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Moscow’s mounting attacks on Ukrainian civilians have come against a backdrop of growing battlefield frustration for the Kremlin. Despite enjoying the military initiative throughout 2025, Russia managed to seize less than one percent of additional Ukrainian territory while suffering catastrophic losses.

This underwhelming military performance has continued in recent months. For the first time in more than two years, Ukraine actually liberated more land during February 2026 than Russia was able to occupy. The Russian army’s inability to achieve a decisive breakthrough is now causing rumblings of discontent on the home front, including among Russia’s vocal pro-war blogger community.

Despite his army’s lack of progress on the battlefield, Putin shows no signs of a willingness to compromise on the maximalist goals of his invasion. Instead, he continues to insist on peace terms that would leave postwar Ukraine isolated, defenseless, and completely at his mercy.

The Russian ruler knows he cannot afford to settle for anything less. After all the sacrifices of the past four years, a negotiated peace that left 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and firmly anchored in the Western world would be viewed in Moscow as a defeat of historic proportions.

With no obvious route to military victory in Ukraine, Putin finds himself trapped in a war he cannot win but dare not end for fear of weakening his grip on power and tarnishing his place in Russian history. So far, he has responded to this dilemma by increasing attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population.

There is very little evidence to suggest this approach is working. On the contrary, recent polls indicate that the bombardment of civilians has hardened Ukraine’s resolve to fight on rather than accept peace terms dictated by the Kremlin. Nevertheless, Russian attacks on civilians are likely to expand further in the coming months as Putin lacks credible alternatives to revive his faltering invasion.

Russia’s decision to bomb a heritage site in the middle of a major Ukrainian city in broad daylight was a signal of intent that points unmistakably toward a coming escalation. Putin is clearly struggling to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, but he remains committed to extinguishing Ukrainian statehood and is prepared to ruthlessly target the civilian population in order to break the current deadlock and force the country’s surrender. Tuesday’s attack on a UNESCO site in the heart of Lviv sent a chilling message that nobody and nowhere in Ukraine is safe.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Under President Trump, the United States has sought a thaw with Minsk. These efforts have so far led to the release of hundreds of political prisoners and an easing of US sanctions against Belarus.

Increased engagement between the US and Belarus represents a significant change in strategy following years of growing tensions between Minsk and Western capitals. Western governments have expressed alarm over Lukashenka’s repressive domestic policies, along with his involvement in Putin’s hybrid war against Europe and his complicity in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Trump administration initiative to reengage with Lukashenka has brought clear humanitarian benefits and has had a life-changing impact on released prisoners along with their families. Nevertheless, concerns remain that the current US approach risks creating incentives for the Belarusian authorities to imprison more domestic opponents.

Despite a number of large-scale releases over the past year, human rights groups claim there are still almost one thousand political prisoners in Belarus, with new names regularly being added to the list as arrests continue. Activists have likened this process to a “revolving door” of repression, with new political prisoners regularly detained as others are pardoned and released.

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Beyond the humanitarian dimension, the US diplomatic outreach to Minsk is seen as an attempt to counter Lukashenka’s near complete dependence on Moscow. Since the 2020 protest movement that almost ousted the Belarus dictator, he has been heavily reliant on Russia for his political survival. In exchange for its support, the Kremlin has sought to expand its grip on neighboring Belarus. This has led to what some have labeled as a “creeping annexation.”

Trump has sought to restart dialogue with Minsk against a backdrop of faltering US-led peace efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine War. So far, however, there is little indication that Lukashenka may be prepared to downgrade his backing for Putin’s invasion or offer any assistance to advance negotiations.

The Belarusian ruler has been a key Russian ally throughout the invasion. This support has included allowing Putin to use Belarus as a gateway for Russia’s initial attempt to seize Kyiv in 2022. More recently, Lukashenka has agreed to host Russian nuclear weapons. He is also accused of aiding Moscow’s drone attacks on Ukraine and partnering with China to produce ammunition for the Russian army.

Lukashenka may now be on track to join Putin among the criminal suspects wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. On March 12, the ICC officially opened an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by Lukashenka and his security apparatus against political opponents. In March 2023, the ICC issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest in connection with his alleged involvement in the large-scale deportation of Ukrainian children.

The latest Belarusian prisoner releases are an indication of improving relations between Washington and Minsk. However, it remains to be seen whether the benefits of this diplomatic outreach will extend beyond humanitarian goals and lead to broader gains in the security sphere. Lukshenka is no doubt ready to offer more pardons in exchange for economic incentives, but he has yet to demonstrate a willingness to decrease domestic repression or distance himself from the Kremlin.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Could Russia use fake separatists to destabilize Estonia and discredit NATO?

James Rice — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:31:17 +0000

In recent weeks, references to a pro-Russian separatist movement in neighboring Estonia have begun appearing with increasing frequency on social media. The so-called “Narva People’s Republic” clearly echoes the “People’s Republics” established by the Kremlin in eastern Ukraine during the early stages of Russia’s invasion in spring 2014. However, not everyone is convinced that this virtual movement is worthy of serious attention.

Estonia’s Internal Security Service, which has earned considerable respect in recent years for a string of high-profile counterintelligence successes, has dismissed the “Narva People’s Republic” initiative as an information operation. Meanwhile, the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service doubts any direct Russian government involvement.

A journalist from the Estonian newspaper Postimees recently managed to infiltrate a Telegram chat group and expose the “Narva People’s Republic” as a tiny operation being run by someone likely outside Estonia with apparent ties to St. Petersburg. Given the small scale of the campaign, there is a lively debate in Estonia and across social media over whether highlighting it is a sensible precautionary measure or counterproductive.

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Many have inevitably drawn comparisons with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the role played by fake separatist movements created by the Kremlin to justify Moscow’s expansionist agenda in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. When separatist propaganda about “People’s Republics” first began appearing in Ukraine in the years prior to the onset of Russian aggression in 2014, it was not initially taken seriously.

Recent references to a “Narva People’s Republic” appear to refer to the entire Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia rather than the city of Narva alone. Like Ukraine’s Donbas, Ida-Viru County was subject to an extended period of russification. During the Soviet occupation following World War II, large numbers of Russian-speakers from various parts of the Soviet Union were settled in Narva and in newly built Soviet industrial cities in the region.

With a current population that remains dominated by Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians, this would seem to make Ida-Viru County ripe for the Kremlin’s influence operations and grievance politics. However, the Estonian government has invested significantly in the region’s economic development and cultural integration.

Also, the fact that many residents of Estonia’s northeast have family links to Russia means they are well aware that they currently enjoy a far better standard of living than most people across the Narva River in the Russian Federation. With Estonia, like Ukraine, one must avoid the fallacy of conflating language with loyalty.

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The fact that a grassroots separatist movement is unlikely to develop in Ida-Viru County will not necessarily prevent Russia from using the separatist narrative to advance its agenda. When efforts to cultivate a local separatist movement in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine proved insufficient in 2014, the Kremlin sent in Russian citizens and military personnel without insignia. Soon after, they were followed by an undeclared invasion force.

Russia’s goal in Estonia might not be military conquest. It is often suggested that Moscow could aim to test NATO’s collective security commitments and discredit the alliance by launching a relatively minor incursion and claiming a small chunk of Estonian territory on the pretext of protecting compatriots. This would be much easier said than done, however, given Estonia’s heavily monitored border, where even the smallest infraction is noticed quickly. In such a case, Estonia would not wait for NATO to respond.

Estonian officials can be prickly about any portrayal of their country as particularly vulnerable or overly reliant on others for security. Since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, there have been endless articles asking “is Narva next?” This framing has been met with strong push back from Estonian security experts.

Similarly, war games exercises resulting in a quick Russian takeover of the Baltic region have been criticized by Estonian officials as lacking understanding of the Baltic states’ own security posture to the point of being insulting. In common with nearby Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania, Estonia employs a whole of society “total defense” concept that should not be underestimated.

Due to the enormous losses it is sustaining in Ukraine, Russia’s military is currently thought to be in no position to launch an invasion of Estonia. In its annual report for 2026, Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, while clear-eyed about the Kremlin’s expansionist ambitions, assessed that Russia has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or any other NATO member state in the present year, or likely the next.

It is no wonder that Estonia’s foreign and defense policy has been focused on marshaling support for Ukraine as it confronts Russian aggression. It is also easy to understand why elements in Russia would like to create the impression of a looming threat to Estonia. So far, Estonia’s reaction to social media chatter about a supposed separatist movement has been typically phlegmatic. As this narrative has drawn media attention, we can expect to see it pushed further and recycled. Estonia’s NATO allies should follow Tallinn’s lead and react by remaining alert but calm.

James Rice is a doctoral student at the Institute of World Politics and former legislative director for US Senator Chuck Grassley.

Sri Lanka is just a small example of the energy havoc spreading around the world. Within days of the conflict’s outbreak and the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, much of South and Southeast Asia have moved from price pressure to physical constraint. Asia is particularly reliant on oil and gas from the Gulf, with around 60 percent of its crude oil imports and nearly a third of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) moving through the strait. Almost all countries in the region import most of their fuel and gas, and some only have enough supplies to last a few more weeks. Several Southeast Asia–based refineries, including facilities in Singapore and Malaysia, have cut back ‌output due to constrained crude availability. Panic fuel-buying has spread to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar. Household reliance on imported LPG is on another scale altogether in India, where hundreds of millions of customers wait for days to replace canisters.

This is what a real energy shock looks like on the ground.

Governments are now scrambling to secure supply, drawing on limited reserves, issuing emergency tenders, and in many cases trying to reduce demand.

In recent days, the Sri Lankan government has taken extraordinary steps. It introduced a four-day workweek, and it began moving schools to remote learning on Wednesdays. Transport and public services are being curtailed. On March 15, the government reintroduced a mandatory petrol rationing program that saw millions of subscribers crash the registration website. These are emergency responses to address a fuel-import dependent system under stress.

Lines form to purchase gas near Galle, Sri Lanka, on March 17, 2026. (Phillip Cornell)

Sri Lanka is not alone. Across Asia, governments are implementing emergency measures. Countries are prioritizing household LPG over commercial use. Industrial activity in sectors such as petrochemicals is being curtailed. The Philippines has shortened the workweek. Pakistan has closed schools. Myanmar introduced mobility restrictions.

Air travel is highly sensitive to fuel prices, and airlines are now cutting routes as jet fuel prices rise sharply. This is compounding the air travel chaos caused by closed airspace over the major Gulf “superconnector” airline hubs, with direct impacts on Asian tourist destinations. Across southern Sri Lanka, hotel bookings have dried up.

The latest pressures have been on the power system in Sri Lanka. The Ceylon Electricity Board is a traditional integrated utility; less than 10 percent of its generation is from liquid fuel. But fuel still provides key flexibility, and local diesel generators are common. After a dry season that reduced hydroelectric capacity, and labor disputes in the face of critical power sector reforms, the fuel shortage is adding to existing system stress. Rolling curtailments and power outages began in earnest this week, forcing hotels and critical services like hospitals to draw further on diesel stocks to feed emergency generation.

The economic effects of these various price and supply shocks are quick to materialize. Higher fuel costs are feeding through into transport and food systems, contributing to inflation and growth pressures. Prices for daily goods at our local markets have already gone up as shopkeepers anticipate supply chain disruptions. Economies like Sri Lanka are particularly exposed due to weaker currencies, limited fiscal space, and dependence on imports. The International Monetary Fund has warned that sustained increases in energy prices could raise inflation and reduce growth globally, with emerging markets especially exposed.

Perhaps the most important development is that demand destruction is already underway. The Financial Times, citing JPMorgan analysis, shows that refined fuel shipments in Asia have fallen by 30 to 35 percent, while global oil demand could drop by around one million barrels per day as a result of both price increases and policy measures. The speed of adjustment makes the current crisis unique. During the 2022 energy shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, the effects unfolded over months as supply chains reoriented. In this case, disruption to a central maritime artery has compressed the timeline. Physical shortages, policy responses, and economic contraction are occurring in rapid succession.

Rationing and demand suppression can provide temporary relief, but perceptions and expectations of duration are already causing changes in behavior. Business owners are contemplating risk-mitigation investments such as solar panels and batteries. A neighbor has become the local agent for Sri Lankan–built electric three-wheelers to replace the classic tuk-tuk. There is a real sense of preparing for a structural change.

Motorists line up to purchase gas near Galle, Sri Lanka, on March 17, 2026. (Phillip Cornell)

Resilience is a word often used to describe technical systems, but it is ultimately about people. Sri Lanka has endured considerable hardship in recent decades, but a very real sense of community and shared responsibility provide informal social safety nets that kick into action during tough times. Even as only a guest of the country, I have felt embraced by the community. Invitations to communal iftar dinners, shared use of barbecues or microgrids, and conviviality during hour-long waits for petrol are just small examples of a community solidarity that feels different.

In developed economies, economic disruption is often framed in terms of price increases and inflation. In markets where the impact on daily activities such as cooking, transport, and work is immediate and tangible, disruption becomes a test of crisis behavior.

Sri Lanka is not an outlier but an early warning, and a reminder that the global energy system remains deeply vulnerable to disruption, especially for those who depend on it most.

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Temnycky in Forbes: How Ukraine’s youth organizations have been impacted by Russia’s war

Atlantic Council — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:19:43 +0000

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Temnycky in Forbes: Georgian Dream drifts from NATO and EU as opposition seeks integration

Atlantic Council — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:15:16 +0000

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Hook in the Hill: No peace in Ukraine until Russia returns its children

Atlantic Council — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:43:47 +0000

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Bociurkiw in the Globe and Mail: Four years into the war, Ukraine has endured – and it has been transformed

Atlantic Council — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 13:48:18 +0000

Nonresident Senior Fellow

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Federal agencies under pressure need smarter systems, not tougher people

Caitlin Thompson — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:28:04 +0000

Bottom lines up front

The institutions charged with keeping the United States secure operate under chronic strain that can make them prone to failure.
Many current efforts to fix this focus on helping individuals operate effectively within flawed systems.
But it’s only by redesigning the flawed systems that the US government can create the readiness on which national security depends.

