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Putin's drone battle for Ukraine's skies
The battlefield in Ukraine has moved from the ground to the skies, with Russia ramping up drone production and launching bigger, more powerful aerial attacks across the border. As Moscow leans further into drone warfare, how much longer can Ukraine hold out? Christopher Miller, chief Ukraine correspondent at the Financial Times, joins Ian Bremmer on the latest episode of GZERO World to discuss how drones have changed life on the front lines and in Ukraine’s cities.
The war looks very different from the one Vladimir Putin launched over three years ago, when tanks rolled across the border and soldiers advanced in heavy columns. Now, thousands of attack-style drones and smaller tactical and FPV drones swarm Ukraine’s skies, redefining how nations fight and how civilians live. Putin has reoriented Russia’s military and entire economy to become an industrial drone powerhouse, eroding Ukraine’s early advantage. Can Kyiv regain its edge? How long can Ukraine hold out and is a peace deal at all a possibility?
“There are now tens of thousands of drones in the air at any given time in eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine being used by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies,” Miller says, “That has changed everything.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube.Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Ukraine's high-tech war of attrition, with Christopher Miller
The war in Ukraine has entered a dangerous new phase, with Russia sending bigger, more powerful drone attacks across the border nearly every day. Gone are the tanks, columns of troops, and heavy artillery from the early days of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Now, tens of thousands of drones swarm Ukraine’s skies at any given moment. How much longer can Ukraine hold out? Christopher Miller, chief Ukraine correspondent at the Financial Times, joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast to discuss the war’s evolution from a conventional land invasion into a high-tech war of attrition dominated by drones.
Artificial intelligence, drones, all types of unmanned vehicles are being used to wage war alongside traditional tanks and artillery. Russia's not advancing like it did in the first few months. Now it's inch by inch, meter by meter. Ukraine’s troops are stuck in positions for months at a time, some nearly a year. Civilians in Ukraine’s cities are under constant threat from drone attacks, sheltering in subways and bomb shelters every night. Despite immense resilience, Ukraine’s people are getting exhausted and the country is running out of manpower. Can Ukraine regain its drone advantage? Is a diplomatic ceasefire at all a possibility?
“A lot of people in the west like to say the Ukrainians are so brave, they can do anything,” Miller says, “Many of my friends and soldiers tell me, we're not superhuman. We die, we bleed. There are fewer of us than there were three and a half years ago.”
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.Transcript: Ukraine's high-tech war of attrition, with Christopher Miller
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are talking about the evolution of the war in Ukraine, a conflict that has redefined how nations fight and how civilians live. When Vladimir Putin launched his full scale invasion in 2022, tanks rolled across the border, artillery pounded cities, soldiers advanced in columns. But more than three years later, the war looks very different. The battlefield has shifted from the ground to the sky. Russia is sending more powerful drones in larger numbers into Ukraine every day. Putin has reoriented, Russia's military and its entire economy to create an industrial drone powerhouse, eroding Kiev's early advantage. The threat spilled over into NATO territory in mid-September when Poland used expensive fighter jets to shoot down cheap Russian drones in its airspace, a dangerous escalation that has European leaders worried that their militaries are losing ground to Moscow's technology advances.
If 20th century warfare was defined by tanks and missiles, Russia's invasion has made it clear that the 21st will be about unmanned vehicles. In the next phase, autonomous AI-powered swarms. Here to talk about what this war has become and how drones have changed life on the front lines, as well as in Ukraine's cities, I'm joined by Christopher Miller, he's Chief Ukraine correspondent for the Financial Times. And he's lived and reported from Ukraine for 15 years. Let's get to it.
Chris Miller, welcome to GZERO World.
Christopher Miller:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Ian Bremmer:
You've been spending a lot of time, more than just about any Western journalist on the ground in Ukraine, not just since the war has started but, I mean, since the precursors to the war have started, right? Talk a little bit about how your experience of the war is changing, how Ukraine's experience of the war is changing?
Christopher Miller:
Sure. So I've been in Ukraine for 15 years, so as you said, even before, not only Russia's full-scale invasion, but it's covert, illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Ian Bremmer:
2014.
Christopher Miller:
And the first war under the guise of a separatist uprising in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, that summer. It's changed dramatically. First of all, just the sheer scale of it, right? Russia allowed itself plausible deniability by not officially launching an invasion in 2014, but using its covert secret forces and separatist proxies to foment this war that raged for years, but at a smaller scale and in Eastern Ukraine. Fast-forward to 2022, what we saw was the first major land invasion in 80 years. And so that brought in, officially, Russia into the war. And we saw mechanized forces, heavy artillery, air forces used early on. This was a regular, conventional war.
