Quotes of the Day:

“Not for ourselves alone are we born; our country, our friends, have a share in us.”

– Cicero

“I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.”

– Herman Hesse

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

– Frederic Bastiat

1. Just as Russia’s Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck

2. Ukraine and Europe Counter Putin’s Cease-Fire Proposal

3. Armies Tormented by Drones Innovate Ways to Spot, Jam and Zap on the Cheap

4. Russian Oil Refinery Capacity Drops Nearly 10% After Ukrainian Drone Strikes

5. An Assessment Mechanised Forces in the Age of Drones

6. Security Cooperation and Special Operations Forces: Training and Education Are Needed Now More than Ever

7. Laura Loomer knocks Medal of Honor recipient in new attack on Army

8. Israel’s New War Plan Includes Fighting in Gaza’s Central Refugee Camps

9. China Detains Senior Diplomat Who Aided U.S. Relations

10. Russian Drone Innovations are Likely Achieving Effects of Battlefield Air Interdiction in Ukraine

11. Why India Can’t Afford to Jettison Its Relationship With Russia

12. The Bolduc Brief: Why Ukraine Must Reject Territorial Concessions to Russia

13. The Quiet Technocrat Who Enacts Putin’s Ruthless Agenda

14. Xi Looks to Tighten Grip After Scandals Shake China’s Military Elite

15. Foreign governments bet big to lobby Trump on tariffs. Most came up empty.

16. Pentagon skipping Canadian security forum makes U.S. look weak, summit president says

17. ‘I Can’t Go Back’: Trump and the New American Brain Drain

1. Just as Russia’s Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck

Part 2 of our SF brother Roger Carstens' attempt to free Navalny.

Just as Russia’s Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck

Alexei Navalny’s death in prison cut short a high-stakes swap advanced by a U.S. diplomat who went rogue

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/navalny-death-carstens-diplomat-swap-c481f490?st=H4GgjL&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Joe Parkinson

Follow and Drew Hinshaw

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Aug. 9, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Roger Carstens was rushing across Tel Aviv to meet Roman Abramovich, knowing he would have to ask the White House for forgiveness rather than permission. 

Twice before, the Biden administration had turned down requests by the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs to meet this enigmatic Russian oligarch, one of the handful of people Carstens considered a “back channel wizard” with the influence to untangle the thorniest diplomatic knots.

This article is the second of two parts. Read Part 1

But in November 2023, when Carstens traveled to Israel to help American families whose loved ones Hamas had taken hostage, a message reached his phone saying Abramovich was also in town. It seemed like an unmissable chance to advance a prisoner swap that could free U.S. citizens jailed in Russia—and at the same time, rescue Vladimir Putin’s archnemesis, the Russian dissident leader Alexei Navalny.

The hostage envoy had been on the ground in six wars but joked the most combat he’d ever seen was wearing a suit and tie in Washington, “trying to get anything done.” He had a plan to free Navalny and the Americans but the White House didn’t think the time was right to move on it. He often joked that he felt like Gulliver, tied down by Lilliputians.

His perceived adversaries: senior White House and State Department officials who had been working, albeit more cautiously, toward the same end, and were weighing the geopolitical and moral risks of trading prisoners with Putin. Carstens complained to colleagues he was stuck reporting to decision makers who, in his view, had never been to combat, never smelled cordite and who sat at their desks, offering reasons why his proposals wouldn’t work.

Roman Abramovich and Roger D. Carstens.

Sergei Bobylev/TASS/Zuma Press; Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

This time, the former Green Beret wasn’t going to give anyone enough time to tell him no. On Nov. 30, he shot off an email to Washington, where the day was still young, saying he was poised to sit with Abramovich. Minutes later, he walked into a hotel chosen for the meeting. Sitting opposite, the billionaire said he could see prisoner talks—between the Central Intelligence Agency and Russia’s FSB spy service—were stalled.

“I’m not sure the FSB is passing on our messages,” Carstens said. He reiterated the latest offer from the White House: a mix of prisoners that included neither Navalny—whom Germany wanted—nor Russia’s own must-have, an FSB officer named Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for murdering a Putin opponent in downtown Berlin. Carstens felt that proposal was never going to fly.

“But let me run another idea by you,” he ventured, “Not officially, but just to get your view.” 

Carstens pitched an idea he called “enlarging the problem.” Germany would free Krasikov, if Russia freed Navalny. As an add-on, the U.S. and European allies could return various deep-cover sleeper spies in their possession, and Russia would release two Americans held on espionage charges the U.S. government strongly denied: former Marine Paul Whelan, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

It sounded intriguing, Abramovich said, but added that he couldn’t imagine Putin would free Navalny. After 30 minutes, Carstens left, reopening his phone to see cascading messages ordering him not to hold the meeting. A few days later, Carstens heard back from Abramovich, who seemed as surprised as anybody. 

Putin, he said, was willing to free Navalny.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny appears via a video link during a court hearing in January 2024. Photo: YURI KOCHETKOV/EPA/Shutterstock

That same week, guards bundled the 47-year-old dissident onto a prison train and locked the door with no word of where he was heading. Hours turned to days as Navalny read the books he’d been allowed to take from the IK-6 prison camp. He couldn’t see the towns passing outside, but the train was snaking across the Ural Mountains, then north toward the Arctic Circle to the “dead railway,” built by political prisoners under Stalin.

It took two weeks to reach his ice-covered destination, known as “Polar Wolf.”

“I am your new Santa Claus,” he wrote in his first letter home to his wife, Yulia. “Unfortunately, there are no reindeer, but there are huge, fluffy and very beautiful German shepherds.” 

A few weeks after he arrived, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz logged on to a private videoconference with Joe Biden, officially to discuss the war in Ukraine. Unofficially, the prisoner trade was on the agenda. Hours earlier, the Journal’s editor in chief, Emma Tucker, had met with Scholz’s top aides in Switzerland. Biden had just met Paul Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth, a portrait painter who struck up an easy rapport with the president. Sullivan had been in constant contact with his opposite number in Berlin ahead of the meeting. The idea was so delicate Scholz was too nervous to mention specifics over the call.

“I will fly to see you,” Scholz said. “I would be happy to.” 

The chancellor traveled without telling his own cabinet, giving such short notice that the only plane the German government could book was a medium-haul Airbus A321, which had to refuel in Iceland. There were no aides and no note-takers in the Feb. 9 meeting, just Biden and Scholz. Hours earlier, Tucker Carlson aired an interview with Putin at the Kremlin, where the former Fox host pushed the Russian president to release Gershkovich. Putin, chastened by Carlson, looked embarrassed. The pieces all seemed to be clicking into place.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz meets with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office in February 2024. Photo: Zuma Press

In the Oval Office, Scholz agreed to free the assassin Krasikov as the centerpiece of a broader deal. The chancellor would rescue Navalny from his Arctic prison—and, he hoped, boost the aging U.S. president’s chances in what was certain to be a bruising re-election campaign. 

“For you, I will do this,” Scholz told Biden.

Black motorcades

On Feb. 15, 2024, the narrow streets of Munich were lined with black motorcades delivering the West’s most important leaders to the Bavarian city’s annual security conference. Carstens wasn’t registered as a speaker or panelist, but he quietly slipped out of Washington on a red-eye flight bound for Germany. By now, the administration was accelerating the Navalny trade toward completion, but preferred to keep Carstens on the periphery of any Russia prisoner talks.

Christo Grozev was already there, waiting anxiously in a cafe close to the venue’s security perimeter. The Bulgarian investigative journalist and spy-hunter felt the deal was almost done, yet he and Carstens wanted to be as close as possible to the West’s top security officials to spot-check that nothing would derail it. Odessa Rae, the “Navalny” film producer, was texting from Dubai in route to Ukraine after meeting their Russian contact, Stanislav Petlinsky.

Vice President Kamala Harris was flying in on Air Force Two, officially to deliver a keynote address, while more quietly representing Biden at a meeting with Slovenian leaders to confirm the trade could include two Russian sleeper spies in their custody: a married couple posing as Argentine nationals. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was at the conference, and still uneasy about the moral line her country was inching toward, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to meet her and soothe any concerns. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, was also in Munich, on hand to address lingering doubts.

Maria Pevchikh and Christo Grozev speak on a 2023 panel in London. Photo: James Whatling/Parsons Media/Zuma Press

Next to Grozev, messaging contacts to try to piece together the state of play, was Maria Pevchikh, Navalny’s friend and head of investigations. Their location felt ominous. Seventeen years earlier, at the same Munich gathering, Russia’s president delivered a speech castigating the world order in which America was “one master, one sovereign,” a diatribe considered the starting gun of his war against the West. Now, within touching distance of the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Soviet collapse, the memory of that speech was like a specter.

As the evening wrapped toward a close, Pevchikh raised a question, like a terrible premonition: “What if they kill him?” After years studying Russian intelligence services, Grozev was confident her concern wouldn’t come to pass. There was a protocol, he reassured her, a methodology for prison swaps upheld since the Cold War. The Journal even had prewritten articles, ready to go, the moment Navalny walked free.

The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray was sitting down for lunch with the chiefs of Britain’s MI6 and Germany’s BND intelligence agency. Their discreet and thankless work was about to pay off in the very real gift of freedom not only for Navalny but also for Gershkovich, whose reporting Wray admired. 

But as the meal unfolded, dignitaries began reaching for their phones, buzzing with news from Russia. The most powerful security czars in the Western alliance turned to each other in horror and bewilderment. “Alexei Navalny has died in prison,” the Kremlin’s state newswire announced. “The cause of death is being established.”

The guests rose one by one to start fielding calls. Wray rushed upstairs to confer with Blinken. America’s top diplomat immediately shot back: “Get me Yulia.” An aide struggled to reach Navalny’s wife and came back with the number for Grozev.

Weaving through the tightly controlled security cordons, European and American officials were scrambling to find each other and confer on what would happen next. The news spread through the hallways and coffee line where a German diplomat blurted out in full earshot of reporters, “Oh no! We were working on getting him out!”

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reacts as she speaks during the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 16, 2024. Photo: Kai Pfaffenbach/Press Pool

Grozev guided Navalny’s ashen-faced widow through the hotel gates to the secretary of state’s suite. The two embraced, then sat down, and Yulia delivered a powerful message: Putin must be punished for the misery he has wrought. Minutes later she walked down toward the lectern in the shellshocked conference hall with delegates standing to applaud, or crying in their seats, her eyes filled with tears and righteous anger.

“I want Putin, his entourage, Putin’s friends, and his government to know they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family, and my husband,” she said.

Chancellor Scholz wanted to see Yulia but wasn’t sure if the woman who had minutes earlier discovered she was a widow would want time with her family. “I want to meet,” she responded and arrived, somehow still composed, in the hotel suite where the chancellor was waiting.

“I have one request,” Yulia said, before turning to the question of Krasikov. “Do not release that man.”

Across the world, the secret club of people who had labored at organizing an exchange were reeling as its one necessary component was lying dead in an Arctic morgue. Officials across the West had worked for months to free not just Navalny but a growing list of Americans seized by the Kremlin as bargaining chips. CIA officers and their European partners had hunted down Russian spies undercover in an Arctic research institute, the front lines of Ukraine and the suburbs of an Alpine capital. The Justice Department had extradited Russian cybercriminals arrested in the Maldives and on a Swiss mountainside helipad—high-wire legal and diplomatic maneuvers that had given the U.S. trading stock for an exchange that was now on ice.

In Los Angeles, Journal publisher Almar Latour was visiting a museum exhibit of art made by prisoners from Soviet gulags, and wondering if a dark gray pencil sketch was drawn in the same camp as Navalny, when his phone rang. It was Carstens, who had landed in Munich just in time to learn it was all for nought.

The U.S. could have brought Navalny back alive if it had acted with more urgency, Carstens said. “If only I had moved faster.”

The special envoy was blaming himself for not putting more pressure on the White House. “We could have wrapped this up in August!” Rae, on her way to Ukraine, was boarding a flight, talking to a fellow passenger about her film, neither of them aware until she glanced at her phone that its subject, her friend, had just died.

In Russia’s IK-17 labor camp, Paul Whelan was trading cigarettes to place a call to his family: “If they are willing to kill Navalny they could do something to me. Poison me. Break my leg?” His sister Elizabeth was quizzing a case officer on Carstens’s staff over text messages about the consequences of a death she was sure wasn’t an accident.

The IK-17 Penal Colony, where American Paul Whelan was transferred to serve a 16-year sentence on espionage charges he and the U.S. government denied. Photo: REUTERS

Recalibration

Jake Sullivan was on his office sofa when a delegation from The Wall Street Journal stepped in. Their meeting, pre-scheduled, was meant to deliver good news, but word of Navalny’s death, hours earlier, lent it the air of a wake.

Sullivan had a habit of looking toward the floor, or to one side, as he carefully deliberated the angles of a problem. After a long pause, he spoke: “I never thought a deal with Navalny would work.” But he also hadn’t expected Putin to kill him, and still wasn’t sure if he would ever know the truth behind the dissident’s death.

Navalny’s supporters had lost everything—the man they were trying to save and Russia’s dreams for a democratic future. And the Journal, whose reporter, Gershkovich, had now spent 323 days in the Moscow jail where Stalin’s henchman once executed purged officials, was no closer to freeing him than in the first hours of his arrest.

But in the cloud of grief and disorientation, the national security adviser could also glimpse a new possibility. Germany had crossed the psychological threshold of agreeing to free a murderer—and perhaps they would accept other political prisoners in Navalny’s place. The question hanging over that analysis was whether Putin had come to the same fatal conclusion.

In the weeks to come, CIA officials would fly to meet their Russian counterparts in Saudi hotels, booked under false names, carrying eyes-only hard-copy lists of prisoners the West could trade with the Kremlin.

The world would finally see the fruits of their labor when, on Aug. 1, 2024 six planes delivered 24 prisoners and two children to an exchange point outside a Turkish air terminal, a mix of Russian spies, hackers, cybercriminals—and Krasikov—traded for Russian dissidents, German convicts, and Americans including Whelan, Gershkovich, and other journalists.

That trade, the largest East-West swap in modern history, would cement a cold, inescapable fact about the emerging world order: taking and trading prisoners, and bending the justice system to do it, is now what powerful countries do, a transactional order of statecraft encapsulated by Navalny’s arrest, the campaign to free him, and his tragic death.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov upon his return to Moscow. Photo: Mikhail Voskresensky/TASS/Zuma Press

For now, however, looking up from his office couch, Sullivan engaged the Journal without offering false hope. The newspaper’s lawyers had brought Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, and she was looking right at him, asking: “Doesn’t this create more urgency to free Evan?”

“It might,” he said. “It’s not a breaking point,” he added. “We will get this done. I see a pathway.”