The hours are long and the pace rarely eases, including shifts of twelve to fourteen hours that inevitably erode family and social life. In theory, there are guardrails. In practice, the approval processes meant to limit overwork can become a formality: the reality of excessive hours reduced to a signature on a page, without changing the workload or capturing the extent of the time burden. The culture reinforces it. Leadership may say the right things, but the cycle doesn’t break, and in some corners of the institution, burnout is even treated as a point of pride. The quiet signal that this has become normal: the organization celebrates the 2 a.m. email. People are mentally drained, but stepping back to recover can feel professionally risky because there’s a persistent sense that if you can’t do it, someone else will, and asking for help can damage your credibility.

The above vignette is a composite scenario, drawing on multiple examples raised by participants—national security practitioners, psychiatry and health experts, and think tank experts on individual resilience—across a series of roundtables conducted by Atlantic Council researchers in 2025 and held under the Chatham House rule.

The roundtables focused on an underappreciated problem: The institutions charged with keeping the United States secure—including US military services and combatant commands, the intelligence community (e.g., CIA, National Security Agency), the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department—operate under chronic strain that can make them dangerously prone to failure in moments of crisis. Many of the “resilience” efforts created to address this problem—wellness training and mindset workshops—focus on helping individuals operate within flawed systems.

Only by adapting those systems can the US government deliver long-term readiness enabling reliable performance under stress that US national security requires. Other key takeaways included:

Individual resilience is not the solution to chronic strain in national security institutions. It is a signal that reveals where systems, incentives, and workload assumptions are misaligned with human limits.
In national security roles, moments of surge, uncertainty, and high-consequence decision-making are frequent. When these moments arise, systems need more than just extraordinary individual effort; they need built-in buffers and redundancies.
Many resilience initiatives are designed to expand coping tools and wellness support programs yet leave the stressors themselves—tempo, staffing, and decision bottlenecks—unchanged. While certainly well-intentioned, these initiatives unintentionally shift the responsibility to overcome the stressors back on the individual. Other incentives then reinforce this overextension as the operating model. A credible systems approach requires measurable leadership accountability, usable leading-indicator data, and explicit trade-offs about tempo, mission scope, redundancy, and availability norms. The goal is sustained readiness and reliable performance under stress.
Leadership behavior is key. Ideally, leaders would express their own vulnerabilities by openly expressing uncertainty, acknowledging moments of strain, and modeling both recovery and the soundness of seeking help. This could increase trust among team members, as well as the likelihood that risks are addressed early.

Resilience is an attribute of systems

Building individual resilience has become a default response to strain across national security institutions. As organizations confront sustained operational tempo, recurring crises, and prolonged uncertainty, resilience is routinely invoked as a way to preserve individual performance under pressure. In practice, however, the term is often used in ways that misidentify both the source of strain and the locus of responsibility.

This issue brief argues that resilience—which the Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative defines as “the ability of individuals, societies, and systems to anticipate, withstand, recover from, adapt to, and bounce forward from shocks and disruptions”—is not primarily an individual attribute. It is a property of systems that shape, support, and sustain individual resilience over time. Individual resilience matters, but not because it can be strengthened indefinitely or relied upon to compensate for structural misalignment. Human adaptation and resilience do have limitations, and through insights from research and roundtable discussions with national security leaders, practitioners, and subject-matter experts, we have underscored the need for a more deliberate systems design in national security institutions.

People do not enter national security roles with identical baselines, nor do they experience or recover from stress in the same way. Those differences are important, because prolonged exposure to ambiguity, moral complexity, and high-stakes decisions can be a relentless strain on attention and judgment. These demands cannot be carried indefinitely, regardless of an individual’s motivation or commitment. It is simply a matter of human limits.

Many institutions appear resilient, often because of highly committed individuals whose extended availability and personal sacrifice can compensate for system strain in the short term. Over time, however, that compensatory model becomes unsustainable, and the earliest cracks often show up in decision-making. Attention narrows, teams become less flexible in how they think through options, and risk judgment becomes less calibrated. Those effects can accumulate quietly over time, until an organization is less adaptive precisely when adaptation is most needed.

The strategic costs of system strain are significant. In national security work, one frequently sees surge conditions, leadership transitions, and external shocks as recurring features of the operating environment. Systems that depend primarily on individual efforts and resilience often lack the buffers needed to respond effectively when those stressful moments arrive. When an individual starts to feel that inevitable burnout, their performance falters precisely when resilience is most needed. The appropriate response is not to ask people to absorb more. Rather, it is to relocate responsibility from individuals to institutions themselves; to overhaul systems so that they operate within human constraints, protect sound judgment, retain expertise, and remain effective over time.

Where current “resilience models” fall short

The concept of resilience is now embedded in the language of national security institutions. Here, “national security” refers to the interconnected ecosystem of defense and security organizations that plan and execute operations, generate intelligence, manage crises, and sustain readiness, as well as the enabling systems that support that work (including the military health system and other readiness services). In these settings, the day-to-day reality is high-consequence decision-making under uncertainty, persistent time pressure, constrained staffing pipelines, and recurring exposure to morally complex and emotionally salient material—including, increasingly, remote operations such as unmanned aircraft systems.

Faced with persistent crises, extended operational tempo, and mounting uncertainty, leaders routinely invoke resilience as a way to sustain performance. In many cases, however, resilience functions less as a strategy than as an expectation: that individuals will adapt to conditions the system itself does not adequately address.

Most contemporary resilience efforts rest on a quiet assumption that personnel are broadly interchangeable and capable of absorbing increasing demands if given the right tools or training. From this perspective, resilience becomes a personal skill set, something that can be strengthened through workshops, coaching, wellness programming, or mindset interventions. These efforts are often well-intentioned. They are also insufficient in environments where strain is chronic and the stakes remain high.

The predictable result is compensation, where highly motivated people bridge structural gaps through personal sacrifice. They devote longer hours, defer recovery, and suppress their own distress, all in service of the mission. For a time, this preserves output and the system appears functional. But the apparent stability is misleading. It requires extraordinary effort from a finite group of people, while quietly depleting the attention, judgment, and recovery that sustained performance depends on.

The evidence increasingly reflects this pattern. Burnout is a recurring occupational risk among military personnel, with documented links to work environment factors (e.g., workload and shift work), psychological strain, and downstream consequences that matter for readiness and mission effectiveness. Within the Military Health System, burnout has also been associated with adverse health outcomes and reduced retention—exactly the kind of expertise loss that “individual resilience” programming cannot offset on its own. And concern about chronic psychological risk is not limited to traditional deployment patterns: Recent defense policy has directed the Department of Defense to study mental health impacts among military drone pilots, underscoring the growing recognition that remote and high-tempo operational roles can carry meaningful mental health burden.

When depletion shows up, it often does not look like a dramatic failure. It can appear first as degraded decision quality, with narrower thinking, reduced creativity, lower tolerance for ambiguity, and less willingness to challenge assumptions. It can also surface as interpersonal strain, reduced patience, and a diminished ability to adapt quickly when new information changes the picture. These shifts are consequential in national security contexts because the central work of these institutions is making sound judgments in real time, under uncertainty, with high consequences.

Many resilience initiatives inadvertently reinforce the conditions that require resilience in the first place. When the organizational answer to overload is “be more resilient,” the system signals that overload is expected and adaptation is the solution. This normalizes strain and diverts attention away from the real drivers of chronic demand, including sustained operational tempo, understaffing, unclear priorities, and incentives that reward constant responsiveness. It can also create a double bind: The system continues to demand extraordinary individual effort, while the individual is expected to treat strain as a personal shortcoming to be managed privately.

This brief takes a different view of individual resilience. It is not irrelevant, nor is it the solution. Instead, it should be treated as an important signal. Properly understood, levels of individual resilience give leaders a clearer read on how the system is functioning, where strain is coming from, and what needs to be redesigned. Used this way, resilience does not justify asking individuals to absorb more. It clarifies where institutions are demanding too much and why.

This is the point where individual resilience becomes a critical tool, not as a mandate for people to adapt indefinitely, but as a way to see how systems’ choices interact with human limits and where redesign is most urgent.

Individual resilience is context-dependent, shaped by the relationships, communities, and institutions we are embedded in.

–Roundtable participant

Why individual resilience should force system overhaul

Resilience is ever evolving: It is shaped long before individuals enter national security roles and continues to be influenced by the environments in which they operate. Biology, early development, and cumulative stress exposure contribute to how individuals tolerate and recover from pressure. The point is not to pathologize normal human responses to sustained strain. The point is to be honest about variability and limits.

Institutions typically treat individual variability in one of two ways. Either they ignore it, designing for an “average” person who does not exist, or they attempt to manage it primarily through individual interventions. Both approaches miss the core insight. Individual resilience is not primarily something systems can manufacture. It is something systems must account for and nurture within people. Thinking seriously about individual resilience makes the system’s assumptions visible, including the ones baked into missions, tempos, staffing models, career pathways, and leadership expectations.

People bring vastly different resilience profiles into roles that demand sustained judgment, adaptability, and high-quality decision-making. Some tolerate prolonged stress with fewer immediate effects. Others experience faster depletion of cognitive reserves. These differences are not moral failures or character defects. They are simply predictable variations in human functioning. The systems that assume each person has the same capacity is, in essence, baking inequality into its performance expectations, and then treating individual differences as deficits.

The more consequential issue, however, is not baseline variability. It is the cumulative effect of depletion and what it does to decision-making over time. National security environments place sustained demands on attention and judgment. Under chronic load, the first changes are often subtle: Thinking narrows. People rely more heavily on familiar patterns. Uncertainty becomes harder to sit with. Teams may lock in on a conclusion too early or simplify complex choices. They may default to routine when adaptive thinking is required. Over time, judgment can become more rigid and less reliable, with people either narrowing or widening their threat interpretation in ways that are not well matched to the situation. The work still gets done, but the quality of analysis and the ability to adjust course can quietly erode, leaving the system less adaptable precisely when conditions shift.

This is why the individual resilience conversation matters, but only if it is used correctly. Individual resilience research does not tell institutions to teach more coping skills and declare success. On the contrary, it tells institutions that the operating environment is placing sustained demands on people in predictable ways, and that these effects compound. If leadership does not manage cumulative demand, decision quality will degrade regardless of how committed individuals are.

Some institutional responses can become counterproductive. Institutions often try to “select for resilience” by screening, hiring, and promoting those who appear to handle stress well, but that does not eliminate human limits. Even the most capable people struggle under sustained load; the difference is the timing and visibility of their strain, not immunity to it. Similarly, short recovery windows do not solve the problem if baseline demand remains high. Recovery is not only about time off. It is about whether systems allow genuine disengagement and whether demand is paced in a way that permits replenishment.

The implication is straightforward: Systems that rely on constant availability, chronic overload, and surge-as-normal operation are not built for long-term effectiveness. They not only put decision-making at risk, but they also erode readiness, retention, trust, and institutional memory over time. Individual resilience should be treated partially as a signal about how the system is functioning and where strain is being generated. Taken seriously, it should drive a rethinking of what “systems approaches” to resilience actually mean in practice. In addition to programs that train individuals to cope, it means redesigning the conditions of work (workload, staffing, priorities, and decision processes) so sustained performance is built into the institution. It also means clarifying decision rights and escalation pathways, and protecting recovery time, so the system is not dependent on extraordinary individual sacrifice.

If individual resilience helps identify where strain accumulates, the next question is why many systems approaches fail to correct it. Participants at the three Atlantic Council roundtables pointed repeatedly to a familiar pattern: Even when supports are added, the underlying drivers and incentives remain unchanged.

How systems approaches often fail

Many systems approaches to resilience fail because they stop short of redesign. They add support without changing assumptions. They layer resources without recalibrating expectations. In practice, they still rely on individual adaptation to keep the system running.

This is the central weakness of many resilience initiatives: They look like systems interventions but function as burden-shifting by making chronic demand more tolerable rather than making demand sustainable. Too often, they treat coping as the solution by expanding training, wellness resources, and self-management expectations, while the structural drivers of overload, including tempo, staffing, and decision bottlenecks, remain unchanged. Roundtable participants described this dynamic directly: The organization “puts resources forward,” but the underlying cycle doesn’t change, and resilience becomes a required module to complete rather than a redesign of how the work is structured.

Incentives then reinforce the underlying dysfunction. Leaders may endorse sustainability while still rewarding constant responsiveness, and organizations may speak about boundaries while promoting those who violate them. In practice, incentives foster behavior or action more quickly than policies, and they can lock in a model of success that depends on continual overextension.

The result is a system that appears robust but is structurally fragile. It performs because individuals compensate, stretching time, attention, and availability to keep the mission moving. Over time, the costs show up in quieter but consequential ways: Decision-making becomes less reliable, teams lose range, and experienced personnel disengage or leave, taking hard-won knowledge with them. When surge conditions, leadership transitions, or external shocks hit, there is often little remaining slack to absorb the shock, and systems without real buffers struggle to adapt quickly enough.

True systems resilience is not achieved by adding more support to an unchanged structure. It requires making deliberate choices about how demand is created, prioritized, and resourced, including how tempo is set, how work is handed off, where redundancy is built in, and what leaders are rewarded for. The goal is not comfort. The goal is sustained readiness and reliable performance under stress.

What an overhaul requires

If resilience is to be treated seriously in national security contexts, then systems approaches must be overhauled, not layered. This begins with acknowledging that many current efforts focus on helping individuals operate effectively within flawed systems rather than redesigning those systems.

