian. After being wounded, his unit left him to die in a forest belt.

He carried a small slip of paper. On it: his unit number, a phone number, and his commander's name.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a joint declaration in Beijing on 20 May on building a "multipolar world," The Moscow Times reported. The text, published by the Kremlin press service, was signed alongside around 40 other documents and a 47-page joint statement on the strengthening of the partnership.

Putin's visit to China began on 19 May, marking 30 years since the founding of the Russia-China strategic partnership and coming days after President Donald Trump's own visit to Beijing.

The declaration's principles are sweeping: respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, equal and respectful inter-state relations, and inadmissibility of expanding military alliances and waging "hybrid wars" or "proxy wars".

Many of these principles are being violated by Russia itself at the moment of signing. 

 Long-term state of polycentricity: what does declaration say? 

The text frames the current international moment in colonial-era terms: efforts by "a number of countries to unilaterally run global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world and limit the opportunities for sovereign development of other countries in the spirit of the era of colonialism have failed."

It argues that the world has entered a "long-term state of polycentricity." Russia, in language included in the joint statement, "appreciates China's objective position on the Ukrainian conflict" and welcomes "the desire to play a constructive role in the settlement."

The principles enumerated for the proposed "more just and rational system of global governance" include attention to "rational security concerns" of all states, and the proposition that "no state or group of states should control international affairs, dispose of the destinies of other countries, or monopolize opportunities for development."

Where do the principles meet conduct? 

Russia is in the fourth year of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022, holds occupied parts of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts. Meanwhile, Ukraine says Russia has at least five scenarios to expand its offensive to the Chernihiv–Kyiv axis or against a NATO member state from Belarusian territory, Euromaidan Press reported.

The 2022 invasion was framed by Putin himself at the time as a "denazification" and "demilitarization" of Ukraine — an explicit denial of the principle in the declaration that every sovereign state's chosen path and development model must be respected.

China asserts sovereignty over Taiwan, which it has not controlled since 1949, and claims contested portions of the South China Sea, a claim a UN-backed arbitration tribunal in 2016 found had no legal basis under the Law of the Sea.

The declaration condemns "expansion of military alliances," "hybrid wars," and "proxy wars." Reuters reported on Monday that three European intelligence agencies and documents the agency reviewed indicate China secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel on Chinese soil in late 2025, with some returning to fight in Ukraine.

The European Commission President said that Russia and Belarus bear "direct responsibility" for drone incursions threatening EU eastern-flank populations — incursions over which the Latvian government resigned last week. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin's longtime foreign-policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, disavowed the term "spirit of Anchorage". The Kremlin has used it for many months to suggest a US-Russia understanding emerged from last August's Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, the Financial Times Moscow bureau chief Max Seddon reported on X.

In October 2025, when Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov publicly said the "momentum from Anchorage has been largely exhausted," Ushakov was the senior Kremlin figure who corrected him. Later, Ryabkov reversed himself and declared "there is no alternative to the spirit of Anchorage," Meduza documented in a February investigation.

"Maybe the spirit of Beijing exists. I don't know about the spirit of Anchorage, I never used this phrase," Ushakov told the state-television journalist.

What was said, and which summit did it refer to? 

The Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage on 15 August 2025 ended without a Ukraine deal, but Moscow subsequently promoted "the spirit of Anchorage" to suggest a "whole set of understandings" had been reached, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it, declining to elaborate.

Meduza's investigation found that the phrase "exists only in Moscow's vocabulary", as it has not been used by the Trump administration to describe the summit's outcome.

Ushakov, 78, has been Putin's principal foreign-policy aide since 2012 and a key Kremlin interlocutor with the Trump administration through the Anchorage process.

"Spirit of Anchorage" project is quietly retiring 

The substitution carries content. Putin traveled to Beijing for his 25th visit, days after President Donald Trump's own visit to China.

Earlier, reports said that three European intelligence agencies and documents the agency reviewed indicate China secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel on Chinese soil in late 2025, with some returning to fight in Ukraine.

The Russia-China "no limits" partnership, declared days before the 2022 war, has remained Moscow's anchor orientation throughout the period the Kremlin was simultaneously promoting the prospect of an American thaw.

Editorial: The summit that peacewashed genocide

The Anchorage narrative has, in the meantime, produced no Ukraine deal, no substantive normalization of US-Russia relations, and a steadily escalating Russian-Belarusian pressure campaign on the EU's eastern flank.

The "spirit of Anchorage" project, sustained by the Kremlin for nine months, appears to be quietly retiring.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called Russia's public threats against the European Union's Baltic member states "absolutely unacceptable". She assigned direct responsibility for endangering eastern-flank populations to Russia and Belarus.

On May 19, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service accused Latvia of allowing Ukrainian drones to be launched from its territory against targets in Russia.

The service issued threats against Latvia, stating that “the coordinates of the decision-making centers on Latvian territory are well known,” and that the country’s NATO membership cannot shield it from what the SVR called “just retribution.”

Latvian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas sheltered in parliament building

President Gitanas Nausėda and Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė were taken to shelters during the roughly one-hour alert in Vilnius, with the Lithuanian army instructing residents to "immediately take shelter in a safe place, take care of your close ones, await new recommendations."

Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas was photographed sheltering in the parliament building. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has called the incidents "a transparent act of desperation" by Russia, "an attempt to sow chaos and distract from a simple reality: Ukraine is hitting Russia's military machine hard."

New forms of pressure on Eastern Flank countries

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the broader sequence of incidents a "coordinated provocation," telling reporters from Warsaw that "we can't pretend that nothing is happening," Euronews reported.

The European Commissioner for Defense, Andrius Kubilius, wrote on X following a recent drone incident in Latvia that Russia is testing "new forms of pressure on the Eastern Flank countries" with the goal of "frightening people of the region," and called for further increases in national and EU defense spending and stronger support to Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the incidents are a consequence of Russian aggression in Ukraine and that the alliance is responding under existing defense plans.

Von der Leyen's statement came after 15 Baltic Members of the European Parliament circulated a letter on Wednesday, urging her to condemn Russia, writing that "Russia's continuous open, dangerous and threatening provocations against the Baltic states have reached a critical point."

The United States is pressing Ukraine to ease restrictions on Belarusian potash imports and to lobby European governments to do the same, Bloomberg reported on 20 May, citing people familiar with the discussions. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The request lands three months after Kyiv expanded its own sanctions on Aliaksandr Lukashenka and his inner circle over Belarus's role hosting Russian Shahed drone relays that strike Ukrainian cities. Washington is now asking Ukraine to argue against the same economic pressure it just moved to tighten.

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Contents

• “This will affect not only Lukashenka, but also his inner circle, his sons”: Ukraine promises further actions against Belarus for drone relays
  1. What potash is, and why Belarus needs it back
  2. What Washington has already done
     • “A direct investment in ammunition flying across the border”: Belarusian defectors warn US sanctions relief is funding Russia’s war
  3. First Lithuania. Now Kyiv.
  4. The scenario Belarusian sources predicted
  5. What Belarus is doing while Washington negotiates
  6. Belarus uses prisoner release to charm West, not for democratization. Lukashenka stands with Russia anyway, says defense report
  7. Five years after Belarus’ stolen election, Ukraine is still catching up on Tsikhanouskaya

“This will affect not only Lukashenka, but also his inner circle, his sons”: Ukraine promises further actions against Belarus for drone relays

What potash is, and why Belarus needs it back

Potash is a potassium-based fertiliser. Crops need it to grow. Belarus produces roughly a fifth of the world's supply, and before 2022 the trade brought in around $3 billion a year — close to 4% of the country's GDP. Almost all of it left through the Lithuanian port of Klaipėda on the Baltic Sea.

Lithuania shut that route after Russia's full-scale invasion. Since then, Belarus has been forced to send shipments through Russian ports — a longer, more expensive journey that, according to journalist Igor Kuley of the Belarusian Investigative Center, eats "almost all the profit." Unlocking the European route is the single biggest financial prize Lukashenka can ask for. It is also the one the US cannot deliver on its own.

What Washington has already done

Since September 2025, the Trump administration has softened US sanctions on Belarus in four rounds, each timed to a release of political prisoners. The state airline Belavia was delisted first. In December, three potash producers received partial relief. In March, the US Treasury fully removed Belaruskali, the Belarusian Potash Company, the subsidiary Agrorozkvit, and the state-run Belinvestbank from its sanctions list. The latest round came on 28 April. Lukashenka called it part of a "big deal" still under negotiation.

The relief works only halfway. Without the EU lifting its own sanctions, Belarusian potash still cannot move through Klaipėda. Belarus is left shipping via Russian ports, paying Russian transit fees, and deepening its dependence on the Kremlin — the opposite of what Washington says its policy is meant to achieve. EU sanctions on Belarus run until February 2027 and require unanimous agreement to extend.

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“A direct investment in ammunition flying across the border”: Belarusian defectors warn US sanctions relief is funding Russia’s war

First Lithuania. Now Kyiv.

US Special Envoy for Belarus John Coale visited Vilnius in March and urged the Lithuanian government to reopen talks with Lukashenka and restore the potash transit. Vilnius refused. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys later told reporters on 14 May that "the situation is changing — I have always said that there is no such activity, but today I can say that yes, additional activity has appeared from the US side." Lithuania's Foreign Ministry the next day pushed back against media framing that he had used the word "pressure."

