Understanding what is happening in the war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly difficult today, because news of what is happening on the battlefield has completely disappeared. We are told that the front is motionless, which is not true because the Russians have conquered Constantinople and are about to do the same with Limam and have reached the outskirts of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. For the Western media, only Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, bombed Russian territory, and hit refineries in Russia make the news, because this is the narrative that the paid or intellectually corrupt journalists of the major Western newspapers have decided we must swallow. The slogan that sums up this orientation is: "Ukraine is winning."
Judging by the effects of the gigantic explosion (see photo) that razed several neighborhoods of the town of Vyshneve, near Kiev, which the Russians struck, detonating an ammunition warehouse stored among civilian homes, one would not think so, combined with the news coming from the battlefield; but a premise is nevertheless essential. The European Union has secured a ruling from the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) establishing that it is a criminal offense to reproduce and disseminate content published by Russia Today and any news sourced from Russian sources, and has also established that this constitutes a personal criminal offense. In other words, it hypocritically claims that news can be personally found online, but not disseminated. This measure follows the personal sanctions imposed on analysts and commentators on the war in Ukraine, such as those imposed on Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud, accused of promoting disinformation and propaganda in favor of the Kremlin. His bank accounts were frozen and he was subjected to other possible harassment through an administrative measure, which is difficult to appeal, for having merely commented on what is happening based on his own knowledge (worse than the USSR's actions against dissidents in the 1970s).With that in mind, let's take stock of what is happening.
Ukraine's strategy
After four and a half years of war, Ukraine is exhausted. Its energy, logistics, industrial, and manufacturing infrastructure has been carpet-bombed and razed, and today it no longer produces anything, yet it is supported entirely by European Union funding (i.e., from our pockets). With the funds received, the Ukrainian authorities claim to pay pensions and salaries, provide healthcare and education services, cover the cost of repairing damage caused by drone, missile, and bomb strikes, and ultimately finance the war effort, while they are appropriating an uncontrolled and uncontrollable amount of these funds.
The war forced more than 8 million Ukrainians to flee their country, seeking refuge in Russia, the aggressor country, demonstrating that they evidently did not consider it an enemy. Another 7 million or so found refuge in European countries, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. Western governments welcomed them, offering them generous benefits to live as refugees, or finding work and integrating into society. These, in particular, left Ukraine because of the war, refusing to fight; the diaspora is particularly large among young people who can be mobilized. Due to the combined effect of these migratory phenomena, the deaths, the populations that have come under Russian control, and everything the war has brought with it, it is estimated that today the Ukrainian population does not exceed 18 million (Kiev government data from 2025), compared to 48 million before the start of the war, which in Ukraine, moreover, dates not from the beginning of the so-called "special operation", but from the Maidan coup of 2014.
Due to the continuous loss of territory, Ukraine today continues to retreat on the battlefield and is structuring its response strategy by seeking to inflict increasing damage on Russia, bombing its territory with drones and missiles, coordinating its military production base with that of European countries where it produces weapons, sheltered from Russian bombing and using their airspace and resources as attack corridors into Russian territory. It receives US and NATO intelligence assistance to identify and reach its targets. By doing so, he hopes to cause so much damage to Russia that it will be forced to come to the negotiating table and negotiate on an equal basis, renouncing possession of the territories conquered on the battlefield.
The intensified bombing of Crimea is intended to undermine Russian control of the peninsula, making life difficult by cutting off electricity, water supplies, food supplies, and everything else necessary for life. The bombing of refineries and the sinking of Russian oil tankers is intended to cut off the sale of Russian oil and thus the flow of money needed to finance the war. The results of this strategy are exaggerated by Western media, serving to spread disinformation, forgetting to add that the smoke columns they show us are often significant: sometimes what's burning is just the drone's fuel, or it's the result of a localized fire that causes minimal damage (in other words, theatrical actions planned by a group that does just that for a living).