First, institutions must address cumulative demand directly by treating operational tempo as a design choice, not a fact of life. That means defining what qualifies as a true surge, setting guardrails so that surge mode does not become the baseline, and building real slack into staffing and schedules. High-tempo periods should then be absorbed by the system rather than by individual overextension. Leaders can put this into practice through workload triage and explicit lists of things employees should stop doing during a period of high demand. They can set clearer thresholds for what gets paused during surges and lead routine after-action reviews that examine not only operational outcomes but the cost in capacity. The goal is straightforward: Create pacing, redundancy, and decision space so readiness is protected even when the environment remains demanding.

Second, leadership accountability must extend beyond crisis performance to include sustainability, which must be measurable. Leaders should be evaluated on whether they manage workload and tempo responsibly, protect decision space, and retain and develop talent over time. That means making incentives explicit: rewarding leaders who build redundancy, delegate authority, and normalize handing off work and scheduling time for recovery. Alternatively, it is essential to correct leaders who rely on constant responsiveness and chronic overextension as their operating model.

In addition, leadership behavior matters in a more human, immediate way than institutions often acknowledge. Roundtable participants emphasized that when leaders are willing to show up as humans, including naming uncertainty, acknowledging strain, and modeling both the action of seeking help and recovery without stigma, it can reset the temperature of an entire team. That kind of credible vulnerability builds trust, widens the space for honest upward feedback, and makes it more likely that problems are surfaced early rather than managed privately until they become crises. In practice, it is one of the fastest ways leaders can shift culture without launching a new program.

Third, training should be used to reinforce sound system design, not to compensate for its absence. Institutions can keep resilience training, but they should pair it with concrete changes that reduce avoidable strain. Training should focus on the skills that improve team and mission performance under stress. Examples of these skills include communication under pressure, decision-making in uncertainty, escalation and delegation norms, and how leaders recognize early signs of overload (aided by data, as discussed below) and make appropriate changes. Most importantly, training should come with a feedback loop. What trainees report about friction points and recurring strain should be treated as operational data that informs redesign, not as an individual coping gap.

Fourth, measurement needs to shift from documenting damage to preventing it, and the roundtables made it clear that good data is one of the few levers that reliably alters behavior. Attrition and burnout rates are lagging indicators. By the time they move, the system has already been drawing down its people and its capacity for a while. A more serious approach is to track leading indicators of strain that leaders can act on, including workload distribution, surge frequency and duration, after-hours expectations, backlogs, approval bottlenecks, vacancy and coverage gaps, and the amount of time teams are operating in “urgent” mode.

Equally important, though, is the usability of data. Leaders need a small set of metrics that can be reviewed routinely, not an elaborate dashboard that no one trusts or uses. The goal is to make strain visible early and tie it to decision points. When surge becomes the baseline, something needs to be paused, rescoped, or resourced. When bottlenecks appear, authority and process need to be adjusted. When certain roles show chronic after-hours load, something needs to be redesigned such as staffing, handoffs, and coverage.

In addition, measurement should be paired with accountability and action. Teams should be able to surface what the data means in plain language, and leaders should be expected to respond with a corrective plan, not a wellness reminder. Over time, this creates an institutional habit of using data to manage tempo and protect readiness, rather than using data only to explain why people are leaving.

Finally, institutions should make trade-offs explicit and operationalize them, rather than leaving them implicit and pushing the costs down to individuals. A genuine overhaul requires leaders to define what “sustainable tempo” means for their mission sets, establish thresholds for when work is rescoped or paused, and build redundancy as a deliberate design feature in critical functions. It also requires resetting norms around constant availability by clarifying what truly constitutes an emergency, creating predictable coverage and handoff models, and rewarding teams that protect continuity without relying on chronic overextension.

The practical question is not whether the work is important. It is how the institution will prioritize, resource, and pace the work so that readiness is preserved when conditions tighten. When those choices are made openly, organizations can align expectations with capacity and reduce the hidden risk created by always-on operating models.

Conclusion

National security institutions will always operate in environments defined by uncertainty, periodic surge, and high stakes. The question is whether those institutions treat resilience as a personal expectation or as a systems responsibility. The next step is to choose a small set of measurable indicators, align accountability to them, and redesign the points of highest friction, where chronic strain is generated. Done well, this shifts resilience from a story we tell people to a capability that institutions strengthen.

Caitlin Thompson spent over a decade at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where she served as the executive director’s Office of Suicide Prevention. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative.

This issue brief draws on a series of three Atlantic Council roundtables with national security practitioners, experts in psychiatry and health, and think tank experts on individual resilience to identify what national security institutions must redesign to sustain readiness under chronic strain.

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Wartime Ukraine offers global lessons on the future of cyber resilience

Oleksandr Bakalynskyi, Maggie McDonough — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:58:46 +0000

The twelve years of cyber warfare that have accompanied Russia’s escalating invasion of Ukraine have transformed the country’s digital environment into a proving ground for modern conflict. Persistent cyber attacks against government systems, critical infrastructure, energy networks, media outlets, and the financial sector have become a defining feature of Ukraine’s wartime reality. Amid this sustained pressure, Ukraine has demonstrated an ability to defend itself and has developed a degree of cyber resilience that is now embedded in the digital state.

Russian aggression in the cyber sphere has forced Ukraine into rapid and often improvised defense. Coordination mechanisms have emerged across government agencies, volunteer networks, and private sector IT firms, with operational responses conducted under constant pressure. Permanent mobilization, however, is not sustainable. Instead, the goal is to codify the next phase of reform in Ukraine’s evolving cyber security strategy.

For Ukraine, the strategic objective is no longer limited to repelling cyber attacks. It is to ensure continuity of state functions even when attacks succeed. This requires a national cyber resilience framework that encompasses government, business, and civil society. It demands continuous professional training along with strengthened legislative and risk management frameworks. It also implies a culture of cyber hygiene at the citizen level. Together, these measures represent a shift from episodic defense to durable digital statehood.

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Ukraine’s experience over the past twelve years underscores a central truth of cyber defense: People play a decisive role in cyber security. Since 2014, thousands of professionals from the private sector, volunteer networks, and academia have mobilized to defend Ukraine’s digital front. Sustaining this momentum requires institutional support and a long-term talent strategy.

Priority areas include integrating cyber education across schools, universities, and military institutions. Partnerships between industry and academia should undergo expansion through education and internships. Workforce development is not merely a labor market issue; it is a pillar of cyber sovereignty and continuity of government. It is also crucial to establish a national cyber reserve supported by access to cyber ranges and allied training platforms.

Wartime conditions have already accelerated innovation in Ukraine. Cloud-based backups, relocation of critical data to secure environments abroad, and decentralized platforms for citizen services are now routine. These practices must be institutionalized to endure beyond the war. Priorities include embedding innovations into permanent government processes and establishing applied cyber research centers at universities.

The convergence of academia, defense institutions, and the technology sector in wartime Ukraine is enabling a distinct national cyber security model to emerge rooted in operational experience and continuous adaptation. It is a model that complements existing frameworks while reflecting Ukraine’s realities. As a result, Ukraine has become an integral actor within the Euro-Atlantic cyber ecosystem.

At the international level, cooperation with the EU, NATO, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan has evolved from ad hoc assistance to structured partnerships. Core focuses include joint threat intelligence-sharing mechanisms; harmonization with EU and NATO standards; participation in multinational exercises; and the development of a shared resilience space in which national resilience contributes to collective defense. Ukraine’s expertise positions it not only as a recipient of assistance, but increasingly as an exporter of operational resilience models to partners confronting hybrid threats.

Ukraine’s progress demonstrates the importance of embedding cyber resilience in institutional architecture rather than treating it as a reactive function. A resilience-by-design model entails distributed system architecture to reduce single points of failure. It requires adoption of open standards and transparent protocols, along with continuous training and simulations embedded in institutional life cycles.

Psychological resilience training for cyber professionals operating under sustained pressure and information warfare conditions is also crucial. This should position cyber security as a governance principle, framing Ukraine not only as a state under attack but as a testing ground for next generation digital resilience.

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Since the onset of Russia’s invasion in 2014, Ukraine has become the world’s most consequential real-time laboratory for cyber resilience. The country’s experience demonstrates that effective cyber security is an integrated system encompassing governance, education, law, diplomacy, and economic resilience. Institutionalizing these lessons into a durable national cyber resilience ecosystem will underpin postwar recovery and long-term digital sovereignty.

For partners, Ukraine’s experience offers much more than a narrative of resistance. It represents a practical plan for collective security for the coming decades of international military conflicts, each of which will have a mandatory digital component.

As Ukraine develops its forthcoming National Cybersecurity Strategy 2.0, several priorities should guide the next phase of institutional reform. First, Ukraine should expand the doctrine of active cyber protection, enabling defensive operations that proactively detect, disrupt, and neutralize threats before they impact critical systems.

Second, the continued Euro-integration of Ukraine’s cyber regulatory framework will be essential. This should include alignment with EU directives such as NIS2, the Critical Infrastructure Resilience framework, and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), ensuring interoperability with European cyber governance standards.

Third, Ukraine should actively participate in the development of a European cyber shield. The goal should be a collective resilience architecture built on shared threat intelligence, joint incident response mechanisms, and coordinated defensive capabilities across the continent.

Fourth, long-term resilience requires sustained investment in cyber workforce development aligned with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. This should include standardized training pathways, public-private talent pipelines, and the expansion of national cyber reserve capacities.

Fifth, strengthening cyber security capacity at the regional administration level across Ukraine will be vital. This can help ensure that local governments and regional critical infrastructure operators possess the operational capabilities and resources necessary to implement national cyber resilience policies effectively.

Finally, Ukraine’s next cyber strategy should also define a clear wartime framework that establishes legal authorities, operational coordination mechanisms, and public–private responsibilities for defending national digital and operational infrastructure during periods of armed conflict or hybrid attack.

With each subsequent international conflict, the digital component will grow in importance and become an increasingly critical part of the battlefield. This is already becoming clear in the current context of revolutionary progress in robotics, the development of AI, big data, parallel computing, and ever-accelerating data transmission technologies.

In this evolving environment, success will no longer depend on greater human or conventional military resources, but on an innovative, flexible, and progressive approach toward the development and use of the latest technologies. In these conditions, cyber resilience is not only a security strategy but also the foundation of freedom.

Dr. Oleksandr Bakalinskyi is a Senior Researcher at the G. E. Pukhov Institute for Modeling in Energy Engineering at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine. Maggie McDonough is the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at the Baltimore Development Corporation. She was previously affiliated with the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI) and Purdue’s Center for Education & Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), where she served as a technical advisor on global cyber security resilience programming.

Attacks on desalination plants in the Iran war forecast a dark future

Ginger Matchett — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:27:31 +0000

WASHINGTON—The ongoing conflict in Iran has focused global attention on surging energy prices caused by supply-chain disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. As devastating as these oil and gas constraints are to both the Middle East and global markets, the war also poses a threat to another critical resource that keeps the Gulf afloat: water. Several limited attacks on desalination plants in both Iran and Bahrain in the past two weeks offer a glimpse at the potential danger if this infrastructure were intentionally and systematically targeted. Either in this war or a future Middle Eastern conflict, water resources could prove an attractive target for anyone seeking to cause harm and destabilize communities.

On March 7 and 8, desalination plants in Iran and Bahrain were targeted in the ongoing conflict. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States of attacking a desalination plant in Iran, while Bahrain’s interior ministry said that its plant was struck by an Iranian drone. The damage to the Bahraini desalination plant reportedly affected water supply in as many as thirty villages. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have also reported missile-related damage to desalination plants during the conflict. Though it is unclear if Iran deliberately targeted all of these plants, this infrastructure is critical to Gulf states and within a short striking distance of Iran. It could become a tempting target for Tehran if the conflict persists.

Countries in the Middle East face arid conditions and frequent water shortages, often relying on desalination infrastructure to turn saltwater into freshwater. Without such technology, which removes salt through reverse osmosis, roughly 100 million individuals in the Middle East would have no regular access to drinking water. There are around five thousand desalination plants across the Middle East, more than four hundred of which are in the Gulf. And a smaller number of plants are responsible for a large share of the output. More than 90 percent of the Gulf’s desalinated water, for example, comes from just fifty-six plants. This concentration and proximity to Iran makes the Gulf’s desalination infrastructure particularly vulnerable as the exchange of missiles and drones intensifies.

In Kuwait and Bahrain, desalinated drinking water accounts for around 90 percent of the countries’ supply, along with roughly 86 percent in Oman, 80 percent in Israel, about 70 percent in Saudi Arabia, and 42 percent for the UAE. In Qatar, it is upwards of nearly 99 percent.

A deliberate series of strikes on desalination plants could deepen regional instability and trigger further humanitarian disasters or migration crises in the Gulf.

If Iran successfully destroyed the Gulf’s desalination infrastructure, then the consequences could be devastating. The effects of a significant strike would likely ripple across cities, disrupting water supplies to local and state-operated public facilities, businesses, houses, hotels, and agricultural operations. This infrastructure is also integrated into national electrical grids, meaning damage could cascade into city-wide power outages or necessitate calls for complete evacuations.

Though not as dependent on desalination plants as some Gulf countries, Iran, too, is experiencing a water crisis. The country is currently in its fifth year of drought, and strikes on Iran’s currently operating plants would likely cause far-reaching pain. This would be made worse by Iran’s constraints on repairing and building additional desalination plants due to international sanctions and rising energy costs.

Moreover, the Gulf’s reliance on desalinated water is only projected to grow. The accelerating effects of climate change are increasing the value of this water source as shallow groundwater supplies—the only renewable water source in the Gulf region—dry up. Saudi Arabia, for example, has announced plans to invest around $80 billion in building additional plants in the coming years.