This is the second of two parts. read part 1

Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson are leaders on The Wall Street Journal’s World Enterprise Team. This piece is adapted from their new book, “Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War,” which will be published on Aug. 19 by HarperCollins (which, like the Journal, is owned by News Corp).

Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com

2. Ukraine and Europe Counter Putin’s Cease-Fire Proposal

Excerpts:

The European counterproposal comes after a week of frantic diplomacy triggered by Putin’s overture to Witkoff. Hours after the two men met at the Kremlin, Trump summoned a call with select European leaders and Zelensky to brief them on the proposal.

On the call, Trump suggested that Russia would be ready to withdraw from the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in exchange for full control of Donetsk, according to European officials from three countries familiar with that conversation and two subsequent calls.

However, Witkoff walked back that claim the next day in a call with the chief aides of European leaders, suggesting that Russia would both withdraw and freeze the front line.

On Friday, European officials demanded a third call with Witkoff to clarify the confusion about what Putin had proposed. In that call, Witkoff said that the only offer on the table was for Ukraine to withdraw unilaterally from Donetsk in exchange for a cease-fire. That proposal was rejected by both Zelensky and European officials involved in the talks.

Ukraine and Europe Counter Putin’s Cease-Fire Proposal

Kyiv and European powers offer their own blueprint for ending war after the Russian leader demanded territorial concessions

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-and-europe-counter-putins-cease-fire-proposal-6a16133c

By Bojan Pancevski

Follow and Yaroslav Trofimov

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Updated Aug. 10, 2025 3:43 pm ET

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European and Ukrainian officials said they worry Russia is using the cease-fire offer as a ploy to avoid new U.S. sanctions and tariffs while continuing the war in Ukraine. Photo: Gavriil Grigorov/Zuma Press; Francesco Fotia/Zuma Press

Quick Summary

• European powers and Ukraine made a counterproposal to Putin’s cease-fire plan, ahead of Trump and Putin’s summit in Alaska.View more

BERLIN—European powers and Ukraine responded to Vladimir Putin’s cease-fire plan with a counterproposal that they say must serve as a framework so that coming talks between President Trump and the Russian leader can gain traction, according to European officials familiar with the talks.

The European plan rejected a Russian proposal to trade Ukrainian-held parts of the Donetsk region for a cease-fire. It was put forward in a meeting with top U.S. officials in England on Saturday.

Russia hasn’t made steps toward peace despite its talks with the U.S., Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday in an address, calling for U.S. sanctions against Russia’s economy. Russia launched an aerial attack Sunday on Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where at least 19 people were injured after homes, a clinic and a bus stop were hit, according to emergency services. 

“Sanctions are needed, pressure is needed,” he said. “If Russia does not want to stop the war, then its economy must be stopped.”

A U.S. official said the meetings on Saturday made progress toward Trump’s goal of ending the war in Ukraine. A European participant said the U.S. side reacted positively to the European plan.

European leaders, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said in a joint statement after the meeting that a diplomatic end to the war must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s security interests.

“We are convinced that only an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war can succeed,” the European leaders wrote.

European governments including those of Britain, Germany and France, as well as Ukraine, scrambled to respond to the peace proposal that came out of the past week’s encounter between Putin and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin. Following these talks, Trump let lapse his self-imposed deadline for imposing stiff secondary sanctions on Russia and agreed to a summit with Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15.

The European aim is to draw a common red line together with Ukraine that European officials say must apply to any potential negotiation with Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Photo: Alina Smutko/Reuters

The European proposal includes demands that a cease-fire take place before any other steps are taken. It also says that territory can be exchanged only in a reciprocal manner—meaning that if Ukraine pulls out of some regions, Russia must withdraw from others.

Crucially, the European plan, which was presented to Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg and Witkoff, also stipulates that any territorial concession by Kyiv must be safeguarded by ironclad security guarantees—including potential NATO membership for Ukraine.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb called Trump to present the European initiative on Saturday afternoon.

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“Europe stands united with Ukraine,” Stubb posted on social media. “We will continue to work closely with President Trump and the United States.” The meeting was an important step forward, he added.

“A fragile cease-fire would only serve the Russians, cementing their conquests and curbing Ukraine’s chances to fight back,” European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a message to European officials after the meeting.

The European plan was drafted and presented to the U.S. side by chief aides to European leaders. Vance was at the meeting, while most other U.S. officials attended via a video link.

According to officials briefed on the proposal brought by Witkoff from Moscow, Putin has said he would agree to a cease-fire in exchange for Ukraine handing over roughly one-third of the eastern Donetsk region that Kyiv still controls. The front line would be frozen elsewhere, including in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions that Russia also claims as its own.

Key regions on the Ukrainian front line

Russian forces in Ukraine

Belarus

Russia

Poland

Kyiv

Luhansk

Ukraine

Donetsk

Zaporizhzhia

Mol.

Kherson

Romania

Crimea

100 miles

100 km

Note: As of Aug. 7

Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

Several European officials briefed on the Wednesday meeting with Witkoff noted that Putin didn’t repeat his original, more hard-line position: that Ukraine must be demilitarized and its government replaced, and that all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, regions whose capitals are controlled by Ukraine, should be ceded to Russia. Putin annexed these three regions and a fourth, Luhansk, which is nearly fully occupied by Moscow, after sham referendums in 2022.

Some of the European officials said Saturday that if Ukraine were to hand over the entire Donetsk region, Russia would have to withdraw from the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

The plan shocked Zelensky, who hasn’t been invited to Alaska, and European leaders. He described it, following Saturday’s conversation with the U.K.’s Starmer, as “a plan to reduce everything to discussing the impossible,” and said that Ukraine wouldn’t give its land to anyone.

Germany’s Merz said in a TV interview on Sunday that European leaders hoped Zelensky would take part in the Alaska meetings as well.

A senior aide to a European leader said it was regrettable that Putin managed to avert the punitive measures scheduled by Trump that would have severely hurt Russia’s war economy and diminished its ability to escalate its invasion of Ukraine. Putin showed how vulnerable he was to U.S. pressure and Trump must use his leverage, the official said.

Signs bearing the Russian coat of arms hang above a street in Mariupol, a Russian-controlled city of Ukraine. Photo: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

Any agreement Trump and Putin reach in Alaska wouldn’t be worth much without the participation of European leaders, another senior European official said.

In their meeting with Vance, European officials reiterated that the future of Ukraine can’t be discussed without Ukraine. No matter what happens in Washington, Europe will continue providing Ukraine with weapons and funds, one senior European official said.

Russia has been on the offensive for more than two years, and in that time conquered less than 1% of Ukrainian territory, much of it in the Donetsk region, while losing hundreds of thousands of troops in pitched fighting dominated by brutal drone warfare.

Embroiled in battles for the towns of Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar since early last year, the Russian army is unlikely to seize the heavily fortified agglomerations of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the north of the Donetsk region anytime soon, according to most military analysts.

Handing over this strategic terrain, home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, in exchange for a cease-fire would mean that Putin, who has broken multiple cease-fires in the past, would be getting a windfall in exchange for giving nothing, said European officials from three countries involved in the talks.

Ukrainian soldiers fire toward Russian positions at the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region on Thursday. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

The European counterproposal comes after a week of frantic diplomacy triggered by Putin’s overture to Witkoff. Hours after the two men met at the Kremlin, Trump summoned a call with select European leaders and Zelensky to brief them on the proposal.

On the call, Trump suggested that Russia would be ready to withdraw from the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in exchange for full control of Donetsk, according to European officials from three countries familiar with that conversation and two subsequent calls.

However, Witkoff walked back that claim the next day in a call with the chief aides of European leaders, suggesting that Russia would both withdraw and freeze the front line.

On Friday, European officials demanded a third call with Witkoff to clarify the confusion about what Putin had proposed. In that call, Witkoff said that the only offer on the table was for Ukraine to withdraw unilaterally from Donetsk in exchange for a cease-fire. That proposal was rejected by both Zelensky and European officials involved in the talks.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

3. Armies Tormented by Drones Innovate Ways to Spot, Jam and Zap on the Cheap

Armies Tormented by Drones Innovate Ways to Spot, Jam and Zap on the Cheap

U.S. forces test technology including computerized rifle sights and backpack-portable jammers

https://www.wsj.com/world/armies-tormented-by-drones-innovate-ways-to-spot-jam-and-zap-on-the-cheap-8c02a6e4

A member of the U.S. Army is shown how to use a portable electronic jammer by a British soldier during the Project Flytrap 4.0 exercise in Poland. Photo: Staff Sgt. Christopher Saunders/DVIDS

By Daniel Michaels

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Aug. 10, 2025 10:00 am ET

Quick Summary

• The U.S. Army and allies are working to counter the growing threat of drones on the battlefield, learning from conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere.View more

BEMOWO PISKIE, Poland—When U.S. Army Sgt. Sebastian Zouzoulas became an electronic-warfare specialist, his main focus was detecting remote-control roadside explosives. That was four years ago—a whole generation back on the battlefield.

Today, his work is all about countering drones.

Wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and across Africa are rewriting the rules of combat, with small, expendable and deadly drones increasingly critical. Militaries are sprinting to mass-produce the weapons and understand how best to fit them into fighting plans.

As with every new weapon, a parallel race is on to thwart the new killers. Tacticians are grappling with how to defend against attacks massing dozens or hundreds of drones—without spending a fortune.

“Whatever weapon system or munition you shoot at another adversary’s capability, it should be cheaper than what you’re shooting down,” Army Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. land forces in Europe and Africa, recently told a gathering in Germany.

Days after setting that challenge, Donahue was at an Army base in the Polish countryside, watching forces try to accomplish it at an exercise dubbed Project Flytrap 4.0. 

The fourth in a series of learn-by-doing events, the U.S.-British maneuvers brought together top brass, tech developers and soldiers like Zouzoulas. While troops staged engagements under drenching rain across the training grounds’ woods and fields, officers and officials filled a base auditorium to absorb lessons from drone combat in Ukraine and hear about the efforts of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to apply those lessons. Outside, soldiers and technicians exhibited some of the gear being tested.

Stryker combat vehicles of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment during the exercise in Poland. Photo: Daniel Michaels/WSJ

U.S. Army Sgt. Sebastian Zouzoulas with a Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team Manpack. Photo: Daniel Michaels/WSJ

NATO, which recently agreed to a spending increase, must ensure “that we are strong enough that we don’t have to fight because no one wants to take us on—because we’ve deterred them,” said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, who attended Flytrap.

The base where Poland hosted the exercise sits about 50 miles from both the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the Polish city of Suwalki, which NATO fears that Russia considers a target because of its location between Kaliningrad and Moscow’s ally Belarus.

Project Flytrap began in March with initial research and testing. It has grown in scale and ambition, with 4.0 the first time troops integrated counterdrone systems into battalion-level fighting. The engagement scenario involved several dozen troops attacking roughly 180 defenders in traditional land battles augmented with hundreds of drones, employed in the most realistic ways possible short of lethality, said organizers.

To crank up intensity, they packed into the four-day exercise a relentless series of attacks, engagements and threats modeled on fighting in Ukraine and other conflicts.

“It’s terrifying, watching the drones counter each other,” said Zouzoulas of the scenes on Ukraine’s front lines.

Adapting to that reality is Flytrap’s focus. Troops from the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, based in Germany, and the U.K.’s Royal Yorkshire Regiment used new devices—some developed in-house and some from private companies—to track, jam and shoot down drones sent at them by other U.S. forces.

A U.S. soldier with a drone detector and a jammer. Photo: Daniel Michaels/WSJ

“It’s very much a cat-and-mouse game,” said Army Lt. Col. Jeremy Medaris, a leader of the exercise. Drones keep adapting, “so then you have to have an adaptation as well” to counter them. Instead of seeking a single solution, he said, the emphasis is on developing a flexible and layered approach with a range of tools. 

Zouzoulas’s Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team Manpack tackles the first stage in drone-fighting: spotting attackers. A sort of antenna, known as a Beast+, resembles a cactus growing out of a backpack, connected by wire to a screen the size of a smartphone. Designed for foot soldiers on the move, it scans for nearby drones’ radio signals and jams them.

An even smaller wearable system resembles two big walkie-talkies. Dubbed Wingman and Pitbull, they also seek and jam drones’ radio signals.

Using radio signals to spot air attacks began during World War II and until recently mostly focused on using radar to pinpoint large, fast objects. Engineers deliberately built systems to ignore small, low and slow objects to avoid alerts triggered by birds. Now engineers must be able to detect bird-size craft and ensure they are machines.

Zouzoulas’s unit moves on Stryker fighting vehicles, on which technicians at Bemowo Piskie mounted for test use a variety of drone-detection gear able to scan 360 degrees over a wide radius. Engineers are experimenting with precision radar and optical or infrared sensors, starting with upgrades to existing systems.

Specialists from the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Analysis Center have spent almost seven years creating software to boost the accuracy and range of widely used radar. It is used to target big guns deployed across the military, under the Common Remotely Operated Weapons System. Now it can detect drones at distances far greater than they might be targeted, said developers.

Troops inside a Stryker can activate the system to shoot drones automatically with the vehicle’s roof-mounted M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun. The system’s radar tracks the rounds it fires and adapts its targeting.

To secure fixed positions like field headquarters, the Pentagon is also using acoustic sensors. Highly sensitive listening devices, trained to detect the sonic signatures of drone motors, don’t hunt for radio waves or visual contact. That is critical at night and against autonomous or fiber-optic guided drones, which don’t communicate with base by radio transceiver.

A U.S. Army tactical operations center during the Project Flytrap exercise. Photo: Daniel Michaels/WSJ

Soldiers conferring as they oversee maneuvers. Photo: Daniel Michaels/WSJ

One acoustic drone-warning system deployed during the Flytrap exercise creates what its developers at Norway’s Squarehead Technology call a safety bubble around troops, in which they can be nearly certain they will know when drones are approaching. A full array, about the size of a campfire, addresses one of the drone attacks’ most insidious features: dread. Ukrainian soldiers and civilians now live in almost constant fear of Russian drones, and Kyiv is working to inflict the same anxiety on Russian troops.

“Knowing there are no drones around you allows you to be a human,” said Squarehead’s vice president of defense, Knut Torbjørn Moe. “You can do the things you need to do, like go to the bathroom or sleep or do other soldier work.”

Once drones are detected, neutralizing them at low cost is the next hurdle. A natural response for soldiers is to shoot at them with their personal rifles, but hitting a drone is much harder than hitting a bird. Troops at Flytrap improved their odds with computerized targeting equipment from the Israeli technology company Smart Shooter mounted on U.S. Army standard-issue M4 rifles.