Russia's strategy
Since the beginning of the war, Russian objectives and strategy have changed over time. Initially, Russia demanded Ukraine transform into a federal state and grant broad autonomy to the Donbas regions, which had rebelled against the central government and the nationalist coup d'état. The coup sought to impose the Ukrainian language on the Russian-speaking population, eradicating their identity and joining NATO to position itself as a bulwark against Russia. It was then in Putin's interest not to dismember the Ukrainian electorate, depriving it of the Russian-speaking component of Donbas, in order not to alter the balance of power among the different segments of the population and thus limit the nationalist forces' control of the government. Putin was ultimately confident in the results of future democratic elections. The nationalists, facing the threat of growing opposition, responded by militarily attacking and bombing Donbas.
Once the "special operation" began and Russia withdrew from Kiev due to the resistance it encountered, realizing the impracticability of the federal solution, it reasserted its ownership of Crimea, which it had annexed in 2014 and which had always been Russian territory, and of the four oblasts of Kerson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk, inhabited predominantly by Russian-speaking people. The continuation of the war and the evolving conflict on the battlefield, which saw Russia completely liberate Lugansk Oblast and partially but significantly the others, pushed Putin to broaden his demands, with the creation of a buffer zone in the border territories of Sumy and Kharkov oblasts, from where Ukrainian incursions into Russia took place (Kursk, for example). In March 2026, it took note of the Ukrainian positions and the situation on the battlefield and began to reclaim these two oblasts and Dnipropetrovsk, partially occupied, bringing the border of the Russian Federation to the banks of the Dnieper and then continuing along a ridge that reaches the state border, in the Sumy oblast, not excluding the possibility of extending its presence to the entire Odessa oblast, to create a link with Transnistria.
A simple glance at the map shows that doing so would achieve the dual effect of completely depriving Ukraine of access to the sea, thus putting an end to any ambition for economic development, especially given the loss of the country's richest regions in mineral resources, and of creating a security cordon around Ukraine. Putin has realized he cannot trust the Ukrainians and their Western sponsors and has decided to make any aspirations of the country to become a military power in Europe, a barracks for the EU's praetorians, unrealistic. By reducing Ukrainian nationalism to an enclave, making it harmless, and significantly reducing its demographic size, this plan is facilitated and brought to fruition by Ukrainian nationalism itself, which now unchallenged dominates the Kiev government, which is characterized as monolingual in a country comprised of numerous ethnic groups and where, in addition to Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian are spoken. A government that imposes a single state religion, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, supported by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in exchange for generous benefits; a government that upholds the superiority of the Ukrainian race, which traces its origins to nomadic tribes of Finnish origin who settled along the country's rivers; a government with Nazi-Fascist political leanings, drawing on the political experience of the UPA, which during the Second World War was responsible for the genocide of more than 100,000 Poles and Jews. It must be said that Ukraine's very claim to that experience, as well as the naming of brigades and battalions after Nazi-Fascist figures, is undermining Poland's support for Ukraine.
Is Ukraine a liberal, pluralist democracy worth supporting?
Ukraine, like Russia, is not a pluralistic and liberal democracy. Its institutional characteristics do not derive from the country's martial law, caused by the ongoing war, which has led to the outlawing of 14 political parties. Rather, they are intrinsic, structurally connected to the political regime imposed by the "Orange Revolution" on the country with the events in Maidan Square, funded by the CIA to destabilize the EU economy and break Russia into many small states for colonization. Ukraine has one of the highest corruption rates in the world: before the war began, a German agency ranked Ukraine well above Belarus on its list of the most corrupt countries. Recent events are confirming this: power is held by a xenophobic, racist, illiberal oligarchy, hostile to the rule of law and cultural freedom, which disregards linguistic rights, imposes a state religion, and persecutes other faiths. It has purged saints of Russian origin from the calendar. A regime plagued by Russophobia, to the point of burning books written in Russian or by Russian authors, banning music composed by Russians, and a state where anyone who speaks Russian in public is subject to arrest.