President Gitanas Nausėda then walked the temperature down further, saying Lithuania faced no US pressure but that even if it did, the sanctions were European and Vilnius could not lift them unilaterally. "The Belarusian regime is not changing its nature and continues to actively assist Russia," he said. "I would advocate for the extension of those sanctions."

The Bloomberg report extends the same conversation to Kyiv. The American argument, according to the sources cited, is that softening restrictions could pull Belarus a little further from Moscow.

The scenario Belarusian sources predicted

Igor Kuley sketched out exactly this kind of escalation in an interview with Euromaidan Press in April. He argued that if European transit stayed closed, the US would look for an alternative — including potentially through the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa — and that Washington would seek Ukrainian cooperation to make the wider Belarus deal viable.

"It wouldn't be difficult for the Americans to agree with the Ukrainians for transhipment to go through, say, the port of Odesa," he said.

Belpol, a group of former Belarusian security officers who defected after the 2020 crackdown, told Euromaidan Press in the same investigation that each round of US sanctions relief frees money the regime previously spent on workarounds, and that the released capacity flows to "both its own survival and help to the partner-neighbour — the Russian Federation, which is solving its tasks on our territory, including military ones." Their investigation documented Belinvestbank loans to Belarusian factories producing 152mm artillery shells and 122mm rockets — the same calibres Russian forces fire at Ukrainian positions daily. Belinvestbank came off the US sanctions list in March.

What Belarus is doing while Washington negotiates

On Monday 18 May, two days before the Bloomberg report, Minsk announced that the Belarusian armed forces would conduct snap nuclear exercises alongside Russian units. Russia has stationed tactical nuclear warheads on Belarusian territory since 2023 and deployed the Oreshnik intermediate-range missile system there in November 2025.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned earlier this month that Belarus could again become a staging ground for renewed attacks on Ukraine, as it was in February 2022. The Lithuanian Defence Ministry's 2026 threat assessment concluded that Lukashenka uses prisoner releases to charm Western governments while continuing to serve as a Russian instrument of pressure against Europe.

Roughly 841 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus, according to the human rights group Viasna. New arrests continue.

Bloomberg's sources said there are no signs the EU is preparing to ease its restrictions. Whether Kyiv will be asked to make the case for them anyway, in public, is the next question.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the "complete elimination" of the "root causes" of what they termed the "Ukrainian crisis" in a joint statement signed in Beijing on 20 May 2026, according to Radio Free Liberty.

Beijing has officially presented itself as neutral on the war while continuing to purchase Russian oil and supply dual-use goods used by the Russian military. The 20 May text formally aligns Chinese language on the war with Moscow's preferred framing.

What the joint statements say

The paragraph on Ukraine in the bilateral statement on strengthening partnership says the parties are "convinced of the need for the complete elimination of the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis on the basis of observing the principles of the UN Charter in their entirety, totality, and interconnection," and that they "advocate continuing the search for a solution through dialogue and negotiations." Russian officials have routinely invoked unspecified "root causes" that must be eliminated to end the war against Ukraine, with the list ranging from NATO expansion to Ukraine's language laws.

A second document — the Declaration on the Formation of a Multipolar World and International Relations of a New Type — contains veiled criticism of the United States and other Western countries. It states the need to "resolutely oppose the use of human rights as a pretext for interference in the internal affairs of other states, as well as the politicization and instrumentalization of human rights issues," and that "disagreements and disputes should be resolved peacefully, eliminating the root causes of conflicts." Putin aide Yury Ushakov called the document "conceptual and programmatic."

A joint statement issued after the talks said the two countries "intend to continue strengthening cooperation in combating the glorification of Nazism, fascism, and militarism, as well as attempts to revive these destructive ideologies," the Kyiv Independent reported.

Power of Siberia 2 still without an agreed timeline

Negotiations on the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline have stalled for years, with China demanding gas prices close to Russia's heavily subsidized domestic rates and seeking only limited volumes. Moscow regards the pipeline as central to recovering gas markets lost in Europe after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov confirmed after the talks that the project was discussed but said there is no "clear understanding" yet on implementation timelines. Putin said Russia is ready to continue uninterrupted deliveries of oil, gas, and coal to China.

Ushakov said agreements had been reached "on joint projects in energy" and on "something very important" in another sphere, without providing details.

Bilateral ties and visit context

China's Foreign Ministry said the two countries had agreed to extend their visa-free regime until 31 December 2027. Around 40 documents were expected to be signed during the visit, alongside the release of a 47-page joint statement on strengthening bilateral ties, the Kyiv Independent reported. The trip also marked the 25th anniversary of the existing Russia-China friendship and cooperation treaty, which the parties agreed to extend.

Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources, that the Chinese military secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China in late 2025, with some later returning to fight in Ukraine, the Kyiv Independent noted.

Putin's visit came one week after US President Donald Trump traveled to China from 13 to 15 May 2026, the first visit by a US president since 2017. Trump described the trade deals reached on his trip as "fantastic."

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on 18 May that Ukrainian forces are preparing to launch drone strikes against Russia directly from Latvian territory, stating that Ukrainian drone operators have "already deployed to Latvian military bases," according to ISW's Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment for 19 May 2026.

The SVR went further, heavily implying that Russia intends to strike the claimed Ukrainian drone launch points — specifically identified as Latvian military bases — as well as "Latvian decision-making centers," in response to any strikes it attributes to Ukrainian forces operating from Latvian soil.

Latvian officials have denied the accusations. According to ISW, Latvian authorities have "repeatedly denied Russian accusations that Latvia allowed Ukraine to use their airspace or territory to launch strikes against Russia."

ISW: A pattern of pretext-building

ISW describes the SVR's role as an instrument of narrative warfare. "The Kremlin often uses the SVR to spread extreme and unfounded narratives intended to destabilize other countries and justify potential Russian interference and aggression," the assessment states. The think tank frames the May 18 SVR statement as part of a sustained Russian effort to "set conditions to violate Baltic and Finnish airspace or conduct other military operations against the Baltics."

The drone diversion problem

The SVR's claims emerged alongside a separate, documented incident. On 19 May, a Romanian fighter jet intercepted a Ukrainian drone over Estonian airspace, according to ISW. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi stated that day: "Russia continues to redirect Ukrainian drones into the Baltics with EW systems," and issued an apology to Estonia and other Baltic states for what he described as unintended incidents caused by Russian electronic warfare interference.

ISW notes it has "previously observed reports of Ukrainian drones crashing in Baltic and Finnish territory, possibly as a result of Russian EW efforts" — a pattern that predates the 19 May incident.

The mechanism

The convergence of the two threads — documented Russian EW diverting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace, and SVR claims that Latvia is actively hosting Ukrainian drone units — fits what ISW identifies as an established Russian information operation framework. By attributing drone incidents in Baltic airspace to deliberate Baltic state complicity rather than Russian electronic interference, Moscow constructs a narrative in which strikes on Latvian infrastructure would be framed as self-defense.

The SVR's 18 May statement, ISW concludes, is "a continuation of Russian officials' efforts to set conditions" for exactly that scenario.

Tens of thousands of foreign nationals have been funneled into Russia’s military through a system that increasingly relies not on ideology, but on individual vulnerability.

Some sign up for money. Others are pressured, misled, or effectively forced. Many only realize they are headed to the front when it is too late to refuse.

This system provides a steady stream of manpower for high-intensity combat, shifting part of the human cost of the war from Russians themselves onto vulnerable foreign populations.

A joint report by the International Federation for Human Rights and Truth Hounds shows that at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries have joined the Russian Armed Forces since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This number rises further when including state-backed deployments such as North Korean troops. 

This recruitment represents a structured system designed to meet Russia’s manpower demands. The report categorizes these fighters not as a uniform group of mercenaries, but as individuals driven by a mix of motivation, coercion, and circumstance.

These include ideologically driven recruits, those seeking financial gain, individuals pressured into signing contracts, and people who may qualify as victims of human trafficking. In practice, these categories often blur, as initial consent gives way to coercion or deception once recruits enter the system.

“What is actually happening is that Russia has created a system of predatory recruitment that now covers many countries across the so-called Global South,” Truth Hounds associate researcher and advocacy expert Maria Tomak told Euromaidan Press. 

“And of course this issue matters deeply, because what we are witnessing is essentially the exploitation and enslavement of vulnerable people, turning them into expendable material for a war taking place in Europe.

“What is ultimately at stake here is human dignity and freedom. The concept of enslavement is historically painful for many parts of the world, especially for Africa, and I do not think people are willing to accept any return to such practices in a new form,” Tomak said.

From ideology to opportunism

In the early stages of the war, foreign fighters on Russia’s side more closely resembled traditional ideological volunteers. Many were drawn by far-right or anti-Western views, or by narratives of civilizational conflict and pan-Slavic identity. Some had prior military experience and saw Ukraine as another front in a broader ideological struggle.

That pattern has shifted significantly. The report finds that ideologically motivated fighters now make up only a small fraction of foreign recruits. The expansion of the war, combined with heavy battlefield losses, has pushed Russia to move beyond niche ideological networks. 

