Madyar, Ukraine’s top drone commander: We will isolate Crimea. Striking vehicles on that highway is as easy as shooting partridges in an open field.

Military personnel and defense workers will find it impossible to remain there or use access routes to it.

1/ Madyar: The pain felt in every Ukrainian town should now be felt in the consciousness of Crimea's residents too.

Ukraine has not and will not strike civilians — unlike Russia's accusations, which are false.

2/

Russia could be ready to invade NATO by 2029 or earlier — Germany’s army chief Christian Freuding, Politico.

Russia is expanding military infrastructure near Finland, Norway, and the Baltic region. 1/ Europe has raised defense budgets since the full scale invasion of Ukraine. But procurement, stockpiles, and production capacity move slowly.

The gap between spending plans and usable capability is the operational problem. 2/

Fiona Hill: Autocracies see the state as strong and society as irrelevant. Individuals have no real role.

The fundamental difference with democracies is that societies still matter and in Ukraine, society has shown extraordinary resilience. 1/ Hill: In Ukraine, strong society is beating strong state.

The state was weak and messy, but society mobilized, networked, flattened hierarchies and worked with the military. That is the opposite of Russia’s vertical, top-down system. 2/

Fiona Hill: Trump does not understand the complexity of the Middle East. Lebanon, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah and Ukraine are connected in different ways.

For him, it is simpler: deal with whoever is on top, negotiate with himself, and ignore advice. 1/ Hill: Trump weakens his own negotiating position every day because he tells Iran what he is thinking in real time.

Tehran has no incentive to make a deal when there is no certainty, no assurance and no clarity about what the outcome would be. 2/

Applebaum: What binds Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is not religion or ideology.

China is communist, Russia nationalist, Iran theocratic. What binds them is fear of liberal language: rights, rule of law, separation of powers and independent courts. 1/ Applebaum: Ukraine has changed how the war is fought. The front is now a 20-mile transparent zone where Ukrainian drones can see almost everything.

Every Russian truck, car or soldier entering that zone can be identified and hit. 2/

Applebaum: Trump is not handling the Iran war strategically. He is not asking what is good for Americans, Iranians or the Middle East.

He is asking: how is this good for me? How do I emerge as the winner? He is chasing applause, not solving the problem. 1/ Applebaum: Trump has never made clear why America is fighting in Iran. Is it because he failed to destroy all nuclear facilities?

Because he wants Netanyahu’s approval? Nobody knows. This is not a problem of democracy, it is a problem of why this war exists. 2/

Applebaum: The Trump administration often seems uninterested in human beings, not Americans facing inflation, not Iranians under bombing, not Epstein victims.

It is focused on clips, engagement, visuals and what the online world will say. 1/ Applebaum: This is beyond ordinary political spin. Spin doctors used to spin real events.

Trump’s world tries to create new realities, stories that may or may not have happened, shaped for screens and algorithms rather than for truth. 2/

Applebaum: Ukraine has reached another turning point. The technological advantage is once again on the Ukrainian side.

The front is now a 20–25 mile transparent zone where Russian soldiers, tanks and trucks are spotted by drones and hit. 1/ Applebaum: “Stalemate” does not mean nothing is happening. It means waves of Russian attacks are being smashed.

Russian casualties can reach around 1,000 killed and wounded a day, while Ukraine’s war is increasingly automated and drone-driven. 2/

Applebaum: On Iran, Trump keeps changing the story. One day the U.S. may invade, the next day it may not.

Maybe one day he will say something true, but how would anyone know? We are beyond “the boy who cried wolf” now. 1/ Applebaum: Trump is using something like the Russian “firehose of falsehoods”: say so many contradictory things that people blank out, stop knowing what is true, throw up their hands and disengage. Maybe that confusion is the point. 2/

Historian Antony Beevor: Nicholas II once said Russia had to remain 200 years behind Western Europe to protect Russian tradition and culture.

That “time lag” was treated as essential because loosening the chains was feared to mean chaos. 1/ Beevor: Russian rulers have long feared that unless Russia keeps expanding, it will contract.

That anxious imperial mentality, the fear of losing everything unless more territory is seized, runs through Russian history. 2/

Historian Antony Beevor: Westerners are horrified by Russia’s attitude to casualties. The old phrase “meat for the cannon” reflects the belief that sheer numbers can crush any enemy.

But Russia has often treated its own people as badly as the enemy. 1/ Beevor: In World War II, Soviet officers could grab civilians to replace casualties without even recording their names.

