The Ukraine War is a US war on Russia

July 16, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - As the Western media continues shaping narratives depicting a growing divide between the US and Europe regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine - a narrative involving an increasingly disinterested and disengaging US with an increasingly desperate and confrontational Europe - it is important to remember precisely how this war was started and why, as well as the material reality shaping its continuation. 

By doing so, it is revealed the only "division" taking place between the US and Europe is a “division of labor,” a phrase literally spoken  by the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels in February 2025 delegating the continuation of what is a US proxy war on Russia to Europe while the US redirects resources toward Asia. 

Precisely because the war in Ukraine is a US proxy war on Russia, and the fact that Ukraine’s trained military manpower and territory continue to contract under the pressure of Russia’s strategy of attrition, to continue the war will require introducing additional pools of trained military manpower - and to extend Russia further - to do so along a wider front. 

The military build-up of the Baltic states appears to be at a minimum an attempt to fix Russian forces along their border with Russia. The worst case scenario for Moscow would be for the US to repeat with its Baltic state proxies what it has already done in 2008 with its Georgian proxies and what it has done from 2011 onward with its Ukrainian proxies - attack Russia and its allies militarily, precipitating wider war along a wider front.  

Western European nations, including the so-called “coalition of the willing,” led by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have implemented Secretary Hegseth’s directives from February 2025 enthusiastically - directives including to “double down” on arming Ukraine, “spending more on defense,” and convincing the European public of the “threat facing Europe” (meaning Russia). 

With this in mind, it is clear there is not only no split of any kind between the US and its European proxies, Washington’s European proxies have demonstrated unflinching servile obedience even at the cost of placing themselves on the precipice of war with neighboring nuclear-armed Russia themselves.  

The Larger, Long-Engineered War on Russia

Surrounding Russia with a number of geopolitical and economic crises to “extend Russia” with the hope of eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse, is the subject of numerous US policy papers spanning the entirety of the post-Cold War period. 

There is even a paper published by the RAND Corporation literally titled, “Extending Russia,” listing a number of measures the US has since implemented verbatim before and since its publication in 2019. 

The paper lays out the economic and geopolitical measures the US has since used to both prepare the grounds for this current proxy war, and to both perpetuate and expand it over time. These measures include targeting Russia’s energy exports including specifically targeting pipeline expansion (Nord Stream, since destroyed by the US), the imposition of sanctions on Russia, the destabilization, destruction and/or the political capture of Russia’s allies both along its borders and beyond (including Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and Armenia, as well as Syria), and the arming of Ukraine itself following its political capture by Washington in 2014. 

This latter measure, the RAND paper admits, would inevitably invite in wider conflict with Russia - and it did. The paper also admitted the measure would likely end in “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” and that, “it might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.”

The purpose of US policy is not to necessarily “defeat” Russia in Ukraine, or in Georgia, or Armenia, Syria, or in any other particular region - but to create a multitude of crises mounting ever increasing pressure on Russia to create cracks and collapse wherever opportunities allow, and eventually precipitate overall collapse following pressure along a large and growing collection of fronts. 

And this is precisely what the US is doing. 

It doesn’t matter that Ukraine can’t win the current US proxy war against Russia - or that Europe collectively might not be able to either. US objectives are to create a growing conflict that eventually outpaces Russia’s ability to respond and defend itself against. 

Similar strategies have been used against other targets of US “regime change” including Libya, Syria, and Iraq spanning decades before finally and fully succeeding. 

Thus, the measure of Russia’s success is not simply on the battlefield in Ukraine, but its success or failure in defending itself against this much wider campaign of US-driven encroachment - a campaign that has transcended all US presidential administrations since the end of the Cold War without exception and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. 

West Says Ukraine is Now “Winning” and Why it is Lying (Again)

May 25, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - A recent article published in the Kyiv Independent titled, “Is Ukraine starting to win the war again?” tests the maxim that if you need to ask, the answer is probably “no.” 

As the collective Western media has done since 2022, the Kyiv Independent cites “flatlined” Russian territorial gains and expanding drone strikes deep inside Russian territory (the article attributes to Ukraine despite the New York Times admitting such strikes are enabled by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US military)  - all as evidence of growing Russian weakness and increasing Ukrainian strength. 

A War of Attrition Is Not Measured in Territory or Headlines

In reality - and even as the article itself admits - the war is not one of territorial gains or headline-grabbing drone strikes, but one of attrition. 

At one point the article even admits, “the upper hand will be gained by the side in whose favor the long attritional fight is running.” 

In any war of attrition, the primary factors lending leverage to one side over another is military industrial production and the ability to maintain or expand trained manpower. By implication this also means the ability to maintain the economic, social, and political stability required to support these enabling factors.  