Clearly, the parameters that define its legal system are incompatible with those of the European Union, whose legal system protects minorities, both linguistically and culturally, and safeguards religious freedom. Allowing Ukraine to join the European Union is tantamount to transplanting a devastating cancer into the European order, capable of completely subverting its institutions, completely undermining its freedoms, and radically transforming the structure of its partner states.
From an economic perspective, Ukraine's accession to the European Union would exacerbate its economic crisis, compounding the ongoing deindustrialization with the total failure of the EU's agricultural economy, which would absorb the bulk of EU funding, thus dumping European farmers. Its accession required and requires non-repayable refinancing for an illiberal and identitarian war, defending not the civil liberties of the Ukrainian people, but the racial supremacy of a segment of them that seeks to impose the dominance of their language, culture, religion, and race on the rest of the population. The governments of Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic understood this well, having decided to halt all funding for the country's war effort. Romania also understood this, but shady Western manipulation of the election results led to the annulment of the presidential elections a year ago to place a friend of the democratic West in power. However, it cannot be ruled out that with the 2026-27 elections, the new European governments will reduce funding to Ukraine, causing the collapse of its army.
Making this even more likely is the situation on the battlefield, which sees the Russian army advancing in the Zaporozhye and Dnipropetrovsk regions, completing the liberation of Donetsk Oblast with the fall of Kostyantynovka and Liman, and beginning the encirclement of the cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk. It is highly plausible that once its objectives in Donbass are achieved, the Russian army will continue to fight until the Ukrainian army collapses and the Ukrainian state collapses, thus ending the battle with Ukrainian nationalism once and for all. Peace negotiations are now impossible, and the war will only be resolved on the battlefield, barring significant government reversals in some major nation like France or Germany.
Western support for the war
Western states, after having renounced , precisely at the initiative of the Ukrainians who sabotaged the Nord Stream, the possibility of having access to low-cost energy from Russia, have decided to persist in the project of breaking up the Russian state in order to colonize it and are proceeding with their own rearmament, making available the capital and resources necessary to sustain the war, wearing down Russia through Ukraine and trusting in the fact that it is the Ukrainians who will shed the blood on the battlefield. After an incalculable number of deaths (contrary to Zelensky's repeated claims, in the last two years, the Russians have returned 18,325 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers against the 588 provided by the Ukrainians: a ratio of 30 to 1) and with the recruitment of new conscripts, implemented through the bussification of Ukrainians of military service age who are hiding to avoid being sent to the front, the government has organized teams of recruiters who hunt them down, kidnap them and force them to leave for the front, after having subjected them to every kind of torture, so much so that many of them have been found in hospital, reduced to semi-corpses, on which the treatment they have undergone was evident (against these practices there have been popular and mass protests even in Volhynia). But the shortage of men for the front remains acute, and so the Western countries that hosted the majority of Ukrainian exiles who refused to be drafted are now proceeding to deprive them of all benefits to induce them to "voluntarily" repatriate and enlist, only to die on the battlefield. This is the decision of the German, Polish, Irish, and, increasingly, other governments, also due to the growing hatred for migrants who enjoy services that erode the welfare of the natives.
The Ukrainians are making up for the shortage of men not only by recruiting mercenaries paid with European subsidies, but also by experimenting with robotic systems that should enable remote warfare in the future. In the absence of men to be deployed directly on the front, the Ukrainians are resorting to personnel contracted or sent by various Western governments, which meanwhile are using the Ukrainian battlefield as a training and testing ground for new weapons, practicing their skills in piloting them, all to the benefit of the armament industries. The number of "volunteers" sent by drug cartels to master drone techniques is particularly high.
War is convenient, war is business, and war fuels the arms trade, as evidenced by the weapons supplied to Ukraine being found on war zones around the world (resold at a profit by those who wield power in Ukraine and enrich themselves at the expense of others).