To date, international humanitarian and water laws haven’t safeguarded civilian water infrastructure, as demonstrated by attacks on targets vital to water supply in Ukraine and Gaza. The Gulf itself has suffered attacks on desalination plants in the past. During its invasion in 1990 of Kuwait, for example, Iraq targeted desalinations plants. It took Kuwait years for the country to restore the infrastructure. More recently, the Houthis in Yemen attacked plants in Saudi Arabia in 2022. The toll is often quick and the consequence potentially long: US intelligence reports have indicated that striking water infrastructure and critical equipment in Gulf states could cause them to lose the majority of their drinking water in days and face national water crises lasting months.

Since 2006, Gulf countries have invested at least $53.4 billion in developing desalination infrastructure. They have also created contingency plans to defend the plants with pipeline networks, massive storage reservoirs, and protective barriers to shield intake valves. Currently, the strategic resiliency capacities of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are significantly greater than Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait.

The consequences of a full-scale water war would extend beyond the Gulf, as the region supplies 40 percent of the world’s desalinated water. As the Gulf’s population grows, continues to rapidly urbanize, and consumes increasing volumes of water, a natural resource crisis there could lead to water scarcity in communities throughout the Middle East and beyond. Studies indicate that by 2030, there could be a 40 percent global shortfall in freshwater resources while demand increases by more than 20 percent, making desalination technology all the more essential. Many threats to water supplies need to be considered, including climate change, pollution, agricultural production, and ecosystem degradation. But safeguarding water supplies also requires investing in the defense of water infrastructure and technologies. Perhaps most urgent are anti-drone capabilities.

As the Iran war continues, there is a serious risk that a deliberate series of strikes on desalination plants could deepen regional instability and trigger further humanitarian disasters or migration crises in the Gulf. All parties to the conflict should avoid escalating what is already a regional war into an even deeper conflict over the Gulf’s water supply.

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UN: Putin’s deportation of Ukrainian children is a crime against humanity

Peter Dickinson — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:10:22 +0000

Russia’s mass deportation of Ukrainian children is a crime against humanity, a new United Nations investigation has found. Published this week by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the report concluded that following the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Kremlin officials “at the highest level” have overseen large-scale deportations from occupied regions of Ukraine targeting thousands of Ukrainian children.

The report provides fresh insights into Russia’s comprehensive wartime program of child deportations. Moscow is accused of abducting tens of thousands of Ukrainian children since 2022 and forcibly transferring them to Russia as part of a “carefully organized plan” coordinated at the highest levels of the Russian Federation state apparatus. Many victims are reportedly subjected to ideological indoctrination designed to strip them of their Ukrainian identity and impose Russian nationality. This process often includes name changes and adoption into Russian families.

Despite extensive campaigning and humanitarian efforts by Ukraine and the international community, only a relatively small number of abducted children have so far been rescued. The plight of Ukraine’s deported kids has made global headlines and has attracted the attention of US First Lady Melania Trump, who has reportedly sought to help facilitate the return of victims by engaging directly with the Kremlin.

The new UN report noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in the mass deportations has been “visible from the outset.” This tallies with existing criminal charges against Putin brought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In spring 2023, ICC officials issued an arrest warrant for Putin for his personal role in Russia’s child abduction program. This warrant has since prevented the Kremlin dictator from attending a number of international summits due to fears that he may face arrest for war crimes.

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This is not the first time United Nations investigators have accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A spring 2025 UN probe concluded that the large-scale detention of Ukrainians in occupied regions of the country represented a “systematic attack against the civilian population” that qualified as a crime against humanity. In areas of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, Moscow is accused of conducting a Stalin-style terror campaign of mass arrests targeting thousands of civilians including elected officials, journalists, civil society activists, religious leaders, cultural figures, and military veterans.

Similarly, a more recent UN investigation into targeted Russian drone strikes against the civilian population in three front line regions of southern Ukraine determined that these aerial attacks amount to a crime against humanity. The killings are clearly intentional, United Nations investigators concluded, with Russian troops reportedly using video-guided drones to hunt down individual victims. Terrified locals refer to Russia’s drone strikes on civilians as a “human safari.”

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The Kremlin’s ongoing program of child deportations and accompanying anti-Ukrainian indoctrination are viewed in Kyiv as elements of a broader Russian plan to erase Ukrainian national identity entirely. Throughout occupied regions of Ukraine, the Russian authorities are ruthlessly eradicating all traces of Ukrainian statehood, history, language, and cultural heritage. Meanwhile, local residents are being forced to accept Russian citizenship. Anyone who refuses to cooperate risks being denied access to basic public services or deported.

Moscow’s efforts to forcibly Russify thousands of abducted Ukrainian children have been widely cited as evidence of the genocidal intent underpinning Russia’s invasion. This is hardly surprising. The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention specifically identifies “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as one of five internationally recognized acts of genocide.

Russia rejects United Nations claims that it is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine and has consistently denied allegations of mass child abductions. Instead, Kremlin officials maintain that the large-scale transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine to Russia is a routine wartime safety measure. However, nobody in Moscow has been able to explain why it is necessary to indoctrinate children against their native Ukraine and force them to adopt a Russian national identity in order ensure their safety.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Lack of mandate

Put simply, the current Syrian government inherited an exceedingly complex and dire set of challenges from the Assad regime, both within the country’s borders and beyond. The fact that the most unified and potent military force in the country did not have a broad political mandate caused concern amid the general rejoicing that Assad was gone. The new government in Damascus assumed office upon taking control of the capital and appointed individuals from within Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, or HTS) to key positions to manage the transition, driving international concerns over continued extremism and the lack of representation. The announcement of a more diverse transitional government in March 2025 was a good sign, as were President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s negotiations with Kurdish and Druze factions, but the potential for inclusive governance remains far from being realized.

Internationally, Syria has been under painful and wide-ranging sanctions since the 1980s, isolating the banking system, restricting trade, and limiting import-export activities. The December repeal of the Caesar Act—which was a US response to war crimes under the Assad regime—lifts nearly all sanctions on Syria and is an important step in both unlocking the investment needed for the nation’s reconstruction and improving economic conditions. However, the scale of needs is immense, with conservative reconstruction estimates exceeding $200 billion.

President Trump’s “peace through prosperity” policy, implemented under the leadership of Ambassador Thomas J. Barrack Jr., is pushing Syria to be open to the West and its allies, a big shift from sponsorship by the likes of Russia, Iran, and China. European and American engagement has brought focused attention from international firms—especially US and Turkish companies. Google and Apple have resumed service in the country, ending what has been called “a digital siege,” while the US Chamber of Commerce has seen strong interest in its new Syria program. Turkish firms engaged in energy, construction, and other critical stabilization sectors have flocked to their southern neighbor.

Trump’s influence

Trump’s return to the White House played a crucial role in creating an opening for positive change in Syria and its relations within the region for two key reasons. First, his excellent relationship with President Erdogan enabled diplomatic coordination and top-level trust during the final eleven days of the Assad regime and the immediate aftermath of its fall. “Erdogan is somebody I got along with great. . . . He’s built a very strong, powerful army,” Trump said on December 16, 2024. He added: “Right now, Syria has a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of indefinites . . . I think Turkey is going to hold the key to Syria.”

Second, Trump’s strong pro-Israel stance and unrivaled popularity among Israelis gave him unique standing to press back on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he called for action in Syria to deter Turkey and weaken the grip of al-Sharaa. Trump’s admonition “you have to be reasonable,” regarding Turkey in Syria, lowered the temperature a few degrees at least, buying important breathing space for the new government to try and stabilize a fragile situation.

Following the appointment of former HTS head al-Sharaa (nom de guerre Jolani) as interim president, the United States initiated the removal of sanctions, including those that had been in place since 1979 This action was prompted by Trump’s meeting with al-Sharaa in Riyadh on May 14, 2025, brokered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This meeting provided hope for the Syrian people and offered an opportunity for their future reconstruction; it also gave the international community a sign of normalizing engagement with the newly created regime in Damascus.

A key focus has been the unity of Syria. The United States, Turkey and the Syrian government have consistently emphasized the need for Syria to stay united with a central government in Damascus. This stance is crucial in countering the narratives and demands of advocates for decentralization, including Kurdish groups in the northeast, which advocate for a federal system, and the Druze aligned with Hikmet al-Hijri in Suwayda, who seek independence. Damascus has refused both while insisting that differences should not be overcome “through blood.”

Internal dynamics with minorities

The Kurds and the Druze received a lot of press over the summer months in 2025, but lingering problems in predominantly Alawite areas pose another challenge to successful stabilization. Following Assad’s ouster, the coastal area, once the primary base for Assad’s loyalists and a major source of volunteers for the Syrian army, transformed into a haven for former army and intelligence officers. Tensions boiled over into a significant cycle of atrocities when Assad loyalists attacked the new government forces, killing hundreds. The Syrian army responded with overwhelming force, leading to clashes that claimed numerous lives—and atrocities against civilian communities described by the United Nations as “widespread and systematic.”

A Syrian investigative committee acknowledged provocations and atrocities by both pro- and anti-government forces, and the Syrian government committed to accountability on all sides. International scrutiny and concern grew, however, when Druze and Bedouin fighters in Suwayda engaged in another round of attacks and atrocities, resulting in hundreds of casualties. By late summer there had been no new major incidents to add to the list of 2025 armed uprisings, reprisals, and atrocities, but the general impression of fragility and low trust persists.

Incidents likes these prompted some Washington-based observers to oppose removal of sanctions. Others argued that isolating or punishing the new authorities in Damascus would not moderate them, though engagement and incentives might. In the end, much of the international community, and most critically Trump and Barrack, chose to support relief and engagement with al-Sharaa.

A year-end deadline for the March 2025 agreement between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), long backed by the United States, and the SDF’s associated Democratic Union Party (aka PYD), came to naught: The Kurdish side faced a stalemate as they refused to take any trust-building steps and persisted in their demand for “federalism.” The American side, led by Barrack, committed to a political solution and held multiple talks in Damascus, Erbil, and northeast Syria, but these efforts yielded no tangible results.

On January 16, al-Sharaa issued a presidential order granting Syrian citizenship to Syrian Kurds. This decision, which had been denied by the Assad family for decades, included other privileges such as recognizing Nowruz, marking the first day of spring, as a national holiday and allowing the Kurds to use and teach the Kurdish language.

This presidential order came in response to clashes between the Syrian government and Kurdish groups in Aleppo that lasted for two days and resulted in the evacuation of those groups to northeast Syria.

Following further clashes, the Kurdish-led forces withdrew from the Aleppo countryside, which served as the front line for the PYD against the Syrian government. This withdrawal led to a rapid domino collapse, resulting in the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from Raqqa and most of Hasakeh province. This allowed the Syrian government to seize control of the oil resources and liberate two major cities overnight.

In an attempt to salvage what could be salvaged, Mazloum Abdi, the head of the SDF, flew to Damascus to meet with Barrack on January 18, 2026. Abdi announced that a new agreement had been reached with Damascus, allowing the SDF to be integrated into the Syrian army and interior ministry. Additionally, the Syrian government would receive control of the oil wells and all governmental institutions, including prisons. After Sal-haraa and Abdi signed a revised implementation agreement on January 30^th, fighting subsided and substantive, though preliminary and fragile, reintegration began.

Fragile ideological middle

Al-Sharaa has gone through a massive personal transformation that may presage the political transformation envisaged for Syria. He removed his military attire and addressed the Syrian people in a suit, adopted a conciliatory approach to various communities within Syria, and sent a clear message to the international community that Syria would be governed by a president rather than the military or religious councils of some sort.

This transformation faced—still faces, to a degree—challenges from his own base. Al-Sharaa wasn’t the only leader in HTS and other opposition movements, and some who shared his objective of defeating Assad advocated a more theocratic vision as the endpoint of revolution. This placed al-Sharaa in the fragile ideological middle: He needed to avoid a clear breach with more radical elements to gain their acquiescence to a governance model far different than that applied in Idlib during the war, one rooted in pragmatism and good relations among Syrians and with neighboring countries.

At the same time, the interim government must balance Turkish-Israeli competition, repatriation of refugees, and a massive reconstruction challenge. Will the path al-Sharaa publicly advocates—moderation, integration, balancing—succeed in managing the various pressures and challenges? It is too soon to say, but nearly a year after Assad’s fall, al-Sharaa is clearly on the right path. Continued pressure from Israel, internal challenges from Syrian hard-liners, the difficult path to reintegrating Druze and Kurds amicably, and immense reconstruction challenges mean that al-Sharaa remains at a critical juncture. Failure on any of these files could undermine faith in his leadership at home and abroad to a degree that momentum in stabilizing Syria would stall. Yet for now, al-Sharaa remains the indispensable man: The lack of alternatives may be his surest safeguard for staying on the path and keeping key domestic and international backers on board.

Asaad Sam Hanna is an intelligence analyst specializing in conflict resolution, regional security, policies, and strategic affairs.

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Russian talk of protecting compatriots masks Putin’s imperial ambitions

Agnia Grigas — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:59:00 +0000

Four years after Russia launched its full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the international debate about how the war should end remains haunted by myths first promoted by the Kremlin more than a decade ago. The most dangerous of these is the belief that Putin is seeking the return of historically Russian populations and land in Ukraine, rather than pursuing a deliberate strategy of imperial expansion under the cynical banner of protecting compatriots.

I first warned about this strategy in a 2014 opinion piece for CNN on the Russian seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. It was then a key theme in my 2016 book “Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire,” where I argued that Russia’s so‑called protection of compatriots was not a humanitarian policy but a geopolitical weapon. Today, these warnings are playing out in Ukraine, even as Western governments grope toward a peace formula that too often treats this doctrine as a negotiable grievance rather than the engine of Russian imperialism.