Here the Kyiv Independent concedes Russia wins out big in both categories, admitting “Russia continues to be able to steadily recruit between 30-35,000 new soldiers per month, enabling Moscow to sustain its losses on the battlefield,” and that, “Moscow aims to produce 7.3 million FPVs in 2026.” 

While the Kyiv Independent claims the quality of those 30,000-35,000 Russian troops recruited each month are low, poorly trained, and poorly equipped in the field, it avoids discussing Ukraine’s recruitment struggles. This includes the fact that - unlike Russia’s recruited manpower who voluntarily sign contracts - much of Ukraine’s manpower is pressed into service - sometimes literally being beaten into submission and dragged to the frontline. 

Regarding drone production, other Ukraine-based sources put Ukraine’s drone output somewhere around 4 million per year, or about half of Russia’s production numbers according to the Kyiv Independent. 

It should be pointed out that in addition to Russia outproducing Ukraine (and in reality, Ukraine’s American and European sponsors) in terms of drones - an area of supposed “Ukrainian” strength - Russia continues outproducing Ukraine and its Western sponsors in all other categories of conventional military power as well, from artillery shells and precision-guided missiles, to armored vehicles and anti-aircraft systems. 

Imagining Victory 

The article repeats recent talking points circulating throughout Wall Street-funded Washington-based policy think tanks regarding the cutting off of Russian forces from use of US-based SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communication network as well as high-profile drone strikes deep inside Russia threatening to risk what Western pundits call  “breaking the key social contract at the heart of Putin's rule,” - that is - the illusion of peace at home while Russia wages war abroad. 

However, none of these claims - whether real or imagined - impact the fundamental factors that either win or lose a war of attrition. 

Drone strikes on Russia have targeted energy production, storage, and export facilities, manufacturing centers, and other infrastructure critical for both Russia’s military and economic viability. While these strikes have caused damage, it has not been at a pace greater than Russia’s capacity to repair and/or adapt to the strikes. 

The drone strikes have raised the costs for Russia of the ongoing US proxy war, but have not changed the overall math of attrition that favors Russia owed to its structural advantages. And while this might seem like a fundamental failure for the US - it is actually precisely what US policymakers set out to do as laid out in policy papers stretching back years before the Russian operation began in 2022. 

US Seeks to “Extend” Russia, Not Necessarily Defeat it in Ukraine  

What the drone strikes also achieve is the creation of a psychological effect - not on Russia’s leadership or population - but on the Ukrainian population and the wider Western public - especially the European public. 

Western Media Hails More Ukraine “Wonder Weapons” That Russia Also Has

April 7, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The Western media has shifted much of its attention toward the most recently launched US war of aggression in the Middle East against Iran - but corners of the Western media remain dedicated to shaping public perception regarding many other fronts along the US’ global war on multipolarism, including the ongoing US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. 

Familiar propaganda formulas continue to be utilized to keep these other, older wars raging as the US escalates around the globe elsewhere, including claims of new “wonder weapons” given to or developed by Ukraine. 

Ranging from M777 artillery pieces, to HIMARS, Patriot missile systems, F-16s, and ATACMS - each weapon platform was introduced as a “gamechanger” that would shift Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield despite the same media also insisting Ukraine was already “winning.” 

What many of these articles leave out, however, is even more important than what they present to audiences. 

Ukraine’s Robotic Wonder Weapons 

A recent surge in stories about Ukrainian “ground robots” is now following this familiar pattern. 

The Guardian in its article, “‘The frontline is like Terminator’: fighting robots give Ukraine hope in war with Russia,”  is just one of many articles claiming Ukraine is transforming into a “centre for the development of unmanned weapons,” implying unparalleled expertise possessed by Ukraine regarding aerial drones and now “ground” or “land robots.” 

The Guardian insists Ukraine’s expertise is so immense that it is “highly sought after” even amid Washington’s latest war against Iran - claiming Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among several Persian Gulf states that have signed a 10-year defense agreement with Ukraine “to provide them with low-cost Ukrainian interceptors.”  

What the Guardian fails to mention is the fact that the deal involves technology sharing, factory construction, and localized production in the Middle East that will take years to manifest into actual military capabilities for these Persian Gulf states, implying that Ukraine itself lacks a surplus in drone production as it struggles on the battlefield against Russia.  

The article is - however - primarily about UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles) and how they have filled every combat role along the frontline from infantry and engineering, to logistics and medical evacuations. 

Buried deep in the article, almost at the very end, it makes an admission that, “Russia also makes extensive use of ground systems.”

What the article does not say is that Russia is producing many times more unmanned weapons of all kinds, from drones to ground vehicles, in quantities the collective West’s collective military industrial production cannot match.