Recruitment has become more pragmatic and more global, targeting individuals based less on belief and more on vulnerability. 

“It is not an either-or situation. We are still dealing with large numbers of mercenaries — we know they have been used by Russia since 2014, and they are still there today. At the same time, we can also see that, as a result of the recruitment system created by Russia, there are many cases in which people’s stories bear clear signs of human trafficking,” Tomak said.

“We are not claiming that all foreign recruits are victims. Obviously, that is not the case. But some of them may indeed qualify as victims of trafficking or exploitation, and this is not limited to isolated or accidental incidents,” she added.

Financial incentives and hidden realities

Financial desperation serves as a primary motivator for recruitment. Russia offers relatively high salaries (especially for those coming from lower-income countries), large signing bonuses, and fast-track citizenship for foreign nationals willing to sign military contracts. 

In some regions, payments can reach tens of thousands of euros, creating a powerful pull for individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

On the surface, this resembles classic mercenary recruitment. However, the report highlights that these contracts are often opaque or misleading. Many recruits sign documents written only in Russian, without translation or proper explanation. Key conditions, such as the inability to terminate contracts during mobilization, are frequently not disclosed.

As a result, individuals who initially join for financial reasons often find themselves trapped in a system they did not fully understand. The promise of stable income or citizenship can quickly give way to frontline deployment under conditions far more dangerous than expected.

For many recruits, the decision to join was the final outcome of a "cascade of setbacks" that exhausted all conventional options. 

One Nepali interviewee described a decade of struggle, including six years of labor in Malaysia spent entirely on loan interest and a subsequent truck-driving accident. Another, a former construction contractor, saw his business destroyed by the pandemic. 

Supporting large households, these men viewed the Russian military salary not as a career choice, but as a desperate "breakthrough" to clear mounting debts.

The report also highlights how personal trust and legal precarity override the known risks of war. A Sri Lankan navy veteran, whose pension was rendered worthless by inflation, followed a colleague of 22 years to Russia simply because he "trusted my friend wouldn’t let me down." 

Others, like a former cook in Moscow facing deportation, saw military service as the only path to legal residency. For these men, the war was a known danger, but it was assigned less weight than the certainty of economic ruin at home.

By early 2026, data indicated at least 842 Nepali nationals had joined the Russian Armed Forces, with at least 115 confirmed killed in action.

Coercion inside Russia

For many migrants already inside Russia, recruitment is not truly voluntary. The report documents a pattern of coercion targeting foreign nationals, particularly from Central Asia, who live in precarious legal and economic conditions. These individuals are vulnerable to police harassment, detention, and deportation.

Many migrants from Central Asia are driven to Russia by systemic poverty and a reliance on remittances to support families back home. This economic dependence forces them into a predatory bureaucratic system where the threat of losing their livelihood or being barred from re-entry serves as a powerful tool for state control.

Authorities have used this vulnerability as leverage. Migrants have been detained in raids on workplaces, dormitories, and even places of worship. They are then presented with a stark choice: sign a military contract or face deportation, criminal charges, or continued detention.

In more severe cases, coercion includes physical violence, confiscation of documents, and fabricated legal accusations. Under such conditions, the line between voluntary enlistment and forced recruitment becomes blurred. What appears on paper as a signed contract may in reality reflect a decision made under duress.

Deception and trafficking across borders

The most alarming category identified in the report involves individuals recruited through deception, many of whom may qualify as victims of human trafficking. Recruitment networks operate across Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, often using social media platforms and informal intermediaries.

Potential recruits are offered jobs in construction, security, or logistics, or promised educational opportunities and pathways to Europe. Upon arrival in Russia, they are redirected to military recruitment centers. Contracts are presented in a language they do not understand, often under pressure and without alternatives.

The report provides striking testimony: of 16 foreign prisoners of war interviewed, 13 said they had been told they would not be required to fight. Despite these assurances, most were deployed to combat positions within weeks. This pattern – recruitment through deception followed by forced deployment – matches key elements of human trafficking under international law.

In late 2023, a trafficking ring was uncovered in Cuba that lured teenagers as young as 18 with promises of construction work, only to confiscate their passports and force them into Russia’s armed forces. 

Similar patterns were found in Sri Lanka and Nepal, where recruits were told they would serve in rear areas, only to be issued weapons and sent to the front under threat of criminal prosecution if they refused.

“This is not simply a matter of morality — it is about Russia violating existing legal obligations. Establishing a system that exploits vulnerable people for the purpose of deploying them into an armed conflict is, by its very nature, illegal,” Tomak said.

"If we were to refer to some other non-legal aspects, it would be challenging the false narrative that Russia is somehow a “friend” of Africa, Latin America, or Asia. Russia is not acting as a friend to these regions, and the system of predatory recruitment is a very clear illustration of that reality,” she added.

A system built on vulnerability

The report makes clear that this recruitment system is not random. It is structured to target individuals with limited options. 

Inside Russia, this includes migrants facing discrimination and legal insecurity. Outside Russia, it focuses on regions marked by poverty, political instability, or lack of employment opportunities.

Young men seeking a way out of difficult circumstances are particularly susceptible. The promise of stable income, legal status, or migration opportunities can outweigh the perceived risks, especially when those risks are downplayed or concealed.

Recruitment networks exploit these conditions. They operate through a mix of state-linked institutions, private intermediaries, and online platforms, creating a decentralized but coordinated system. 

The involvement of official structures, including diplomatic channels and state agencies, suggests a level of oversight that goes beyond informal or purely criminal networks.

Minimal training and rapid deployment into "meat assaults"

Regardless of how individuals enter the system, their trajectory tends to follow a similar path. Training is often minimal, lasting from a few days to several weeks. Many recruits have no prior military experience and receive little preparation for combat.

They are then assigned to high-risk units, frequently involved in so-called “meat assaults.” These operations involve frontal attacks designed to absorb enemy fire and expose defensive positions. The role of these units is inherently expendable, relying on volume rather than survivability.

Casualty rates reflect this reality. Ukrainian estimates suggest that 3,388 foreign fighters have been killed, with some reports indicating that up to one in five do not survive. 

Many die within the first few months of deployment. Language barriers, lack of coordination, and inadequate medical screening further increase the risks they face.

A formalized state policy: lowering barriers and increasing incentives

The recruitment of foreign nationals is no longer an ad hoc effort but a formalized state policy. Since 2023, Russia has systematically lowered legal barriers to enlistment. 

Key legislative changes include the removal of minimum residency requirements and the relaxation of Russian language proficiency standards, which previously acted as hurdles for non-CIS citizens. 

Under a series of presidential decrees, foreign nationals who sign a one-year contract with the Armed Forces are now eligible for a simplified, fast-track path to Russian citizenship.

This formalization extends to a bounty system that incentivizes local officials and private intermediaries. Regional governments now allocate specific budgets for "referral" payments, creating a competitive recruitment market. 

In the Ryazan region, for example, the fee for recruiting a person from countries outside the former Soviet Union was set at 575,000 RUB (approx. €4,000). 

This institutionalized structure has driven a sharp increase in scale: identified foreign recruits grew from roughly 3,800 in 2023 to nearly 14,000 in 2025.

What comes next

While some countries have initiated domestic investigations, criminal prosecutions, and crackdowns on local trafficking rings to curb enlistment, the predatory recruitment machinery shows no signs of stopping. 

Despite rising international attention and declarations from Moscow claiming it has ceased intake from certain nations, investigators find that the pipeline continues to actively circumvent these state-level restrictions.

What is unlikely to change is the underlying logic. Russia faces ongoing manpower demands and political constraints on domestic mobilization. Foreign recruits – especially those who are vulnerable – provide a way to bridge that gap.

Ukrainian intelligence estimates indicate that Russia plans to bring in an additional 18,500 foreign nationals by the end of 2026, signaling that this system is intended to be a long-term structural component of the war effort.

Recruitment through exploitation reframes the legal status of foreign recruits

The term “foreign fighter” suggests a degree of agency and choice that does not always exist. While some individuals do join voluntarily, many others are drawn in through a combination of economic pressure, misinformation, and coercion.

Understanding this distinction matters, as it shapes how these individuals are treated under international law, how responsibility is assigned, and how responses are designed. The report points toward a need to move beyond narrow definitions of mercenarism to recognize the broader patterns of exploitation at play. 

Many recruits meet the international criteria for victims of human trafficking, which necessitates a shift in how home countries and the international community approach their repatriation and legal processing.

For Russia, these individuals function as a source of expendable manpower. They are part of a system that recruits globally, targets the vulnerable, and deploys them rapidly into high-risk roles to shield the Russian population from some of the costs of the war. 

This institutionalized exploitation represents a growing humanitarian and legal challenge for the international community.

Read the full report here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on 19 May for a two-day visit, according to the Kremlin. The trip comes four days after US President Donald Trump concluded his own visit to China on 15 May—the first by an American president in nearly a decade.