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When Russia occupied Crimea in 2014 and shortly afterward invaded east Ukraine’s Donbas region, many observers in Washington and European capitals saw it as a shocking but limited land grab. Many accepted the narrative that Crimea and eastern Ukraine were “Russian lands,” populated by Russian speakers who supposedly wanted to be part of Russia. Some even argued that Moscow was merely responding to local preferences, albeit illegally. Even then, it was clear that this reading was dangerously wrong. In reality, Moscow was asserting a unilateral right to intervene wherever it claimed the population as compatriots, regardless of what those communities actually wanted.

The idea of protecting Russian compatriots has long served as the backbone of a broader Kremlin project aimed at redrawing borders and reasserting Russian dominance across the post‑Soviet space. Similar tactics including cultural outreach, imperialistic propaganda, the distribution of Russian passports, and military intervention, have been evident in Moldova’s Transnistria region, Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Ukraine. This approach also poses an obvious threat to a range of other countries.

Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 confirmed that Crimea was not an exception but a pilot project. Putin’s justification for war leaned heavily on the idea of restoring Russia’s so-called historical unity and protecting Russian speakers in the Donbas region from alleged discrimination.

Alarmingly, even as Russia bombed Ukrainian cities and attempted to seize Kyiv, many Western discussions continued to treat parts of Ukraine as spaces where Russia’s claims might be partially legitimate or at least negotiable. This conceptual carve‑out has endured over the past four years, subtly shaping proposals to freeze the conflict along the current lines of control.

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The idea of a single, unified Russian people stretching across borders is less a sociological reality than a political ambition. The Kremlin has long blurred the lines between ethnic Russians, Russian speakers, non‑Russian ethnic minorities such as Abkhazians and Ossetians, and political “compatriots.” This allows Moscow to manufacture a constituency that justifies military intervention, even where Russian speakers are a minority or have no desire for Moscow’s protection.

This dynamic is visible in Ukraine today. Moscow claims to be acting on behalf of Ukraine’s Russian‑speaking communities, but in practice it has bombed, tortured, deported, and repressed these communities throughout the occupied territories. Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians who speak Russian at home, including many in cities like Kharkiv and Odesa, have chosen to resist Russian forces, volunteer for the Ukrainian army, or flee westward, contradicting the notion that language determines loyalty.

Putin’s talk of defending compatriots is a not a minority rights policy; it is a carefully crafted propaganda script to justify military aggression. First, Moscow defines a broad, elastic category of compatriots. Then it alleges discrimination against them. The target group next receives Russian passports. Finally, the Kremlin claims a duty to intervene militarily. When international policymakers and commentators accept the vocabulary of “protection” on Moscow’s terms, they are accepting the logic of empire. After all, modern borders depend on international law not historical grievance or dubious ethnic claims.

As the largest European invasion since World War II enters a fifth year, Western policy is still constrained by the remnants of these myths. When officials suggest that a peace settlement might involve Ukraine “recognizing realities on the ground” in Crimea or the occupied east of the country, they echo the idea that these territories are somehow less Ukrainian because of their demographic and linguistic profile.

In practice, this means legitimizing and rewarding the Kremlin’s compatriot policy. Accepting this logic in Ukraine would signal that using Russian speakers and the protection of ethnic Russians as a pretext for occupation and annexation is an acceptable tool of statecraft. That message would not only entrench Russia’s gains in Ukraine; it would also open the door to similar tactics in other states from Kazakhstan to the Baltics, where Moscow could once again weaponise bogus historical narratives to justify future aggression.

To move toward real peace, Western governments need to update not only their military and economic policies, but also their mental maps. That means rejecting Russia’s imperial expansion strategy built on historical myths that foster the quiet assumption that Crimea and eastern Ukraine are “different” in ways that justify special rights for Moscow. Instead, any settlement must reflect international law and the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, rather than Putin’s imperial ambitions.

As long as the West grants tacit legitimacy to Russia’s compatriot doctrine and Putin’s claims to “historically Russian lands” in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and beyond, it will be extremely difficult to end the current war in a manner that will safeguard European security.

Dr. Agnia Grigas is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire.

In this era of great-power rivalry, middle powers are increasingly pairing domestic reforms with multilateral leadership to overcome global gridlock. They innovate at home, align domestic priorities with international engagement, and scale what works through foreign policy and development cooperation and finance: coalitions and platforms such as BRICS, the G20, regional blocs like ASEAN, multilateral development banks (MDBs), and the United Nations (UN). Their comparative advantage is not necessarily dominance, but agility and legitimacy—the ability to gain traction at home and diffuse ideas and implementation abroad.

Momentum, models, and the hardest hurdles

Between 2023 and 2025, the World Bank’s WBL benchmarking project tracked 113 reforms across sixty-eight economies, and middle powers account for many of the most substantive advances (a sampling of examples cited in Annex 3A of the report are included below). Their leadership on gender equality is grounded in domestic reforms that deliver results at home and credibility abroad. Many—including Sweden, Spain, Germany, Canada, and Mexico—are advancing feminist foreign or development policies. These strategies show why middle-power countries often outperform larger powers on gender equality: they prioritize high‑return reforms, back them with implementing institutions and enabling technologies, and share what works through regional and global cooperation.

They are also targeting the most binding constraints identified by widespread research and as highlighted in the WBL—each with digital and systemic dimensions—shaping women’s economic participation and, by extension, growth:

Safety remains the lowest‑performing WBL dimension globally, with enforcement ineffective in roughly 80 percent of cases. Middle powers are working to close this “last mile” gap by pairing comprehensive statutes with integrated service ecosystems—hotlines, shelters, and survivor‑centered justice pathways. The United Kingdom and Brazil, for example, enacted legislation on cyberharassment, including criminal penalties for such conduct. They are also elevating these models in G20 and UN processes, where safety increasingly intersects with peacebuilding, digital governance, and climate resilience. In doing so, they help shape broader commitments, financing, and peer learning.
Care—especially childcare—remains one of the most underbuilt forms of productive infrastructure. In low‑income economies, only about 1 percent of the enabling mechanisms for quality, affordable care are in place. Middle powers are increasingly reframing care as core economic infrastructure, developing standards, financing mixed provision, and designing policies that raise women’s labor force participation and productivity. Spain’s childcare benchmarks, Oman’s pension credits for caregiving, and South Korea’s paid leave for fathers illustrate practical models with macroeconomic payoff—approaches middle powers can share through South-South and triangular cooperation.
Entrepreneurship also remains constrained: ninety-one economies still lack non-discrimination protections in access to credit, gender‑responsive procurement is limited, and small and medium-sized enterprise finance remains underdeployed for women‑led firms. Here, too, middle powers are making measurable progress—expanding women’s market access through governance reforms and procurement tools, while development finance institutions (DFIs) in the Nordics and sovereign wealth funds in Gulf states deploy blended finance to de‑risk lending and unlock capital, including for women entrepreneurs, and Ireland is among several middle powers prescribing gender quotas for corporate boards. This blend of technical cooperation, policy reform, and catalytic finance—an area where middle powers excel—has direct and scalable impact.

The multilateral multiplier

International influence is also a key aspect of middle-power leadership in this space. Recent G20 presidencies—Indonesia in 2022, India in 2023, Brazil in 2024, and South Africa in 2025—have kept inclusive growth, human capital, and sustainability at the center of consensus documents, normalizing gender equality as a macroeconomic priority rather than a social sideline. At the UN, for example, the CANZ countries—Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—have used sustainable development negotiations and general debates to advance gender-responsive financing, data, and governance standards essential for tracking progress on gender equality.

As BRICS continues to enlarge, it adds financing heft via the New Development Bank to mainstream gender‑smart infrastructure and services—such as safe transport, childcare, and digital public goods. This is what middle‑power leadership looks like: leveraging platforms, aligning agendas, and moving from principle to practice. At its Global Forum last week, the European Investment Bank—home to several middle-power member states—pledged to maintain its gender investments and renew its action plan.

Taken together, the middle-power approach—practical, institution‑focused, and coalition‑driven—is helping redefine what effective, gender‑responsive economic governance and cooperation looks like in today’s geopolitical landscape.

Toward a portable playbook for gender-equal growth

From these middle-power experiences, a replicable set of actions is emerging—steps that a committed government can adopt and partners can support:

Legislate the high‑return basics: guarantee equal pay for work of equal value; enact comprehensive anti‑discrimination; remove job bans; and implement robust anti-violence legislation, including cyber provisions.
Invest in the systems and institutions that make rights real: inspectorates, survivor services, specialized courts, digital infrastructure, childcare standards and financing, skilling, and sex‑disaggregated data architecture.
Mobilize capital at scale: use DFIs, pooled funds, and guarantees to finance care, women’s health, safe transport, water, and digital public infrastructure; crowd in private capital—especially for women entrepreneurs—through gender‑responsive procurement and disclosure; and leverage financial technology to expand access.
Align trade and investment tools: embed gender parity and safety standards in procurement, trade facilitation, and investment promotion to create durable market incentives.
“Multilateralize” the model: deploy G20 and UN platforms and processes, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, MDBs, and regional organizations to champion gender equality, standardize indicators, share tools, and scale financing and replication.

Why does this matter now? Because when it comes to women’s economic participation, the growth math is decisive. Closing gender gaps in the labor force could lift GDP by between 15 and 20 percent in many economies—and by up to 50 percent in the MENA region and South Asia. For aging OECD and East Asian societies, women’s economic participation is a macroeconomic stability imperative. For youthful regions, it is the difference between a demographic dividend and a demographic drag. Middle powers straddle both realities and are translating evidence into institutions at a time when credibility is currency. Trust in global governance may be fragile, but results are within reach. By grounding reforms in evidence, investing in institutions, and scaling through coalitions, middle powers are building the next playbook for gender‑equal growth and development. And in doing so, they remind us that influence and impact are not necessarily about size—they are about what works.

Nicole Goldin is nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and head of equitable development at United Nations University-Centre for Policy Research.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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Ukraine’s women may hold the key to the country’s future security

Calin Trenkov-Wermuth, Sofia Kryshtal — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:42:55 +0000

Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s ongoing invasion is often framed as a referendum on Western resolve, but the real test is whether the Ukrainians themselves can sustain a credible defense posture over time. As the war enters a fifth year, Ukraine’s long-term security will depend less on promises from abroad than on decisions made at home.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent diplomatic push reflects this reality. Throughout 2025, he intensified efforts to shape a settlement that would not simply freeze the front, but also create a durable security framework. He did so knowing that any peace will be judged by its ability to prevent a future renewal of Russian aggression.

Crucially, peace through strength must mean the strength of the entire nation, not half of it. Ukraine’s security cannot rest on external guarantees alone. It must also be based on national capacity, including a cultural and institutional shift that integrates women as a pillar of defense planning. This is not a social policy argument. It is a force generation argument.

Even in an optimistic scenario, any agreement between Kyiv and Moscow will demand long-term readiness and self-reliance. Ceasefires can be violated. Commitments can erode. What endures is force posture: Trained units, predictable rotation, and the resilience to absorb pressure.

Deterrence is not a document. It is a condition and it rests on how effectively a state mobilizes and prepares its population. Yet Ukraine’s mobilization still reflects post-Soviet assumptions. Men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-nine are treated as the default defenders of the state, while women are viewed as supplementary. That division no longer matches battlefield realities or Ukraine’s strategic needs.

Since 2024, Kyiv has tightened mobilization rules, expanded enforcement, and narrowed exemptions. These measures have stabilized force levels, but they have not solved the underlying problem: Ukraine is fighting a prolonged war of attrition against a far larger adversary. Pulling more men into the system without changing how the system functions will not produce sustainable results.

One weakness is preparation and allocation. Many men still only receive limited training before mobilization. At the same time, tens of thousands of women with in-demand support skills in fields such as logistics, communications, medicine, intelligence, engineering, IT, and drones, remain outside the recruitment and training pipelines.

The result is inefficiency on two fronts. Front line units are overstretched and denied predictable rotation, while rear area roles are often filled by personnel whose skills are misaligned with their assignments.

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Ukraine does not need to mirror Russia’s mass mobilization model. It needs smarter force management. Women can be systematically integrated into roles currently performed by men far away from the front, including checkpoints, border duties, logistics hubs, training commands, communications and intelligence units, and other rear-area security functions.

In a war of attrition, regular rotation is essential to combat effectiveness. Reallocating personnel this way would relieve pressure on front line units. Over time, it would create a broader preparedness posture in which more Ukrainians have the skills to resist renewed aggression. It would also broaden the pool of people with military experience, which strengthens deterrence long after any ceasefire.

The case for integration is not hypothetical. Ukrainian women have volunteered in large numbers since 2014. Legislation adopted in 2018 granted women equal rights and responsibilities in the Ukrainian armed forces. By 2025, more than 70,000 women were serving in the Ukrainian military, including in drone units, medical evacuation teams, intelligence cells, and logistics chains. Recruiting data from the past year indicates that roughly one in five new candidates entering the pipeline was female.

Despite the growing prominence of women, the Ukrainian military has not yet fully adapted. Legal equality has not translated into institutional integration. Access to training and promotion is inconsistent. Women are still too often treated as volunteers rather than a core element of force planning. Discrimination and sexual harassment persist, while accountability is uneven.

Many barriers are practical. Units often lack properly fitted equipment and uniforms. Separate barracks, showers, and toilets are not universal. Access to gynecological care is inconsistent. Mechanisms to prevent and address harassment and misconduct are sometimes poorly enforced. These are not symbolic deficiencies; they directly affect retention, readiness, and morale.

A modern defense strategy is not built on weapons alone. It is built on resilience. Russia’s theory of victory assumes Ukrainian society will fracture under prolonged pressure. Zelenskyy’s diplomacy aims to deny Moscow that outcome by securing international backing and buying time. But society must disprove Russia’s assumptions in practice.