US Beta-Testing China Blockade with Attacks on Russian Energy Exports

December 6, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The incremental build-up toward an overt blockade against Russian energy exports continues with recent aerial and naval drone strikes on both Russian energy production facilities deep within Russian territory, as well as Russian energy terminals and ships used to carry Russian energy exports moving to and from them. 

The most recent incidents include attacks on tankers off the coast of Turkey in the Black Sea and naval drone strikes on the Novorossiysk Fuel Oil Terminal. There was also an apparent attack on a tanker involved in moving Russian energy exports, off the coast of Senegal in West Africa, Newsweek would report.

Western media sources have, over the course of several years now, admitted that Ukraine’s aerial and naval drone campaigns are facilitated and directed by the United States through its military command center in Wiesbaden, Germany as well as through the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which has assumed control over Ukraine’s intelligence services since as early as 2014, the New York Times admitted. 

The New York Times in its 2025 article, “The Secret history of America’s Involvement in the Ukraine War,” would admit specifically that: 

“…the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.”

Besides admittedly directing the attacks itself, the US enables such operations through the use of unique intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities no other Western nation possesses. Thus, attempts to assign responsibility to nations like the UK and France still ultimately implicate the US. 

In regards to aerial drones strikes on Russian energy production facilities deep inside Russian territory, Reuters would publish its article, “US intelligence helps Ukraine target Russian energy infrastructure, FT reports,” noting: 

“The U.S. has been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities for months in a joint effort to weaken the economy and force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. 

U.S. intelligence has helped Kyiv strike important Russian energy assets, including oil refineries, far beyond the front line, the newspaper said, citing unnamed Ukrainian and U.S. officials familiar with the campaign.”

While the recent attacks on Russian energy production and exports is being presented by the Western media and even some independent commentators as being at cross purposes with US President Donald Trump’s various “peace” proposals, they are actually the manifestation of long-standing US geopolitical objectives aimed at stretching out and undermining Russia and beyond. 

Attacks on Russian Energy Production and Exports Years in the Making

This strategy was laid out years before Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine in 2022, aimed at “extending Russia,” eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse, and all as part of a much wider strategy of likewise isolating and containing a rising China. 

In a 2019 RAND Corporation paper literally titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” in its table of contents included both “geopolitical measures,” like “provide lethal aid to Ukraine” to trigger the now ongoing proxy war with Russia, and “economic emasures” including “hinder petroleum exports” and “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.” 

Very clearly these policies have been implemented for years under the Obama, Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations and include, first sanctions targeting the construction of Nord Stream 2 and eventually its destruction, as well as sanctions placed on Russian energy production and exports from 2014 onward. The more recent physical attacks on Russian energy production inside Russian territory with the aid of US intelligence and now strikes on tankers used to transport Russian energy exports abroad represents an escalation of these long-stated US objectives. 

New US “Peace” Proposal is “Minsk 3.0” Repackaged (Yet Again)

November 28, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has once again proposed what it calls a “peace plan” amid its own ongoing proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

The contents of the proposal are irrelevant. The US does not seek peace in general, and certainly not with Russia specifically. Instead, and what previous proposals likewise represented, this is an attempt to freeze the ongoing conflict, rebuild Ukraine’s armed forces - and if possible - move Western troops into Ukraine itself to create a bufferzone possibly forcing advancing Russian forces to stop. 

Beyond mere speculation, this is what US Secretary of Defense (now “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth laid out himself in a public directive delivered to Europe in Brussels in February of this year. 

Despite Secretary Hegseth going out of his way to insist, “this must not be Minsk 3.0,” the directive not only explicitly lays out a “Minsk 3.0” framework complete with freezing the ongoing conflict (not ending it), “doubling down” and “re-committing” to Ukraine’s “security needs,” thus rebuilding Ukraine’s armed forces, it actually exceeded it with an additional Syria-style bufferzone imposed by “European and non-European troops.” 

Just as Minsk 1 and 2 prevented Ukraine’s armed forces from being overwhelmed and any actual peace being achieved, this new “Minsk 3.0” proposal seeks to freeze the conflict once again, specifically to prevent any genuine resolution from emerging. 

With “European and non-European troops” placed into Ukraine, Russia’s ability to resume its Special Military Operation (SMO) once it becomes clear the US has once again violated its agreement with Russia, will be complicated by a now deeply entrenched NATO presence inside Ukraine - just as US and Turkish forces complicated the full retaking of Syria by Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies, ultimately leading to the complete collapse of the Russian and Iranian-backed government in late 2024.

Even if the US were to propose a deal explicitly excluding any of these possibilities it must be remembered the original Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements did as well and were simply, blatantly, and very deliberately violated by both the US and its Ukrainian and European proxies. 

