Browsing: All news

As the series of successful Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure has demonstrated, Kyiv can inflict meaningful, long-term damage on several key nodes in Russia’s energy extraction, refining, and export, though Ukraine would be unlikely to force a complete Russian energy shutdown. Still, the ongoing Ukrainian strike campaign has forced Russia to shutter some of its oil output, but Russia has adapted by rerouting some energy product flows and has managed to continue energy exports at substantial, though somewhat crimped, volumes.

In 2019, Army specialist Lauren Palladini was rushed to a hospital for a cesarean section delivery of her daughter, Everly. During the procedure at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the medical resident lacerated her right uterine artery. It was a life-threatening error that would eventually cost her any chance of having more children. It would also launch a six-year, uphill battle for accountability. 
In the weeks that followed, Palladini hemorrhaged seven times.

Summary and Key Points: For three years, Moscow watched the war it started from a safe distance. That’s over. Ukraine’s long-range drones are now reaching the Russian capital — hitting refineries, defense plants, and logistics hubs, and puncturing the city’s sense of immunity. And the clearest sign of how rattled the Kremlin has become wasn’t a strike at all. It was what Putin no longer felt safe putting on display, on the one day Russia exists to flaunt its military might.

Iran isn’t just blockading the Strait of Hormuz anymore — it’s monetizing it. A new law creates a dedicated agency, backed by the Revolutionary Guard, that turns the world’s most important oil chokepoint into a tollbooth: pay up, or your tanker doesn’t pass. Tehran believes it can squeeze tens of billions of dollars a year out of the scheme — and it’s betting the rest of the world will have little choice but to go along.

Last week, the Trump administration was publicly signaling that a deal with Iran was coming soon – but the prospect of a permanent peace between the two sides now appears far more remote after Iran announced that it had suspended all indirect negotiations with Washington through mediators. On Monday, Iran accused the United States of failing to restrain Israeli attacks and claimed that continued military operations in Lebanon constitute a violation of the ceasefire agreement.

Summary and Key Points: Russia planned a three-day war. More than four years later, the way it actually fights tells a very different story — one the parades and the propaganda are built to hide. Look past the rhetoric at how Russia now puts men and machines into the field, and a single, damning pattern emerges. This is no longer a great power on the march. It’s an army scraping the bottom of every barrel it owns — and hoping Ukraine runs empty first.

Summary and Key Points: The MiG-35 was supposed to be Russia’s comeback fighter — a modern, affordable jet to rebuild a battered air force and rake in export billions, hyped as Moscow’s answer to the American F-35. The reality is one of the more embarrassing stories in modern military aviation. Years after the promises, Russia has almost nothing to show for it — and what little it has is being used in a way that gives the whole program away.

Russia’s MiG-35 Failure Is Clear 

MiG-35 Creative Commons Image.

MiG-35 Fighter from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Summary and Key Points: China calls it the aircraft carrier killer. The DF-26B is built to do what most weapons can’t — track a U.S. aircraft carrier moving across open ocean and slam into it from thousands of miles away at Mach 15. Beijing says it works. The Pentagon has to assume it might. But no one outside China’s Rocket Force really knows what this missile can actually do — and that uncertainty may be the most dangerous thing about it.

The Aircraft Carrier Question

NAVAL AIR STATION NORTH ISLAND, Calif.

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war.

Summary and Key Points: One of Russia’s largest oil refineries has gone quiet. A Ukrainian drone strike on May 29 forced the Volgograd plant to halt processing — only the latest hit in a campaign reaching deeper into Russian territory than almost anyone thought possible. Kyiv has stopped going after symbolic targets near the border. It’s now methodically working through the refineries that turn Russia’s crude into the fuel and cash that Putin’s war runs on.

The Ukraine War Is Coming for Russia’s Oil 

Putin in 2025 Looking Stern. Image Credit: Creative Commons.