Russia

Mid-afternoon Tuesday, a missile struck the town of Przewodow in eastern Poland close to the Ukrainian border, killing two. The incident immediately set off alarm bells around NATO and the world, as Poland, a member of the military alliance, could invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, bringing all 30 members to its defense. The Polish government is considering invoking Article 4 of the treaty, which allows any member state to call a meeting of all members to discern if "territorial integrity, political independence or security… is threatened." NATO was due to meet on Wednesday anyway, but the tragedy in Poland has superseded the gathering’s planned lineup.

With the recapture of the key southern port city of Kherson, Ukraine has achieved yet another success in its nearly nine-month war with Russia. But as winter approaches and conditions worsen, both sides will face new challenges, and the West’s support will be tested. As the Institute for the Study of War indicated in a recent assessment of the conflict, it is unlikely that combat activity will drop significantly in the coming months. As the early winter rains roll over Ukraine, the region’s infamous mud will prove to be an impediment to maneuver warfare. That period will then give way to the freezing temperatures that characterize the Eastern European winter. Those temperatures will put an end to the mud, allowing forces to more effectively continue operations.

If you listened only to the rhetoric of so-called national conservatives, you would think progressives were their polar opposites. But on the issue of foreign policy, it seems like they can find some common ground. It was reported on Tuesday that the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Biden asking him to negotiate with Russia. It was later reported that the same letter had been hastily withdrawn after massive backlash within the Democratic Party. The missive was apparently written and signed in June, updated recently, and somehow carelessly published without all of the signatories’ consent. Either way, it seems to represent something real within the Democrats' progressive wing.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu haven’t really been on speaking terms. That is, until last weekend, when the two defense chiefs conversed with each other twice in three days. The readouts released by the Defense Department are about as brief as brief can get. They don’t tell us much about what was said, other than the general observation that Austin, a former four-star army general, swatted away Moscow’s explanations for the war in Ukraine. What the conversations illustrate more than anything is just how rare they've been. Indeed, the reason why so many news outlets wrote about the Austin-Shoigu calls was because they were extraordinary.

For centuries before Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene, Russian foreign policy has been shaped by the country’s need for warm-water ports. To be a great power in Europe and the Near East, Russia must have access to the Mediterranean. Commercial as well as military considerations dictate this. In the eighteenth century Russia conquered the khanate of Crimea and acquired a splendid location for a new Black Sea port — what is now the city of Sevastopol. The Crimean peninsula had been a gateway from Asia to the Mediterranean since the days of the ancient Greeks, who built some of their northernmost colonies there. Russia made Sevastopol the permanent home of its Black Sea Fleet.

Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz announced this week that Israel would maintain its policy of not supplying weapons to Ukraine. This drew criticism, including charges that Israel has a moral obligation to help Ukraine and is instead foolishly prizing its relations with Russia. Critics also note that Israel’s archenemy Iran is providing weapons and advisors to Russia. They further point out that Israel’s Ukraine arms embargo puts it out of step with Israel’s most important partners in the West, especially the United States. Yet aiding Kyiv is a far riskier bet for Jerusalem than for most Western capitals. This is no easy call, and the one Israel made is probably the right one.

Traditionally, the GOP has been the favorite of those concerned with safety and national security. The party of Ronald Reagan emphasized the need for strong engagement abroad, a willingness to project power when necessary, and a commitment to the free world. Yet the contours of the conservative movement have begun to change in recent years, calling into question the GOP’s credibility on the issue of security. The growing support for a sort of soft isolationism is a problem. It is also fundamentally not conservative. Prominent voices from the American right have been carrying the banner of soft isolationism for years, from Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance to Senator Josh Hawley and former president Donald Trump.

Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine is coming up on its eighth month, and the costs to the Kremlin’s military have been immense. Increasingly isolated on the world stage, Vladimir Putin has joined the world’s club of pariah states, the only group willing to give him support. Chief among his allies is the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state with similarly imperialistic designs and global isolation. This axis has been brewing for some time — the two nations worked together extensively in Syria, for example — but the relationship has reached new heights as the Russian armed forces buckle under the strain of war. Perhaps the most potent symbols of this relationship are the hundreds of Iranian drones flooding into Ukraine to fill a gap in Russia’s weapons inventory.

Ukraine’s devastating attack on the Crimean Bridge and Russia’s sickening response — deliberately targeting civilians — perfectly encapsulate how these adversaries are fighting this war. Ukraine has a coherent strategy, effective operational design, and close coordination among its forces. Russia is failing because it has none of this. The centerpiece of Ukraine's strategy is eviscerating Russian combat power without getting into a raw slugfest that would sacrifice its own troops. That means knocking out Russian combat power without a head-on battle, wherever possible. How does Ukraine do that?

What’s more alarming than President Trump trying to frighten Kim Jong-un with “fire and fury”? President Biden trying to frighten Americans with Putin. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” the president riffed at a New York fundraiser, while fretting to supporters about his need to find that elusive off-ramp for the Russians. Biden’s loose talk about Putin’s formidability contrasted with US handwringing fits a pattern. Pervasive throughout Putin’s war has been far too much focus on what the United States should do to help Putin find these mythical off-ramps, and on how to restrain Ukraine to prevent it from getting nuked.