A whole-of-society defense that mobilizes women across military and security roles sends a strong signal of endurance. It demonstrates that Ukraine is prepared for years of deterrence and reinforces the message that Ukraine is building a modern European state.

This signal will also matter to allies. Western support is increasingly constrained by domestic politics. Ukraine’s strongest argument is not moral clarity alone, but strategic credibility. A country that can sustain defense over time is easier to support than one perpetually dependent on emergency assistance.

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Other states facing serious long-term threats have updated their security cultures. Israel mandated conscription for both genders in 1949. Norway introduced gender-neutral conscription in 2015; Sweden followed in 2018.

Ukraine has taken steps toward modernization. In 2024, it updated defense education curricula in secondary schools. By 2025, pilot programs expanded civilian preparedness. But beyond high school, structured pathways for women to acquire military training remain limited. Lyceums and military academies are still underused as talent pipelines.

The costs of delay compound. Exhaustion erodes combat effectiveness. Poor rotation accelerates burnout, desertion, and casualties. No peace plan, however carefully negotiated, can compensate for a force structure that excludes half the population from systematic preparation.

Whether Zelenskyy’s peace initiative succeeds or stalls, Ukraine will require endurance. The policy agenda should be clear. First, Kyiv should extend mandatory service to women aged twenty-five to sixty for designated non-front line support roles currently filled by men such as logistics, medical support, communications, and administration.

It will be crucial to clearly codify exemptions based on factors including parental and family commitments, along with professional status and medical limitations. This will make it possible to free more male personnel for front line duty while sustaining continuity of operations.

Second, the Ukrainian authorities need to fix the basics that determine retention and readiness. This includes properly fitted uniforms and equipment, adequate facilities, reliable medical and gynecological care, and strict enforcement against harassment and misconduct.

Third, Ukraine should expand training and education pipelines that actively target women, including military higher education. Recruiting data already shows demand; the state should convert that demand into readiness, while civil society tracks progress.

Fourth, Ukraine’s allies should support women’s integration through training exchanges. Western military commanders have decades of lessons to share on integrating women into units and training pipelines.

Finally, Kyiv will need to invest in long-term societal preparation. Ukraine cannot rely on emergency mobilization alone; youth must be educated early for the responsibility of defense. When service is framed as an expected civic duty rather than an abrupt wartime shock, conscription becomes a sustainable pillar of national security.

Security guarantees will shape Ukraine’s future, but guarantees are not substitutes for national capacity. Zelenskyy is right to pursue diplomacy that does not mortgage sovereignty; he is also correct to insist peace must be durable. Durability, however, will be measured in battalions, rotations, and readiness, not in signatures.

Ukraine’s most reliable long-term defense asset is its people: Men and women alike. Mobilizing and integrating women is not about ideology. It is a strategy for victory and long-term security.

Calin Trenkov-Wermuth is the former principal security governance advisor at the US Institute of Peace and co-author of The Future of the Security Sector in Ukraine, published by USIP. Sofia Kryshtal is the former executive coordinator of the USIP Task Force on the Future of the Security Sector in Ukraine.

This is forcing Putin and his generals to rethink. The Kremlin dictator remains determined to extinguish Ukrainian independence and force Ukraine permanently back into the Russian orbit. However, he knows that there is little prospect of achieving his ambitious objectives via the bloody battles currently taking place over the rust belt towns and villages of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

In order to break this strategic deadlock, Russia aims to systematically dismantle the conditions that allow Ukraine to function as a state. This means the continued bombardment of energy infrastructure throughout the country; it is also likely to involve expanded attacks on other crucial public utilities, such as municipal water services and sewage treatment. In parallel, Russia will increase strikes on civilian transport with an emphasis on Ukraine’s logistically vital rail network.

The end goal is to deprive Ukraine of the industrial capacity to defend itself and destroy the basic amenities to sustain even a minimum standard of living. Kremlin officials hope this will break Ukrainian morale and enable Putin to dictate the terms of peace.

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Russia has made no formal declarations regarding its intentions, but the strategic shift toward the bombardment of infrastructure over the past year has been unmistakable. In 2025, Russia launched around 55,000 kamikaze drones at targets in Ukraine, representing a fivefold increase from the total one year earlier. Attacks have sought to deprive individual cities of power while severing Ukraine’s national energy network along the Dnipro River.

The impact of this bombing campaign extends far beyond civilian suffering. By cutting off major power generation assets and disrupting connectivity, Russia is pushing the entire grid into a near-permanent state of emergency. This is placing heavy strain on Ukraine’s defense industry, which is often deprived of the electricity it needs to function. With Kyiv now relying on domestic defense sector output to cover around 50 percent of the country’s military needs, this disruption to production poses a grave threat to national security.

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The coming spring season will be crucial. The next few months of warmer weather should be Ukraine’s window to rebuild and recover lost industrial capacity. However, Moscow will be working hard to slam that window shut with waves of attacks made possible by Russia’s surging domestic drone production.

The continued bombardment of infrastructure targets across Ukraine will also help exhaust the country’s limited air defense ammunition supplies. Every interceptor missile used to defend a Ukrainian city or a power substation is one less available to cover front line positions. This will force Kyiv to prioritize between protecting the civilian population or shielding soldiers in the combat zone.

Another key feature of the war during the first half of 2026 will be escalating Russian attacks on Ukraine’s railways. Recent strikes on key routes linking Ukraine to Poland indicate that this campaign is already well underway. Any major disruption to rail services could cause significant economic damage and prevent millions of Ukrainians from traveling. More importantly, it would leave the army under-supplied and logistically isolated during the height of the summer campaigning season when Russia’s offensive capacity is expected to peak.

It is still not too late to counter the Kremlin’s plans, but the clock is ticking. Kyiv’s partners must urgently enhance Ukraine’s air defense capabilities and provide the country with more systems to protect the expanding list of potential infrastructure targets. Efforts should also be made to fortify strategic sites and anticipate future repair requirements by providing likely replacement components in advance.

Russia’s current strategy should come as no surprise. At the very start of his reign, Putin learned in Chechnya that pulverizing infrastructure was a reliable path to victory in a conflict that conventional military force could not resolve. In 2003, the United Nations reportedly called Chechen capital Grozny “the most destroyed city on earth.”

The Kremlin dictator now plans to secure victory in Ukraine by employing similar tactics. If Ukraine’s electricity grid and critical infrastructure are allowed to fragment further, the authorities in Kyiv may find themselves literally powerless to defend their country.

William Dixon is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute specializing in cyber and international security issues. Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security.

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Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began with the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin was well known for questioning Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state. Recently declassified transcripts show that in 2008, the Russian leader told US President George W. Bush that Ukraine was an “artificial country.” He was also notorious for promoting an unashamedly imperialistic version of Ukrainian history and insisting that Ukrainians were actually Russians (“one people”).

These trends intensified following the start of Russia’s armed intervention, with Putin becoming openly dismissive of Ukraine’s legitimacy and laying claim to Ukrainian territory. In summer 2021, he took the highly unusual step of publishing a 5000-word history essay that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. At around the same time, the Kremlin dictator began referring ominously to independent Ukraine as an “anti-Russia.”

Meanwhile, Putin’s formidable propaganda machine was busy demonizing and dehumanizing Ukrainians. Anyone who rejected the official Kremlin vision of Ukraine as an “inalienable” part of Russia’s own history, culture, and spiritual space was depicted as a Nazi and a traitor. This extreme anti-Ukrainian rhetoric set the stage for the crimes committed following the onset of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

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The horrors of the past four years have gone far beyond the death and destruction associated with conventional armed conflicts. In areas of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, the Russian occupation authorities have launched a campaign of national destruction and set out to completely erase all traces of Ukrainian culture, history, language, and identity. Untold thousands have been detained in waves of arrests that United Nations investigators have branded as a crime against humanity.

Those who remain are being subjected to ruthless russification encompassing virtually every aspect of daily life. Anyone who refuses to accept Russian citizenship faces the prospect of deportation from their own homes. Military age men are liable to be conscripted into the Russian army and obliged to fight against their fellow Ukrainians.

Perhaps the single most shocking Russian war crime committed in occupied Ukraine has been the mass abduction of children, who are sent to Russia for indoctrination in order to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose an imperial Russian identity. In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin in connection with Russia’s large-scale child kidnapping campaign.

These crimes have taken place against a backdrop of genocidal language that is now a routine feature of Russia’s political and media discourse. Kremlin officials and propagandists frequently call for the liquidation of Ukraine and indicate that they intend to extinguish Ukrainian national identity completely. Based on the crimes taking place in Ukraine and the intent on display in Moscow, numerous international experts have concluded that the Russian invasion qualifies as an act of genocide.

Ukrainians are acutely aware of Russia’s genocidal objectives. They know what is happening in the occupied regions of their own country, and are all too familiar with the sickening propaganda emanating from the Kremlin. This awareness is a crucial factor fueling the phenomenon of Ukrainian resilience. Far from being comic book heroes, most Ukrainians are ordinary folk who recognize that if they stop resisting, their country will not survive.

Since 2022, Ukraine’s bravery has captured the imagination of the watching world. But as we marvel at the courage of a nation defying seemingly impossible odds, it is crucial to also act accordingly by increasing international support for the Ukrainian war effort. Too often, vocal cheerleading in Western capitals has not translated into robust backing. This only emboldens Russia and prolongs the war.

As Putin’s invasion enters a fifth year, it is now abundantly clear that Russia aims to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. Ukrainian resilience alone will not be enough to prevent this catastrophe. If Kyiv’s partners fall short, the applause of the past four years will ring very hollow indeed.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

In India this past November, authorities disrupted a plot by suspects tied to the Islamic State–Khorasan Province to weaponize and use ricin to attack crowds and water supplies. A highly potent toxin derived from castor beans, just a few milligrams of ricin can cause significant sickness and death.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence can now also make this threat exponentially worse.

The threat spectrum also continues to expand as nation-states explore novel agents. A recent US State Department assessment, for example, highlighted Chinese military involvement in research about dual-use marine toxins, raising serious concerns about Beijing’s compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

This threat also extends to localized murders and tragic accidents. In Australia, the 2025 Erin Patterson case resulted in a life sentence for killing three people with death cap mushrooms during a family luncheon. Difficulties with detection and attribution of toxins made this case, and others like it, particularly difficult to prosecute.

And in California, families recently paid a devastating price for mistaking a death cap mushroom for a safer, edible one. Death cap mushroom poisoning often begins with vomiting and diarrhea, but after a brief period during which patients improve, liver failure occurs. This month, state health officials reported the largest surge of severe poisonings in years, with more than three dozen hospitalizations, three liver transplants, and four deaths as of February.

While the world banned biological and toxin weapons decades ago, that agreed-upon norm never eliminated the materials, knowhow, or intent that make toxins attractive to criminals, terrorists, and rogue states alike. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence can now also make this threat exponentially worse. These technologies lower the barrier to entry, making the complex knowledge required to design, synthesize, and deploy lethal toxins more accessible to bad actors than ever before.

There are those who want to believe that the problem of toxins no longer exists or that it is far less challenging than, for example, the threat of infectious diseases. But ongoing ricin events in the United States and overseas, repeated food contamination with aflatoxin, and growing concern about nation-states weaponizing toxins alongside viruses and bacteria—all demonstrate that the threat of toxins persists and appears to be increasing.

In response, the world needs to treat toxins as a main problem, not a subordinate issue.

Specifically, governments need to invest in and support biological attribution. These investigations are far from easy. They begin with mysterious illnesses, suspected food poisoning, unexplained deaths, and rumored causes. Researchers need forensic methods and investigations that can differentiate among natural, accidental, and intentional toxic exposure. Governments need credible results to move forward with prosecutions, inform intelligence assessments, and allow elected leaders to speak with confidence to the public about what is going on and what they are doing about it.

The United States should make diagnostics for toxins a higher priority, with the ability to distribute them quickly and effectively down to the state and local level. The US government needs to alert the healthcare and public health communities about the current threat that toxins pose so that they can learn to recognize (or at least suspect) this sort of poisoning and use readily available, rapid point-of-care diagnostics during the very short window of time available to treat and save victims. It is not possible to send specimens to reference labs and get results back in time to save lives. Responsible toxidromic biosurveillance, too, can play an important part in identifying public health events and allowing health professionals to better inform citizens. After all, the United States cannot address the threat if it does not pay attention to it.

As the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense convenes policymakers and experts at the Atlantic Council on Thursday, February 26, it is clear that the United States and the world must act now to defend against this enduring biological threat.

Pick your poison: The enduring threat of biological toxins

The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense at the Atlantic Council will host its latest meeting, mapping the threat picture of biological toxins and its implications for future biological attacks.

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Why Colombia’s veterans are going to war in Ukraine

Erin K. McFee — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:39:11 +0000

WASHINGTON—In a memorial park in Kyiv, Colombian flags form a striking patch of what has become a dense blanket of tributes to the fallen. An estimated 300 to 550 Colombian nationals have been killed fighting for Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. Though official figures are unavailable, estimates suggest that approximately 25 percent of personnel from the sixty-five countries that have joined Kyiv’s ground forces have come from the Andean nation.

Much has been written about how these fighters perform and perish. Less attention has been paid to why they arrive at all. This is not a story of mercenaries or idealists. It is a symptom of unresolved governance questions: how Colombia transitions its veterans to civilian life and how the international community regulates cross-border military labor. Decades of internal conflict produced a large pool of seasoned fighters, from soldiers versed in the fundamentals of combat to elite counterinsurgency operators. These skills have become commodities on the global market.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s administration has not responded by embracing the country’s role as a de facto supplier of allied combat power; instead, it has recast this flow of fighters as a crisis of exploitation. As winter deepened on the front line in late 2025, I interviewed a Colombian veteran in Kyiv, who shared with me a warning that carries a grim weight: “Tell Colombians not to go there, because more die than return.” Yet still they go—drawn not by glory, but by the grim calculus of limited options.

