Dmitry Orlov
Since diplomacy, in the western understanding of the term, has degenerated into an exchange of insults and the laborious process of negotiating agreements which nobody ever intends to keep, all that remains is war. Or, perhaps, the plural form — wars — is more appropriate, since there are several ones going on at once. In each case, there is a battlefield, there are military actions taking place (or preparations for them) and there is, inevitably, an eventual outcome. Motivations for these conflicts range from outright delusion to political expediency all the way to ideological imperatives and the demands of national survival.
A lot has already been said and written about the death of diplomacy in the West, but a recent exchange is just too perfect to pass by. When the Russians pointed out that the Americans reneged on the agreements reached during the Putin-Trump summit in Anchorage, Alaska on August 15, 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed out that these were not agreements, just proposals. As it turns out, it was the Americans who proposed and the Russians who accepted the proposals. Thus, the Americans made proposals which they themselves did not agree to. What could possibly be the point of trying to reach a peace agreement with such people? There is no point, and that just leaves war.
Although it is commonly thought that the goal of war is victory — and this is most often the stated goal of any war, to preserve the morale of the troops and to maintain the support of the populace which pays for it — just as often the goal is the perpetual continuation of the conflict. A prime example of such a perpetual conflict was the Cold War. It is possible to argue that it was not truly a war because it was never fought; it is also possible to argue that it was fought more or less continuously. The Cold War was fought in dozens of regional wars, large and small. In case you need a refresher, here is a quick summary of them:
Korea (1950–1953): A major direct clash in which US and UN forces fought Chinese and North Korean troops supported and resupplied by the USSR. The US managed to fight this war to a permanent stalemate which left the Korean peninsula permanently divided at the 38th parallel, with the North allied with Russia and China and the south under permanent occupation by American troops.
Vietnam (1955–1975): The US intervened in French Indochina, taking over for failing colonialist France to stop Vietnamese quest for independence while the Soviets backed the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military in a prolonged and devastating conflict which ended when the US-supported regime in the south collapsed, the Americans were routed and the north triumphed.
Afghanistan (1979–1989): The USSR intervened to prop up a socialist government, prompting the US (and allies) to arm, train, and fund the Mujahideen insurgents. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan on February 15, 1989. The withdrawal was carried out in accordance with the Geneva Accords, and the commander of the 40th Army, Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, became the last serviceman to cross the border bridge over the Amu Darya River, flags flying, as seen in the photo above. The socialist government of Mohammad Najibullah stayed in power for approximately three years and two months following the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Its collapse was precipitated by the withdrawal of Soviet support under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. A civil war then raged until September 27, 1996, when Kabul was taken over by the Taliban. The Americans then occupied Afghanistan from October 7, 2001 until August 30, 2021 in a failed effort to dislodge the Taliban, having falsely accused the Taliban for complicity in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Cuba: The US and USSR almost found themselves in a nuclear war during the badly misnamed Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). It was, in fact, the Turkish Missile Crisis: the US positioned nuclear missiles in Turkey which threatened the USSR; the USSR responded by positioning nuclear missiles in Cuba which threatened the US; in the end, each side withdrew their missiles.
Africa: The USSR actively supported decolonization movements throughout the continent, helping a score of countries achieve independence, including Algeria, Angola, Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa (where the war was against apartheid) and Zimbabwe. After the collapse of the USSR these relationships were put on pause for a time but have since been renewed and revitalized. The 2nd Russia–Africa Summit was held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 27–28, 2023. The summit drew delegates from 49 of the 54 African Union member states, including 17 heads of state. The 3rd summit will be held in Moscow in late October of 2026.
The African national liberation movements included quite a lot of armed conflict. Official records indicate a combined total of 1,100,000 to 1,800,000 casualties for the major anti-colonial conflicts in Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe alone. These were, to avoid the use of euphemisms such as “conflict”, wars of national liberation.
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Let us enumerate the stakeholders of the war in the former Ukraine: Russia, the US, European members of the EU and of NATO, various other nations not hostile toward Russia and, of course, the former Ukraine itself (the Kiev regime and the population of the former Ukraine). Each of these stakeholders is disinterested in a quick end to the war in the former Ukraine, each for its own set of reasons.
Russia’s ultimate goal for the former Ukraine is to render it harmless without burdening itself unduly or suffering too many casualties. What precipitated the conflict can be reduced to two main factors. There was the threat of NATO troops stationed on Ukrainian soil, right on the invasion path toward Moscow followed by both Napoleon and Hitler.
There was also Kiev’s incipient genocide of the Russian population in the Ukraine’s former eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk which served as the trigger for the launching of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February of 2022 as an R2P (Responsibility to Protect) mission. The dramatically increased shelling of Donetsk by the Ukrainians in February of 2022 provided ample justification for it.