It must also be remembered that the US, far beyond just the conflict in Ukraine, has violated every single agreement, treaty, and understanding ever proposed to Russia - and before that - the Soviet Union. There exists a long trail of unilaterally upended arms treaties, memorandums, and agreements left by successive US administrations including by President Donald Trump himself including the now scrapped Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies. 

The current Trump administration has in just under its first year in office alone, used proposed “peace deals” and “ceasefires” with Iran and Lebanon-based Hezbollah as cover for attempted and successful decapitation strikes by both US proxies (Israel), as well as strikes carried out by the US itself against Iran. 

The Russian Response

It is impossible to say with certainty how the Kremlin interprets these proposals. It is almost impossible to conceive Russia’s leadership could be naive enough to believe anything being proposed by the US or even believing the US could in any conceivable way seek peace in the first place.

However, with Minsk 1 and 2 in hindsight and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself having agreed to both proposals despite later admitting they were “sheer deception” according to Russian state media, TASS, it raises questions as to why these agreements were ever accepted in the first place and whether or not Russia will accept future proposals by the West. 

It could be that Russia was simply not ready in 2014-2015 to launch what would eventually shape into the 2022 SMO and felt the time Minsk 1 and 2 created for both sides could be better utilized by Russia and eventually place it in a stronger position than Ukraine and its US sponsors when the SMO was launched.  

Future Global Order Pivots on Ukraine Proxy War

October 21, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Russian forces in recent weeks have been increasingly encircling the cities of Pokrovsk in central Donetsk while approaching Lyman and Siversk further to the north. Looking at various live mapping projects tracking the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, nascent pincers appear to be emerging in what some analysts believe could be a large-scale encirclement of what remains of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” in the Donbass region.

Comprising a number of heavily-defended built-up urban centers from Kostiantynovka and extending northward toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk closer to Lyman, Ukraine’s remaining fortress belt likely comprises thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces. Their encirclement by Russian forces would deal a catastrophic defeat to Ukraine and its US sponsors and signify the achievement of a major Russian objective amid its ongoing Special Military Operation (SMO) - the full capture of the Donbass region. 

Over the next weeks and months, the fate of this military operation will be decided, both on the battlefield in the Donbass region, far beyond it in the strategic depths of both Ukraine and Russia, as well as geopolitically worldwide. 

Realities of a Major Donbass “Encirclement”

While many may imagine a World War 2-style physical encirclement of Ukraine’s fortress belt by rolling columns of Russian armored and infantry units, the encirclement will much more likely take the form of an operational, rather than physical envelopment. 

Russian ground forces will continue their incremental advance along the line of contact, approaching Ukrainian-held towns and cities, besieging them, and eventually taking them, ensuring salients that emerge are well-protected from Ukrainian-counter attack as well as from the sort of operational envelopment Russia itself has been and seeks to continue to impose on Ukrainian forces. 

Instead, Russian long-range warfare capabilities and drone warfare in particular - which has evolved rapidly in terms of both quality and quantity - will be able to target Ukraine’s line of communications along the entire rear of its remaining fortress belt. With the inevitable fall of Pokrovsk to Russian forces in central Donetsk and Russian forces approaching Lyman in the north, Russian FPV (first-person view) and fiber optic drones will be in range of virtually everything in between. 

The encirclement of Pokrovsk and the emerging salient extending north reaching almost directly west of Kostiantynovka has already compromised logistics for Kostiantynovka itself. As Russian forces consolidate control in this region, drone operations targeting logistics for Kramatorsk and Slavyansk will become increasingly effective together with Russian forces doing likewise while moving from north to south near Lyman and Siversk.

The closer these pincers get to one another, the more effective operational encirclement will become and the more precarious Ukrainian positions will become in between them. 

Just as Pokrovsk itself does not require complete physical encirclement by Russian forces to severely compromise Ukrainian logistics and thus undermine defensive positions inside the city, Russia does not necessarily need to physically encircle the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk section of Ukraine’s fortress belt to severely compromise both logistics for it and military positions within it.

In some ways, an operational encirclement would be preferable to a physical envelopment. 

Because Russia is fighting what is essentially a war of attrition seeking to demilitarize Ukraine rather than focusing on the rapid seizure of territory, it seeks to force Ukraine to commit huge amounts of reserves to Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the fortress belt to meet well-established Russian military positions and long-range fires.

A rapid Russian advance toward the Dnieper River or beyond, would be costly and would afford what remains of Ukraine’s forces the ability to operate closer and closer to their own base of material support along its border with NATO. Instead, Ukraine is forced to continuously send troops and material to the current line of contact where Russia is destroying it.

Western Actions On and Beyond the Battlefield  

The Western media now accepts that Russia is both fighting and decisively winning this war of attrition and that there is little the US and its European client states can do to stop it - at least in terms of continued military support for Ukrainian forces.