On December 2, 2025, a forum on this topic held at Universidad Sergio Arboleda in Bogotá convened by the Corioli Institute (of which I am the founder and executive director), the Governance, Policies, and Strategic Security Agency, and several other partners, exposed the far more complex reality driving this exodus and the emerging struggle to govern it.

When reintegration fails, military labor moves

One must look beyond the label of “mercenary” to understand why a Colombian soldier ends up in the Donbas. Across the Bogotá forum, veterans, researchers, and officials converged on a shared pattern: professional soldiers with fifteen to twenty years of counterinsurgency experience retire in their late thirties or early forties, only to fail to reintegrate into an economy that has no place for them. Formal transition and retraining programs exist; however, their disconnectedness from labor-market realities leaves veterans without a credible civilian off-ramp.

November 3, 2025, Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine: Maidan Square, Kyiv: Colombian flags pay respect to the almost 350 Colombian volunteers who have lost their lives fighting Russian and affiliated forces in Ukraine in Maidan Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 3, 2025. Of the international Legion’s foreign volunteers, Colombia’s have lost the most men. The US is second with around 100 killed in action. (© Jeremy Bigwood/ZUMA Press Wire)

A typical mid-level officer earns roughly four million pesos (just over one thousand dollars) per month in active service, with that figure dropping to four hundred dollars for rank-and-file soldiers. Upon retirement, income often falls by half. With anemic transition programs and the domestic private security sector saturated, the contrast with Ukrainian frontline pay is stark. Salaries for soldiers in Ukraine participating in combat operations run from $3,000 to $5,000 a month (including any time in captivity and rehabilitation following injury), plus a potential $25,000 signing bonus and a $350,000 death benefit to families in the event the soldier is killed in combat. While language barriers and a multitude of bureaucratic hurdles have resulted in substantive challenges in obtaining death benefits and repatriating fallen soldiers’ remains, the economic arbitrage remains compelling for those feeling functionally stranded between illegal employment and economic exclusion. Ukraine becomes, as one participant of the forum in Bogotá put it, “the first real door that opens.”

Bogotá’s legal turn: Moral framing vs. practical limits

Such structural pressures and their consequences have shaped Bogotá’s response, which has adopted a tone of criminalization and moral condemnation. At the presidential level, the legal turn has been driven by Petro’s broader rhetorical and policy pivot against what he calls mercenarismo. Since 2024, he has described recruitment for foreign wars more broadly as a form of “human trafficking converting men into merchants of death,” arguing that, in the case of Ukraine, commanders treat Colombians as an “inferior race. . . and cannon fodder.” He called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to free Colombian “mercenaries” from these armies and argued that veterans should not be permitted to, among other illicit activities, put their skills in the service of “other wars abroad” due to the fact that their training had been paid for by the Colombian people.

In December 2025, the Colombian House of Representatives approved a bill with ninety-four votes in favor (with seventeen against) to ratify the 1989 United Nations (UN) Convention against mercenaries. Under that UN convention, a mercenary is defined as a specially recruited person who takes part in hostilities for private gain, is promised material compensation substantially higher than that paid to regular combatants, neither a national nor resident of a party to the conflict, not a member of the armed forces of a party, and not sent on official duty by a state that is not party to the conflict. Colombians fighting in Ukraine’s International Legion—or its army’s regular assault units following the dissolution of the legion in December 2025—are thus not mercenaries according to this definition. They receive the same pay as regular combatants and are members of the state’s armed forces.

Legal experts at the forum warned of the pitfalls of collapsing state military service, private security contracting, and outright mercenary activity into a single category. Blurring these definitional boundaries undermines critical outcomes such as who gets prisoner-of-war status, consular protection, and veterans’ rights. Forum participants described a “witch hunt” that strands hundreds of veterans in a legal gray zone in which they could face prosecution at home for service that is perfectly legal under international law. Meanwhile, the economic realities pushing them to leave in the first place remain completely ignored.

Petro’s reductive framing risks returning fighters to Colombia as stigmatized subjects instead of veterans with recognized needs. Many returning Colombian veterans of the war in Ukraine are simultaneously traumatized, severely wounded, politically delegitimized, and exposed to prosecution. This convergence of stigma and legal peril creates a dangerous reintegration vacuum, one likely to be filled by criminal organizations eager to recruit highly trained personnel who feel abandoned by the state.

Policy priorities for Colombia and its partners

While the forum focused on Colombians’ participation in the war in Ukraine, the scale of Colombian veterans’ movements is global. More than merely joining state-backed armed forces in Eastern Europe, they are also being actively recruited by (and sometimes lured by false promises into) nonstate armed groups across the geopolitical spectrum, from the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan to Mexican cartels. This transnational demand for Colombian combat labor creates a complex threat landscape where the line between lawful military service and criminal activity is increasingly blurred. Any effective response must thus confront illicit and exploitative recruitment networks without mistaking them for the problem itself. Rather, policymakers should address the structural failures that make fighting for foreign forces a rational choice for many veterans. They should also preserve clear legal distinctions so that those who serve through lawful pathways are not further marginalized when they return.

Prioritize the genuine implementation of the 2019 Veterans Law to transform it from a hollow framework into a viable civilian off-ramp. This requires the Ministry of Defense’s veterans directorate to embed financial planning and transition support throughout the military lifecycle. Meanwhile, the Ministries of Labor, Education, and Health must build education and employment pathways aligned with actual market demand to address the governance failures driving veterans abroad.
Establish a permanent interministerial national mechanism and a dedicated Colombia–Ukraine liaison capacity to manage the transnational market for combat labor. Led by the Foreign Ministry (Cancillería) and linking the Ministries of Defense, Justice, and Labour, this body would coordinate veteran policy, regulate recruitment networks, and manage repatriation claims. It would also invest in data systems in collaboration with international partners to distinguish lawful service from illicit trafficking to help protect returnees.
US policymakers and US Southern Command should treat veteran reintegration as a critical node of regional security cooperation to prevent criminal networks from capturing US-trained expertise. US military assistance should match operational training with robust reintegration support to deny cartels access to elite combat and drone skills. This directly supports US priorities on counternarcotics and transnational crime. Force development without credible transition pathways creates downstream security risks.

The growing patch of Colombian flags in Kyiv’s memorial park signals what one veteran at the forum described as a “definitive inflection point.” Colombian combatants will continue to deploy to distant theaters. Unless the structural gray zone of veteran exclusion is addressed, these now globally dispersed front lines will inevitably rebound back home, transforming untreated trauma and economic precarity into fresh, combat-tested, and technologically trained manpower—ideal targets for recruitment by domestic and transnational criminal networks.

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After four years of Russia’s invasion, time to stop underestimating Ukraine

Mykola Bielieskov — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:16:48 +0000

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is now entering a fifth year and has already lasted longer than the entire conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.

It was not supposed to be like this. When Russian President Vladimir Putin first gave the order to invade four years ago, he was anticipating a brief and victorious campaign to decapitate the Ukrainian state and extinguish Ukrainian independence. This over-confidence was reflected in the initial Russian invasion plan, with vast armored columns approaching cities along major highways while showing little consideration for the possibility of any serious Ukrainian resistance.

Putin did not seek to mobilize or recruit additional troops for this ambitious undertaking. Instead, he believed an invasion force of approximately two hundred thousand professional soldiers would be more than enough to achieve his objectives. There were even reports of invading Russian units bringing their parade uniforms along, ready for the inevitable victory celebrations. However, it soon became apparent that the Kremlin dictator had fundamentally misread the situation.

Russia’s blitzkrieg attack failed because it was based on a series of false political and military assumptions. In the political realm, Russia’s leaders had long dismissed Ukraine as an artificial state with no unifying national identity. As a result, they seem to have been genuinely shocked by the scale of popular resistance in spring 2022 as millions of Ukrainians rose up to defend their nation.

On the battlefield, the initial stage of the invasion exposed the underwhelming reality behind Russia’s military superpower pretensions. The Russian army may look impressive when marching unopposed across Red Square, but Putin’s commanders struggled to conduct combined arms operations in Ukraine and demonstrated a distinct lack of imagination. Likewise, the Russian air force was unable to establish control of the skies over Ukraine.

Putin’s plans unraveled because he underestimated Ukraine. After years of dismissing Ukrainian statehood as an accident of history and insisting Ukrainians were really Russians (“one people“), he seems to have convinced himself that Ukraine could not possibly demonstrate the national cohesion necessary for a sustained defense. His commanders appear to have been similarly dismissive, and clearly did not think the Ukrainian military was capable of waging a modern war.

These assumptions were largely the product of wishful thinking. They conveniently ignored Ukraine’s significant nation-building progress during the post-Soviet era, and failed to anticipate the impact of the comprehensive military reforms undertaken in the country following the onset of Russian aggression in 2014.

Putin and his Kremlin colleagues were not the only ones to fall into the trap of underestimating Ukraine. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, military and political leaders throughout the West were also queuing up to write off the country.

While individual forecasts differed, there was a broad consensus that Ukraine had no real chance of resisting the might of the Russian military and would be completely overrun by the Kremlin war machine in a matter of days. Instead, Ukraine won the Battle of Kyiv and stunned the watching world.

This remarkable success set the tone for all that has followed. By the end of 2022, Ukraine had liberated around half of the land seized by Russia during the initial stage of the invasion. Since then, Kyiv has managed to decimate the Russian Black Sea Fleet and has forced Putin to withdraw the bulk of his remaining warships from occupied Crimea. Ukraine is also now increasingly bringing Putin’s invasion home to Russia with long-range drone and missile strikes deep inside the Russian Federation.

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Over the past four years, Russia’s invasion has become the biggest European war since World War II, with a series of game-changing technological advances transforming military doctrine. In 2022, the battlefield was dominated by tanks, armor, and artillery, much as it had been since the early twentieth century. Today, the war is being shaped primarily by drones and small groups of infantry.

The proliferation of these technologies has turned what began as a war of movement into a war of attrition, with a kill zone stretching at least ten kilometers from ground zero on both sides of the front line. Robotic systems can now strike enemy targets on land, in the air, and at sea, and are also being deployed to evacuate the wounded, perform logistics roles, and serve as front line sentries.

Ukraine has proved highly adept at this innovative form of warfare. In many cases, Ukrainian military commanders have sought high tech solutions in order to counter Russia’s overwhelming advantages in manpower and conventional firepower.

Kyiv has also viewed defense tech innovations as an economically viable way to compensate for often unpredictable flows of military supplies from the country’s Western partners. This approach has helped to minimize any negative consequences following the reduction in direct US aid to Ukraine since the return of Donald Trump to the White House last year.

As a result, Ukraine now boasts a large and sophisticated domestic drone industry, with developers constantly upgrading existing models based of real-time combat feedback. Ukraine’s remarkable defense tech progress since 2022 has positioned the country at the cutting edge of drone technologies. Partner countries increasingly acknowledge this status and are seeking to benefit from Ukraine’s expertise, with Ukrainian soldiers training their NATO counterparts in drone warfare.

As the Trump presidency leads to dramatic shifts in the international security landscape, Kyiv is more generally in the geopolitical ascendancy. With America looking to downgrade its transatlantic commitments, the Ukrainian army is recognized as a key contributor to Europe’s future security. A country once seen as militarily insignificant is now regarded as indispensable for the defense of the continent.

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Ukraine’s emergence as the largest and most innovative military in Europe has enabled the country to stem the tide of Russia’s invasion and prevent any major breakthroughs. While Moscow has consistently held the battlefield initiative since late 2023, the Russian army has only managed to seize around one percent of additional Ukrainian territory while suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Faced with a bloody quagmire on the front lines, Putin has resorted to exaggerating his army’s advances as he seeks to maintain the myth of inevitable Russian victory and discourage further support for Ukraine. This tactic was brutally exposed in late 2025 when Putin repeatedly claimed to have captured Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to visit the city personally and record a selfie video revealing the Kremlin dictator’s lies.

Despite Ukraine’s strong record of military innovation and battlefield success since 2022, there are indications that both Russia and some of Kyiv’s Western partners continue to underestimate the country. Putin’s recent public statements reaffirming his determination to fight on, together with Russia’s increasingly open rejection of a compromise peace, suggest that Moscow still expects the Ukrainian army to collapse.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Ukraine has “no cards” and should therefore agree to a Kremlin-friendly peace deal. Others in Europe continue to argue that unfavorable military realities make painful Ukrainian concessions unavoidable in order to end the war.

These pessimistic perspectives ignore the lessons of the past four years. The Russian army is clearly not the irresistible force of Kremlin propaganda, while Ukraine is no longer a military minnow and has multiple trump cards in its possession. The most important conclusion of all is that the human dimension still ultimately determines outcomes on the battlefield. It is here that Ukraine truly excels, with an army of skilled, inventive, and highly motivated personnel defending their homes and families.

The grassroots ingenuity of Ukraine’s military and the country’s readiness to embrace defense sector innovation have undoubtedly been instrumental in sustaining the Ukrainian war effort. But while impressive new weapons systems have often grabbed the headlines, it would be shortsighted to attribute Ukraine’s military strength to technological advances alone.

As the war enters a fifth year, the Ukrainian nation as a whole deserves the respect of the world for defying Russia so emphatically and transforming their country into a formidable military power. Nobody knows this better than Putin, who is paying a very high price for making the mistake of underestimating Ukraine.

Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at Ukrainian NGO “Come Back Alive.” The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal position and do not reflect the opinions or views of NISS or Come Back Alive.

The battlefield itself has also changed, with the clearly defined front lines of the early years giving way to a shifting grey zone dominated by ubiquitous drone coverage. As a result, major offensives featuring armored units and massed infantry are now extremely difficult to conduct. Russia has refined its tactics in response to these changes, shifting away from a reliance on human wave assaults toward the use of small infiltration groups that probe Ukrainian defenses while seeking to establish footholds.