The fire-control system consists of a high-tech sight that is slightly larger than a big telescopic scope and a replacement trigger. The shooter aims at a drone and pulls the trigger, but bullets only fire when the system has calculated that a hit is likely.

A U.S. soldier carries an M4 rifle fitted with a Smart Shooter sight. Photo: Daniel Michaels/WSJ

Soldiers at Flytrap also tested an array of point-and-shoot jammers that resemble oversize laser guns from a science-fiction movie. Most emit strong radio signals that disrupt a drone’s operation.

Bigger threats, such as drone swarms or attacks on armored vehicles, need a bigger response. That is what the San Francisco startup Mara aims to tackle with what it calls “ubiquitous antiswarm” technology, which detects incoming drones and autonomously launches compact interceptors. The company is a finalist in a continuing Army competition seeking innovative tech solutions to a range of battlefield problems.

Chief Executive Daniel Kofman, adjusting an antenna array on a Stryker, said he aims for “one-to-one cost with the drone coming at us” using inexpensive hardware and what he called “novel AI.” A full system, with 48 interceptors, costs “less than a new truck,” he said, without specifying what kind of truck.

Once troops in an equipped vehicle activate their system, it seeks and shoots down attacks without human input, Kofman said. The equipment is designed to withstand jamming and guard against fully autonomous drones, like fiber-guided ones, freeing troops to focus on their mission—not drones. 

“That’s the whole point of our system,” Kofman said.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Is the U.S. taking the right steps to counter the threats posed by drones on the battlefield? Join the conversation below.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

4. Russian Oil Refinery Capacity Drops Nearly 10% After Ukrainian Drone Strikes

Russian Oil Refinery Capacity Drops Nearly 10% After Ukrainian Drone Strikes - The Moscow Times

The Moscow Times · by The Moscow Times · August 8, 2025

Two of Rosneft’s largest oil refineries have been knocked offline following Ukrainian drone strikes last week, sidelining key infrastructure for at least a month and forcing Russia to ramp up crude exports through its western ports.

Repairs at the Ryazan Oil Refinery — Rosneft’s largest — and the Novokuybyshevsk Refinery are expected to take about a month, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Ryazan plant, which processes 13.7 million metric tons of crude annually and supplies fuel to the Moscow region, has halted roughly half of its fuel output due to damage to two of its three main refining units.

Meanwhile, the Novokuybyshevsk refinery, considered the most technologically advanced in Rosneft’s Samara group, has completely shut down its key atmospheric distillation unit (AVT-11). The plant’s total capacity is 8.3 million tons per year.

The attacks could result in a loss of up to 8% of Russia’s refining output, based on estimates by Reuters, which reported the country processed 267 million tons of crude in 2024.

With refining capacity curtailed, Rosneft is now left with a surplus of crude oil.

The company will increase exports via western seaports to 2 million barrels per day in August, up from a previously planned 1.77 million barrels, sources told Reuters earlier this week.

In an effort to stabilize domestic fuel supplies, Russia’s Energy Ministry said Friday that lost gasoline production will be offset in the coming days.

The ministry said emergency measures are underway, including the deployment of backup primary and secondary refining units and increasing throughput at other facilities across the country.

Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilyov has previously acknowledged that delays in returning refineries to service are being exacerbated by Western sanctions.

Read more about: Oil , Drones , Ukraine war

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5. An Assessment Mechanised Forces in the Age of Drones

A view from India.

Excerpt:

Drone and Dusted? For about seven decades since end of the Second World War, air forces around the world continued to grow bigger and faster therefore more complex in all aspects – manufacturing, maintenance, Command and Control (C2) and operations. This complexity has now become a millstone. Drones are a game changer; Davids against Top Gun Goliaths. Drones have an advantage today because antiquated ideas of airpower persist even when there is a clear writing on the wall. To become what they are, drones have let go of a lot of characteristics of a conventional combat aircraft i.e.: speed, range, weapon array and complexity. If mechanised forces adapt, change size, shape and most importantly tactics, they will force drones to become conventional aircraft and consequently going by Friedman’s central idea, ‘level the playing field’ [2]. Mechanised forces in their existing avatar are something that was created to get over the impasse of trench warfare. They now need to take on a new avatar to defeat drones. So, if one was to ask, “Are Mechanised Forces Drone and Dusted?”, my answer is, “NOT YET*” (* – conditions apply).

An Assessment Mechanised Forces in the Age of Drones

https://divergentoptions.org/2025/08/10/an-assessment-mechanised-forces-in-the-age-of-drones/

Type your email…

Samir Srivastava is serving in the Indian Army. All suggestions in the article are solely of the Author in his personal capacity. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.

Title: An Assessment of the Future of the Mechanised Forces in the age of Drones.

Date Originally Written: July 24, 2025

Date Originally Published: August 10, 2025

Author Point of View: The author is from the Mechanised Infantry Branch of the Indian Army. The author believes that the Mechanised Forces (as Armoured Corps and Mechanised Infantry are popularly known) still have a future in a battlefield dominated by Drones; but only if they adapt and change.

Summary: One may not have heard of a tank destroying another tank in the past few years but would surely recollect numerous instances where a drone has destroyed a tank. This includes the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War. So, is it curtains for the Mechanised Forces? Not quite yet.

Text: Lately, the drone has possibly become the biggest tank killer. The old dictum of a tank being the best anti-tank weapon is just that, old. It may be the end of the road for the Mechanised Forces as we know it, but there’s still hope if the Mechanised Forces choose to adapt. This assessment aims to look at this aspect.

What are Drones? Jargon aside, drones are aircraft. They are smaller, slower, easy to manufacture, low on technical complexity and most importantly cheap & unmanned. This makes them nimble, ubiquitous and dispensable unlike conventional combat aircraft. While Mechanised Forces are well equipped to deal with conventional aircraft however best of static and mobile air defence systems are falling short in addressing even the most apparent weaknesses of Drones.

Do Drones have Weaknesses? Yes, they do. Like conventional combat aircraft they need to be launched from somewhere, they need to be controlled by someone (not aboard but certainly somewhere near the business end) and need to be of some size to knock out a combat vehicle (unless one is just looking to put in a grenade through an open hatch). Unlike conventional combat aircraft, a drone is a one trick pony; because it’s airframe is capable of carrying only so much (propulsion, guidance and ordnance) and their effective range is at best one-tenth of a conventional aircraft. In most cases, drones operate within a short window – use it and/or lose it.

What is the Way Ahead? Mechanised Forces need to force the drone to become a conventional combat aircraft. Through design of Combat Vehicles coupled with changed techniques, tactics & procedures, either force the drone to become bigger in order to carry more payload or rob the drone of its battlefield autonomy by forcing it to collaborate with other drones thus consuming battery power, electromagnetic spectrum and airspace. This idea is expanded below.

Combat Vehicle Design? First things first – change how a tank or Infantry Combat Vehicle looks in all aspects – visual, thermal and electronic. Tanks and ICVs have, for over seven decades, generally had the same shape. Change this and both First Person View (FPV) drones as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled targeting can be defeated. Combat vehicles also need to shed weight. With a main battle tank, the primary threat no longer rests with another tank — do we really need 45–60-ton behemoths? Optimising the main gun will help reduce weight. Urbanisation has reduced target engagement ranges to a maximum of 1500 meters and this obviates the requirement of guns firing up to 4000 meters. Another way to shed weight is to reduce armour thickness; drones as they are now will not be able to fire a depleted uranium armour piercing round. A lighter tank/ ICV can go faster and farther, and that is the key to survival.

Speed and Dispersion? In his seminal work, Sean J. Edwards presented Swarm Warfare as something comprising of four stages – locate, converge, attack and disperse [1]. While this work was written long back, three of four stages are still relevant in case of drone swarms. Dispersal may be out since the drones are generally on a one-way trip. In this if we impair the drones’ ability to locate and converge, attacks either won’t happen or they’ll be ineffective. To evade being located, mechanised forces need to move fast. Drone launch pads can’t be everywhere and they too have a radius of action; move out of that as fast as possible and mechanised forces will be safe thus forcing drone operators to re-deploy therefore wasting time and giving away position. In the age of drones, Speed is the New Stealth. But speed alone is not enough. There is a requirement to disperse, with an ability to converge whenever required. Nothing very new but one truism that is more relevant today is that Massing is Suicide. Moving with speed and dispersing over a large frontage and depth will force the enemy to make more capable drones thus having to invest in heavier airframes or backup (logistics, electronics and software). The moment a drone gets as cumbersome as a conventional combat aircraft both in terms of design as well as logistics, its advantage vanishes and mechanised forces regain the upper hand.

Drone and Dusted? For about seven decades since end of the Second World War, air forces around the world continued to grow bigger and faster therefore more complex in all aspects – manufacturing, maintenance, Command and Control (C2) and operations. This complexity has now become a millstone. Drones are a game changer; Davids against Top Gun Goliaths. Drones have an advantage today because antiquated ideas of airpower persist even when there is a clear writing on the wall. To become what they are, drones have let go of a lot of characteristics of a conventional combat aircraft i.e.: speed, range, weapon array and complexity. If mechanised forces adapt, change size, shape and most importantly tactics, they will force drones to become conventional aircraft and consequently going by Friedman’s central idea, ‘level the playing field’ [2]. Mechanised forces in their existing avatar are something that was created to get over the impasse of trench warfare. They now need to take on a new avatar to defeat drones. So, if one was to ask, “Are Mechanised Forces Drone and Dusted?”, my answer is, “NOT YET*” (* – conditions apply).

Endnotes:

[1] Edward, Sean. Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present and Future. 24 Jul 2025. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1100/RAND_MR1100.pdf

[2] Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World is Flat. Penguin Book

6. Security Cooperation and Special Operations Forces: Training and Education Are Needed Now More than Ever

Due to the publication platform JSOU is using I cannot cut and paste the article here.

Please go to this link to read the article on the web site.

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/agwW3fgBvDeUrAqA

Security Cooperation and Special

Operations Forces: Training and

Education Are Needed Now More

than Ever

By Colonel (Retired) John E. Chere, Jr.

JSOU Report 25-18

July 16, 2025

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this work are entirely those of the author and do not

necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense,

United States Special Operations Command, or the Joint Special Operations University.

This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

7. Laura Loomer knocks Medal of Honor recipient in new attack on Army

Will our civilian Army leadership push back? Only civilian political leaders can stop this and make it right.

Of course Ms Loomer has the absolute right to say whatever she wants. But civilian political leaders do not have to listen to her and do what she says.  

Some say this is misattributed to Voltaire:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

The words above reportedly originated with an English author named Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906. 

Excerpts:

Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient and friend of several Trump administration appointees, called Loomer out in a social media post of his own on Saturday. While the medal is apolitical, he said, a person wearing it does not have to be.

“If anyone has earned the right to free speech or to have an opinion it’s a man who threw himself in front of a suicide bomber to save lives,” Meyer wrote to Loomer. “What have you done?”

Laura Loomer knocks Medal of Honor recipient in new attack on Army

The unofficial adviser to President Donald Trump chastised Army Secretary Dan Driscoll over a social media post recognizing Florent Groberg, a decorated soldier who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/09/laura-loomer-florent-groberg-dan-driscoll/

August 9, 2025 at 5:45 p.m. EDTYesterday at 5:45 p.m. EDT

Far-right activist Laura Loomer. (Jacob M. Langston/For The Washington Post)

By Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp

Far-right political activist Laura Loomer has opened an extraordinary new line of attack on the Pentagon, sharply criticizing Army Secretary Dan Driscoll for allowing the service to acknowledge the battlefield valor of Medal of Honor recipient Florent Groberg, who suffered catastrophic injuries saving the lives of fellow soldiers targeted by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.

Loomer, writing on social media, questioned why the Army had spotlighted Groberg in a recent post marking the incident’s anniversary. Groberg, she suggested, was undeserving of such recognition because he delivered remarks, as a private citizen, at the 2016 Democratic National Convention and was not “US born.”

“There are probably so many people who the Army could honor who have received the Medal of Honor,” Loomer, a provocateur who, unofficially, has advised President Donald Trump on personnel matters, wrote in her post on X. “But who did the Army choose to honor instead on their social media page under the Trump admin?” Under Driscoll, she continued, “there have been several instances of either him, or the Army promoting anti-Trump Leftists on their official social media channels.”

The Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest recognition for combat valor, and the Defense Department has long celebrated the courage and sacrifice demonstrated by the award’s recipients, putting Loomer’s criticism deeply at odds with one of the more sacrosanct aspects of American military culture. Yet given her considerable influence and frequent visits with Trump — she has taken credit for the administration’s ouster of several appointees whom she branded insufficiently loyal — Loomer’s broadside late Friday night appears certain to force an uncomfortable discussion at the Pentagon and, potentially, within the White House.

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Spokespeople for Driscoll and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, both Army veterans like Groberg, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not respond.

An Army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity citing the issue’s sensitivity, said Groberg is a “national hero” and one in a long series of soldiers who will be featured online by the service this year as it celebrates its 250th birthday. Loomer’s attack, the official said, is “despicable.”

“The Army is not going to check the political affiliation of our soldiers before we recognize them,” the official said. “A man or woman serving is not a Democrat or Republican, they are an American. Their political affiliation has nothing to do with their service.”

Loomer’s swipe at Driscoll and Groberg coincided with the anniversary of the suicide bombing on Aug. 8, 2012, that claimed the lives of four men: Army Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin J. Griffin, 45; Army Maj. Thomas E. Kennedy, 35; Air Force Maj. Walter D. Gray, 38; and Foreign Service officer Ragaei Abdelfattah, 43. Groberg, then 29, shoved the attacker away moments before the explosives detonated, preventing far greater carnage. He suffered life-altering injuries to his left leg, and several other soldiers were wounded.

Groberg declined an interview request but voiced amazement online at Loomer’s criticism.

“Thirteen years ago today is my Alive Day, the day I nearly lost my life, and four of my brothers, including three Army leaders, never came home,” he wrote. “I’ve served under presidents from both parties and will always honor my oath to this country. Yes, I spoke for 60 seconds at the DNC when asked about service and sacrifice, not politics. For me, 8/8 isn’t about parties. It’s about the lives we lost.”

During his convention speech, Groberg said he was not speaking as a Republican or a Democrat, but as a “proud immigrant to this country, a proud veteran of the United States Army, and a proud recipient of our nation’s highest military honor.” Groberg, who was born in France and later became a U.S. citizen, recognized his fellow service members who were killed during the attack. He said, too, that when Hillary Clinton’s moment arrived, she would be “ready to serve, ready to lead and ready to defend you.” Trump defeated Clinton in the election that November.

Groberg, asked previously about his decision to appear at the Democratic convention, said he informed organizers he is a Republican.

