Rachman, FT: "The current wars in Ukraine and Iran underline how foolish it is to assume that a military superpower will always win a war against a smaller country."

China's assumption that Taiwan would be helpless without American support is a dangerous mistake.

1/ Ukraine has no navy — yet forced the Russian navy out of the Black Sea. Iran's navy was reportedly destroyed — yet Tehran keeps the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed with drones, missiles and speedboats.

Naval superpowers are increasingly vulnerable to cheap weapons.

2/

Graham: If China invades Taiwan, the full weight of U.S. sanctions and tariffs should hit on day one.

That is deterrence. If we had done this with Russia before Ukraine, I do not think Putin would have invaded. 1/ Graham: China buys 90% of Iran’s oil.

Trump says he does not need Beijing’s help, but there will come a moment when China has to be held accountable. If you keep funding Iran, there must be a price. 2/

Xi Jinping to Trump: Putin may regret invading Ukraine, FT.

Xi said this as the war enters its fifth year, Russia remains stuck in a battlefield stalemate, and Ukrainian drones keep striking Russian troops and targets deep behind the front.

1/ Xi made the remark during talks with Donald Trump in Beijing last week.

FT: Xi went further than in past US-China talks on Ukraine.

2/

Stubb: The Soviet Union marched 1,600km to Berlin in four years. Russia moved 60km into Donetsk in three.

Who knows modern warfare? Ukraine does. They are Europe's best security partner.

1/ Stubb: Ukraine kills or wounds 30–35,000 Russians per month. Kill ratio: 1 Ukrainian to 7–8 Russians.

In April, Ukraine took back more territory than Russia gained. 95% of damage comes from Ukrainian drones. The dead zone stretches 20–40km. Russia stopped advancing.

2/

Gates, former US Def. Sec: It would be a mistake to change the carefully worded US position on Taiwan.

Experts parse these things down to the tense of the verbs. Keeping the US position as it has been is important, and everything I’ve seen indicates the president did that. 1/ Gates: The US should go forward with what we’ve agreed with Taiwan. There is a huge backlog of weapons we sold to Taiwan that we have not been able to deliver.

An important shift is getting Taiwan to focus on weapons needed to defend against a Chinese amphibious invasion. 2Х

Ukrainians are currently teaching 18,000 NATO troops on the Swedish island of Gotland.

The Aurora 26 exercises bring together 12 NATO members and Ukraine as a tutor. Ukrainian soldiers are sharing their experience in drone warfare — Radio Svoboda.

1/ For Sweden, the Aurora 26 exercises are part of the process of deepening its integration within NATO, which it joined just two years ago.

Gotland provides a strategic location between mainland Sweden and the Baltic states to the East.

2/

Zelenskyy: Russia is considering plans for operations to the south and north of Belarusian territory, either against the Chernihiv-Kyiv direction in Ukraine or against one of the NATO countries directly from the territory of Belarus — Reuters. 1/ Russia has already deployed tactical nuclear warheads and Oreshnik hypersonic missiles in Belarus.

Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia all share the border. Both systems shorten Moscow's flight time to Warsaw, Vilnius, and Riga. 2/

Kellogg: Since Iran’s revolution, eight U.S. presidents have dealt with this regime, but only Trump has done something.

The IRGC was created to protect the revolution, not the country. If it survives, this problem returns in 5, 10 or 20 years. 1/ Kellogg: Iran’s “Mosaic Defense” was built to fight the U.S. by decentralizing the IRGC, so everyone acts independently.

But Tehran never accounted for a president like Trump — and that is the mistake they made. 2/

Keane: China dominates the U.S. militarily in the region on every platform except submarines.

But deterrence is not platform-to-platform — it is forward capability and political will to impose costs and make Beijing doubt it can succeed. 1/ Keane: Xi has said for years he intends to take Taiwan. The goal is not only geopolitical — it is technological.

The world’s most advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan. Whoever owns that capability owns the future of AI. 2/

Budanov: Ukraine is fighting the most brutal war on the European continent since World War II.

By casualties, geography, and the range of weapons used, we are at the top. A bad “top,” but still the top. 1/ Budanov: Unity means uniting around the state. During war, it is not the time to undermine the hierarchy.

When media feeds only scandals and betrayal, the soldier in the trench starts asking: why am I here? 2/

Ukraine's battlefield AI system Delta tracks every Russian soldier in real time. Click any icon on the screen and a drone kill video opens automatically.

Enemy coordinates reach the nearest available weapon system at the speed of light. — The Telegraph. 1/ Delta is Ukraine's digital backbone, simultaneously a real-time surveillance tool showing drone reconnaissance and strike feeds, a equipment and supply archive and a secure messaging platform.