That has since changed even more dramatically. And what we see now is a ground war where infantry are stuck in positions for not days long or week long rotations, but months. I even know some Ukrainian soldiers who have been in positions for nearly a year. And that is because we are looking at a high-tech war with artificial intelligence, drones, new swarms of drones, all types of robots, essentially, being used to wage war alongside these other conventional means.
So, in some ways, this war looks like the second world war or even the first world war. If you zoom in and you look at the trenches and the bunkers and that type of warfare, right? There are heavy artillery systems that are being used that were used in the Afghanistan war in the '80s. But there are now, with great prevalence, tens of thousands of drones in the air at any given time in Eastern Ukraine and Southern Ukraine being used by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies. Now, that has changed everything, the way war is fought, the fact that now we're only seeing small infantry forces of three to five on the Russian side advancing very slowly and methodically.
Ian Bremmer:
3 to 5 individual soldiers.
Christopher Miller:
Individual soldiers. So your viewers will recall these long snaking lines of armor tanks at the beginning of the war, dozens of soldiers advancing across the battlefield. Now it's sabotage units of three to five guys at once. And this is done because of the prevalence of drones. So nothing happens on the battlefield now that isn't seen by both sides' surveillance drones as well as these FPV, or first person drones, that you've got a soldier 5, 10, 20 kilometers behind the front line-
Ian Bremmer:
Who's operating these drones.
Christopher Miller:
Who's operating these drones and viewing [inaudible 00:05:38]-
Ian Bremmer:
Which is essentially a virtual soldier.
Christopher Miller:
Of course. They're using a VR headset and they're sitting there looking at a computer screen, and that's the way in which a lot of these soldiers are viewing the war now. But because of the prevalence of these drones, you can only get these small groups of soldiers sort of penetrating areas in the front line. Now that means that, of course, Russia's taking huge losses. Anything larger than these groups of three to five soldiers would-
Ian Bremmer:
Get blown up by Ukrainian drones.
Christopher Miller:
Exactly. Exactly.
Ian Bremmer:
Because they can see them.
Christopher Miller:
Exactly.
Ian Bremmer:
Right, cover.
Christopher Miller:
So this is a war of attrition now, and the battlefield in Eastern and Southern Ukraine has seen some changes this summer, but very slowly, right? Russia's not advancing like it did in the first days of the war when it swept in and took bigger cities and went for hundreds of kilometers from the border of Crimea through Southern Ukraine. Now it's inch by inch, meter by meter.
Ian Bremmer:
How far from the front lines is it possible to live as a civilian on either side given that nature?
Christopher Miller:
Well, it is determined by the length of the fiber optic cables that are attached to many of the drones that are being used now, or the ranges of the FPV drones that are being used, right? So the Russians have drones that can fly 20 kilometers, 30 kilometers, 40 kilometers. I've heard that they're experimenting with some that might be able to fly upwards of 50 kilometers. Now that's much larger than just a front line area that is the width of numerous cities. It could be the length of a road that spans two major cities in Eastern Ukraine.
So I'll give you two examples right now. There are two cities that Russia has in its sights. One is called Pokrovsk, and the other is called Kostiantynivka, and both are in Donetsk Oblast in Eastern Ukraine, which they have illegally annexed, but they don't occupy, correct? Yes. Putin claims these areas all the way to their administrative borders to be Russian territory, even though they don't control them completely. And they want these cities very badly. Trying to take them is difficult because these are urban environments, urban warfare is slow and plotting and grinding and bloody. And so what they're using in conjunction with these drones are large aerial bombs that are equipped with wings that can fly in and destroy giant city blocks. So that's making life hell for the people who live in these cities. Which used to be populated each tens of thousands, 60,000 to a 100,000 people. Now there's a few thousand, or in some cases a few hundred people.
Ian Bremmer:
Living in these cities.
Christopher Miller:
Living in these cities. And it's hell for them because if they are to leave, there is this constant buzzing of drones. The prevalence of drones is everywhere. These drones dictate the movements of soldiers, life in these frontline cities. When I visited the frontline city of Kherson example, where the Russians have, for more than a year, now systematically hunted not only soldiers in their vehicles and on foot, but civilians at markets, on their bicycles. And so at the Financial Times, we published an article about how the Russians were hunting down these civilians and filming them doing so and then publishing their own videos on their telegram channels and boasting of this. So that's what life is like for the Ukrainians on the front line, and also why we've seen this mass exodus from Eastern Ukraine to the rest of the country and this flood of internally displaced people, and also more broadly, the millions of refugees that now have arrived in Europe and even the US.
Ian Bremmer:
And it's why, I mean, you were in the early stages of the war, 2022, 2023, spending a lot more time on the front lines than you are now. I mean, you're just not capable of reporting anything given that nature of conflict.