“I saw an opportunity for me to go in, not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, not as a political figure, but as a veteran. As an immigrant. As an American,” he told The Washington Post in 2016. He said then that he had a “God-given right” to share who he would be voting for, and that he did not judge anyone who voted for Trump.

“I made a choice,” he said. “I stood up. I knew I would take the heat. But guess what? I still go to sleep at night like a baby. I’m okay with it.”

President Barack Obama presents Army Capt. Florent Groberg with the Medal of Honor during a ceremony at the White House in 2015. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

In an interview Saturday, Loomer defended her criticism of Driscoll and Groberg, telling The Post that no one from the White House or Hegseth’s office had contacted her and asked her to take down her posts. She said the Army’s choice to recognize Groberg was ideologically at odds with the Trump administration.

“It is very important that the secretary of the Army does not push out Democratic propaganda,” Loomer said. She added that people can take her criticism “however they want. I just laid out the facts,” and said she thought she had been respectful.

“Well,” she said, “I said, ‘Thank you for your service.’”

Hegseth’s silence, in particular, is notable. Unlike other defense secretaries, he’s been extremely active on social media and quick to publicly rebut perceived critics or slights. He also has repeatedly called for a return of what he calls the “warrior ethos” to the Pentagon, celebrating those who prepare for combat and serve with distinction in it.

He and Loomer spoke privately in recent weeks, Hegseth’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, told CNN recently. The conversation came as she has turned her attention to perceived disloyalty to Trump within the Defense Department.

Driscoll’s name has surfaced as a possible replacement for Hegseth if the defense secretary were to leave the Cabinet post. Hegseth has faced frequent questions about his longtime viability in the role amid allegations of mismanagement and infighting on his team at the Pentagon, but he has retained the president’s support.

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Loomer said the social media post about Groberg marks at least the third time this year that the Army has highlighted people who have opposed Trump. She cited Driscoll’s show of gratitude to Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Virginia) for attending the Army’s 250th birthday celebration. Vindman, a retired Army officer, was a central figure in Trump’s first impeachment.

Loomer also noted the Army’s announcement that retired Army officer Jennifer Easterly, who served in the Biden administration as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, would join the faculty at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Driscoll revoked Easterly’s appointment last month, after Loomer and other critics panned the decision, and said he would direct a review of West Point hiring practices.

Others who have served under Trump defended Groberg and questioned Loomer’s understanding of the military’s nonpartisan culture.

“One of the first things my drill sergeant told us at Army Basic Training in 1983 was, ‘You all bleed Army green now — no one cares about the color of your skin, where you came from, or what religion you are,’” Chris Miller, who served as acting defense secretary during the first Trump administration, said in a text message. “He didn’t have to add, ‘or your political affiliation’ because it was taken for granted that our oath was to the Constitution and not any political party or person.”

Miller added: “To have an agent provocateur, seemingly lacking any understanding of the appropriate role of the military in America’s constitutional republic, cast aspersions on Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll’s righteous effort to honor the courage and sacrifice of all Army Medal of Honor recipients is an abomination and disreputable.”

Robert Wilkie, who served as Veterans Affairs secretary during the first Trump administration, said in a statement to The Post that the Medal of Honor “knows no political affiliation.”

“I am a Trump supporter and I am the son of a distinguished combat officer,” Wilkie said. “My service was modest. I was raised to believe that that medal is sacred. No matter what the holder believes or where he came from, he is worthy of the respect and thanks of all Americans.”

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Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient and friend of several Trump administration appointees, called Loomer out in a social media post of his own on Saturday. While the medal is apolitical, he said, a person wearing it does not have to be.

“If anyone has earned the right to free speech or to have an opinion it’s a man who threw himself in front of a suicide bomber to save lives,” Meyer wrote to Loomer. “What have you done?”

During the first Trump administration, Groberg visited the White House multiple times for ceremonies recognizing other service members who received the Medal of Honor. Trump thanked him directly for attending, according to transcripts from those events.

During the Biden administration, Groberg was appointed to the American Battle Monuments Commission, an independent agency that oversees U.S. military cemeteries and monuments overseas. He has often voiced a need for Americans to stand together and remember U.S. troops killed in combat. Groberg has been retained by the Trump administration on the commission, according to its website.

Groberg also visited the Pentagon recently and met with Hegseth in his office. Groberg, who now works at an aerospace investment firm, voiced appreciation for the opportunity on LinkedIn.

“Honored to meet with the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week for a meaningful conversation about strengthening our defense industrial base and our troops,” Groberg said. “We discussed the importance of competition, resilience, and innovation across the national security ecosystem. Grateful for the time, leadership, and shared commitment to building a more agile and prepared force.”

When some criticized Groberg’s decision to meet with Hegseth, the Medal of Honor recipient defended his choice and said that it appeared Hegseth has veterans’ best interests at heart.

Alex Horton and Noah Robertson contributed to this report.

What readers are saying

The comments overwhelmingly criticize Laura Loomer's remarks about Medal of Honor recipient Florent Groberg, emphasizing her lack of understanding and respect for military service. Many commenters highlight Groberg's bravery and service, contrasting it with Loomer's perceived... Show more

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.

Comments 2,948

By Dan Lamothe

Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military. He has written about the Armed Forces since 2008, traveling extensively, embedding with five branches of service and covering combat in Afghanistan.follow on X@danlamothe

By Tara Copp

Tara Copp is a national reporter focused on the military and national security. She has covered U.S. military operations across the globe. follow on X@TaraCopp

8. Israel’s New War Plan Includes Fighting in Gaza’s Central Refugee Camps

Excerpts:

Israeli authorities say it will begin with the goal of seizing control of Gaza City—the biggest population center in the north of the strip. Military analysts said it could play out over weeks or months, reflecting serious resource constraints that are likely to limit the pace and scope of military operations.

Under the plan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face the prospect of further displacement and new rounds of deadly fighting. More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.

Some analysts said Israel appears to hope the increased military pressure will bring Hamas back to the negotiating table on its terms and could pause the operation at any point.

Israel says it currently controls up to 75% of the Gaza Strip. Around two million Gazans are crammed into Gaza City, the seaside tent encampment at Al-Mawasi, and the central camps. Invasion of those areas would squeeze the population to an ever shrinking territory amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

The new plan will require the country to call up a large number of soldiers. The military already faces severe manpower strains, and reservists are exhausted from almost two years of war in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank.

Polls in Israel have shown for months that a large majority of the population, including right-wingers, support ending the Gaza war in exchange for freedom for the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Israel on Saturday to protest Netanyahu’s expansion of the war, in one of the largest antiwar demonstrations in recent months.

Israel’s New War Plan Includes Fighting in Gaza’s Central Refugee Camps

Israel’s prime minister revealed the previously undisclosed objective amid pressure internationally and at home

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israels-new-war-plan-includes-fighting-in-gazas-central-refugee-camps-2e0d8ad0

By Anat Peled

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Aug. 10, 2025 2:24 pm ET

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Israeli Prime Minister said the new war plan approved by Israel’s cabinet aims to demilitarize Gaza, have “overriding security control” by Israel and create a non-Israeli civilian administration. Photo: Abir Sultan/AFP/Getty Images

Quick Summary

• Netanyahu said Israel’s security cabinet approved a war plan to dismantle Hamas in Gaza City and central refugee camps.View more

JERUSALEM—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new war plan approved by Israel’s security cabinet includes dismantling Hamas in Gaza’s central refugee camps in addition to Gaza City, a broadening that comes as he faces criticism internationally for expanding the war and from the far-right wing his coalition for not going far enough.

The new war plan was approved just ahead of the weekend. An announcement by the prime minister’s office at the time only mentioned that the military would prepare to take over Gaza City. Netanyahu revealed the previously undisclosed targeting of the central camps in comments to reporters Sunday.

The more limited initial objectives announced last week—after Netanyahu had touted a takeover of the entire Gaza Strip—were criticized by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as too incremental.

“They decided once again to do the same thing and head for a military campaign that doesn’t aim for decisive victory, but just pressuring Hamas to go for a partial hostage deal,” Smotrich said in a video statement on Saturday.

A tent camp houses Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military offensive, in Gaza City. Photo: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

“Unfortunately, for the first time since the start of the war I feel I cannot stand behind this decision and back it,” Smotrich said, adding that he had lost confidence that Netanyahu wanted to defeat Hamas.

Israel also came under heavy pressure internationally over its decision to expand the war as well as earlier moves that sharply restricted the flow of food into Gaza and pushed many Palestinians closer to starvation. Germany said last week that it would restrict arms sales to Israel, while European countries and the U.K. criticized the war plan.

The prime minister’s ruling coalition relies on the support of far-right lawmakers like Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Netanyahu has had to balance their demands with the views of his military and pressure from international partners since the beginning of the war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel nearly two years ago.

“Last Thursday, Israel’s security cabinet instructed the IDF to dismantle the remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza city and the central camps,” Netanyahu said, during a news conference for foreign journalists, referring to the acronym for the Israeli military.

Netanyahu offered few details of the new plan or how the central camps would fit into it on Sunday. He said the military would evacuate the population before the assault to “designated safe zones,” where they would be provided with humanitarian aid. He declined to provide a timeline for the operation, but said Israel hoped to complete it quickly so it could end the war

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced criticism from the far-right wing of his coalition for not being aggressive enough in going after Hamas. Photo: Abir Sultan/Press Pool

Israeli authorities say it will begin with the goal of seizing control of Gaza City—the biggest population center in the north of the strip. Military analysts said it could play out over weeks or months, reflecting serious resource constraints that are likely to limit the pace and scope of military operations.

Under the plan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face the prospect of further displacement and new rounds of deadly fighting. More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.

Some analysts said Israel appears to hope the increased military pressure will bring Hamas back to the negotiating table on its terms and could pause the operation at any point.

Israel says it currently controls up to 75% of the Gaza Strip. Around two million Gazans are crammed into Gaza City, the seaside tent encampment at Al-Mawasi, and the central camps. Invasion of those areas would squeeze the population to an ever shrinking territory amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

The new plan will require the country to call up a large number of soldiers. The military already faces severe manpower strains, and reservists are exhausted from almost two years of war in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank.

Polls in Israel have shown for months that a large majority of the population, including right-wingers, support ending the Gaza war in exchange for freedom for the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Israel on Saturday to protest Netanyahu’s expansion of the war, in one of the largest antiwar demonstrations in recent months.

Write to Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com

9.

A warning? If you are liked too much by the Americans you are at risk?

China Detains Senior Diplomat Who Aided U.S. Relations

Liu Jianchao gained warm reception during visit to Washington and New York where he was seen as potential foreign minister

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-detains-senior-diplomat-who-aided-u-s-relations-ca110bfc?mod=hp_lead_pos4

By Chun Han Wong

Follow and Lingling Wei

Follow

Aug. 9, 2025 11:52 pm ET

Liu Jianchao speaking at a forum in Beijing in July. Photo: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

Quick Summary

• Liu Jianchao, a Chinese diplomat considered a potential foreign minister, was taken for questioning by authorities after returning from a trip.View more

Liu Jianchao, a senior Chinese diplomat widely seen as a potential foreign minister, has been taken away by authorities for questioning, according to people familiar with the matter.

A veteran of China’s foreign service who also fought corruption as a Communist Party graftbuster, Liu has most recently been serving as head of the party’s International Department, which oversees relations with foreign political parties and socialist states. 

Liu was taken away after returning to Beijing from a work trip overseas in late July, according to the people familiar with the matter. The reason for his detention couldn’t be determined.

Liu, 61 years old, couldn’t be reached for comment. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The International Department and the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, its top internal watchdog, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Liu’s most recent public engagements were visits to Singapore, South Africa and Algeria late last month in his capacity as head of the International Department, according to official disclosures. The department’s website continues to list Liu as its minister.

His absence could erode diplomatic expertise in Beijing, where Chinese leader Xi Jinping has increasingly favored political loyalty in personnel appointments, according to people close to China’s foreign-policy establishment.

The detention of Liu marks the highest-level known probe involving a Chinese diplomat since Beijing ousted Qin Gang as foreign minister in 2023 after giving him the job just seven months earlier. An internal party investigation found that Qin had engaged in an extramarital affair that lasted through his tenure as Beijing’s ambassador to Washington, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Qin was succeeded as foreign minister by his predecessor, Wang Yi, who is also the Communist Party’s top foreign-policy official and a member of the elite 24-member Politburo. Qin resigned from the party’s Central Committee last year, but remained a party member.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping Photo: Lukas Coch/EPA/Shutterstock

Party enforcers have taken down scores of senior officials as part of Xi’s relentless disciplinary purges, which have featured heightened scrutiny on party and state workers over national-security concerns. Since Xi took power in 2012, party inspectors have punished more than 6.2 million people for offenses that include corruption, bureaucratic inaction and the leaking of state secrets.

After Qin’s removal, Liu was considered a strong candidate to step up as foreign minister, given his experience and seniority within China’s diplomatic apparatus.

During a trip to Washington and New York in early 2024, Liu drew praise for his engaging delivery of messages on the need for steady U.S.-China relations, according to people who attended meetings with him at the time. Some American participants noted Liu’s willingness to both listen to and address concerns over China’s policies, including a clampdown on Western firms assessing investment risks in the country.

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During that trip, Liu interacted with American think tanks such as the Asia Society, investors such as Blackstone Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman and Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, as well as Biden administration officials, including then Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“The Chinese were basically telling us that he’s going to be the next foreign minister,” a U.S. official said at the time. “They were saying, ‘He’s going on to bigger things.’ ”

But the same trip raised eyebrows back in Beijing, where it would have been seen as politically incorrect for Liu to present himself as the foreign-minister-in-waiting before any formal announcement that he would be taking that role.

Liu has spent the bulk of his career in the foreign service, with notable stints in party and state agencies that spearheaded Xi’s crackdown on corruption.

People who have met Liu say he once professed a passion for golf and used to play often, but likely stopped as the party started frowning upon officials golfing amid Xi’s clampdown on extravagant behavior. Liu’s son was working in the finance industry in the U.S. at one point and is now based in China, according to some of these people.

A fluent English speaker, Liu joined China’s Communist Party and the Foreign Ministry in the 1980s, when he also spent time studying international relations at Oxford University. He gained prominence in the public eye as a ministry spokesman—a post he held during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Liu Jianchao became a key figure in Xi Jinping’s ‘Operation Fox Hunt,’ a global effort to hunt down Chinese fugitives accused of graft who had fled abroad. Photo: Florian Gaertner/DPA/Zuma Press

China subsequently appointed him as its ambassador to the Philippines and then Indonesia, before promoting him to assistant minister of foreign affairs in 2013.