The imperative to save Russian lives in Donetsk and Lugansk overlapped with Russia’s secondary goal, which was to save numerous Russians still living in the territories held by the Kiev regime. Thus, carpet-bombing Ukrainian cities, as the Americans or the British or other NATO forces would have done (and, indeed, have done in similar circumstances) is not something that the Russian government would ever consider doing.
Quite the opposite: those Russians who are still living in Kiev-held territories are offered visa-free entry into the Russian Federation and a path to Russian citizenship and integration into Russian society. Since all Ukrainians speak Russian, the vast majority of them as their first language, they reintegrate easily.
If the war were to end, it could do so in at least three different ways. The first way, entirely unacceptable to Russia on every level, would be to agree to a cease fire, freeze the conflict at the current line of separation (which runs through what under Russian law comprises sovereign Russian territory, though it will not do so for much longer given the pace of Russian advance) and allow the stationing of NATO troops on territory still controlled by the Kiev regime. This end to the war would be equivalent to a defeat.
Another way the war could end is through a sudden, outright Russian victory. The Ukrainian forces are routed and the Ukrainian military dissolves. The US, NATO, the EU all wash their hands of the Ukrainian conflict, abandoning their Ukrainian dependents to their fate. Russia then has a chaotic, ungovernable humanitarian disaster area on their border which they somehow have to rescue from its horrible fate.
The Russians are working assiduously to liberate the remaining small patches of what is, constitutionally, Russian Federation territory in the Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions (Lugansk has been completely liberated as of July of 2022). They just liberated Konstantinovka. There are now just two major towns left to liberate: Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. Likewise, major advances are taking place in the south, in Zaporozhye in particular. They are also making strides in building up buffer zones in Sumy and Kharkov regions to safeguard neighboring Russian regions from attack. These are some of the stated goals of the Special Military Operation and they are being achieved, albeit rather more gradually than many people would like.
Meanwhile, the Kiev regime, assisted by NATO, has been launching a great many terrorist attacks against Russian regions. Crimea has been particularly badly hit and today was forced to impose a state of emergency to deal with the damage from Ukrainan drone strikes. Other Russian regions have been affected as well, although the overall effect of these strikes is generally overestimated. These terrorist attacks are being used in a propaganda campaign in the West which aims to convince the populace that the Ukraine is winning and that therefore continued support for the Kiev regime is justified. Apparently, war, like beauty, is in the eye on the beholder. How else could we ever hope to explain the following: last Monday, in Gdańsk, Poland, US Deputy Secretary of State Jeremy Levin pompously declared that “Ukraine is winning the war.” Nothing could be further from the truth!
The Kiev regime is losing, but not for lack of trying. Its attack on Russian territory during the night of June 26 was the most massive so far in 2026. After analyzing data published by the Russian Ministry of Defense, RIA News service reported that Russian air defense systems shot down 660 Ukrainian drones. A handful of drones probably got through (no air defense system can be 100% effective). The news in Russia is quite full of stories of the damage caused by drones and drone fragments: a few people get hurt and a few houses and apartment buildings are damaged almost every day. This is, of course deplorable. But war is like that; people get hurt.
But from the point of view of the Russian government and the Russian military, this is by no means altogether bad. Russia has developed the world’s best air defense system and the Russian defense establishment will be busy selling these systems to eager customers around the world for many years to come. The conflict is allowing Russia to keep up with drone development and related technology including the battlefield use of AI systems and satellite communications. And Russia has plenty of cards left to play if the terrorist attacks ever grow too painful. In particular, Russia has the weapons in place to disable Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system which Alex Karp’s Palantir AI uses to generate targeting information (it takes a perverse interest in girls’ schools) and which the drones then use to navigate to these targets. But doing so now would deprive Russia of the great sport of shooting down hundreds of drones every night.
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Moving on to the United States, a quick end to the Ukrainian war is unlikely to be on terms acceptable to it. This makes it preferable to push off the moment when the policy of fashioning the former Ukraine into an anti-Russia and squandering countless billions in pursuit of the lofty goal of weakening Russia finally crashes and burns. Also, a premature end to this war would deprive American arms manufacturers of sales. Since weapons for the Kiev regime are now being paid for by the Europeans, it would also deprive the US of a valuable way of bleeding dry the European economy — a reasonable goal for it, since the EU is the only major economic competitor against which the US still has the ability to compete, being increasingly left behind by China, Russia and India. Lastly, many in the US still cherish the forlorn hope that the Ukrainian conflict will weaken Russia and prevent it from developing its economy. (If you believe, I have a few thousand economic sanctions to sell you at bargain basement prices.)
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Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/37e694d0-880f-4404-9a9f-c798e938ccf7
By Brian Shilhavy