Christopher Miller:
That's exactly right. The prevalence of drones in the air make it almost impossible to spend any significant amount of time in the open in Eastern Ukraine. I'll give you a quick example. Just a month ago at the beginning of August, I was meant to embed with a unit in Eastern Ukraine and go into the city of Kostiantynivka. I used to live-
Ian Bremmer:
How big is this unit you were going to embed with-
Christopher Miller:
The unit itself? Probably a couple of dozen guys. But it's probably-
Ian Bremmer:
And what was the unit comprised of?
Christopher Miller:
The unit was comprised of drone operators, infantrymen. It's part of a larger part of a larger brigade that has been operating in Eastern Ukraine. So I was going there with the intention of understanding what the front line situation was in Kostiantynivka after it really became a more serious target of the Russian army.
Ian Bremmer:
One of the two cities that Russia is now trying to grab.
Christopher Miller:
That's right.
Ian Bremmer:
Right, okay.
Christopher Miller:
So we had sort of mapped out this plan. I would arrive nearby, I'd get picked up in an armored vehicle with two or three soldiers, and we would zip into Kostiantynivka, and I would spend some time in this command and control center where I'd be able to monitor the front line and their activities [inaudible 00:10:48]-
Ian Bremmer:
Is it in a government building, is it underground? Where's the center?
Christopher Miller:
Most of these command and control centers are in basements of partly destroyed buildings, abandoned schools, abandoned factory buildings. There's a lot of industrial buildings in Eastern Ukraine.
Ian Bremmer:
But in that regard, safe from drones?
Christopher Miller:
Correct. Relatively, relatively speaking. From aerial bombs, not so much.
Ian Bremmer:
Not so much.
Christopher Miller:
Heavier artillery, but from drones, more or less. The real danger from drones is being out in the open. So we had mapped this path that I would ride with them through the city, and then the situation changed completely overnight. The Russians managed to move forward just a few kilometers, but that put their drones within range of the entire city of Kostiantynivka. So they said, "We're going to have to postpone this for now. Let's see if we can do this when get back, when you get back in Ukraine after a break." So when it makes it impossible almost to move around freely, certainly, and it makes it a requirement to jump through all sorts of security hoops to actually observe and report on this war, which is a dramatic change from 2014 when we could very freely cross the front line. Drones were not used as bombs.
Ian Bremmer:
Take a step back from the front lines into the rest of Ukraine because, of course, much of the reporting that we are seeing on the war in Ukraine is about longer range missiles, artillery bombs, and the rest that are being used against Kyiv, against Lviv, against major cities across Ukraine where civilians are targeted as well as critical infrastructure and are getting killed. Clearly the Ukrainians at this point have some relatively sophisticated air defense capabilities. Most of these are not getting through, but some are. We're almost four years into this war at this point. What's day-to-day life like? How is it different when you are spending a lot of your time in still what one would call an active war zone, right?
Christopher Miller:
I have an apartment in the Capitol, Central Kyiv, and along with the other 4 million residents of that European Capitol, I go to bed every night anticipating there to be another air attack. They've become much more frequent this year in 2025, we've seen Russia launch not only in greater frequency, but also in greater scale, these attacks using Iranian supplied and designed drones, attack drones, numerous types of missiles including ballistic missiles. The Ukrainians are really only able to shoot them down using the American supplied Patriot weapon systems. And so we go to bed anticipating these attacks and like clockwork, usually between 10:00 PM and midnight, there'll be an air raid siren. Everyone in the city has their own kind of personal plan. My friends who have children, they run across the street to a bomb shelter, to the metro systems, which were designed after World War II to be bomb shelters-
Ian Bremmer:
Atomic [inaudible 00:14:01] strikes.
Christopher Miller:
Myself and many others, we don't have bomb shelters in our buildings, so we sort of curl up in our bathrooms, and everyone who doesn't have a bomb shelter has learned to live by this rule of two walls. Which is try to, if you can, place yourself behind at least two walls, one to take the initial impact, the second to take the shrapnel and debris from that so you won't be badly injured. And then, of course, inevitably these attacks happen and you can hear the buzzing and whirring of these attack drones, huge reverberating explosions from the missiles.
And then we don't sleep much and we get up in the morning and we look outside and we see the destruction wrought by these aerial attacks. That might mean 20 people killed on one day. It can mean 40 people injured the next. And then, of course, there are the attacks on energy infrastructure and other critical infrastructure. Right now that's a big focal point on the Ukrainian side as we head into the autumn and winter seasons. So it's from the front lines to Kyiv all the way, as you mentioned, to Lviv and Western Ukraine near the borders of the EU and NATO, it's a war zone.