Putin is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang for what the Kremlin calls discussion of "the most sensitive issues" in bilateral relations. The setting is asymmetric: Ukraine is on the table in a room Kyiv is not in, and analysts now describe Beijing as the "middle link" between Moscow and Washington on the war. The program includes a formal reception marking the 25th anniversary of the Russian-Chinese Treaty on Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, and an informal tea meeting between the two leaders—the session officials describe as reserved for the most complex political questions.

Putin's aide Yury Ushakov said relations between the two countries have "actively developed and reached an unprecedentedly high level," and announced that approximately 40 cooperation documents are expected to be signed during the visit. Among them: a joint "Declaration on the Formation of a Multipolar World and International Relations of a New Type," and a new "Joint Statement on Further Strengthening the Comprehensive Partnership."

The Russian president's delegation is, according to Russian state media, record-sized: it includes the heads of Gazprom, Rosneft, Novatek, Sberbank, and VTB, five deputy prime ministers, eight key ministers, and several regional governors—a composition that signals Kremlin hopes for large-scale deals, reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The gas deal

The central unresolved question of the visit is whether Russia and China will finally sign a final contract for the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline—a project Putin has been raising with Xi since 2015. A memorandum was signed two years ago, but the core sticking point remains price.

China is insisting on terms close to Russia's domestic gas prices—roughly $50 per thousand cubic meters—a figure Russian negotiators are expected to resist, according to RFE/RL. China currently buys Russian gas at $258 per thousand cubic meters, which is already 40 percent below what Gazprom charges most other customers.

China has never publicly confirmed Putin's statements about the project. In March, it emerged that Beijing had included "preparatory work for the central route of the Russia-China gas pipeline" in its current five-year plan through 2030—but without naming the Power of Siberia 2 directly.

The Xi-between-Putin-and-Trump dynamic

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Putin had followed Trump's visit and negotiations with Xi closely, and that the Beijing trip would give Moscow "a good opportunity to exchange views on the contacts the Chinese had with the Americans."

Trump and Xi discussed both the US-Israel war with Iran and Russia's war against Ukraine during their summit. Before leaving Beijing, Trump suggested a Russian strike that partly destroyed a nine-story residential building in Kyiv—killing 24 people—could damage peace efforts. "Until last night, it was looking good, but they [the Ukrainians] took a big hit last night. So it's gonna happen [the end of the war]. But it's a shame," Trump said, per Reuters.

Many analysts, according to RFE/RL, regard China as the "middle link" in communications between Moscow and Washington, and are watching whether Xi is prepared to act as intermediary on Ukraine and the Middle East. A detailed discussion of military and geopolitical questions between Xi and Putin is expected during the informal tea session.

The Ukraine question

China has not condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine since 24 February 2022, and has not voted for relevant UN General Assembly resolutions—though it has repeatedly accused the US, NATO, and the West of "provoking the conflict." At the same time, Beijing has never formally recognized Russia's annexation of Crimea or the four Ukrainian regions annexed later, and has made clear to the Kremlin that use of nuclear weapons would be considered "categorically unacceptable."

China officially maintains neutrality and promotes its mediator role. In the lead-up to Putin's visit, Chinese officials avoided any mention of Ukraine, preferring language about "issues of common interest."

Western governments have repeatedly alleged that China supports Russia's military-industrial complex despite its declared neutrality. Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service reported that China helps Russia produce military drones by supplying critical Western components, with Russia receiving approximately 80 percent of such components from China, according to its assessment.

The Iran dimension

The war between the US, Israel, and Iran—which closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping and threatened global energy supplies—is expected to feature in the Putin-Xi talks, as it did during the Trump-Xi summit.

The two countries' interests diverge sharply. For Moscow, the war ties down the Trump administration's resources and attention, reduces US support for Ukraine, and has driven up oil prices that help fill the Russian war budget. Russia has also been exchanging intelligence and drone technology with Iran, including the Shahed drones used in both conflicts.

For Beijing, which is the world's largest importer of Iranian oil, the war and the Hormuz closure directly threaten economic security. China has been calling for de-escalation and seeks to position itself as a responsible global actor. Unlike Russia, Beijing fears the collapse of the Iranian regime and the resulting strengthening of US influence in the region. With Putin arriving just days after Trump, Xi may be looking to demonstrate to Washington that he can exert influence over both Iran and Russia—in exchange for concessions on Taiwan or trade tariffs, according to RFE/RL.

The broader question, which this week's meetings may begin to answer, is how far Moscow and Beijing are prepared to go in supporting Iran—and whether their bilateral partnership might formally expand into a trilateral military-political alliance with Tehran.

The asymmetry

Putin's pre-visit address put bilateral trade above $200 billion, with payments "almost entirely conducted in rubles and yuan." Russia accounts for about 4 percent of China's total foreign trade. China takes more than a third of Russian imports and over a quarter of Russian exports, according to RFE/RL.

Russia's economy, now in its fifth year of war, is critically dependent on China. Beijing has provided Moscow with political cover under sanctions and replaced Western consumer goods on Russian shelves with Chinese ones after Western firms withdrew.

Some commentators, paraphrasing a Chinese proverb cited by RFE/RL, describe the Moscow-Beijing relationship as "a marriage where the partners may share a bed but certainly dream different dreams."

During his 13–15 May visit to Beijing, President Donald Trump told Fox News that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had personally promised to halt weapons shipments to Iran and help keep the Strait of Hormuz open to commercial shipping. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, by the end of the visit, issued only a statement calling for "the earliest possible achievement of a mutually beneficial peace"—with no mention of arms, monitoring mechanisms, or sanctions, according to [Radio Free Europe's Russian Service](RFE/RL URL preserved from original).

China's structural dependency on Iranian oil makes any clean break commercially unfeasible regardless of what Xi tells visiting American presidents. Beijing takes roughly 80–90% of Iran's oil exports—about 1.4 million barrels per day in early 2026, before the US naval blockade reduced flows—at significant discounts under American sanctions. No monitoring agreement, sanctions package, or verification mechanism was signed at the summit.

Trump described the exchange in direct terms, telling Fox News that Xi "said, 'I would love to be a help, if I can be of any help whatsoever.'" On the weapons pledge, the president said: "He said he's not going to give military equipment. That's a big statement."

The Trump administration pushed Beijing to halt such transfers because US officials say they enable attacks on American and allied forces, weaken US military advantages, and undermine sanctions and regional stability.

What intelligence agencies say

US intelligence agencies tell a different story. According to US intelligence reporting cited by RFE/RL's Russian Service, in April and May 2026 Chinese companies were actively negotiating the shipment to Iran of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS)—shoulder-fired missiles capable of targeting low-flying aircraft and drones. African intermediaries were used to obscure the weapons' origin. Advanced radar systems and spare parts for anti-aircraft missiles were also part of the discussions.

Beyond covert channels, Beijing has been supplying Tehran with dual-use technologies—components for drone and missile production—that are difficult to trace because of their civilian applications. China has also been confirmed to be providing Iran with intelligence on US troop movements in the region.

In late 2024, Iran acquired a Chinese reconnaissance satellite used to track US military concentrations in the Middle East. Congressional testimony from US intelligence officials in March 2026 raised suspicions that Iran had been using access to China's BeiDou satellite navigation system—the American GPS alternative—to coordinate drone and missile strikes on targets across the Middle East.

Russia, according to the same US intelligence reporting, has separately been supplying Iran with satellite targeting data, with Moscow aiming to help the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps strike US warships and American military and diplomatic facilities in the region.

A training ground for the next war

Politico's analysis published ahead of Trump's Beijing trip, as cited by RFE/RL, argued that the drawn-out US-Iran war has become, from China's perspective, "a free training ground"—allowing Beijing to identify vulnerabilities in American military strategy.

According to the analysis, China has been closely studying Washington's weapons use: the pace of missile strikes, intelligence operations, the expenditure of expensive munitions, logistics, and gaps in American defenses across the Middle East. The assessment is that this systematically undermines the US position ahead of any future confrontation—including over Taiwan.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated in March 2026 that Iran had already received "military assistance" from both China and Russia, though he provided no details. Iranian officials have not commented on whether Chinese weapons have been used against American or Israeli forces; no such deployment has been publicly documented since the war began.

Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, told The New York Times that IRGC-affiliated voices are now openly saying Iran's failure was that it had been too shy about aligning itself with China and Russia.

The economics behind the pledge

The commercial relationship that makes any clean break difficult began decades before the current war. Chinese arms sales to Iran began immediately after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and expanded continuously through the 1980s, when the Iran-Iraq War coincided with market reforms under Deng Xiaoping. Deng instructed Chinese enterprises to abandon state subsidies and pursue commercial profit, which gave state defense companies the right to export. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from roughly 1982 to 1987 Iran received large quantities of Chinese missiles, fighter jets, tanks, and small arms—while China simultaneously sold the same weapons to Iraq, leaving both sides fighting each other with identical Chinese equipment.

The Reagan administration strongly opposed Chinese arms sales to Iran from the outset. Washington's particular anger was directed at the HY-2 Silkworm anti-ship cruise missile, which Iran used during the 1987 "Tanker War"—striking one tanker with American owners and another flying a US flag in Kuwaiti waters.

After the Iran-Iraq War, Iran developed its own Noor anti-ship missile—a reverse-engineered copy of China's C-802 with active radar homing and a low-altitude flight profile—with Chinese assistance. The missile remains in service with the Iranian Navy and the IRGC naval forces.