Liu made an unusual switch to anticorruption work in 2015, when he was assigned to lead the international-cooperation office at the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. He became a key figure in Xi’s “Operation Fox Hunt,” a global effort to hunt down Chinese fugitives accused of graft who had fled abroad.

In 2017, Liu helped pilot a new government antigraft agency—known as a supervisory commission—in the eastern province of Zhejiang, where he was named the region’s top discipline enforcer. The agency was established at the national level the following year, with a mandate to police conduct and enforce party-style discipline among all government workers.

Liu returned to the foreign service in 2018, when he became a senior official at the party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, a Xi-led body that directs China’s diplomatic policy.

In 2022, the party appointed Liu as head of the International Department and then promoted him to full membership of its elite Central Committee. He has traveled more often than his predecessor did, including trips to the U.S. and other Western democracies that past International Department chiefs generally hadn’t visited.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com and Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

10. Russian Drone Innovations are Likely Achieving Effects of Battlefield Air Interdiction in Ukraine

Read the entire report at this link: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-drone-innovations-are-likely-achieving-effects-battlefield-air-interdiction

Russian Drone Innovations are Likely Achieving Effects of Battlefield Air Interdiction in Ukraine

Aug 7, 2025 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

By Kateryna Stepanenko

August 7, 2025

Executive Summary

The Russian integration of combined unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack tactics and adaptations is giving Russian forces important advantages on the battlefield in Ukraine and facilitating Russian advances on key Ukrainian towns. Russian UAV adaptations are likely achieving some effects of battlefield air interdiction (BAI): The use of airpower to strike targets in the near rear of the frontline to impact battlefield operations in the near term.[1] Neither Ukraine nor Russia has been able to conduct BAI using manned aircraft or UAVs due to the density and sophistication of adversary air defenses and electronic warfare (EW) over the past three years, but Russian forces are now achieving partial BAI effects in support of their offensives.[2] Russia’s allies, especially the People's Republic of China (PRC), have enabled Russia to develop and scale the production of UAVs that are more resistant to EW interference and capable of operating at longer distances, higher speeds, and in challenging environments. Ukraine and its partners must invest urgently in kinetic anti-drone systems that are not reliant on EW to secure near-rear areas and, ultimately, frontline positions as well.

Russian forces are actively achieving some effects of battlefield air interdiction (BAI) of Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) with tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), enabling Russian advances in eastern Ukraine. BAI is the use of air power to strike targets in the near rear of the frontline to impact battlefield operations in the near term.[3] These operationally significant targets include roads, railways, and bridges (infrastructure that supports GLOCs); command posts; ammunition depots; assembly areas; and training grounds. In simple terms, BAI aims to deny the adversary the use of crucial logistics lines and facilities necessary to sustain battlefield operations. Ukrainian servicemen and analysts reported that Russian forces began to systematically target Ukrainian GLOCs and other operationally significant targets with tactical first-person-view (FPV) UAVs and loitering munitions across the entire frontline as early as Winter and Spring 2025, effectively using these UAVs to interdict Ukrainian logistics ahead of the Russian Summer 2025 offensive.[4] Ukrainian sources noted that Russian forces previously only operated tactical UAVs on the battlefield, but that they have adapted these UAVs to strike Ukraine's near rear areas.[5] Russian forces recently made notable advances in the Lyman, Siversk, Kostyantynivka, Pokrovsk, and Novopavlivka directions, likely after achieving limited BAI effects with new FPV drone and loitering munitions adaptations.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia has previously been able to conduct BAI using manned aircraft or UAVs due to the density and sophistication of adversary air defenses and electronic warfare (EW) over the past three years.[6] Russia has largely used its aircraft to launch long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure in the deep rear and to launch glide bombs along the frontline, but has not used aircraft directly over the battlefield. Ukraine has shown that it is possible to conduct at least partial BAI using ground-based systems during the 2022 Kherson counteroffensive when Ukrainian forces used US-provided HIMARS to deprive Russian forces of the use of the Antonivsky Bridge and the roadway over Kakhovka Dam.[7] Neither Ukrainian nor Russian UAVs can fully accomplish BAI effects such as destroying a bridge or a highway due to payload limitations. UAVs, however, are increasingly targeting individual vehicles on the GLOCs, defensive positions such as trenches, and infrastructure targets that are accomplishing interdiction effects similar to those that BAI aims to achieve. These interdiction effects include keeping adversary reinforcements and supplies from arriving at the frontlines in a timely manner.

11. Why India Can’t Afford to Jettison Its Relationship With Russia

CRInk + sometimes "I"? India does what it believes it must. And what about the QUAD? And did we not rename the Pacific Command INDOPACOM to account for India? Or is it INDOPACOM because of the Indian and Pacific Oceans? Enquiring minds want to know.

Why India Can’t Afford to Jettison Its Relationship With Russia

Despite the threat of U.S. tariffs, New Delhi is resisting pressure to cut ties with Moscow that have brought economic and geopolitical benefits

https://www.wsj.com/world/india/why-india-cant-afford-to-jettison-its-relationship-with-russia-5d495768

By Shan Li

Follow and Thomas Grove

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Aug. 9, 2025 11:00 pm ET

President Trump has been trying to persuade Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help the U.S. isolate Russia. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Quick Summary

• President Trump is using tariffs to try to weaken India’s ties with Russia amid the Ukraine war.View more

President Trump is using the threat of stiff tariffs to try to peel India away from Russia, as he attempts to boost pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

But decades of close economic, political and military relations between New Delhi and Moscow mean Trump faces a challenge in persuading Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to drop a partnership that has survived great geopolitical turmoil.

In recent days, Trump has blasted India for its heavy reliance on Russian oil imports, as well as its longstanding purchases of Russian military equipment. On Wednesday, the president slapped India with an additional tariff of 25% on its exports to the U.S.—doubling the existing 25% duty that went into effect earlier this month—as punishment for its continued purchasing of Russian oil.

Despite tariffs that could inflict real damage on the Indian economy, Modi has stood firm in the face of rising American pressure—a sign of how important relations with Russia are for the South Asian giant.

India’s Foreign Ministry called the penalty “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable” and promised that India will “take all actions necessary to protect its national interest.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier in the week that “sovereign countries should have and do have the right to choose their own trading partners.”

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President Trump doubles tariffs on Indian goods as a penalty for Russian oil deals. WSJ’s Shan Li reports on the consequences for India. Photo: Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

On Friday, Modi wrote on X that he had a “good and detailed conversation with my friend President Putin.”

“I thanked him for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine,” the prime minister wrote, adding that the leaders had “reaffirmed our commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.” He said he expected Putin to visit India later this year.

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Since the Cold War, Russia has been one of India’s most constant partners in a relationship anchored by arms deals, economic cooperation and diplomatic support for New Delhi as it faces off with regional rivals China and Pakistan. For its part, Moscow drew close to India after tensions grew in the 1960s between the Soviet Union and Beijing.

In the decades that followed, Russia extended more than a billion dollars’ worth of loans for the purchase of Russian military and nonmilitary goods.

The charm offensive was further sweetened by Russian crude, which Moscow sold to New Delhi in the 1960s at a 10% to 20% discount to prevailing world prices.

“This was all part of the Soviet ‘oil offensive,’ ” said historian Sergey Radchenko, Cold War expert and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

India’s oil refiners have made significant savings by buying discounted Russian crude in recent years. Photo: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News

Moscow even sent geologists to India to search for oil and, when little was found, the Soviet Union allowed India to purchase Siberian crude with shipments of tea so that New Delhi could conserve its cash reserves, he said. 

The bonds grew closer after the U.S. backed Pakistan—a bitter rival of India—and imposed a slew of sanctions on New Delhi in 1974 after its first nuclear test and in 1998 when India again tested its nuclear weapons.

“Many Indians still find Russia today, because of the history, a reliable partner,” said Harsh V. Pant, head of strategic studies at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi. “Many in India believe that America has always been more favorably disposed towards Pakistan.”

Even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t pushed Modi to repudiate Moscow. India—which has long pursued a strategy of avoiding alignments with other major powers—has stayed neutral on the Ukraine war, abstaining from United Nations votes to condemn the invasion and declining to join successive waves of Western sanctions.

Meanwhile, India—a net energy importer with a voracious and growing appetite for energy—benefited from a shift by Western countries away from Russian oil, as well as a price cap that the U.S. and its allies have imposed on the country’s crude.

Sanctions targeting Russia’s oil industry have increased Moscow’s reliance on friendly nations such as India. Photo: Vladimir Soldatkin/Reuters

Over the past several years, India has begun buying massive amounts of Russian oil. Last year, India accounted for more than one-third of Russia’s oil exports, second only to China at nearly 50%, according to the Observer Research Foundation. Steep discounts have saved Indian refineries $17 billion over the past three years, according to credit-rating firm ICRA.

Indeed, India isn’t the only Asian country to benefit from Russia’s increasing economic isolation. Rival China has likewise bought crude and scooped up assets inside Russia. But a creeping wariness in Moscow of overdependence on Beijing makes Russia’s relationship with India all the more important.

The cheap oil is critical for a country of 1.4 billion that is growing rapidly. The South Asian nation is the world’s fastest-growing consumer of oil, behind only the U.S. and China in total consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Its vast energy needs are met by importing 90% of its crude oil from overseas.

Over the past three years, trade between the two countries skyrocketed to $69 billion, a record figure pushed higher by India’s purchases of Russian crude. Those imports have allowed New Delhi to sell gasoline at a cheaper rate domestically and resell its oil products abroad at a fatter margin.

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“It’s not going to be shutting off the Russian tap in the immediate future,” said Syed Akbaruddin, former Indian permanent representative to the U.N. and dean of the Kautilya School of Public Policy in Hyderabad. “There is no way, given the cost differential and the impact on the budget.”

To be sure, Indian refineries have already started hedging their bets by curbing their purchases in recent weeks, according to data and analytics firm Kpler. Imports of Russian crude oil fell about 500,000 barrels a day in July to a five-month low of 1.6 million.

According to the company’s analysis, India’s private refiners, which process over 50% of imported Russian crude, are expected to boost their imports from other sources including the Middle East and West Africa—but can’t cut off Russian oil completely.

“Replacing Russian barrels is no easy feat—logistically daunting, economically painful and geopolitically fraught,” Sumit Ritolia, Kpler’s lead research analyst in refining and modeling, wrote in a research note.

Meanwhile, Trump has also taken aim at India’s historic reliance on Russia for military equipment.

The S-400 air-defense system, seen at a Moscow parade in May, has been a key part of Russia’s arms sales to India. Photo: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Although New Delhi has been trying to diversify its suppliers in recent decades, Russian and Soviet-made equipment still makes up over 50% of India’s arsenal. New Delhi continues to be a loyal customer of Russian arms.

Part of the appeal is Moscow’s willingness to share technology and help India manufacture arms domestically. In contrast, under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. signaled its openness to technology transfers, but Washington has dragged its feet on some projects.

Last month, the Indian navy commissioned a new stealth frigate purchased from Russia. Two more frigates are being built in India with technical assistance from Russia’s Yantar shipyards.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term, India bucked threats of sanctions from the U.S. to agree to buy five squadrons of Russia’s top shelf S-400 air-defense system. Three of those squadrons so far have been delivered—and stationed along India’s borders with China and Pakistan.

“It will be many decades before India can actually replace the Russian kit in their inventory, if they can replace it at all,” said Ashley J. Tellis, an expert on geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Write to Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com and Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

12. The Bolduc Brief: Why Ukraine Must Reject Territorial Concessions to Russia

Conclusion:

The arguments against territory swapping underscore the importance of upholding international law, defending Ukrainian sovereignty, and maintaining a firm stance against Russian aggression. The U.S. plays a critical role in supporting these objectives through military aid, economic sanctions, and diplomatic leadership, alongside a united coalition of allies committed to Ukraine’s defense. The alternative is a world where aggression is rewarded and international law is rendered meaningless, a world inimical to peace and stability.

The Bolduc Brief: Why Ukraine Must Reject Territorial Concessions to Russia

sofrep.com · by Donald Bolduc · August 10, 2025

7 hours ago

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Brigadier General (Ret.) Donald C. Bolduc, former U.S. Army Special Forces Commander. Image Credit: US Army

The proposition of territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia, particularly as entertained during the Trump administration, encounters formidable opposition rooted in international law, Ukrainian sovereignty, and the necessity to deter further Russian expansionism. These objections converge on several pivotal arguments.

The forced relinquishment of Ukrainian land would represent a violation of sovereignty. Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a cornerstone of international law and the UN Charter, would be fundamentally compromised by any coerced cession. The exclusive right of Ukraine to govern its territory within internationally recognized borders is intrinsic to its sovereignty. A forced land exchange would subvert this right, establishing a perilous precedent for nations grappling with territorial disputes. President Zelensky has repeatedly affirmed that the Ukrainian constitution explicitly forbids ceding territory, rendering any negotiation involving such concessions an illegitimate infringement upon Ukraine’s sovereign decision-making prerogatives.

The nature of Russian aggression under Vladimir Putin cannot be ignored. Russia’s military incursions into Ukraine constitute an unprovoked act of aggression, flagrantly violating international law. Ceding territory would reward this aggression, potentially emboldening Russia to pursue further territorial expansion through military force. Putin’s regime has consistently demonstrated a blatant disregard for international norms and agreements, exemplified by its repeated violations of accords such as the Helsinki Final Act, and more recently, the violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which guaranteed Ukraine’s security in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. Any negotiated settlement involving territorial concessions risks exploitation by Russia, which may not adhere to the terms of the agreement.

The role of U.S. military support and economic sanctions is critical. U.S. military aid remains indispensable for Ukraine’s capacity to defend its sovereignty and deter further Russian aggression. Reducing or eliminating this support would not only weaken Ukraine’s negotiating position but also embolden Russia. Economic sanctions against Russia and its allies are essential to increasing the economic cost of its aggression. Relaxing or removing these sanctions would provide Russia with economic relief, undermining the international effort to compel adherence to international law. U.S. leadership in maintaining sanctions and providing military support is vital for upholding the broader international order. A retreat from this commitment would signal a weakening of U.S. resolve and potentially encourage other states to challenge international norms.

What alternatives exist to territory swaps? Instead of ceding territory, the focus should be on bolstering Ukraine’s military capabilities through increased aid, training, and intelligence sharing. This approach would enable Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and potentially regain lost territory. Continued diplomatic pressure on Russia, including coordinated sanctions, international condemnation, and the potential for asset seizures, can help isolate Russia and compel it to negotiate a peaceful resolution that respects Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

The international community, including organizations such as NATO and individual nations like the United Kingdom and Germany, has provided substantial support to Ukraine. The UK has committed £18 billion in aid, including £13 billion in military support, while Germany has pledged a €5 billion military aid package. This support is crucial for Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and resist Russian aggression.