Ian Bremmer:
So a lot of support for the Ukrainians right now, particularly from Europe. And that doesn't seem to be in any way winding down going forward. But hard to imagine how much longer the Ukrainians are going to be able to stand up given what they're facing. Not to say they're not courageous, not to say they don't care about their country, but this is just grinding, grinding attacks on the population at large and on a dwindling number of healthy men over 25 that it's hard to call up as reserves. We saw the first major demonstrations against Zelenskyy because of this anti-corruption body. They overturned it given that pressure and given international pressure. But still nobody wants to see those sorts of things happening on the ground in Ukraine. If you look forward, how resilient do you think the Ukrainians can continue to be?
Christopher Miller:
You covered a lot of ground there. Yeah, look, I know the Ukrainians to be incredibly resilient and they know themselves to be, they're also astute observers and readers of Western media, and they follow very closely what our leaders in the West say. And one of the things that they've noticed is that a lot of people in the West like to say, "The Ukrainians are so brave, they can do anything and look at them, stand up to what was believed to be the second most powerful military in the world." But they're getting tired of being framed that way and talked about in that way. Many of my friends and soldiers tell me, "We're not superhuman. We are the second part of that, human, just like you. We die, we bleed. There are fewer of us than there were three and a half years ago."
So you're right that there is a manpower problem. The Ukrainians are very well aware of that. It is a very painful issue. It's not popular to lower the age to mobilize men under what the current mobilization minimum is, which is 25 right now. And so Ukraine's army is getting older, of course, they're becoming fewer with every new Russian assault, every new attack, it's getting harder to mobilize enough men for the fight. At the same time, the Ukrainians understand this is an existential. There is a sort of mantra that has been spoken by the Ukrainians since 2014, and that is, "If Russia stops the war, there will be peace in Ukraine. If the Ukrainians stop, there will be no more Ukraine."
Ian Bremmer:
No more Ukraine, [inaudible 00:18:04] hear it all the time.
Christopher Miller:
I do think that that's more or less accurate, right? If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their country is going to look completely different than it does today, than it has for the last 30 years following its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is what they're fighting for, right? Progress. They've made incredible progress, not only in the past 30 years, but especially since 2014. The irony is that Russia and when Vladimir Putin talks about the root causes of this war, what he's talking about is the perceived creeping eastern advance of NATO and Ukraine becoming a vibrant democracy, more closely aligned with the Western world and Europe than with Russia.
He actually was much closer to that goal in 2013 and 2014 than today, and because of his own doing. He took Crimea by force. He started a war in 2014. He launched Europe's biggest war since the second World War, and that has brought two new members in to NATO. It's pushed Ukraine closer to the west, made it more of a vibrant democracy than it was prior to then. And so his goal is to bring it back in and the Ukrainians understand that. That is why there's an existential element to this. Putin is not going to stop.
Ian Bremmer:
If you're Putin and you see that he can take the losses clearly in terms of his own population, he's not showing a great deal of concern about that. But the amount of time it's taking him to get very incremental gains on the ground in Ukraine is growing, is growing, and the impact on his own economy is getting more substantial, including the ability of the Ukrainians to take a lot of Russian refining capacity off the table. And some of that is Ukraine's own internally developed weapons, right? They have these Flamingo weapons now, for example, that are built in Ukraine that can hit Crimea. They didn't have that a year ago.
Christopher Miller:
An impressive long range drone program.
Ian Bremmer:
Long range drone program, which they're ramping up at global scale, right? I mean, I've heard a million a month is where they want to get in short order. So if you are Putin, and I understand that you don't have any direct special insights on that, but you are spending your entire time professionally on the ground, is there a sense that these soldiers are at some point also... Is time necessarily on Russia's side here, is that the way that it is perceived?
Christopher Miller:
That is the way it's perceived. I think that's right. Perhaps not forever. I don't think that he can continue the pace, the scale of the war that he's currently waging for many, many years to come. But certainly in the short term, we're talking months, six months a year, possibly upwards of two years, I think he can continue to wage his war as he is now. Taking territory isn't the ultimate goal for him here. He takes territory and he uses the ground offensive as leverage. He can dial it up and down. He can order his troops to move forward in Donetsk Oblast or in the Southern Zaporizhzhia Oblast and make it more difficult for Ukraine, right? Apply more pressure on Ukraine. We saw this ground offensive align with all of these flurries of summits with Trump in Alaska, and between Zelenskyy and the Europeans and the White House, these are all happening against the backdrop of the Russians scaling up their air offensive and their ground offensive, right?