UN sanctions from 2006 onward led Beijing to stop signing new arms contracts with Tehran and to vote for anti-Iran resolutions—a shift driven less by legal principle than by China's expanding relationships with Gulf monarchies including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. But dual-use technology transfers continued, covering chemical precursors for ballistic missile fuel, radio-frequency connectors, and turbine blades for Iranian drones.

France's foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, says Russia has lost. "In Africa as elsewhere—in Mali, but also from Venezuela to Iran and Syria—Russia has been largely defeated," he told Le Monde in an interview published on 13 May. Three weeks earlier, Russia's Africa Corps had slipped out of the northern Malian city of Kidal under an escorted withdrawal negotiated with the rebels advancing on it, and a senior Malian official told RFI what the junta thought of its protector: "The Russians betrayed us in Kidal."

Barrot is passing judgment on a model. Russia offered the juntas of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger one proposition—security in exchange for resources, no questions about democracy—and presented it as the alternative to the West.

Kidal was the proof it worked: Malian and Wagner forces retook the city from Tuareg separatists in November 2023, the one clean battlefield win Moscow could point to in the Sahel. Three weeks before the interview ran, the Africa Corps handed Kidal back without a fight, and Sadio Camara, the defense minister who built Mali's turn to Moscow, was dead. The model is being tested in public, and Russia's own clients can observe the result.

What Barrot said

Barrot's case rests on more than the battlefield. France's trade with Africa is three times larger than Russia's, he told Le Monde, its investment eight to 10 times higher, the number of African students in French universities eight times greater. "Vladimir Putin's Russia offers nothing but security services traded for exploitation of Africa's resources," he said, putting Moscow's contribution to African development at "zero." On influence, he was categorical: "There is no loss of French influence in Africa."

That last claim is the one the facts strain against. France was forced out of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger between 2022 and 2024—troops expelled, ambassadors withdrawn—and the three juntas formed the Alliance of Sahel States in part to make the break with Paris permanent. Barrot stands on firmer ground describing Russia's troubles than describing France's position. And the force that drove Russia out of Kidal was not French. It was an al-Qaeda affiliate, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, fighting alongside the Tuareg separatists of the Azawad Liberation Front—the same coalition whose July 2024 ambush at Tinzaouaten inflicted Wagner's heaviest known losses in Africa, some 80 mercenaries killed. Where Russia is retreating, France is not the one moving in.

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The retreat from Kidal

The withdrawal itself was filmed. Tuareg fighters posted video of Russian vehicles leaving their Kidal base; the FLA announced it had reached an agreement with the Russians to vacate the town "permanently," CNN reported. The Malian official who spoke to RFI said the regional governor had warned the Russians "three days before the attack," and that "they did nothing"—the departure, he said, appeared to have been negotiated in advance.

Three days' warning. Nothing done. A convoy filmed leaving.

The Africa Corps left equipment behind, mine-resistant vehicles among it, now in rebel hands. Malian troops and the civilian administration pulled back to Gao. Tessalit, another northern base, fell within days, its garrison gone before the rebels arrived. The April assault that opened the door had killed Camara at his home near Bamako and struck the garrison town of Kati and the capital's airport in a single coordinated wave—the largest offensive Mali has seen since the 2012 rebellion.

The pattern Barrot is pointing at

His list—Mali, Venezuela, Iran, Syria—is not only a French talking point. When Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024, Russia began losing the bases that supplied its African operations. When US forces seized Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, Moscow's answer was tweets and phone calls; Euromaidan Press reporting at the time traced a consistent record—loud commitments, nothing delivered when a partner is directly threatened. Chatham House analysts reached the same conclusion about Mali that Barrot reaches about the continent: as in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran, Moscow proved unable to keep an allied government from being overrun. The Africa Corps is thinner than Wagner was—battles involving Russian fighters in Mali dropped from 537 in 2024 to 402 in 2025, the drawdown pulled partly toward Ukraine—and analysts say it can prop a regime up briefly while doing nothing about the governance collapse underneath it.

Who pays

What the model does reliably is profit from the insecurity it is paid to fix. EP's reporting on the Wagner playbook set out the mechanism: a monthly fee from the junta, resource concessions—gold, uranium, lithium—and an incentive structure with no reason to end a war that pays. In Mali that arithmetic carries a body count. Russian and Malian forces killed more than 500 people at Moura in 2022. Seven civilians were killed near the Mauritanian border this March; Malian and Russian forces were blamed. The juntas are now flying joint airstrikes to hold what is left, and JNIM has threatened to seal off Bamako, a city of four million, "from all sides," the Guardian reported.

Barrot says Russia has been defeated. In Kidal, the people who were promised protection learned what the word means when the protector negotiates its own way out.

Cuba has amassed more than 300 Russian and Iranian attack drones, and its military has begun internally discussing how it might use them against American targets, according to classified US intelligence described to Axios. US officials assess that Cuba's drone-warfare interest is tied to Russia's war on Ukraine, where thousands of Cuban soldiers have fought in Moscow's ranks. The disclosure arrived alongside a CIA visit to Havana and a looming US indictment of the island's de facto leader.

What the intelligence describes

Cuba has been buying attack drones of varying capability from Russia and Iran since 2023 and storing them at strategic sites across the island, US officials told the outlet. Havana has gone back to Moscow in the last month for additional drones and gear, the senior official said. Intelligence intercepts suggested Cuban officers were studying how Iran has withstood American military pressure.

The assessment names no active attack plan; it describes internal Cuban discussions about Guantanamo Bay, US Navy ships, and possibly Key West, the city 90 miles north of Havana. A senior official acknowledged the intelligence could become a pretext for US military action.

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How Russia's war seeded the threat

Washington puts the number of Cubans who fought in Russia's invasion at up to 5,000, and says some came home to tell the island's commanders how decisive drone warfare had become. For every Cuban it put in the line, the Kremlin paid Havana about $25,000, by US estimates. Ukrainian intelligence has long detailed the scale of this recruitment, telling a US Congress briefing that nearly 20,000 Cubans have served in Russia's army. 

A Ukrainian Defense Ministry body says Russia treats these men as expendable frontline infantry. Ukrainian units have captured Cuban fighters in combat, including one detained near Kupiansk who said he was forced to the front. Russian oil keeps the sanctioned island running while its citizens fill Moscow's ranks.

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Pressure on Havana

The Central Intelligence Agency's director, John Ratcliffe, traveled to Cuba on 14 May 2026 and warned officials there against any hostilities, urging them to dismantle the one-party state to lift crippling US sanctions. The US Department of Justice is expected to unseal an indictment of Raúl Castro on 20 May 2026 over his alleged role in the 1996 downing of two planes flown by the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a congressional hearing on 12 May 2026 that an adversary operating so close to American shores is highly problematic. The moves followed months of escalation: in January 2026, the US president urged Havana to strike a deal or face a full cutoff of oil and money, then declared a national emergency over Cuban government actions he called a threat. In February, he said he saw a chance for a "friendly takeover" of the island. US reconnaissance flights near Cuba sharply increased amid the standoff.

New satellite imagery appears to show renewed Russian military-linked deliveries to Syria months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to a joint investigation by OSINT groups GeoInsider and SONARROW.

The reported deliveries come amid uncertainty over Moscow’s future access to Syrian military facilities following the collapse of Assad’s government, with analysts closely watching whether Russia can preserve its Mediterranean foothold under Syria’s new political order.

Russia has maintained a military presence in Syria throughout the civil war, building long-term naval and air infrastructure at Tartus and Hmeimim that supported its intervention in support of Assad’s government and secured a permanent Mediterranean logistics hub. 

At its peak, Moscow operated across roughly 90 sites in Syria. Current reporting suggests that footprint has now contracted sharply, with Russian activity increasingly concentrated around Tartus and Hmeimim. 

Cargo convoy spotted unloading in Tartus

The analysis identifies the Russian cargo ship SPARTA unloading equipment at the port of Tartus on 11 May, accompanied by naval escort vessels.

Researchers say the exact cargo remains unclear, but assess it likely included military or dual-use equipment tied to ongoing negotiations over Russia’s future access to military infrastructure in Syria.

Syria reassesses Russia’s military access after Assad

The reported shipment comes as Syria’s new leadership reassesses the terms of Russia’s long-standing military presence in the country. Syrian Defense Minister Marhaf Abu Qasra said in 2025 that Russia could retain access to its bases “if Syria gets benefits,” adding that “in politics, there are no permanent enemies.”

On 1 April 2026, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa announced plans to convert former Russian facilities into “National Training Centers” for the Syrian Army. The previous 49-year Russian basing agreement is now reportedly suspended or under renegotiation.

Damascus uses Russian bases as leverage in post-Assad negotiations 

Regional reporting and diplomatic sources cited by GeoInsider suggest Damascus is using the threat of terminating Russian basing rights as leverage in wider negotiations, including discussions around Syrian debt, Assad family assets, and transitional justice measures. 

Moscow, meanwhile, is reportedly offering technical assistance, construction materials, and logistical support in exchange for preserving at least a limited military foothold in Syria.