The arguments against territory swapping underscore the importance of upholding international law, defending Ukrainian sovereignty, and maintaining a firm stance against Russian aggression. The U.S. plays a critical role in supporting these objectives through military aid, economic sanctions, and diplomatic leadership, alongside a united coalition of allies committed to Ukraine’s defense. The alternative is a world where aggression is rewarded and international law is rendered meaningless, a world inimical to peace and stability.

The proposition of territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia, particularly as entertained during the Trump administration, encounters formidable opposition rooted in international law, Ukrainian sovereignty, and the necessity to deter further Russian expansionism. These objections converge on several pivotal arguments.

The forced relinquishment of Ukrainian land would represent a violation of sovereignty. Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a cornerstone of international law and the UN Charter, would be fundamentally compromised by any coerced cession. The exclusive right of Ukraine to govern its territory within internationally recognized borders is intrinsic to its sovereignty. A forced land exchange would subvert this right, establishing a perilous precedent for nations grappling with territorial disputes. President Zelensky has repeatedly affirmed that the Ukrainian constitution explicitly forbids ceding territory, rendering any negotiation involving such concessions an illegitimate infringement upon Ukraine’s sovereign decision-making prerogatives.

The nature of Russian aggression under Vladimir Putin cannot be ignored. Russia’s military incursions into Ukraine constitute an unprovoked act of aggression, flagrantly violating international law. Ceding territory would reward this aggression, potentially emboldening Russia to pursue further territorial expansion through military force. Putin’s regime has consistently demonstrated a blatant disregard for international norms and agreements, exemplified by its repeated violations of accords such as the Helsinki Final Act, and more recently, the violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which guaranteed Ukraine’s security in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. Any negotiated settlement involving territorial concessions risks exploitation by Russia, which may not adhere to the terms of the agreement.

The role of U.S. military support and economic sanctions is critical. U.S. military aid remains indispensable for Ukraine’s capacity to defend its sovereignty and deter further Russian aggression. Reducing or eliminating this support would not only weaken Ukraine’s negotiating position but also embolden Russia. Economic sanctions against Russia and its allies are essential to increasing the economic cost of its aggression. Relaxing or removing these sanctions would provide Russia with economic relief, undermining the international effort to compel adherence to international law. U.S. leadership in maintaining sanctions and providing military support is vital for upholding the broader international order. A retreat from this commitment would signal a weakening of U.S. resolve and potentially encourage other states to challenge international norms.

What alternatives exist to territory swaps? Instead of ceding territory, the focus should be on bolstering Ukraine’s military capabilities through increased aid, training, and intelligence sharing. This approach would enable Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and potentially regain lost territory. Continued diplomatic pressure on Russia, including coordinated sanctions, international condemnation, and the potential for asset seizures, can help isolate Russia and compel it to negotiate a peaceful resolution that respects Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

The international community, including organizations such as NATO and individual nations like the United Kingdom and Germany, has provided substantial support to Ukraine. The UK has committed £18 billion in aid, including £13 billion in military support, while Germany has pledged a €5 billion military aid package. This support is crucial for Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and resist Russian aggression.

The arguments against territory swapping underscore the importance of upholding international law, defending Ukrainian sovereignty, and maintaining a firm stance against Russian aggression. The U.S. plays a critical role in supporting these objectives through military aid, economic sanctions, and diplomatic leadership, alongside a united coalition of allies committed to Ukraine’s defense. The alternative is a world where aggression is rewarded and international law is rendered meaningless, a world inimical to peace and stability.

As someone who’s seen what happens when the truth is distorted, I know how unfair it feels when those who’ve sacrificed the most lose their voice. At SOFREP, our veteran journalists, who once fought for freedom, now fight to bring you unfiltered, real-world intel. But without your support, we risk losing this vital source of truth. By subscribing, you’re not just leveling the playing field—you’re standing with those who’ve already given so much, ensuring they continue to serve by delivering stories that matter. Every subscription means we can hire more veterans and keep their hard-earned knowledge in the fight. Don’t let their voices be silenced. Please consider subscribing now.

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sofrep.com · by Donald Bolduc · August 10, 2025

13. The Quiet Technocrat Who Enacts Putin’s Ruthless Agenda

The Quiet Technocrat Who Enacts Putin’s Ruthless Agenda

For three years, Sergei V. Kiriyenko has handled the political aspects of the war in Ukraine, rising among a cadre of skilled managers who oversee the sprawling Russian state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine-war-sergei-kiriyenko.html

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Sergei V. Kiriyenko in Moscow in 2023. His modest title, first deputy chief of staff, belies a sprawling portfolio of responsibilities.Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

By Anton Troianovski

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. He spoke extensively with Kremlin insiders, Western officials and former colleagues of Sergei V. Kiriyenko to trace his rise to power.

Aug. 10, 2025

Updated 5:23 a.m. ET

The Kremlin official boasted of his commitment to healthy living, opening a door in his office to show a visiting businessman what looked like a private gym. Then he described his latest project: stage-managing “referendums” in occupied Ukraine to make it look like those regions wanted to join Russia.

The Moscow businessman, who had come to see him about another matter, recalled that the official, Sergei V. Kiriyenko, had gone into great detail about the referendums, even listing the percentage breakdown of the results the Kremlin would declare.

He added that Mr. Kiriyenko left the impression of a calm, ambitious bureaucrat “solving a concrete, technical problem.”

Since that meeting three years ago, it has become more clear than ever that Mr. Kiriyenko is the man who turns President Vladimir V. Putin’s ideas into action.

As the Russian leader wages war, Mr. Kiriyenko oversees wide-ranging government efforts to tighten Mr. Putin’s grip on the country and on occupied Ukraine. He has also recently gained new power inside the Kremlin, taking over much of the portfolio of another Putin aide who disagreed with the invasion of Ukraine.

Read more about Dmitri N. Kozak

He Was a Key Aide to Putin. Then He Balked at the Ukraine War.

Despite his modest title of first deputy chief of staff to Mr. Putin, Mr. Kiriyenko represents an underappreciated aspect of how the Russian president exercises power, forming part of a cadre of skilled, loyal and opportunistic managers who direct the sprawling apparatus of the Russian state.

For more than three years, Mr. Putin has leaned on Mr. Kiriyenko, 63, to manage the political aspects of the Ukraine war. Cracking down on domestic opposition. Expanding the Kremlin’s control of the internet. Pushing Mr. Putin’s narrative into Russian schools and culture. Shaping propaganda and governance in occupied Ukraine. Attempting to legitimize Russia’s land grab.

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First aid training at a school in Kursk, Russia, in 2024, part of a new subject called “Fundamentals of Security and Protection of the Motherland.”Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

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Celebrating in Moscow in 2022 after a ceremony to sign accession treaties for territories seized from Ukraine.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

Just in the past few months, Mr. Kiriyenko’s reach has extended to efforts to reintegrate Ukraine war veterans into civilian life and to push Russians onto a state-affiliated messaging app instead of Western ones. If Mr. Putin makes a deal with President Trump at their planned summit in Alaska on Friday to end the fighting in Ukraine, it is likely to be Mr. Kiriyenko’s job to sell any compromise to Russians as a victory.

In interviews, more than a dozen former colleagues and other Russians who know Mr. Kiriyenko described him as a man whose proficiency in the minutiae of control and influence have greased the machinery of Mr. Putin’s autocracy. Many of the people, including three close to the Kremlin, spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The Kremlin declined to make Mr. Kiriyenko available for an interview and did not respond to a request for comment.

One of his former aides, Boris B. Nadezhdin, said that he noticed Mr. Kiriyenko’s skill at managing personnel and at staying in his bosses’ good graces three decades ago, when Mr. Kiriyenko was a deputy energy minister. The two men would collide in 2024, when the Kremlin blocked Mr. Nadezhdin’s attempt to run for president against Mr. Putin.

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Mr. Nadezhdin noted in an interview that Russia’s era of independent politicians had passed. He said that the Putin era belonged to those like Mr. Kiriyenko — “a person who does not try to implement any of his own plans, ideas and so on, but simply, clearly carries out tasks.”

‘Without Rules’

Mr. Kiriyenko casts himself as a student of the cold calculus of power.

He is a sixth-rank black belt in aikido, a Japanese martial art focused on harnessing an opponent’s energy and turning it against them. He professes an interest in Methodology, a Soviet-era school of philosophy in which society can be engineered, managed and transformed from above.

In the tumult of modern Russian politics, that focus on power has translated for Mr. Kiriyenko into shifting alliances and repeated reinvention. “In a game without rules,” he once told an interviewer, “the one who makes the rules wins.”

Mr. Kiriyenko was just 35 in 1998 when he briefly became Russia’s prime minister. His youthful image and meteoric rise — he’d been a regional oil refinery manager a few years before — earned him the nickname Kinder Surprise, a play on the name of a European children’s candy.

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Mr. Kiriyenko, then the Russian prime minister, in Tokyo in 1998. His rapid rise to power at a relatively young age earned him the nickname Kinder Surprise.Credit...Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse

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President Vladimir V. Putin, on the day of his inauguration in 2000, attending a ceremony in Moscow at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Mr. Kiriyenko represents an underappreciated aspect of how Mr. Putin exercises power.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/Agence France-Presse

After losing his post when Russia defaulted on its debt, Mr. Kiriyenko co-founded a party pushing Western-style economic overhauls. He took a crash course in literature to appeal to the urban middle class, reading five books a week in the midst of his 1999 election campaigns for Moscow mayor and for the Russian Parliament, according to Marat A. Guelman, then his campaign manager.

“He was quick to perceive, quick to change,” said Mr. Guelman, who later turned against Mr. Putin and now lives in Berlin.

After Mr. Putin won the presidency in 2000, Mr. Kiriyenko pivoted again and quit Parliament to work for the Kremlin. A few years on, Mr. Guelman asked for help for an associate who had run afoul of the authorities, describing him to Mr. Kiriyenko as “a person of our convictions.” Mr. Kiriyenko, Mr. Guelman recalled, shot back: “I don’t have convictions now — I’m a soldier of Putin.”

Alfred R. Kokh, a 1990s-era deputy prime minister of Russia who also left the country, described a similar exchange. He complained to Mr. Kiriyenko in 2003 about improprieties in that year’s parliamentary election campaign.

“Are we going to la-la,” Mr. Kiriyenko replied, “or are we going to talk business?”

Powerful Friends

Already ensconced in the Kremlin machinery, Mr. Kiriyenko ran one of the government’s biggest businesses from 2005 to 2016: Rosatom, the state nuclear energy conglomerate.

During those years, Mr. Kiriyenko deepened a bond with a banking and media magnate, Yuri V. Kovalchuk, according to Western officials and several of the Kiriyenko associates who spoke to The Times. A physicist by training, Mr. Kovalchuk is widely seen as one of Mr. Putin’s closest friends.

He persuaded Mr. Putin to bring Mr. Kiriyenko back to the Kremlin, some of those people said. Mr. Kiriyenko had proven himself at Rosatom, modernizing the company with Japanese management principles and extending Russian influence by striking deals around the globe.

In his new Kremlin job, Mr. Kiriyenko was entrusted with orchestrating Mr. Putin’s version of democracy, an exercise in cementing the president’s legitimacy and keeping control of a far-flung nation. As the first deputy chief of staff overseeing domestic politics, Mr. Kiriyenko planned the selection of the Kremlin’s preferred candidate for governor in each of Russia’s more than 80 regions, the elections to fill the more than 600 seats in Parliament and the stage management of Mr. Putin’s own re-election in 2018 and in 2024.

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Mr. Kiriyenko, left, in southern Iran in 2010, when he was head of Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy conglomerate. In that role, he won plaudits for modernizing the company.Credit...Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency

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Moscow in 2020. For more than three years, Mr. Putin has leaned on Mr. Kiriyenko to manage the political aspects of the Ukraine war, including expanding the Kremlin’s control of the internet.Credit...Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“He’s the technical implementer,” said Grigory A. Yavlinsky, a liberal politician in Moscow who ran for president, with the Kremlin’s approval, in 2018. “It’s a huge amount of work.”

Mr. Kiriyenko also held contests to identify the next generations of technocrats, featuring online aptitude tests and role-playing leadership games. Just this year, finalists of his “Leaders of Russia” competition have been named to government roles such as auditing construction projects in occupied Ukraine, managing bus transit in suburban Moscow and running the health ministry in Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East.

He has broadened his portfolio further by taking on Russia’s last bastion of free speech: the internet. In 2021, Mr. Kiriyenko wrested control of the country’s most popular social network, VK, from an oligarch. Mr. Kovalchuk put up much of the money. Mr. Kiriyenko’s son became C.E.O. Mr. Kovalchuk’s grandnephew took another senior role.

The power of that alliance was on display in a blitz that many analysts saw as a prelude to a potential ban on WhatsApp.

In March, VK unveiled its own messaging app. In June, Russia’s communications minister praised the company for releasing a “fully Russian messenger” in a televised meeting with Mr. Putin. Days later, Russian lawmakers passed a bill mandating that a Russian-made messaging app should come preinstalled on all smartphones. In July, the government announced that this app would be the one developed by VK.

“For us, the government is always a partner and a senior comrade,” Mr. Kiriyenko’s son and the head of VK, Vladimir S. Kiriyenko, said in April.

Backing the Invasion

As Mr. Putin massed troops and plotted his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the president’s political aides were largely in the dark, Mr. Kiriyenko’s associates said. The three people close to the Kremlin said they were convinced that Mr. Kiriyenko didn’t share the fixation on Ukraine’s pro-Western turn that drove Mr. Putin to attack the country.

After the war started, Mr. Kiriyenko soon refashioned himself once again. Trading his suit for olive-green shirts, he started traveling to occupied Ukraine amid the fighting, touring hospitals and schools.

He worked on planning a public “war crimes” trial of Ukrainians to show Mr. Putin fulfilling his promise to “denazify” the country, one of his associates told The Times in June 2022. The trial never materialized as Russian forces struggled on the battlefield, but Mr. Kiriyenko said at a conference in 2023 that the war “must end with trials of Ukrainian criminals.”

He did succeed in putting on a different show — the sham referendums in which Moscow claimed Ukrainians under Russian occupation had voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia.

Inside Russia, Mr. Kiriyenko used the levers of his office to try to engineer popular support for Mr. Putin’s invasion.

The Public Projects Directorate, a unit focused on patriotic initiatives that Mr. Kiriyenko oversees, developed propaganda lessons for Russian schoolchildren. His staff also pressured midlevel officials to serve stints as administrators in occupied Ukraine, said Sergei Markov, a pro-Putin analyst in Moscow who has worked with the Kremlin.