So these are tools of leverage. Ultimately, what Putin wants to see is the destruction of Ukraine as a sovereign independent state, and he wants to damage Europe and NATO as a cohesive security structure. And so the people, his soldiers, as you mentioned, they matter much, much less for him, right? He still is able through recruitment, by promising large salaries and bonuses to get 30,000 plus soldiers every month to sign up. He hasn't had to mobilize soldiers except for the one time, I believe, in autumn of 2022. Should he need to do that, I think then there might be a little bit more domestic pressure on Russia. It's true that its economy is not great, but it's not overheating and they can continue prosecuting the war, I think, for at least several months, if not a couple of years. This is also what the Ukrainian military and military intelligence believe and have told me.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, I want to give you at least a little time to talk about the diplomacy, since that's what you've been focused on of late. There's a lot more talk about a ceasefire, not that the Russians are accepting it. A lot more talk about Zelenskyy potentially meeting with Putin, the Europeans, the Americans, a coalition of the willing, a lot more talk about security guarantees. Do you think that we are meaningfully closer to a diplomatic breakthrough today than we were, say, six months ago?
Christopher Miller:
No. No. I don't think we're any closer. And the simple reason is because Putin has not been made to be put in a position where he is forced to negotiate an end to this war. We're seeing Putin go out and say publicly, be very clear about what his goals are, and those goals have not changed or shifted at all since 2022 when he launched his war. We saw Putin recently in Vladivostok say, "The root causes of the war still need to be addressed for there to be lasting peace," right? Those root causes, again, are the issues around his perceived view of NATO expansion eastward, Ukraine's democracy and sovereignty. He wants to see a leader in place that he can control, right? He doesn't want Ukraine to exist as an independent country. He is only ready to sit down at the negotiating table and negotiate away Ukraine's independence and sovereignty.
And he's said that. He's not provided any serious concessions. We hear Donald Trump go out and say that he has managed through his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who's met Putin five times in Moscow now, concessions in this war, and either through misunderstanding, miscommunication, misinterpretation, or pure naivete, Steve Witkoff has come back and said that Putin is willing to concede some territory. Putin himself has come out and said he's not willing to do that.
So I don't think that we're any closer to a sustainable ceasefire, let alone a lasting peace because Putin's positions haven't changed, and until his position does, we're just not there yet. I think it is good that we're seeing the Europeans discuss a coalition of the willing to try to get more specifics or more specific, rather, about what they're willing to provide, should there be a ceasefire and a lasting peace, right? Boots on the ground, intelligence on the part of the United States, air defenses, right? Those are all crucial things that Ukraine will need and it will be great to get those guaranteed in writing should there be a ceasefire or a lasting solution to this war. But that's not going to happen until more pressure is applied on Vladimir Putin to get him to negotiate in earnest.
Ian Bremmer:
And that pressure as of right now, is being applied primarily, and only ineffectively, by the Europeans, in your view.
Christopher Miller:
Correct. I mean, I think the Europeans can do much more, but I think the real pressure should come, and probably will need to come, from the White House, from the United States, and the Trump administration. Which has been, of course, hesitant to do so, right? We've heard Donald Trump level threat after threat of new harsh sanctions and against Vladimir Putin if he continues to prosecute his war. We've heard Donald Trump air his grievances about feeling as though he's being led along by Putin and being frustrated about these attacks on civilian areas that continue.
Ian Bremmer:
But so far no impact.
Christopher Miller:
But so far what we hear from Donald Trump is, "I'll think it over. And in two weeks time, several days from now, soon, I might have to take some action." But so far these have been empty threats. And Vladimir Putin, of course, knows that.
Ian Bremmer:
Chris Miller, thanks for joining the show.
Christopher Miller:
My pleasure. Thank you.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars, otherwise don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends-
How Russia overtook Ukraine's drone advantage
After more than three and half years of war, Russia has become a drone powerhouse. It’s sending bigger and more powerful swarms across the border into Ukraine nearly every day, eroding Kyiv’s early drone advantage. A year ago, Russia was barely sending a thousand drones into Ukraine a month, now it averages six times that. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down how Vladimir Putin prioritized drone production to turn Russia into a drone superpower.
Russia’s full-scale invasion began with embarrassing setbacks and staggering losses. Supply lines broke down, soldiers abandoned tanks, casualties quickly mounted. Meanwhile, Ukraine innovated by using cheap quadcopters armed with grenades. But in the last year, Putin made drones a national priority. He retooled the military, prioritized production, and improved technology. The future of warfare is now being built on the battlefield in real time, and whoever adapts the fastest wins. Will Ukraine be able to regain its edge?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
A combination picture shows Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with Arkhangelsk Region Governor Alexander Tsybulsky in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region, Russia July 24, 2025.
In Alaska, the clock favors Putin
In negotiations, the most desperate party rarely gets the best terms. As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska today to discuss ending the Ukraine War, their diverging timelines may shape what deals emerge – if any. Trump needs a deal fast, Ukraine needs one that lasts, and Russia can afford to wait.
