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/

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/

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/

Ukraine's FP-1/2 long-range drone now flies into Crimea carrying two FPV drones strapped to its wings.

One FPV is fitted with a flat antenna that matches a compact Starlink terminal — United24. 1/ Russian sources filmed the downed mothership in a bay near occupied Crimea. The wings still held two attached FPV drones.

Analysts identified the antenna on one of them as Starlink-grade. 2/

Bolton: Leaving the Strait of Hormuz in Iran’s hands is unacceptable. It is an international waterway.

Iran cannot be allowed to impose hegemony over it — and the only way to stop that is militarily. 1/ Bolton: If Iran can turn control of Hormuz on and off like a light switch without paying a price, it will do it again.

Opening the strait militarily would remove Iran’s leverage and restore deterrence. 2/

Putin and Zelenskyy are both losing faith in Trump’s peace talks — but for opposite reasons.

Russia believes it can still win militarily. Ukraine believes it no longer has to accept a bad deal under US pressure after stabilizing the front, FT. 1/ Putin is shifting from negotiations back to territorial expansion.

Russian commanders told him they could seize all of Donbas by autumn, after which Moscow plans to raise demands further. 2/

Ukraine secretly launched a counterattack in southeastern Ukraine so compartmentalized that commanders feared soldiers’ online girlfriends could be Russian FSB agents.

Only 10 people in a 2,000-man brigade knew details 2 weeks before it began, The Kyiv Independent. 1/ The goal is to retake territory Russia seized in late 2025 before Moscow could fortify it.

Ukraine later claimed 400 km² recaptured in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro region during the winter-spring offensive. 2/

Defense analyst Michael Clarke: Militarily, this is simple. The US tried to hit Iran’s political center of gravity by decapitating the IRGC.

It did not work. Iran’s political center is now stronger. 1/ Clarke: The US could go into Hormuz, fight a battle and win, but there would be losses.

Trump is not prepared to take that cost, so America is trying to win from 400–500 miles away with robotics, drones and AI. 2/

McFaul: Iran has a good reason to think it did not lose.

Trump team declared Epic Fury over without achieving its major goals: no nuclear deal, no missile limits, no end to terror funding, no regime change. 1/ McFaul: If the Americans have already quit, Iran is in a strong negotiating position.

Now the whole discussion is about reopening Hormuz — something that was open before Epic Fury even started. That is perfect for Tehran. 2/

Last night Russia bombed Kyiv for 8 hours and killed 24 people.

Today it forced the city into air raid sirens again. KSE students ran to shelters four times during classes and came back to continue studying each time.

This is what university life in Kyiv looks like now. 1/ On May 14 Russia launched 1,560 drones at Ukraine in 24 hours — one of the largest drone attack since the start of the full-scale war.

Most of them hit Kyiv. Air raid sirens lasted from 00:50 until 8:43 a.m. 2/

Even Satan cannot save Putin — Telegraph.

His latest nuclear threats is attempt to convince Russians that he still holds cards.

After 4 years of war, much of its Black Sea Fleet damaged, territorial gains limited, so Moscow relies on nuclear rhetoric to project strength. 1/ Kremlin’s latest showpiece is the RS-28 Sarmat, branded “Satan II.”

Putin claims it can strike targets 21,750 miles away and bypass Western missile defenses — but the program suffered repeated delays and failed tests. 2/

Putin’s system was built specifically to survive rumors of coups, elite dissent, and instability.

Every arrest, defection rumor, mysterious death, or crackdown can itself become a tool to justify even harsher repression and reinforce fear inside Russia, Sean Wiswesser for FA. 1/ Putin did not “learn authoritarianism” after taking power.

He entered the Kremlin as a career KGB officer already trained in surveillance, coercion, elite control, and suppression of dissent from inside Soviet security structures. 2/

The US-China relationship is a zero-sum contest. Their meetings and negotiations do not change that — even after Xi and Trump’s summit in Beijing on May 14th, writes The Economist. 1/ Xi greeted Trump with a ceremony on Tiananmen Square, talks in the Great Hall of the People and an escorted tour of the Temple of Heaven — the first American president to visit it since 1975. 2/

NYT: Ceasfires don’t work under Trump.

USA brokered five temporary truces in the Russia-Ukraine war since Trump returned to power. Every time, violations marred them.

As the latest truce expired, Russia bombed Ukraine again. 12 civilins killed.

1/ Analyst Joshi studied 42 comprehensive peace agreements reached between 1989 and 2018. A successful peace process takes an average of 1,570 days of technical labor.

The latest Russia-Ukraine truce lacked independent oversight and a substantive political foundation.

2/

Applebaum: Putin’s real fear is a Maidan-style street revolution — people against corruption, demanding democracy and Europe.

Liberal-democratic language is explosive inside Russia. That is why he needed to crush Ukraine’s democracy movement. 1/ Applebaum: Russia invaded Ukraine knowing it was breaking the post-1945 rule that borders in Europe must not be changed by force.

This war is not only about Ukraine, it is a fault line between the democratic world and the autocratic world. 2/

Applebaum: Trump’s net worth reportedly went from $2.3B when he entered office to $6.5B two years later.

We’ve never had a president running businesses while in office, decisions are being made not for Americans, but for his company. 1/ Applebaum: Why did Saudi Arabia invest $2B in Jared Kushner’s fund? Not because they liked him — because he is Trump’s son-in-law.

Now Kushner negotiates in the Middle East with his own business partners. The conflict is overwhelming. 2/

Graham: China buys 90% of Iranian oil and tops Russian oil purchases. Xi could call and end both wars today.

If this summit ends with no action on that — we made a big mistake.

1/ Graham: China buys Russian and Iranian oil cheap — keeps both war machines running. Stop it — the wars end.

Xi isn't irrational. If he believes Trump will crush China's economy for propping up Iran, he'll change. Make it real.

2/

Bolton: Xi could trade Trump concessions on Iran or trade for one phrase: "The US opposes Taiwanese independence."

Taiwan is terrified. We don't know yet if Trump gave it. They still have hours of meetings left.

1/ Bolton: Trump wanted the biggest trade deal in history — he won't get it today either.

Some Boeing sales, some economic deals he'll tout. But the core issues aren't resolved. China played rare earths. They may agree a trade war ceasefire. That's it.

2/