“Sure, those who don’t want to can refuse,” Mr. Markov said. “But in that case they understand that they’ll face serious limits on their careers.”

Mr. Kiriyenko’s portfolio also includes the arts. He has ramped up government support for pro-war entertainers who backed the war while blackballing those critical of it, according to Russian media reports. Iosif I. Prigozhin, a major music producer, said in an interview with The Times that the Kremlin gave “a blank check” after the invasion to musicians who were “more focused on national interests.”

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Detaining an antiwar protester in central Moscow in 2022. In his role at the Kremlin, Mr. Kiriyenko has been entrusted with orchestrating Mr. Putin’s version of democracy and cracking down on dissent.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

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The Russian music producer Iosif I. Prigozhin in the United Arab Emirates in April. He said that the Kremlin gave “a blank check” to musicians who were “more focused on national interests.”Credit...Katarina Premfors for The New York Times

Mr. Prigozhin’s wife, the pop star Valeria, has performed at patriotic concerts in Red Square. He called Mr. Kiriyenko “positive, decent, sensitive and precise.” When Mr. Kiriyenko’s office seeks performers for events, “the approach is not demanding, but suggestive,” Mr. Prigozhin said.

Mr. Kiriyenko’s policies are also backed up by the full force of the Russian state. Thousands of antiwar Russians have been prosecuted or forced into exile in an effort that many analysts, opposition figures and the former colleagues of Mr. Kiriyenko say they believe was largely coordinated by him as the Kremlin official who oversees domestic politics.

Ilya V. Yashin, a Russian opposition leader, had just been arrested and interrogated in July 2022 when he said he chatted with a security service agent in the grim corridor of a law enforcement agency in Moscow while waiting for his prisoner transport to arrive.

The agent told him that his arrest was a “political decision,” dropping hints about a “Sergei” in the Kremlin who was a “buddy” of Boris Y. Nemtsov, the politician who brought Mr. Kiriyenko into government in the 1990s. The suggestion was that Mr. Kiriyenko was responsible for his fate, Mr. Yashin recalled in an interview after his release in a prisoner exchange last year, though he noted he couldn’t be certain of Mr. Kiriyenko’s role, if any.

To Mr. Yashin, the irony was remarkable. Both he and Mr. Kiriyenko were allies, at different times, of Mr. Nemtsov, a Russian opposition leader assassinated in 2015.

“Now Nemtsov is dead, and one of his friends put another one in prison,” Mr. Yashin wrote from jail in 2022.

‘Absolutely Opportunistic’

In February of this year, Russian state news outlets reported that Mr. Kiriyenko was managing public unrest in Abkhazia, a Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia. To help show the benefits of being on the Kremlin’s side, Mr. Kiriyenko offered a gift of 20 Russian school buses and organized a version of his trademark leadership competitions.

Mr. Kiriyenko’s remit has been increasingly expanding outside Russia’s borders.

A different Kremlin deputy chief of staff, Dmitri N. Kozak, oversaw relations with Abkhazia as recently as last year. But Mr. Kozak has lost influence in Moscow amid his criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, according to the three people close to the Kremlin, a U.S. official and a Western contact. In the past few months, they said, Mr. Kozak presented Mr. Putin with a proposal to immediately stop the fighting in Ukraine, start peace negotiations and reduce the power of Russia’s security services.

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A police patrol in February in front of the electoral commission in Sukhumi, capital of the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia, a Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

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Russian officials including, second from right, Dmitri N. Kozak, a deputy chief of staff, after a summit in Geneva in 2021. Mr. Kozak has lost influence in Moscow, according to three people close to the Kremlin.Credit...Denis Balibouse/Reuters

The Russian president has kept Mr. Kozak, who has been at Mr. Putin’s side since the 1990s, in his senior post. But he has shifted much of Mr. Kozak’s portfolio to Mr. Kiriyenko, including managing Kremlin relations with Moldova and with the two breakaway regions of Georgia, the people said.

The expansion of Mr. Kiriyenko’s influence shows how his star continues to rise at the Kremlin as he embraces and executes Mr. Putin’s wartime policies.

Mr. Kiriyenko is “effective” and “absolutely opportunistic,” Mr. Yashin said. If Mr. Putin or a future Russian leader pivots back toward the West someday, Mr. Yashin said, “Kiriyenko will find the words for it.”

Paul Sonne, Michael Schwirtz and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

14. Xi Looks to Tighten Grip After Scandals Shake China’s Military Elite

Xi Looks to Tighten Grip After Scandals Shake China’s Military Elite

The Chinese leader’s crackdown on military corruption reveals how deep his concerns run, not only about battlefield readiness, but about political survival, as well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/world/asia/china-military-corruption.html

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A portrait of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, at the Military Museum in Beijing. Mr. Xi has set a 2027 target for modernizing the People’s Liberation Army.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

By Chris Buckley

Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan

Aug. 10, 2025, 

12:01 a.m. ET

Outwardly, China’s military has never been stronger. Its naval ships venture farther across the oceans. Its nuclear force grows by about 100 warheads every year. Its military flights around Taiwan are increasingly frequent and intimidating. Every few months, China unveils new weapons, like a prototype stealth fighter or newfangled landing barges.

Internally, though, China’s military is experiencing its most serious leadership disarray in years. Three of the seven seats on the Central Military Commission — the Communist Party council that controls the armed forces — appear to be vacant after members were arrested or simply disappeared.

That internal turbulence is testing the effort by President Xi Jinping, going back more than a decade, to build a military that is loyal, modern, combat-ready and fully under his control. Mr. Xi has set a 2027 target for modernizing the People’s Liberation Army, or P.L.A., and also — according to some U.S. officials — for gaining the ability to invade Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.

The current wave of investigations and removals has reached some commanders handpicked by Mr. Xi, suggesting recurrent problems in a system that he has tried for years to clean up. In the first years after Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, he launched an intense campaign to clean up corruption in the military and impose tighter control, culminating in a big reorganization.

“When Xi Jinping sees his own men making mistakes, he is likely to be especially furious,” Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at American University who has studied Chinese leaders’ relations with the military, said of Mr. Xi. “Control over the military is so existential. It’s inherently explosive. That’s why any sense of stepping out of line has to be crushed.”

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Fighter jets on the flight deck of China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, as it was anchored in Hong Kong last month. Two Chinese aircraft carriers conducted exercises in Pacific Ocean recently.Credit...Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The most jarring absence in the military leadership is that of Gen. He Weidong. The second most-senior career officer on the Central Military Commission, General He has disappeared from official public events and mentions, an unexplained absence that suggests he, too, is in trouble and may be under investigation.

Another top commander, Adm. Miao Hua, who oversaw political work in the military, was placed under investigation last year for unspecified “serious violations of discipline,” a phrase that often refers to corruption or disloyalty. He was among around two dozen, if not more, senior P.L.A. officers and executives in the armaments industry who have been investigated since 2023, according to a recent tally by the Jamestown Foundation.

Both men had risen unusually quickly under Mr. Xi’s patronage. While Chinese officials are vulnerable to investigations for corruption or disloyalty even in the best of times, for him to lose them both reveals an uncommon degree of top-level upheaval.

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“The purges may have affected the working of the bureaucracy. It can also create a broader skepticism about the readiness of the Chinese military within the leadership,” said Ely Ratner, who had been an assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration.

Mr. Xi’s ultimate fears for the Chinese military come from questions of battlefield preparedness, and anxieties that commanders could drift away from absolute loyalty to him and the party. Mr. Xi may seek a fourth term as leader of the Communist Party in 2027, and he will need to replace retiring or purged commanders with a new cohort whose devotion to him is beyond question.

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Gen. He Weidong, left, in 2023 at a meeting of a political advisory body in Beijing.Credit...Thomas Peter/Reuters

Recent official statements point to a renewed drive to reinforce ideological control. The Central Military Commission issued new rules last month aimed at “fully eliminating toxic influences, and restoring the image and authority of political officers.” A series of front-page commentaries in the Liberation Army Daily — the main newspaper of the Chinese military — urged P.L.A. political officers to observe absolute loyalty.

Since Mao Zedong’s era, the military has served not only as a fighting force but also as a lever of political control for Chinese leaders, as their ultimate protection against potential rivals or popular uprisings. In internal speeches to the military throughout the earlier years in his rule, Mr. Xi praised the army for standing by party leaders during the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests, according to a volume of his speeches to the military published in 2019.

But in such speeches, Mr. Xi has also repeatedly cited the lessons of Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, the two most senior former P.L.A. commanders who were arrested for corruption nearly a decade ago. If the rot in the Chinese military elite had been left to spread, “our forces would have become a private army under certain people, an armed force turning against the party,” Mr. Xi told a Central Military Commission meeting in 2018.

There are no signs that the recent turbulence in the military amounts to concerted defiance of Mr. Xi. But even relatively few cases of corruption or mismanagement could erode the trust between Mr. Xi and his commanders, said Joel Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington who studies China’s military.

Mr. Xi is the only civilian party leader who sits on the Central Military Commission, which ensures his singular power over the military. That also means that he cannot turn to other civilian officials to help him.

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Adm. Miao Hua arriving at the Pyongyang Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 2019.Credit...Cha Song Ho/Associated Press

“Xi would have to rely on commanders to develop options and implement them based on a huge amount of information and technical skills,” Professor Wuthnow said. “If he’s unable to verify that those people are honest, professional and competent, then I think his appetite for war goes down because: How can he be sure of the outcome?”

The purges are likely to disrupt coordination, weaken confidence in commanders and prompt Beijing to be more wary of considering an amphibious assault on Taiwan, M. Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs.

“The high intensity kinds of operations that would be involved in an invasion of Taiwan, or a blockade of Taiwan — pretty much anything that would happen under the shadow of U.S. involvement — I think will be impacted for a period of time by these problems,” Professor Fravel said in a telephone interview.

But the need to act strongly in a crisis against foes might override any doubts about combat readiness, Professor Fravel said. If Mr. Xi felt that a war on Taiwan was necessary, he would most likely not hesitate to send his armed forces into battle, whatever the gaps in the top command, Professor Fravel said.

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In Taiwan, the military has also been holding practices, such as this anti-landing drill in 2023.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

As if to make that point about resolve, Mr. Xi has pushed China’s forces to perform increasingly demanding operations, such as the recent exercises by two aircraft carriers and accompanying warships in the western Pacific. An intercontinental missile test that arced over the Pacific last year appeared partly intended to send a similar message of resolve. “There is no detectable delay or scaling back,” in Chinese naval operations, said Andrew S. Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

Next month, Mr. Xi will preside over a military parade in Beijing to showcase China’s forces and his authority over them, when the party commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, which China celebrates as its victory over Japanese conquest.

In the lead-up to the parade, the Chinese state broadcaster released a new documentary series called “Storming the Fort” that depicted the armed forces as primed for combat. “When the party tells you to do something, you sure do it,” an infantry officer says.

Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.

15.Foreign governments bet big to lobby Trump on tariffs. Most came up empty.

Are the only "winners" the Lobbyists who profited even in their failure? But they will probably not be able to market their connections to the Trump administration officials in the future.

Foreign governments bet big to lobby Trump on tariffs. Most came up empty.

Countries scooped up lobbyists with Trump connections as the administration embarked on an effort to upend global trade. They’re all still looking at higher tariffs.

Politico

At least 30 nations hired new lobbyists with connections to Trump since the election. They include major trading partners like South Korea and Japan as well as smaller countries like Bosnia and Ecuador. But employing those lobbyists appeared to bear little relation to whether the countries were able to avoid the most punishing tariffs.

“I think the current leadership in Washington seems to be disrupting the traditional way of doing things. It’s not just about the business part, it’s about diplomacy, it’s about dealing with other nations,” said Mukesh Aghi, the CEO of the U.S. India Strategic Partnership Forum. “I think the whole old model of trying to influence does not seem to work.”

The new model is punishing India. After bringing longtime Trump adviser Jason Miller on board in April, the nation has nonetheless been walloped by Trump over the past two weeks. Tariffs for India are now set to rise to 50 percent, after the country failed to secure a trade agreement and Trump decided to jack up tariffs in response to its purchase of Russian oil.

India inked a yearlong contract with Miller worth $1.8 million in exchange for “strategic counsel, tactical planning and government relations assistance” as well as perception management and public relations, according to documents filed with the Justice Department. He did not respond to a request for comment.

The experiences of Canada and Mexico stand out. Canada’s provinces stocked up on lobbyists and the country has still been hammered by Trump. Mexico didn’t and relied instead on President Claudia Sheinbaum’s personal relationship with Trump — a direct approach that worked better.

Five of Canada’s 10 provinces brought on new lobbying or public relations help in the last year, amid a federal leadership vacuum as the country prepared to elect a new prime minister.

Capitol Counsel lobbyists representing Ontario and Alberta set up meetings and calls for provincial officials with more than a dozen Republican members of Congress as well as Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. Meanwhile, lobbyists at HBW Resources worked to create inroads with Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on behalf of energy-heavy Saskatchewan and Alberta, DOJ filings show.

In February, a federation of Canadian premiers and territorial leaders hired Checkmate Government Relations for assistance arranging a trade mission to Washington. The firm is led by Ches McDowell, a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr., and employs the son of Trump’s 2024 campaign co-chair. For $85,000, Checkmate got the premiers a meeting at the White House with deputy chief of staff James Blair and director of presidential personnel Sergio Gor.

Less than a month later, Canada’s D.C. Embassy hired the public affairs firm Signal Group for a crash course and media training on messaging on right-wing media. It included a “right-wing message analysis” of the Canadian ambassador’s recent TV interviews and breakdown of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for the MAGA set.

Mexico, by contrast, has just a single lobbying firm, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, on retainer, to provide legal services on trade issues.

Yet despite Mexico playing a more direct role in the flow of fentanyl — a top concern of Trump — it was the neighbor to the north that ultimately faced steeper tariffs. Canada now has a 35 percent tariff on its goods, while Mexico has stayed at 25 percent, even though most products are exempt under an existing free trade agreement. Mexico appeared to benefit from what one Mexican official described as personal ties between Trump and Sheinbaum.

A Republican lobbyist working on Trump’s tariffs suggested that making headway with the president requires a shift in thinking.

“I think what’s happened with some of these countries is they felt entitled to the status quo,” the lobbyist argued. “And they were offended that anyone, even the U.S. president, would suggest changing it at all.”

The lobbyist pointed to the success that Sheinbaum has had in wooing Trump. Instead of taking a combative stand, “the better approach is to look at it from the perspective of: The president wants to redefine the trade relationship between the two countries, and that’s his goal, and you have to deal with him on those terms,” the person said.