Trump wants a quick foreign policy win to fulfill his overdue campaign promise of ending the war "within 24 hours." With his base growing tired of funding Ukraine and cabinet members like Vice President JD Vance pushing for foreign policy to pivot toward China,Trump may prioritize announcing any deal over negotiating a good one.
US Leverage: Trump wields two powerful tools to force a deal. Against Russia, he could impose secondary sanctions on China's purchases of Russian energy — potentially dealing a devastating blow to Moscow's oil-dependent economy. Against Ukraine, he holds the extreme option of suspending intelligence sharing. While European allies could provide weapons in America's absence, they lack the intel that powers Ukraine’s precision drone strikes.
"Trump may be keen to chase speed over substance," warns Eurasia Group analyst Dani Podgoretskaya, who fears this could produce "a terrible, terrible deal" for Ukraine. However, she says that in meetings this week with EU leaders Trump “supported several Ukrainian demands, including for security guarantees and, most importantly, involving Ukraine in future meetings,” making the scenario of Trump inking a unilateral deal with Putin unlikely.
Meanwhile, Ukraine wants a ceasefire, but only if it lasts. Ukraine’s red lines remain firm: no foreign policy subordination to Russia, no permanent NATO exclusion, and no territorial concessions without "ironclad" security guarantees from the west. While Kyiv is running short on manpower and would potentially even accept a ceasefire that freezes current front lines, analysts say it won't make territorial concessions without meaningful security guarantees — fearing Russia will simply rebuild and invade again.
"The overarching goal for Ukraine is to survive an unprovoked attack on its statehood and prevent Russia from ever coming back," explains Podgoretskaya.
Current map of war in Ukraine
Ukraine's Leverage: Ukraine's greatest strength lies in its ability to refuse. No peace agreement works without Ukrainian consent — Kyiv will simply keep fighting.
If Trump traded territory without Ukrainians at the table and Zelensky capitulated, it would trigger political collapse and potentially spark military rebellion in Ukraine."It would be impossible for [Zelensky] to sell that back home," says Eurasia Group expert Tinatin Japaridze. "Territorial concessions remain a top-of-mind risk for all Ukrainians, and to this end, Kyiv’s capitulation is highly unlikely, though of course Putin will continue to push for this."
Ukraine also retains European backing and could sustain operations for perhaps up to a year without American support. However, a critical vulnerability lurks in Ukraine's defense infrastructure: "A lot of the components they're using for drones come from China," Podgoretskaya warns. "That is potentially a bottleneck, a very dangerous one."
Finally, Russia enters Alaska aiming to buy time and avoid new US sanctions while maintaining maximalist demands: annexation of five Ukrainian regions, permanent NATO exclusion for Ukraine, and strict limits on Ukrainian military forces. Putin may offer Trump small concessions — such as a temporary halt to aerial bombardments — while highlighting potential future US-Russia business opportunities, keeping the door open for future talks without committing to a full ceasefire.
Russia's Leverage: Despite economic damage from sanctions, "Russia can keep going at the expense of long-term growth,” says Podgoretskaya, “They can make sacrifices to keep the war alive until they get what they want." Moscow maintains battlefield superiority in Donbas after 17 months of grinding down Ukrainian defenses, and experts predict these gains will accelerate if fighting continues – with Russia potentially controlling the whole region by the end of the year.
Putin also has domestic incentives to prolong the war. "The economy is now very dependent on military spending. When that is cut, the economy is going to suffer quite dramatically," Podgoretskaya explains. To justify the pain of the war, Putin needs a substantial military victory.
“The Russians are not going to Alaska to make a deal,” says Japaridze. “They’re there to win some time and show both domestically and abroad that Putin is playing the long game.”
The US, Ukraine, and Russia will all attempt to pursue their goals with their leverage. Like many of you, we’ll be watching this afternoon to see what happens next.
India caught in middle as Trump tests out new Russia policy
With friends like these! President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a new 25% tariff on India, one of the US’s closest allies in Asia.
Although India is a “friend”, Trump said, the country’s notoriously high trade barriers had prevented more commerce with the US. The new measures will go into effect on Saturday.
The move comes smack in the middle of rocky, ongoing trade talks between the US and India. Trump wants to crack open India’s vast market for American firms, while India is keen to protect certain domestic industries – particularly pharmaceuticals, auto parts, and agriculture – as well as the access of Indian students and high-skilled workers to the US.
India is in a tough spot – as Trump carries on talks with various countries at once, PM Narendra Modi doesn’t want to get stuck with a higher US tariff rate than other export-oriented Asian competitors who are all jockeying for access to the massive US market.