GeoInsider says the negotiations mark a reversal from the Assad era, when Russia operated in Syria as the dominant external power rather than a state bargaining to preserve reduced access. 

Russian warships escorted convoy into Syria

According to the investigation, the cargo operation was accompanied by unusually tight naval security measures.

Satellite imagery and vessel tracking data reportedly show the frigate Admiral Flota Kasatonov positioned near Tartus during the unloading operation, while the corvette Stoykiy moved ahead of the convoy to help secure the maritime approach corridor.

The escort pattern suggests the shipment was considered operationally sensitive, the analysts said.

Ships reportedly used deception measures during transit

GeoInsider said all vessels involved in the convoy disabled their AIS transponders shortly after passing Gibraltar and remained electronically dark until reaching Syria.

The investigators also said at least two ships broadcast false positions in the Baltic Sea in what they described as an apparent attempt to complicate open-source tracking efforts.

Despite the spoofing measures, the convoy was tracked to Tartus using satellite imagery and maritime monitoring data, according to the report.

A shifting balance of dependence and leverage between Damascus and Moscow

Syria’s political transition after the fall of Bashar al-Assad has not produced a clean break with Russia, despite Moscow and Damascus having been on opposing sides of the war’s final phase. 

While the new leadership has signaled a shift toward engagement with Western and regional partners, ties with Russia continue in areas tied to energy and military infrastructure, even as their terms are being reassessed.

Russia continues to supply a significant share of Syria’s oil imports, reflecting the constraints facing Damascus after years of war, damaged domestic production, and limited access to alternative suppliers. 

The situation reflects mutual limitation: Syria’s constrained economy and infrastructure reduce its options, while Russia’s reduced military footprint and changing political environment limit its previous dominance.

At the same time, Moscow retains leverage through established bases and maritime access in the eastern Mediterranean, though these positions are now subject to negotiation rather than guaranteed control.

The result is not continuity of the Assad-era alignment, but a transitional arrangement: ongoing practical cooperation in specific sectors alongside a broader shift in bargaining power between Damascus and Moscow.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a decree introducing a simplified procedure for residents of Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova, to obtain Russian citizenship, according to Russian state media RIA Novosti.

The move is framed by Moscow as a humanitarian step, but it comes in a long-running pattern where Russia expands citizenship access in territories outside the control of internationally recognized states. Such policies are often viewed as a tool for strengthening political leverage over contested areas.

Decree removes standard citizenship requirements and expands fast-track access

The decree applies to adult foreign citizens and stateless persons living in the territory and removes standard requirements such as residence in Russia, Russian language proficiency, and knowledge of Russian law and history. Moscow says the measure is aimed at “protecting rights and freedoms.”

Russia has repeatedly used the claim of “protecting its citizens” as a political justification for intervention in neighboring states. This framework has been cited in the lead-up to or during military actions, including in Ukraine, allowing Moscow to argue that it is acting to defend Russian nationals even in areas that are internationally recognized as part of other sovereign countries.

Transnistria remains outside Moldova’s control since early 1990s conflict 

Transnistria is a narrow strip of land in eastern Moldova, along the border with Ukraine. It declared independence in 1990 during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it is not recognized by any UN member state and is considered internationally to be part of Moldova.

A short war in the early 1990s left the region outside Chisinau’s control. The conflict involved separatist forces backed by Russian troops already stationed in the area, after which Moldova lost effective control over the territory.

Since then, Transnistria has functioned as a de facto separatist entity with its own authorities, security forces, and administrative structures. Its economy and political system remain closely tied to Russia, and Russian citizenship has been widely distributed among residents over the years.

The region is often described as a frozen conflict zone, with Russian military personnel still present as part of a long-standing “peacekeeping” mission. The new decree further deepens Moscow’s legal and political links with the population living there.

Similar passportization policy used in Ukraine’s Donbas

Russia also introduced simplified citizenship procedures for residents of the occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts prior to the full-scale invasion in 2022. This was expanded after the full-scale invasion, when Moscow accelerated mass passport distribution in occupied Ukrainian territories.

The policy allowed residents to obtain Russian citizenship without meeting standard requirements such as long-term residence in Russia or language exams. In practice, it created a large population of dual-status residents in areas not controlled by Kyiv, with Russian-issued documents used for administration, military mobilization, and political integration.

Internationally, these measures have been widely viewed as part of Russia’s broader strategy of embedding legal and political control in territories it occupies or influences, rather than as neutral citizenship policy.

When Russia attacked Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the phones started ringing at Al Jazeera Balkans' office in Sarajevo. The callers were not asking about Kyiv. They were asking about bunkers.

What is the state of Sarajevo's underground bunkers and shelters, they wanted to know. Can they be used?

The fear underneath the question was specific: if Russia attacked Ukraine, what if the Serbs attack us again?

This is what 30 years of "peace" feels like from inside Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war ended in 1995, on paper. The fear of it never did. And the Bosnian journalist who fielded those calls—Harun Karčić, a longtime Al Jazeera Balkans correspondent who was eight years old and a refugee himself when his war began—was in Lviv this week to tell Ukrainians, with what he called "blunt" candor, exactly why.

"The mistake we made was that we accepted a peace agreement in 1995 which gave Serb rebels 49% of our country," Karčić told the panel "Handle the Truth in the Age of Crises" at Lviv Media Forum 2026.

"This would be equivalent to you Ukrainians signing any peace agreement which would give Russian separatists in the east a say in your government. Whatever you do, don't accept such peace agreements—because they will continue blocking your country, obstructing your progress and, excuse my bluntness, screwing you for the next 30 to 40 years."

What Dayton was, and what it produced

The deal Karčić is referring to—the Dayton Accords, signed under US pressure in November 1995—ended the Bosnian war by formally keeping Bosnia as one country while splitting it into two entities. The Bosniak-Croat Federation got 51% of the territory. Republika Srpska—the entity led by the Bosnian Serb forces who had spent three and a half years trying to destroy Bosnia, and whose army committed the Srebrenica genocide—got the remaining 49%, plus veto power over state-level decisions in Sarajevo.

In other words: the rebels who lost the war were given a permanent seat at the table they had tried to demolish. That seat has been used ever since to block every step Bosnia has tried to take toward Europe.

Thirty years later, the bill is in. Bosnia has no realistic path to NATO membership. Its EU accession is frozen. Its central government can be paralyzed by Republika Srpska whenever Belgrade or Moscow find it convenient. Corruption is endemic. Tens of thousands of young Bosnians emigrate every year.

Russia Today and Sputnik run offices and studios in Belgrade and Banja Luka—Republika Srpska's de facto capital—pumping out free Russian-language content that local outlets, starved for funding, copy-paste into Bosnia's information space. The two halves of the country now live in literally parallel realities. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Karčić noted, the headlines in Republika Srpska read: "Ukraine Attacks Russia." "NATO Places Biological Weapons on Ukraine's Border." "NATO Wants to Use Russia."

Children in Mostar are still educated in segregated schools—the so-called "two schools under one roof"—and many never cross the city's famous bridge to make a friend on the other side.

The trap, regardless of shape

Karčić's analogy—Russian separatists with a say in Ukraine's government—describes the Republika Srpska model literally. It also describes what Russia spent 2014–2022 trying to install in Ukraine through the Minsk agreements: a frozen Donbas held by Russian proxies with permanent veto rights over Ukrainian foreign policy, defense, and language law. Ukraine refused to implement those provisions, and the war went total.

The 28-point peace plan circulating since November 2025 has taken a different shape.

Not a Republika Srpska inside Ukraine, but the formal amputation of Ukraine's east and south. Recognition of Crimea, Luhansk and the entirety of Donetsk Oblast as de facto Russian—including the roughly 25% of Donetsk Oblast currently under Ukrainian control. A freeze of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts along the line of contact. Ukrainian withdrawal from the parts of Donetsk it still holds, with that withdrawal zone reclassified as an internationally recognized "demilitarized buffer zone" belonging to the Russian Federation. A cap on the Armed Forces of Ukraine at 600,000 personnel. No NATO, vague US security guarantees that would lapse if Ukraine were judged to have provoked renewed Russian aggression.

No internal Russian veto. Just Russia keeping what it took, plus binding limits on what Ukraine could do to defend itself afterwards.

The mechanism is different. The trap Bosnia describes is the same. Any peace deal that rewards the aggressor—whether with a seat at the domestic table or with a slice of stolen territory—and that constrains the victim's future capacity to integrate westward or defend itself, produces the same end state: a frozen conflict, blocked EU and NATO accession, ongoing destabilization, and a country that spends the next 30 years running interference against the power that tried to destroy it.

Bosnia got the entity-veto version. Ukraine is being offered the territorial-amputation version. The architecture differs. The frozen-conflict end-state is identical. And Bosnia's Russian-backed Serb leader Milorad Dodik is threatening secession right now—proof that 30 years of "peace" still ends with the same gun on the same table.

Karčić is not the first Bosnian voice to make this case. His compatriot Hamza Karčić, a political scientist at the University of Sarajevo, wrote in Al Jazeera in November 2022 that a Dayton-style settlement would render Ukraine, like Bosnia, "deeply dysfunctional"—exploited by Russia through a local client. Three and a half years on, with the 28-point plan in active negotiation, that warning has only sharpened.