Leader-to-leader calls were particularly valuable in helping countries make their case directly to Trump.

“From my perspective, the best way to lobby President Trump is for the leader to face-to-face lobby him,” Tami Overby, a partner at DGA Group Government who focuses on trade in South Korea. “It seems President Trump, he always talks about his relationships with other leaders. You know, whether we’re in a good spot with that country or not [depending] if he feels like he’s got a good relationship. And he sees himself as a deal maker.”

Many of the firms enlisted to represent foreign governments before the Trump administration are mainstays of the D.C. lobbying scene, and plenty of countries already had veteran trade lobbyists or lobbyists with ties to Trump on their payrolls before the election.

They include Mercury Public Affairs, the former K Street home of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles which signed five new foreign governments since November, including South Korea, Ecuador and Libya. And while South Korea reached an agreement with the White House to set its tariffs to 15 percent in exchange for investments in the U.S. and lower trade barriers, tariff rates increased between April and August for both Ecuador and Libya. In Ecuador’s case, it went from being ignored in Trump’s first threats of “reciprocal” tariffs, to facing a 15 percent tariff in August.

Mercury also lobbies for the Japanese government, which maintains a roster of more than two dozen lobbying and public relations firms in the U.S. Japan was among the first major trading partners to strike a trade agreement — setting its tariffs at 15 percent, down from a threatened 25 percent.

Ballard Partners, the previous home to Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi, helped broker a phone call between Trump and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba the day after the election, according to documents filed with DOJ under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Another Trump-linked lobbying firm, BGR Group, has signed six new foreign governments since Trump’s win last year. It previously employed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and is home to Trump adviser David Urban. Some of its foreign clients, like Angola and South Korea, saw their tariff rates drop between April and August. But the firm also lobbies for the Indian government, which paid BGR $300,000 from December through May, though much of that work was related to flaring tensions with Pakistan.

Several Southeast Asian economies that have hired help in Washington fared better, with many of them receiving lower rates compared to the initial duties unveiled in April. Their wins were relative, though: The countries’ tariff rates are higher than before, and broadly higher than much of the world. In other words, lobbyists might have succeeded in helping their clients avoid the worst case, but the outcomes could hardly be considered triumphs.

Countries hired U.S.-based lobbying firms to strengthen ties with the Trump administration, and worked with business groups with ties to lower-level Trump administration officials across the Departments of Commerce and Treasury. Cambodia and Indonesia had their tariff cut to 19 percent, substantially lower compared to rates initially outlined by the president in April.

DOJ filings show that Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld reached out to U.S. Trade Representative’s Office chief of staff Sam Mulopulos on behalf of the Cambodian government on the same day that Trump announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs. The firm sent Mulopulos multiple follow-up texts over the next few months to coordinate meetings with Cambodia’s negotiators and check for updates on the status of tariff negotiations, and organized meetings on the Hill with lawmakers including Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), according to the filings.

In the end, Cambodia saw one of the largest tariff rate declines of any country between April and May, dropping from a threatened 49 percent duty.

The Trump administration for its part has portrayed the countries with the most significant declines as cooperative partners that were willing to make the greatest concessions to the president’s terms.

One former diplomat who worked with governments across Southeast Asia said representatives from Vietnam arranged more than two dozen meetings with government officials, which ramped up days after Trump outlined his April rates. The country secured a modest win as its tariff rate was cut from 46 to 20 percent — though the final figure remains higher than what Vietnam officials say was originally agreed to.

One Asian diplomat credited lobbying efforts by countries in the region with helping shift the Trump administration away from its original trade strategy, which aimed to pull regional economies out of China’s orbit and prioritize crackdowns on Chinese transshipment and other enforcement measures.

“Some countries need the access that lobbyists can give and an intermediary for backdoor and informal talks,” they said.

A number of countries turned to first-time foreign lobbyists who are cashing in on their ties to Trump or his circle.

The Pakistani government brought on seven new lobbying firms this year, including Trump’s former bodyman Keith Schiller and George Sorial, the Trump Organization’s former compliance chief. Neither of them had ever registered as foreign agents before, but Pakistan agreed to pay their firm $50,000 per month, according to a copy of the contract filed with DOJ. Islamabad managed to have its “reciprocal” tariff rate lowered from 29 percent to 19 percent — a contrast to Pakistan’s rival next door, India.

Among the foreign governments that signed Continental Strategy this spring were Guyana — which is paying the firm $50,000 per month and saw its tariff rate plunge from 38 percent in April to 15 percent in August — and Japan, which is paying the firm $37,500, DOJ filings show. Continental Strategy is led by Carlos Trujillo, a diplomat who served in Trump’s first administration, and Alberto Martinez, a top former aide to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Some countries and industries that have been successful in swaying Trump have later had those advantages neutralized. The “Big Three” American auto companies — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — helped convince the administration to create a rebate program, aiding auto producers that rely on the North American supply chain.

But as Trump set about crafting trade deals, that advantage was quickly neutralized. Japan, South Korea and the European Union — all trading partners with large auto industries — were able to secure a 15 percent tariff on cars and car parts, undermining the efforts of U.S. automakers to build domestically.

Even after this week’s tariff implementation kickoff, countries and lobbyists are still holding out hope that they can win exceptions or other helpful provisions. That possibility is sure to keep business booming on K Street, despite its lackluster performance.

“A lot of clients are like, ‘Well, is it done? Can we still get our thing in there?’” the Republican lobbyist noted. “The framework is there, but there’s still a lot of blank spaces, and that’s where we’re seeing a lot of activity.

Politico

16. Pentagon skipping Canadian security forum makes U.S. look weak, summit president says

Pentagon skipping Canadian security forum makes U.S. look weak, summit president says

The Globe and Mail · by Steven Chase · August 9, 2025

President of the Halifax International Security Forum Peter Van Praagh says American officials have played a key role in the event since it began in 2009.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press

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A Trump administration decision to suspend the participation of U.S. defence officials in events staged by think tanks, including the annual Halifax International Security Forum, represents a retreat of American leadership that makes the country look weak, the president of the Canadian summit says.

Peter Van Praagh says U.S. officials have confirmed to him that a recent Pentagon ban on attending national security events will include the three-day summit in Atlantic Canada.

Each November, this gathering brings together more than 300 security and foreign policy-minded politicians, analysts and pundits from Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond. It’s been called the “Davos of international security” and gets about 50 per cent of its budget from the Canadian government.

The Pentagon would not comment directly on the ban but said it’s screening events to ensure they do not contradict the guiding principles of Donald Trump’s White House. Top U.S. generals and their staff normally participate in the Halifax forum each year as well as other events including the Munich Security Conference and Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue.

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“In order to ensure the Department of Defense is not lending its name and credibility to organizations, forums, and events that run counter to the values of this administration, the Department’s Office of Public Affairs will be conducting a thorough vetting of every event where defense officials are invited to participate,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in an e-mailed statement.

The suspension of participation takes place as relations between the United States and its allies, including Canada, are eroding under the Trump administration. Mr. Trump has launched a trade war against Canada and threatened many allies and trading partners with significant tariffs in order to extract trade concessions from them.

Peter MacKay, who as defence minister under Stephen Harper set up the Halifax forum, said the decision “seems borne out of spite and another sign that U.S. foreign policy is adrift.”

Mr. Van Praagh said American officials have played a key role in the Halifax forum since it began in 2009. “Since the forum’s founding, the United States, including the U.S. military, has not just attended – it has led,” he said. “And that leadership has been both meaningful and essential.”

“Skipping Halifax doesn’t make the U.S. look strong. It makes it look unsure of its own ideas – afraid to engage, to be questioned, to be seen,” he said. “You can’t shape the world by staying home.”

Mr. Van Praagh, a founder of the Halifax forum, said the Pentagon has not explained its rationale to him. He noted that, unlike some other events, Halifax is limited to democracies.

“We don’t invite authoritarian regimes. We don’t invite China. We don’t invite Russia. We don’t invite Iran or North Korea,” he said, “because we take great care to create an atmosphere where credible ideas will be communicated openly and respectfully.”

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Mr. Van Praagh said forgoing the event is strategically reckless and benefits such regimes, which would prefer less co-operation between democracies.

Recounting notable visitors to past Halifax forums, Mr. Van Praagh said it’s puzzling how an annual gathering of partner countries in Canada, one of America’s closest allies, could clash with the Trump White House’s principles.

“If Halifax – host to Ukrainian war heroes, Taiwanese democrats, Iranian dissidents and bipartisan American leaders – runs counter to those values, then something has gone very wrong,” he said.

“To skip Halifax is not just to skip a conference. It is a decision to step away from decades of American leadership, tradition and strategic thinking. It is a retreat into a bunker of silence at the very moment when America’s leadership is most needed.”

Richard Fadden, who served as national security adviser to Mr. Harper and former prime minister Justin Trudeau, said the new Pentagon policy suggests a “fear of ideas and a lack of confidence” in American military officers.

“All militaries by their nature tend to be rather insular, and contact with ideas – including those that do not reflect the current views of their governments or chain of command – can only benefit the professional development of serving members.”

Mr. MacKay called the Pentagon ban “bizarre on many levels.” He noted European, Asian and NATO officials come to Halifax in hopes of bilateral meetings with U.S. officials and pointed out many former U.S. defence secretaries attended the forum as part of a U.S. military delegation. Mr. MacKay said the decision appears to have a “vindictive bent or at best indifference to Canada.”

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U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who led a bipartisan Congressional delegation to the Halifax forum in 2024, said it appears to her that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is “so worried that his policies cannot withstand public scrutiny that he will restrict others’ participation from the only security conference with Canadians held in Canada.” She said “walling off top Pentagon officials” from Halifax will limit their ability to test theories and assumptions with allies.

“For years, the presence of U.S. military leadership has demonstrated our continued commitment to advancing solutions to our most challenging global security issues. It’s imperative that the United States continue to have a seat at the table to shape, lead and make progress on our shared priorities,” Ms. Shaheen said.

Mr. Van Praagh said the event offers a stage for senior civilian and military leaders to communicate their priorities to allies and to test these ideas among partners. It provides a venue for Americans to connect privately with partners on the sidelines.

He noted the forum was created in the wake of the Iraq War “to spark debate that would lead to better future decision-making and fewer errors that lead directly to unnecessary tragedies and lives lost.” Halifax “provides serious opportunities for American policymakers to hear new thinking and learn new ideas outside of the D.C. bubble,” he said.

Mr. Van Praagh said the forum will nevertheless be sending invitations to top leadership in the U.S. military.

The Globe and Mail · by Steven Chase · August 9, 2025

17. ‘I Can’t Go Back’: Trump and the New American Brain Drain

A foreign view.

‘I Can’t Go Back’: Trump and the New American Brain Drain - WhoWhatWhy

whowhatwhy.org · by Naomi Stockley · August 9, 2025

Trump’s attacks on higher education are driving students to Europe and other welcoming countries.

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Carter Freshour was sitting in a bar in Barcelona on US election night last November, watching the presidential numbers roll in with his friends, when it hit him: “I can’t go back to the United States.”

The 22-year-old business student was born to American parents in Washington, DC, and has since lived in multiple US states, as well as Guatemala. He has been living in Phoenix since he was 17. Shaped by a highly mobile upbringing, he had already been considering living overseas at some point in his life, but the moment Donald Trump’s reelection became certain, he knew that his path lay outside his home country.

Freshour’s story echoes that of many students and academics who are reassessing their futures in the US amid the turmoil unleashed by the Trump administration’s aggressive cuts to scientific research and broader attacks on higher education.

His decision to search for international graduate programs was solidified when the new administration began making public funding cuts to education and cracking down on international students who protested government policies. “When a president attacks higher education, particularly with regards to free speech, that is the first domino to fall,” Freshour said. “If people can’t speak out against atrocities, anything else can happen.”

James Bailie, an Australian who earned his doctorate in statistics at Harvard this year, also found himself reconsidering his plans. Originally intending to stay in the US for his postdoctoral work, Bailie’s course changed after funding cuts impacted his prospects. “Around March, April, we realized that the funding for the postdoc was precarious,” he explained. “The money just wasn’t there anymore.”

Fortunately, a collaborator in Sweden secured European grant funding to bring him on, and, in September, Bailie will begin postdoctoral work at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. “Initially I was quite disappointed, but then as all of these attacks by Trump on the university sector and on international students and international academics were happening, I came around to the idea,” he said, citing a stressful environment impacting both himself and many of his colleagues.

Bailie continued, “You don’t know what’s going to happen, there’s a large amount of uncertainty, not just in terms of funding but also in terms of your visa.”

He also expressed concern about the impact on international students:

The US recruits so much talent from the rest of the world. You start making life difficult for those people and they’re not going to come anymore, and the universities aren’t going to be the same amazing places to work at.

A systemic crisis underpins these individual concerns. The Trump administration proposed slashing more than 57 percent ($5 billion) from the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget and has withheld $8 billion for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research and funding, compared to the previous year. Hundreds of millions of dollars in grants have been frozen or rescinded at major research universities.

A recent Nature survey found that approximately 75 percent of US-based scientists are considering relocation, particularly early-career researchers seeking stability and opportunities in Europe, Canada, and Australia. This would put the potential drain rate closer to a torrent than a trickle.

These cuts have forced universities nationwide to impose hiring freezes, reduce graduate student enrollment, and even rescind admission offers. Over 12,500 American Fulbright scholars abroad and 7,400 foreign Fulbrights in the US have had their funding paused, further destabilizing academic communities.

A recent Nature survey found that approximately 75 percent of US-based scientists are considering relocation, particularly early-career researchers seeking stability and opportunities in Europe, Canada, and Australia. This would put the potential drain rate closer to a torrent than a trickle.

European institutions have responded with open arms. The European Union pledged €500 million (approximately $556 million) over two years to attract displaced US scientists, while France recently announced a €102 million national recruitment program. Aix-Marseille University’s Safe Place for Science initiative targeting American researchers swiftly attracted more than 60 applications for just 15 positions.

Denmark is fast-tracking 200 positions for US academics; Sweden’s education minister has publicly called for American scientists to relocate; and Canadian universities have launched multimillion-dollar efforts to recruit early-career researchers. It is becoming clear that America’s loss will be the world’s gain.

Though Bailie remains hopeful that American universities will eventually recover under a different administration, for now, his return to the US is not in the cards. Likewise, Freshour plans to either remain in Spain or move to Portugal after completing a master’s degree at IESE Business School in Madrid.

Their experiences highlight the reality that, for a growing number of students and academics, their futures lie beyond the US, in Europe and other global destinations where their work and voices are welcomed.

Naomi Stockley is an Australian graduate student at Sciences Po University in Paris.

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whowhatwhy.org · by Naomi Stockley · August 9, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com