The Russian production system and the war
After an initial period of disarray, due to the unexpected Ukrainian resistance, the Russian army reorganized with its characteristic slowness and pachydermic pace. The latent production system supporting the war effort was gradually reactivated (the Russians never destroyed the Soviet Union's war industry, but rather put it on standby), enormous capital was made available, scientific research and testing of new weapons resumed, and this allowed the Russian army to close the initial gap with Ukrainian armaments, supplied by NATO.
The basic strategy remained unchanged: the Russians continued to wage a war of attrition, slowly and steadily eroding the enemy to consume its material and human resources. The main reason for this choice is to avoid excessive losses, but also the fact that Russia possesses an immense territory, vast economic resources, and a larger and more motivated population, so much so that it has been able to rely, at least until now, solely on the recruitment of well-paid volunteers. What has changed is the integration of new technologies such as drones, which were initially imported from Iran and are now developed domestically and used to prepare the ground, without the need for tanks (which have become vulnerable), and to facilitate infiltration and incursions by small groups into enemy territory.
In this new type of warfare, the objective is the annihilation of the adversary, the individualization of the conflict, the elimination of each individual soldier, the distinction between civilian population and the front, avoiding hitting the former as much as possible and severely penalizing the soldier in the trenches. This type of warfare requires patience, but it guarantees certain results. These tactical and strategic reasons explain the slowness of Russia's action in Donbass and render vague and useless any considerations regarding the Russian army's ability to invade the territory of European Union states, which would simply be a burden for Russia to manage, especially given its population of less than 150 million.
In other words, Russia appears to be in no hurry, continuing to fight until every last Ukrainian takes up arms, organizing and directing its economic resources to the war, and waiting for the political, economic, and military conditions to be created to guarantee its own security. Ukraine's recent shift in strategy is less effective than it is being portrayed: the number of drone strikes hitting targets is increasingly low (once again, evidence of continued technological evolution on both sides), and lately, the Ukrainians have been "forced" to strike civilian buildings like the Wildberry (Russian Amazon) warehouse to demonstrate their ability to achieve something and to make the population feel the weight of the war. In any case, these attacks are increasing the number of Russian politicians who are tired of Putin's minimalist approach: aside from Karaganov and others who would gladly launch a tactical nuclear bomb to remind Westerners of Russia's military might, there are also "impatient" statements from people very close to Putin, such as his spokesman Peskov and Foreign Minister Lavrov. It cannot be ruled out that the special military operation will soon be upgraded , especially if the West continues with its current militaristic strategy.
The latest from the front
In recent days, we have been witnessing what appears to be the worst crisis within the Ukrainian establishment, triggered by the dismissal of Foreign Minister Fedorov. The implications of this operation are not yet entirely clear, but some facts are clear. Fedorov began his political career as Minister for Digitalization of Public Administration, and as such began to establish contacts with American high-tech companies (particularly Palantir).
Ukraine's decision to invest in long-range drones to strike Russian soil (and divert attention from defeats on the ground ) coincides, not coincidentally, with Fedorov's rise to the Ministry of Defense. The benefits of this strategy, however, were achieved by shifting investments away from the traditional military sector, resulting in a shift in who profits from related deals. This explains the growing discontent within the military's top command.
The reason for this decision, which appears to be a return to the past, remains unclear: perhaps the military isn't entirely convinced that the drone strategy is as effective as publicly claimed, and realizes that Fedorov's request for additional funding for his drones could be suicidal. The fact remains that the Ukrainian population has decided to protest because they see Fedorov as a kind of genius offering hope, captive to propaganda, but also because it's convenient to hope for the success of an automated war, based on drones operating on land, sea, and water, entrusted to robots, in a country where recruiters are forced to chase and beat up prospective recruits (not coincidentally, many of those protesting are young).
Antonio & Gianni
https://www.ucadi.org/2026/07/23/ucraina-le-prospettive-del-conflitto/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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