But Trump has put Modi in another, even trickier bind. He said India will pay a “fine” for its purchase of Russian oil. While details have yet to emerge, this looks like the first instance of Trump using so-called “secondary sanctions” to pressure Vladimir Putin, who has serially ignored Trump’s ongoing demands to end the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this month Trump threatened a tariff of 100% on any countries that trade with Russia unless the Kremlin stops the war within 50 days. This week he cut the deadline to “10 or 12 days.”
India is one of those countries, big league. Delhi purchases roughly 2 million barrels of oil daily from Russia, accounting for 40% of India’s total oil imports. That amount reflects a huge boost in Russian imports after 2022, when European sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine made Russian crude way cheaper for non-European buyers.
Analysts say that India could certainly go back to its traditional suppliers in the Middle East and Africa, but it would have to accept significantly higher costs compared to the blackballed Russian crude it’s gotten used to.
The dragon in the room. Still, if Trump is serious about landing a blow on Russia’s oil-dependent economy, he’ll sooner or later have to look towards the other
billion-person Asian power that gulps down Kremlin crude. China imports more than 2 million barrels of the stuff a day, about a fifth of its total imports. Together with India, the two countries buy more than 80% of Russia’s oil exports, accounting for about 5% of overall global crude demand.
Beijing is also Russia’s largest trade partner overall. With the US locked in tricky trade talks with its biggest global rival, is Trump ready to swing the secondary sanctions hammer at Beijing too?
British soldiers with NATO-led Resolute Support Mission arrive at the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan March 6, 2020.
Hard Numbers: Secret British plan resettles Afghans, More Palestinians die at aid sites, US AIDS relief lives on, robots take the field, & more
19,000: According to a BBC report, the personal details of 19,000 Afghans who had applied to move to the United Kingdom following the 2021 Taliban takeover were leaked in February 2022. The government learned of the data breach in August 2023 and created a secret resettlement scheme for those affected, as it was deemed they were at risk of harm by the Taliban. Under the program, 4,500 Afghans have relocated to the UK.
20: At least 20 Palestinians were killed in a stampede at an aid distribution site operated by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund on Wednesday. The UN says at least 875 people have lost their lives in the past six weeks alone while trying to access aid at these sites, with the majority reportedly gunned down by Israeli security forces. While Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians, it has said it is investigating the incidents.
$400 million: US Republican senators reached a budget deal on Tuesday that will preserve the $400-million President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, which helps to stem the spread of HIV in more than 50 countries and has reportedly saved 26 million lives. President Donald Trump had previously frozen funding for PEPFAR as part of his foreign-aid freeze.
2: A US citizen, Daniel Martindale, who spent more than two years spying on Ukrainian troops for Russia was awarded citizenship by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Martindale reportedly biked from Poland to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022, and surveyed key military positions and facilities from a Ukrainian village near the front line.
4: Our new robot umpire overlords have arrived! Last night’s Major League Baseball All-Star game – a meaningless but fun contest between the sport’s biggest stars – featured a trial system allowing players to appeal to a computerized system to challenge ball-and-strike calls made by human umps. Four out of the five challenges in the game were successful. The system could be introduced in meaningful games at the Major League level as soon as next season. Do we want this?
Zelensky and Putin in front of flags and war.
$300 Ukrainian drones vs. $100 million Russian bombers
The combined message from Kyiv could not have been clearer: we may be far smaller and – on paper at least – weaker, but we can strike hard and reach far into Russia. Using drones produced indigenously for less than the cost of an iPhone, Ukraine took out strategic bombers worth upward of $100 million each – many of which are nearly impossible to replace due to sanctions and Russia’s degraded industrial base. At a 300,000-to-one return on investment, this is the kind of asymmetric operation that can upend the rules of modern warfare.
Just as significant as the material damage is what the attacks revealed: that a small but determined and innovative nation can deploy cheap, scalable, and decentralized tech to challenge a much larger, conventionally superior foe – and even degrade elements of a nuclear superpower’s second-strike capacity. The lessons will reverberate globally, from Taipei to Islamabad.
Perhaps the biggest impact of Ukraine’s battlefield coup may be to challenge the core strategic presumption that has guided Vladimir Putin’s thinking for over three years: that time is on his side. Since the invasion began, Putin has bet on outlasting Ukraine – grinding down its defenses, draining Western support, and waiting for the political winds in Washington and Europe to shift. That assumption has underpinned his refusal to negotiate seriously. But the success of Ukraine’s drone and sabotage operations challenges that theory of victory. It shows that Ukraine is not simply holding the line or surviving a war of attrition; it is shifting the battlefield and expanding the costs of continued war for Russia in ways the Kremlin has not anticipated.