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"The 'international community' is a vague term, almost non-existent"

Karčić was equally pointed about the actors who would broker any such deal. "We placed too much trust in the international community thinking that they will solve our problems without us taking the initiative to do the same thing," he said. "Now, with the United States pulling out of Europe generally, the EU is lost. They have no common policy. They don't know where they're heading. They have no common approach to the Balkans at all, nor to Ukraine."

His verdict on the phrase itself was unsparing: "The 'international community' is a very vague term, almost non-existent."

For Ukrainians watching the same Western capitals that once promised "as long as it takes" pivot toward "a deal," that line lands differently than it does in Sarajevo. It lands as recognition.

What Bosnia did not have

There is one thing Bosnia did not have in 1995, however, that Ukraine still does.

"I'm fascinated by what Ukraine does, in the sense that it accepts support from the West, it knows exactly what it wants to achieve, but it has maintained its own agency in dealing with its enemy and the perpetrators of this war," Karčić told the room.

"It hasn't allowed international actors to direct or dictate where it wants to head, or [actors] who would have different competing agendas which may not always be in the best interests of this country."

In 1995, Bosnia did not have that latitude. Its capital had been under siege for nearly four years. Its army was outgunned. Srebrenica had fallen four months before Dayton, and more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys had been murdered by forces that would, weeks later, sit across a negotiating table in Ohio and receive their entity as a reward.

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Ukraine’s victory plan is dead, killed by Russian nuclear mind games

The Bosnian government signed because US negotiator Richard Holbrooke offered it a choice between bad and worse.

Ukraine in 2026 is not in that position. It still controls its capital. Its army has held back—and in many places pushed back—the largest land army in Europe for four years. It still chooses its own ministers, sets its own war aims, and decides what it will and will not accept. Whatever pressure now comes from Washington or Brussels, that latitude is what makes Karčić's warning useful rather than retrospective.

Bosnia could not refuse. Ukraine still can.

Hungary will summon Russia's ambassador on 14 May over the previous day's drone strikes on Zakarpattia Oblast, Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced after the first meeting of his new government on 13 May.

This is the first time a Hungarian government has called in Russia's envoy over an attack on Zakarpattia—the Ukrainian region bordering Hungary. Under Viktor Orbán's foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, the previous government stayed silent through earlier Russian strikes near the Hungarian border, drawing repeated criticism from independent Hungarian outlets.

Russian drones hit five targets across the oblast. They damaged a transformer and a railway station in Svaliava and an industrial facility in Uzhhorod, Foreign Minister Anita Orbán reported. The ambassador is due at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 14 May.

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Russia is hitting Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast, bordering Hungary with drones, for first time. Expert says this is linked to end of Orbán’s era

"The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Zakarpattia Oblast," Magyar said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha thanked Anita Orbán for the speed of her condemnation.

Magyar identified Russia as the aggressor throughout his campaign, breaking with Orbán's pro-Kremlin rhetoric. He traveled to Kyiv in July 2024 to deliver humanitarian aid after Russia struck the Okhmatdyt children's hospital, and before April's election he sent an open letter to Moscow's ambassador in Budapest invoking Hungary's 1956 uprising against Soviet rule, after his party accused Russian operatives of interfering in the campaign. He has pledged to end Hungary's veto on the EU's €90 billion Ukraine aid package, while ruling out Hungarian weapons transfers and opposing Kyiv's fast-tracked EU accession.

Ukrainian analysts linked the timing of Russia's Zakarpattia strikes to the end of Orbán's era—a message from Moscow that the protection no longer applies. Magyar answered with his first foreign-policy act in office. The ambassador he is summoning is the same one he wrote to in opposition.

The Zakarpattia oblast holds Ukraine's largest ethnic Hungarian community—roughly 150,000 people whose defense Orbán made central to Hungarian foreign policy for sixteen years. At 11:30 on Thursday, the Russian ambassador will hear what Magyar's government has to say about them.

Sanctioned Russian shadow tankers continue transiting UK waters despite Britain's March threat to intercept them, BBC Verify found. No boardings have been publicly confirmed by British forces. A former Royal Navy commander described the inaction as "pathetic." 

184 vessels, 238 journeys, 94 crossings into territorial waters

BBC Verify tracked all 184 vessels using MarineTraffic data between 25 March and 11 May. In at least 94 instances, ships briefly crossed into UK territorial waters within 12 nautical miles of the coast. All 238 journeys took place inside the UK's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which extends up to 200 nautical miles. The vessels included 173 oil tankers, 10 liquified natural gas (LNG) tankers, and one multipurpose offshore vessel. Most journeys passed through the English Channel.

A Russian warship appears to have escorted the sanctioned oil tanker Universal through UK waters, satellite imagery shows. Intelligence firm MAIAR identified the warship as highly likely the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich. The tanker entered UK waters in the early hours of 8 April before transiting the Channel.

MoD says it is "disrupting and deterring"

BBC Verify asked the Ministry of Defence (MoD) whether British forces had intercepted any sanctioned vessels since 25 March. The MoD did not directly answer. It said it was "disrupting and deterring" shadow fleet vessels. It had also "challenged" more than 700 suspected ships since October 2024. The MoD declined to specify what "challenging" means or to comment on specific operations.

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EU’s 21st Russia sanctions package will target the shadow fleet, banks, and firms selling stolen Ukrainian grain—Politico

Former Royal Navy warship commander Tom Sharpe called the lack of boardings "utterly confusing" and "pathetic." "We have the military capability, whether that's warships, boarding teams, Customs and Excise," Sharpe said. "We've got no maritime spine in us."

Shadow fleet

Russia gathered the shadow fleet after the 2022 full-scale invasion to bypass G7 oil price caps and other Western sanctions. The fleet now exceeds 1,100 tankers, according to Ukrainian data. Most vessels are aging tankers operating under flags of convenience, with hidden ownership chains and frequent AIS tracking shutdowns. Russia uses them to move over 60% of its seaborne oil exports, Kyiv assessed.

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“Kinetic sanctions” in action: Two more Russian shadow fleet tankers hit at Novorossiysk — the second naval drone strike in five days

International sanctions have tried to keep pace. The EU's 20th package, adopted in April, added 46 vessels to its blacklist, bringing the total to 632 ships. The EU's 21st package, expected in June or July, will further target the fleet. Ukraine itself sanctioned 656 vessels in a single December 2025 decree, the largest single package on record.

Ukraine has also resorted to direct action. Naval and aerial drones have struck shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and off the Senegal coast. Kyiv calls these "kinetic sanctions." War-risk insurance for shadow fleet vessels has tripled following the strikes.

Russia has begun negotiating about who negotiates. Moscow has spent years demanding Ukraine give up land its army has failed to take. Now it is also trying to pick who sits across the table from it. On Sunday, the EU said no.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, speaking to reporters in Brussels on 11 May, rejected Vladimir Putin’s proposal to install former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder as Europe’s negotiator with Moscow. Schröder, she said, had been “a high-ranking lobbyist for Russian state companies.”

If he negotiated for the EU, he would “sit on both sides of the table.” Letting Russia name the EU’s negotiator, she added, would be “not very wise.”

The proposal had come from a Red Square podium two days earlier. After the 9 May Victory Day parade, Putin floated Schröder’s name, saying Europe should send a negotiator who “didn’t say nasty things” about Russia.

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Contents

• Slovak Prime Minister: Zelenskyy should call Putin if he wants a meeting
  1. Russia negotiates about who negotiates
  2. Berlin said no. Then floated a duo.
  3. The pressure goes one way
  4. NYT: Lost Starlink, throttled Telegram, missed recruits — Russia’s worst battlefield year since 2023
  5. Talks continue on Trump-brokered prisoner exchange with Russia after Putin claimed that Kyiv was not ready for swap
  6. ISW: Russia’s “Victory Day ceasefire” reduced combat but didn’t stop it

Slovak Prime Minister: Zelenskyy should call Putin if he wants a meeting

Schröder—personal friend of Putin, former chair of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 boards, former Rosneft board member until 2022—fit the description. His post-chancellorship career on the boards of Russian state companies became so emblematic of Russian elite capture that commentators coined a term for it: Schröderization.

Russia negotiates about who negotiates

Opponents don’t usually pick each other’s negotiators. Russia is testing whether it can.

Schröder is not the first name Moscow has tried to place at the table. In February, Russia sent Vladimir Medinsky to Geneva—a historian-ideologue whose role, British analysts argued, was designed to make Ukrainian and Western counterparts walk away so Russia could blame them for the collapse.

The Schröder proposal extends the same playbook from the opposite direction. If Russia cannot dictate the demands, it can try to shape the room.

Berlin said no. Then floated a duo.

The German government rejected Schröder before Kallas did. Berlin called the proposal a Scheinangebot—a sham offer.

Then Tagesspiegel reported the SPD–CDU/CSU ruling coalition was discussing a “Schröder-Steinmeier duo,” pairing the ex-chancellor with sitting Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who, as foreign minister during the Minsk years, faced his own criticism for accommodation toward Moscow. Berlin’s view: Schröder could not handle the role alone, but with Steinmeier it might be “an interesting option.”