Every soldier has access. New login codes are issued every few hours. 2/

Applebaum: Europe can give up — or it can fight back by building.

New technologies, new platforms, new rules, more transparency, and democratic control over data and algorithms can replace systems designed to divide and exploit us. 1/ Applebaum: Europe should lean into its achievements. It remains an oasis of security, stability and rule of law.

In a world of unpredictable powers, Europe’s predictability is an advantage. 2/

NATO war game ended with Russia cutting off the Baltics in 24 hours — because Germany froze politically while the US stayed out.

Retired Ukrainian Gen. Romanenko, playing Russia’s commander, says NATO’s biggest weakness was not troops but hesitation, FP. 1/ Scenario assumed a ceasefire in Ukraine by late 2026.

Russia rebuilt forces, left troops in Belarus after joint exercises, then used a “humanitarian crisis” in Kaliningrad as justification for escalation against Lithuania. 2/

NATO will press Europe's defence industry to invest without guaranteed contracts. Mark Rutte will ask Rheinmetall, Airbus, Safran, MBDA, Saab and Leonardo to scale production now.

This breaks the procurement model that has stalled European rearmament — Aaron Kirchfeld, FT. 1/ The meeting itself is unusual. Rutte meets defence executives regularly, but pulling this many top companies into one room is not routine.

NATO needs visible industrial expansion before the Ankara summit in July. 2/

A 12-year-old Ukrainian boy saved his siblings by doing something many soldiers fail to do under pressure.

Anatolii Prokhorenko grabbed a fiber-optic cable connected directly to Russia and stopped a drone seconds before it hit children playing near his house, The WP. 1/ The drone was hunting civilians.

Russia uses FPV drones to track and strike people biking, driving, walking, or standing near their homes in border regions — a tactic Ukrainians call “human safari.” 2/

Ukraine is fast-tracking FP-7.x Freya, a domestic anti-ballistic missile built to hunt Russia's Iskander-M.

Fire Point is welding it together from ready European components instead of waiting years for a from-scratch system — United24. 1/ The airframe draws on the Soviet 48N6 from the S-300/S-400 family, reworked with a new architecture, composite materials, and Western internals.

Speed — 1,500–2,000 m/s. Length — 7.25 m. Body diameter — 0.53 m. Chief designer — Denys Shtilerman. 2/

Russian Kh-101 cruise missiles that hit Kyiv this week were built in Q2 2026 and still packed with western chips.

One missile contained more than 100 western made components from Texas Instruments, AMD, Kyocera AVX, Nexperia, Harting — FT. 1/ Ukrainian officials and an independent missile expert reviewed debris from the apartment block strike that killed at least 24 people.

The photos match Kh-101 wreckage, including the turbofan and airframe. 2/

The EU is cutting steel import quotas by 47% from July 1, which could cost Ukraine up to €1 billion in lost export revenues.
Vodoviz, Metinvest: "They will completely kill any possibility of Ukrainian companies to deliver on the European market." — FT. 1/ Brussels will cut its steel import quota 47% from July 1 and add a 50% tariff on any additional imports. The measure was pushed by France, Spain and Poland in response to a glut caused by Chinese overproduction that has cost tens of thousands of jobs in European factories. 2/

Graham: Everything Obama and Biden did was designed to keep Iran to a civilian nuclear program.

There is no way they can have 60% highly enriched uranium unless they cheat. Everything you did failed. You allowed Iran to become a threshold nuclear nation. 1/ Graham: Did Iran shoot missiles at Diego Garcia?

Caine: Yes, sir.

Graham: Under the protocols we had, were they supposed to be able to do that?

Caine: Without reviewing the fine print, I believe the answer is no.

Graham: No, they weren’t. You failed there. 2/

Blinken: The Iran nuclear deal was not perfect, but it boxed the program in with intrusive inspections and pushed breakout time past a year.

Trump tore it up and replaced it with nothing. Iran went from more than a year to a few weeks. 1/ Blinken: Trump is constrained by two things: markets and munitions. Oil, gas, fertilizer, helium — this has moved from prices to actual availability.

The reserves and ships already on the water are now a very thin shock absorber. 2/

Cheap flights are ending. Spirit Airlines collapsed this month. Wizz Air short positions hit one-sixth of its shares.

Jet fuel doubled after the Iran war shut the Strait of Hormuz, nearly 40% of Europe's kerosene — Peter Campbell, Financial Times. 1/ Andrew Lobbenberg, airlines analyst at Barclays: "We have seen lots of crises — 9/11, Covid. This is the next Covid."

He predicts bankruptcies, mergers, and faster retirement of old aircraft. 2/