That shift matters, especially in the diplomatic context. The timing of the drone campaign – just 24 hours before a direct round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul – was hardly coincidental. Kyiv’s actions were designed to signal that Ukraine is not negotiating from a position of weakness and won’t be coerced into a bad deal. Though the Istanbul meeting itself was predictably fruitless – lasting just over an hour and reinforcing the irreconcilability of the two sides’ positions – the fact that the Kremlin showed up fresh off such a high-profile embarrassment suggests it may be starting to realize that Ukraine has cards to play and continuing the war carries risks for Russia.
This may not be enough to bring Russia to the negotiating table in good faith, but it could make it more open to limited agreements. To be sure, a permanent peace settlement remains as distant as ever. Kyiv continues to push for an unconditional ceasefire that Russia rejects out of hand. In Istanbul, Moscow proposed two equally unacceptable alternatives: either Kyiv retreats from Russian-claimed territories or accepts limits on its ability to rearm, including a halt to Western military aid. But the right kind of pressure from the United States, coordinated with European allies, could now stand a better chance of extracting a first-phase deal – whether that’s a 30-day ceasefire, a humanitarian corridor, or a prisoner swap – that could then potentially turn into something bigger and more durable.
At the same time, Ukraine’s gains increase the tail risks of dangerous escalation. Russia’s deterrent posture has been eroded. Putin’s red lines – on NATO enlargement, Western weapons use, attacks inside Russia – have been crossed repeatedly without serious consequence. That makes him look weak but also increases the risk that he will feel compelled to escalate the conflict more dramatically to restore his credibility at home and abroad.
Russia’s immediate response to the recent attacks will be more of the same: heavier indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. But a darker possibility is that, boxed in and humiliated, Putin might consider a tactical nuclear strike. The threshold for such an extreme step is high – not least because China, Russia’s most important global partner, strongly opposes nuclear use. That scenario remains unlikely, but less so than before June 1. And Putin is emboldened by the belief that the West – particularly Trump – fears direct military confrontation more than anything. If he assesses that Russia’s position in the war is becoming untenable or its conventional deterrence is crumbling, his calculus could change.
Ukraine has just reminded the Kremlin – and the world – that it can shape events, not just react to them. This doesn’t put it on a path to victory or bring the war to an end. But by showing that it has leverage and that Moscow has more to lose than it thought, Ukraine has altered the strategic equation and opened a narrow window for diplomacy – even if the endgame remains as elusive as ever. The alternative is a deeper and more unpredictable conflict that grows more dangerous the longer it drags on.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 6, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Trump talks peace, Pakistan charms China, Romania, Poland and Portugal go to the polls
Trump seeks peace between Ukraine and Russia - again
US President Donald Trump will speak Monday at 10 am EST to Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss “STOPPING THE 'BLOODBATH'” in Russia’s war with Ukraine, as well as “trade.” After that call, Trump will speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the hopes of brokering a 30-day ceasefire.
But is a deal DOA? Ukrainian sources claim that Moscow insists that Ukrainian troops first withdraw from the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, which doesn’t align with Washington’s proposal. Moscow hasn’t commented, but such demands could torpedo a truce before it begins.
A new eastern axis: Pakistan, China…. and Afghanistan?
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister and deputy Prime Minister, Ishaq Dar, is in Beijing Monday to meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi "on the evolving regional situation in South Asia and its implications for peace and stability.” The meeting follows April’s violent conflict between Pakistan and India which saw Islamabad deploy Chinese weapons.
Is Kabul now in play? While in China, Dar is reportedly also holding trilateral talks with Afghanistan to discuss "enhanced security cooperation". The three countries all border India, and an alliance could threaten that country’s territorial integrity in the north. Pakistan further claims that its ceasefire with India expired Sunday, raising the possibility of renewed hostilities.
A mixed night for the right in trio of European elections
A centrist takes the crown in Romania, the right makes gains in Portugal, and a run-off awaits in Poland.
In Romania, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, bested hard-right election front-runner George Simion 53.8% to 46.2%. The results won’t please the White House, which had plumped for Simion, but will delight the EU, NATO, and Ukraine, which Romania has supported in its war with Russia.
In Portugal, the center-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won 32% of the vote, improving on last year’s results by 4 points and boosting its number of seats in the Assembly to 89. They remain short of an outright majority, though. It was a dismal night for the opposition Socialist Party (PS), which scored just 23% and lost 20 seats, leaving it with just 58. This means that Chega, a hard-right party, will be the joint-second-largest party in Portugal, after it also won 58 seats. This is by far Chega’s best result in its six-year history.
In Poland, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski narrowly bested conservative historian Karol Nawrocki, 31.4% to 29.5%, in the first round of the presidential election. Trzaskowski would help Prime Minister Donald Tusk reform laws enacted by the former governing party, Law and Justice, while Nawrocki would align with the far right. The two men will now face off in a second-round runoff on June 1.