SPD foreign policy spokesman Adis Ahmetović was the dissenter: “Our goal must be to sit at the negotiating table. If one of the conditions is the participation of a former chancellor, this should be carefully examined.”

Steinmeier’s term as president expires in early 2027. A short runway, if it goes anywhere.

The pressure goes one way

Kallas’ rejection lands as Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov told state TV that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would visit Moscow “soon enough” to continue the dialogue.

Ushakov also restated Moscow’s core demand: Ukrainian withdrawal from the parts of Donetsk Oblast its army has failed to take, including Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. “Until Ukraine takes that step, we can hold several more rounds, dozens of rounds of negotiations, but we’ll be stuck in the same place,” he said.

Mediators describe a moment of ripeness—the point at which battlefield or economic pressure forces a real shift in position. Russia has not reached one. Until it does, every move in the talks is tactical, not transformative. Including, now, the move to nominate who should sit on the other side.

Portugal’s defense sector is rapidly expanding, Wiedomostri reports. According to estimates from the Ministry of Defense, Defense Minister Nuno Melo links the sharp growth of the industry to the war in Ukraine and to the increasing security risks to the EU posed by Russia.

Between January 2025 and April 2026, nearly 100 new companies related to the arms industry were created in the country. In total, their number has reached around 450. It's the highest level since Portugal joined the EU in 1986.

Record budget includes +€3.8 billion and a 23% increase in spending

In October last year, the Portuguese government, led by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, announced a record increase in military spending for 2026.

The defense budget rose by nearly €3.8 billion, representing a 23.2% increase compared to 2025.

New EU defense market: Portuguese companies involved in 17 European projects

Portuguese defense companies are currently participating in 17 projects developed by the European Union in the field of armaments. This is another signal of growing activity by national enterprises in EU-level defense initiatives

“These projects include, among others, drones, combat systems, and airspace technologies,” wrote Expresso.

Expresso also noted that of the 450 entities operating directly in Portugal’s defense sector, the vast majority are small and medium-sized enterprises. The weekly publication added that only in the first quarter of 2026 did several new companies enter the sector.

Earlier, Portugal hosted the REPMUS/Dynamic Messenger 25 exercises. Ukraine also participated in the drills, serving as the Opposing Force (OPFOR).

Not just participants — Ukraine commands NATO’s simulated enemy for first time in history at Portugal naval drills

The Ukrainian combat system DELTA served as the exercise management platform, integrating participants’ efforts and ensuring effective coordination across joint operations. It managed over 100 sea, underwater, land, and aerial drones.

US President Donald Trump publicly called Aliaksandr Lukashenka his "friend" on Sunday, thanking the Belarusian dictator after a multi-country deal freed three Polish citizens from Belarusian detention and two Moldovans from Russian detention. Among those released was journalist Andrzej Poczobut, holder of the European Union's top human rights honor.

"Thank you to President Aliaksandr Lukashenka for his cooperation and friendship. So nice!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, crediting his Special Envoy John Coale.

The friendship language tracks a year-long pattern. Roughly 500 prisoners have walked out of Belarusian jails since the Trump administration opened talks with Minsk. Several rounds of US sanctions relief have put Belarus's state airline, potash giants, and most of its financial system back in the dollar economy — including, in March, a state bank that Belarusian defectors have documented as financing the 152mm artillery shells Russia fires at Ukraine.

The greeting also marks an escalation in tone. When Trump first called Lukashenka in August 2025 — only the second time in 31 years of his rule that the Belarusian leader had spoken to an American president — he described him as "the highly respected President." Nine months later, "highly respected" has become "friend."

Who walked out

Poczobut, a correspondent for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and a leader of Belarus's Polish minority, had been serving an eight-year sentence since 2021 on charges widely seen as politically motivated. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize, the EU's top human rights honor, while in prison. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski described him as a symbol of the Belarusian fight for freedom.

The deal also freed Grzegorz Gawel, a Carmelite friar from Kraków, and a Belarusian national who had worked with Polish intelligence services. Polish officials did not publicly identify the intelligence officer. Poland sent three people in the other direction as part of the arrangement, foreign-ministry officials told reporters. Two Moldovan citizens were released alongside them — from Russian, not Belarusian, prisons. That is the part of the announcement that suggests Lukashenka is now functioning as Moscow's broker as well as his own.

According to the human rights group Viasna, 848 political prisoners remained in Belarusian jails as of 7 May, before Sunday's release. New arrests continue: Viasna recognized 51 additional people as political prisoners in January 2026 alone.

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The Hermitage archaeologist Ukraine wanted to try is back in Russia—Kyiv calls it a propaganda gift to Moscow

The White House offer

A meeting with Trump is on the table. Coale told the Financial Times in March that internal discussions about inviting Lukashenka to the White House or to Mar-a-Lago had been ongoing "for several months." Lukashenka himself said Trump had invited him to Florida. No date is set.

If it happens, it would be Lukashenka's first official US visit and a diplomatic prize the 71-year-old has chased for decades — particularly since the fraud-marred 2020 election that the previous Trump administration refused to recognize.

What three rounds did not touch

Since September 2025, the US and Belarus have engaged in a series of prisoner-for-sanctions exchanges in which Washington gradually eased sanctions in return for the release of political prisoners. None of the sanctions rollbacks have affected the Belarusian conduct most directly tied to the war in Ukraine.

Belarus still hosts Russian Shahed drone relays. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announcing Ukraine's February sanctions package against Lukashenka's inner circle, said the relays "correct and coordinate" attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Russian tactical nuclear weapons remain on Belarusian soil — the first such deployment outside Russia since the Cold War. In December 2025, Russia stationed its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile system at the Krichev-6 base in eastern Belarus, putting most of Europe within strike range from launchers under Russian command.

And then there is Belinvestbank.

The state bank, freed by US Treasury general license in March, has — according to an investigation by the Belarusian defectors group Belpol — provided loans to Belarusian state enterprises producing components for 152mm artillery shells and 122mm rockets. These are the rounds Russian forces use daily against Ukraine. The same bank, Belpol documented, finances Integral, a microelectronics maker whose chips have been pulled from Russian cruise missiles striking Ukrainian power infrastructure. It also finances a newer ammunition facility near Slutsk whose own loan records list Russia as the primary market.

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“A direct investment in ammunition flying across the border”: Belarusian defectors warn US sanctions relief is funding Russia’s war

The charm offensive

Lithuania's defense ministry, in its 2026 annual threat assessment, concluded that Belarus uses prisoner releases to charm the West while continuing to act as a Russian instrument of intimidation against neighboring states. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader who won the 2020 election by every credible independent count and lost it by Lukashenka's official one, said in December that the dictator "hasn't changed his policies, his crackdown continues, and he keeps on supporting Russia's war against Ukraine."

The Carnegie Endowment's Belarus analysts noted after Trump's first call with Lukashenka that the Belarusian leader appears to be playing some sort of intermediary role between Trump and Putin — Coale himself said the US had used Lukashenka to convey messages to Moscow. Trump's August call came hours before his summit with Putin in Alaska. Sunday's deal — in which Moldovans walked out of Russian detention as part of a Lukashenka-brokered exchange — suggests the channel is still live.

What "friend" buys

Around 500 political prisoners were released over the past year. A Sakharov laureate at home with his family in Poland. These are real outcomes, and the Belarusian opposition has thanked the Coale team for the work.

Andrei Padniabenny and Valiantsin Shtermer will not be in the next batch. The two political prisoners died in Belarusian custody in 2025 of unknown causes, according to Human Rights Watch. Pastor Aleh Loika, still in prison, is in deteriorating health. The bank that funds the shells is back online.

So is the friendship.

France has detained a member of the Donetsk People's Republic, a pro-Russian terrorist organization, acting in Ukraine's eastern regions. Ukraine's Security Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General assisted in the operation.

According to investigators, he is implicated in torture carried out in the illegal Donetsk detention facility “Izolyatsiya.” Ukrainian law enforcement agencies reported this.

“Izolyatsiya” is a notorious prison facility in Donetsk, where people are tortured simply for being Ukrainian. Journalist Stanislav Aseyev, who survived imprisonment there, described it as “a threshold beyond which a person feels like God while behaving like the devil.”

Assistant to “Izolyatsiya” leadership: torture, coercion, and forced confessions

The investigation established that in 2017–2019, the suspect voluntarily cooperated with representatives of the pro-Russian illegal entity and served as an assistant to the leadership of the illegal prison in occupied Donetsk.

He participated in torture, cruel treatment of detainees, psychological pressure, and forcing “required” confessions. At least nine victims have currently been documented.

Escape to EU and international investigation: France opens its own case

In 2021, after the Security Service completed its investigation and transferred the case to court, the accused left Ukraine and traveled to France, where he attempted to obtain refugee status.

Following appeals from Ukrainian prosecutors and human rights organizations, including Truth Hounds, French law enforcement opened its own criminal proceedings.

Arrest and war crimes charges: case under Paris court supervision

As part of a joint investigation by Ukrainian and French investigators, the man was arrested. By decision of the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office, he was taken into custody and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The investigation is ongoing under the supervision of a specialized unit of the Paris court.