Names mattered only if someone was suspected of treason, desertion or disloyalty. The individual barely counted. 2/

Former Ukrainian FM, Kuleba: Ukraine depends fully on PAC-3 Patriot interceptors from the US.

Because of the Iran war, depleted U.S. stocks and slow production, Ukraine is not getting enough, even as Russia increases ballistic attacks on Ukrainian cities. 1/ Kuleba: There is no diplomatic window right now. Diplomacy works when one side is exhausted, runs out of resources, or changes its war goals.

None of that is happening in Ukraine or Russia. Both still have the resources and will to pursue military goals. 2/

Former Ukrainian FM, Kuleba: It is too early to say Ukraine is winning the war, though I firmly believe Ukraine will win.

The current situation is more precise: Ukraine has stabilized Russia’s pressure on it, while increasing pressure on Russia. 1/ Kuleba: Ukraine is not striking civilian targets, unlike Russia. Ukraine found Russia’s bottleneck: refineries.

Attacks on them cause fuel crises inside Russia, meaning Russians now feel the consequences of the war Putin promised they would not feel. 2/

Former MI6 Chief Richard Moore: Without China, Russia would have lost war in Ukraine.

North Korean troops and Iranian drones grab headlines. But what keeps Putin in Ukraine is China — chemicals for artillery shells, components for drones and missiles.

1/ Moore: Zelenskyy is prepared to give up de facto 20% of his country to stop the fighting.

That's an extraordinary sacrifice for peace. The Ukrainians are under pressure — of course they are. But that offer is on the table.

2/

Zelenskyy: Every dollar invested in drones delivers dozens of dollars in damage to the enemy.

Last year, June to June, Ukraine's drone forces hit over 356,000 Russian targets.

1/ Zelenskyy: When we visit partner military bases, we see how much they need to change.

Equipment sitting in the open, formations built on 20th century rules, columns still moving in convoy, reliance on old strike capabilities.

2/

Hodges: Russia only changes after defeat. Until Russia is crushed on the battlefield, it will not change.

Too many people at the top are invested in the corrupt status quo, and they do not care about ordinary Russians or Russian soldiers. 1/ Hodges: Putin will keep going until he realizes he cannot win.

The key is for the UK, Germany, France, Poland, Finland and others to commit to Ukraine winning, not to a ceasefire Russia will violate before the sun goes down. 2/

Military historian Phillips O’Brien: There have been no U.S. peace efforts in Ukraine.

There have been efforts to get Putin a very good deal, forcing Ukrainians to give up more territory and people. That is not peace. That is Washington trying to deliver Putin a success. 1/ O’Brien: Trump believed Ukraine had no cards and that he could bully Kyiv into giving Putin a great deal.

He completely underestimated Ukrainian resilience, Ukraine’s own capabilities, and its willingness to fight. That wrongfooted him. 2/

Bolton: No regime change in Tehran means nuclear proliferation. Iran rebuilds everything when oil flows again.

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, Egypt watch US resolve collapse — and start their own nuclear programs. That's the dynamic we've triggered.

1/ Bolton: Six weeks of bombing Iran wasn't enough. They've been building their deep state for 47 years.

Why would anyone think six weeks dismantles that? The regime is run by religious authoritarian fanatics. They still have missiles.

2/

Edward Luce, FT: Trump has lost control of the Iran war the way Jimmy Carter lost control of the hostage crisis.

Carter became a prisoner of what Tehran decided to do.

Trump is now in the same position after Operation Epic Fury and 13 US service members killed. 1/ Trump: I call the shots. I call all the shots.

But Israel ignored his request not to retaliate after Iran's missile attack, then Netanyahu ordered strikes anyway. 2/

658 deep strikes Ukraine conducted against Russia in 2025. Twice the 2022–2024 total.

The Economist: Small drones hit ports and refineries repeatedly before repairs finish, ballistic missiles enter serial production, Flamingo cruise missile reaches 3,000km.

1/ 2026 pace: 800+ deep strikes. St Petersburg hit twice in one week in June — 800km from Ukraine's border.

A plume of black smoke above the port on June 3rd. Three days later, Ukraine blew up a nearby oil depot and naval base.

2/

Russia shut down part of the secret surveillance system guarding Putin and his inner circle.

Engineers switched it back on only after sealing it off from the internet.

Russia acted after Israel used AI on Iranian cameras to find and kill Khamenei — FT. 1/ Israeli intelligence harvested footage from thousands of Iranian traffic cameras to pin down a February 28 meeting of Ayatollah Khamenei and his closest aides. Several top security officials died in the opening strike of the US-Israel war.
AI parsed millions of hours of video to isolate the targets from the crowd. 2/