With Putin’s commanders under intense political pressure to capture more ground, the impetus is on Russia to continue offensive operations. As the defending force, this places Ukraine in a strong position. According to Ukrainian officials, Russian casualties have recently reached record highs of more than 30,000 per month. For the first time in the war, this means Russia’s losses are now higher than monthly recruitment levels.

The Russian army in Ukraine has recently experienced disruptions to Starlink connectivity, creating further challenges for the coordination of offensive operations. Without stable links between front line units and commanders, Russian forces are likely to become even more vulnerable and easier to eliminate. This has already led to a number of successful Ukrainian counteroffensives and could create the conditions for additional increases in Russian casualty rates.

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Since the onset of the invasion, the Kremlin has been careful to reduce the risk of any backlash over heavy losses in Ukraine. Recruitment has concentrated on Russia’s ethnic minorities and the country’s poorest communities, with prisoners offered amnesties in exchange for military service. For the past few years, the emphasis has increasingly turned to attracting volunteers via large enlistment bonuses and generous salaries. Nevertheless, Russia’s ability to absorb casualties is not limitless. The longer the war drags on, the harder it will be for Moscow to maintain the current tempo, especially if Russian casualties continue to climb.

As part of efforts to maximize Russian losses, Ukraine has established a digital infrastructure to turn drone warfare into a systematic campaign of attrition. Through mechanisms such as the ePoints system, all Russian personnel and equipment losses are logged, verified, and analyzed. Ukrainian commanders can identify which units are most effective and adjust tactics as needed.

Ukraine’s strategy is producing striking results. In December 2025 alone, Ukrainian drone units claim to have hit over one hundred thousand Russian targets, a 31 percent increase compared to the previous month. Russian war blogger Dmitry Rogozin is one of many on the opposing side to acknowledge the effectiveness of this approach, noting that Ukraine is “building a model for the conflict as a long-term project designed to exhaust and exert systematic pressure.”

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The Russian army in Ukraine is already beginning to show signs of strain. According to UK Defense Secretary John Healey, Moscow is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign recruits as Russian commanders lose men faster than they can replace them. “Putin likes to give the impression that they’re making relentless and inevitable progress,” Healey noted recently. “But he’s weaker than he’s been and more reliant than he’s been on foreign fighters.”

Russia’s efforts to attract foreign mercenaries are a clear indication of the country’s mounting manpower challenges. Putin remains deeply reluctant to order a new mobilization due to concerns that this could destabilize the home front and spark a repeat of the exodus of fighting age Russian men that took place in 2022. However, with the Russian economy struggling, paying for new volunteers may become more challenging and lead to budget cuts elsewhere that could also fuel discontent.

If Russian losses continue to outpace recruitment, Putin may find himself with no good options. He could be forced to choose between mobilization, diverting state funds to sustain recruitment incentives, or scaling back offensive operations. All of these choices have the potential to fuel domestic instability. In recent days, there has been widespread speculation that Russian efforts to block the Telegram app may reflect growing Kremlin concerns over the possibility of unrest.

For much of the war, the Russian public has experienced the invasion of Ukraine as a distant conflict. Mounting casualties, particularly if paired with growing economic hardship, may gradually erode this sense of detachment and increase the pressure on the Kremlin. As the war enters a fifth year, Ukraine is hoping escalating Russian losses can finally force Putin to rethink his invasion and seek a meaningful settlement.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

As Russian battlefield losses mount, Putin is turning to Africa for soldiers

Katherine Spencer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:38:58 +0000

At the end of January, CSIS estimated that Russia has suffered approximately 1.2 million casualties during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. If accurate, this figure would represent the greatest loss incurred by a major power in any war since World War II. The exact number of Russian soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine remains hotly debated, but nobody would seriously question the fact that the invasion has led to catastrophic losses.

As casualties continue to mount, Russia is seeking to recruit men from abroad to replenish the ranks of its depleted army. The BBC Russian service recently estimated that around 20,000 men from foreign countries have signed up to join Russia’s invasion, with many recruited from former Soviet republics as well as low-income nations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

Foreign recruitment is increasingly popular with the Putin regime as it allows Moscow to avoid another round of politically risky mobilization, which could easily destabilize Russian society. By paying foreigners to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin is able to shift the war’s bloodiest burden away from Russian households and minimize any potential backlash on the home front.

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Russia’s military recruitment efforts are global in scope and span many countries. The issue of African recruitment has made headlines in recent weeks following the publication of footage showing the apparent mistreatment of African men in the Russian army. A number of videos surfaced on social media in January that appeared to depict the verbal and physical abuse of Africans by their Russian colleagues, who referred to them as “disposables” and mocked one recruit who was seen with an anti-tank mine strapped to his chest.

Russian military recruiters have targeted Africa with particular intensity. More than 1,400 African nationals have been identified as serving in the Russian army, with one in five reported dead. These confirmed figures may only represent a small portion of the overall total. The Kremlin is accused of sending African men to fight in Ukraine after first attracting them to Russia with false promises of ordinary jobs or non-combat military roles. Many survivors have complained of finding themselves on the front lines of the invasion with little to no military training.

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The growing number of African men serving in the Russian military is sparking international alarm, with a number of African nations voicing their concerns. A Kenyan intelligence report released on February 19 claimed that at least 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight for Russia through clandestine recruitment networks. Officials in Nairobi are now moving to shut down an estimated 600 recruiting agencies, and are pushing Moscow to ban the recruitment of Kenyan soldiers.

South African government officials have entered into talks with their Russian counterparts on the issue and are hoping to repatriate 17 of their nationals. These men were reportedly recruited for combat roles in Russia via a scheme involving the daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma. Nigeria’s foreign ministry has also warned citizens about a rise in illegal recruitment schemes sending fighters to Russia, following reports that two Nigerians were killed in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, women from South Africa and other parts of the continent are reportedly being targeted and tricked into working in Russian drone factories. Most are recruited via social media adverts for jobs in the catering and hospitality industries. The South African authorities have warned citizens about online campaigns promising jobs and study in Russia. As awareness increases across Africa, media coverage is highlighting the dangers facing Africans who seek lucrative employment in Russia.

The Kremlin will likely attempt to enlist more Africans in 2026 as Russia struggles to find sufficient numbers of domestic recruits amid mounting battlefield losses. Around 422,000 Russian nationals signed contracts with the military last year, a 6 percent drop from 2024, according to recent reports. In addition to availability, foreign troops are also cheaper to recruit than Russian citizens, who in many cases now expect unprecedented enlistment bonuses as well as other benefits including salaries far in excess of national averages.

Russia’s growing reliance on African soldiers is a powerful symbol of an invasion that has gone horribly wrong for Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin dictator expected to decapitate and subjugate Ukraine in a matter of days. Instead, as the invasion enters a fifth year, Putin finds himself forced to recruit troops from around the world in order to avoid destabilizing Russia and threatening the survival of his own regime.

Katherine Spencer is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

National preparedness starts at the state level with governors and the National Guard

Jeanne Thorpe and Sarah Wallace — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:52:04 +0000

WASHINGTON—Is the United States prepared for 2026? If the recent past is any indication, the country will likely face hurricanes, fires, and floods that will place significant strain on preparedness systems in the year ahead. The nation’s midterm election and its 250th anniversary celebrations could draw on these preparedness resources, too. And all of this is occurring amid rising civil unrest, persistent cyber threats to critical infrastructure, and an expanding reliance on the National Guard for domestic missions that move troops away from their local communities.

But what distinguishes this moment is not the presence of risk. It’s the convergence of risk with diminished federal surge capacity. The federal disaster workforce shrunk this past year, and several important Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) advisory bodies were dismantled. As a result, US state governments are expected to manage complex, multi-domain crises with fewer federal backstops than in previous decades. In practice, governors are no longer simply implementing federal plans; they are operating as strategic national security actors, often without commensurate recognition or supporting architecture.

It’s clear that US preparedness strategy must evolve to reflect a reality already evident on the ground: Governors, the National Guard, and durable public-private platforms now constitute the functional core of domestic resilience.

The National Guard: A strategic asset hiding in plain sight

Across nearly every major domestic operation—from SEAR-1 events to statewide COVID-19 pandemic responses—the National Guard has been central to mission success. Today, National Guard units routinely support cyber defense, wildfire and severe weather response, public-health surges, mass care and sheltering, infrastructure stabilization, and continuity of government.

The National Guard’s strategic value lies not simply in its scale, but in its dual-mission structure. Guard members operate with military discipline while remaining deeply embedded in civilian institutions, infrastructure systems, and local communities. This hybrid role makes the Guard uniquely suited to contemporary threats that blur traditional boundaries between civil response, cyber defense, public health, and security operations.

Despite this operational centrality, the Guard remains under-integrated into national planning and readiness frameworks. Federal strategies frequently presume that federal agencies will be executing them, even as real-world response increasingly depends on state-led action. The result is a persistent mismatch between responsibility and design: States are expected to deliver outcomes without full integration into strategy, intelligence, or readiness planning. The costs of this misalignment are measurable: wasted public funds, delayed evacuations and restoration efforts, degraded infrastructure resilience, extended economic disruption, and, at times, preventable injury and loss of life.

A model proven in real operations

Across the country, states are quietly building public-private operational platforms that integrate emergency management agencies, Guard units, and private-sector operators into a shared situational picture. In practice, this means co-located coordination centers where state emergency managers, National Guard planners, utility operators, hospital systems, transportation authorities, and major venue security directors operate from the same dashboard during incidents. It means common operating platforms that fuse weather modeling, infrastructure status data, cyber threat indicators, supply-chain analytics, and real-time field reporting into a unified view accessible to decision makers across sectors. It also means pre-negotiated information-sharing agreements, joint exercises, and clearly defined decision authorities that allow leaders to move from awareness to action without bureaucratic delay.

The effectiveness of this approach is not theoretical; these systems have been tested under sustained pressure. During major storms, mass gatherings, and public-health emergencies, integrated platforms have enabled synchronized evacuation planning, coordinated Guard logistics with private fuel and transportation providers, prioritized power restoration to hospitals and water systems, and aligned cyber defense measures with physical infrastructure protection.

As co-chair of the Massachusetts Large Venue Security Task Force from 2019 to 2023, one of the authors—Jeanne Thorpe—worked directly with major venue operators statewide to identify operational gaps, assess cyber vulnerabilities, and strengthen physical security. That effort demonstrated how structured public-private platforms can elevate readiness without expanding formal authorities or adding bureaucratic complexity.

High-profile special events—such as the Boston Marathon, Independence Day celebrations, and other SEAR-1 operations—demonstrate the value of real-time information sharing across public agencies, private partners, and the Guard. The advantage of these platforms is not speed alone, but decision coherence—the ability to align action across institutions operating under intense time pressure.

The complexities of events at large venues, including stadiums and convention centers, further underscore the necessity for this level of coordination. These environments bring together transportation systems, utilities, public safety workers, healthcare workers, and private security, often amid rapidly shifting conditions. Shared situational awareness allows leaders to adapt to crowd dynamics and weather volatility, as well as to manage infrastructure stress without fragmentation or delay.

These same dynamics were evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coordinated engagement among hospitals, supply-chain partners, laboratories, emergency management agencies, and Guard units stabilized testing, vaccination, and logistics operations at scale. Across contexts, the lesson has been consistent: resilience emerges from integration, not hierarchy. Traditional crisis models often rely on a linear chain of command in which information flows upward for validation and decisions flow downward for execution. That structure works in discrete, single-domain emergencies. But contemporary crises rarely unfold that way. Wildfires intersect with grid instability. Cyber intrusions affect hospital systems. Severe storms disrupt supply chains and telecommunications simultaneously. In these compound scenarios, a purely hierarchical model slows decision-making and fragments situational awareness across stovepiped agencies.

An integrated approach does not eliminate authority; it aligns it across sectors in real time. Emergency managers, Guard commanders, infrastructure operators, and private-sector leaders work from a shared operating picture and coordinate actions laterally as well as vertically. Decisions can be made at the level closest to the operational problem, informed by cross-sector visibility rather than routed through sequential layers of approval. The result is not less order, but more adaptive coherence under pressure.

Why the National Guard matters to states

The consequences of misaligned authorities and priorities are not abstract. They are felt most acutely by communities already under strain.

For example, West Virginia’s geography makes it one of the most flood-prone states in the country. Each year, floods, mudslides, and other natural disasters devastate rural communities and destroy homes, which risks overwhelming local response capacity. This past year, significant portions of the West Virginia National Guard were deployed to Washington, DC, sent by the governor to support federal missions at the request of US President Donald Trump. While the deployment itself was lawful and aligned with federal needs, its timing exposed a critical vulnerability in the nation’s preparedness architecture.

For West Virginians navigating disaster recovery, the absence of Guard forces is not a political question. It is an operational one. The Guard is often the only rapidly deployable force capable of reaching remote areas, restoring access, supporting evacuations, and stabilizing essential services. When those units are unavailable, the gap cannot be quickly filled by federal assets or private contractors—particularly in rural states with limited surge capacity.

This episode underscores a structural reality: Governors must retain meaningful access to the National Guard as a critical, time-sensitive resource for their own populations, even as Guard units continue to support federal missions. Domestic preparedness is not just a matter of whether the Guard can deploy, but of where and when it is available. When Guard forces are pulled away from disaster-prone states at moments of acute need, resilience becomes uneven and public trust in government response erodes.

The lesson is not that federal missions are illegitimate. It is that preparedness strategy must account for trade-offs in real time and ensure that governors are equipped with both the authority and situational awareness needed to balance national demands against immediate state-level risk.

Why governors must be central to national security planning

If the United States is serious about domestic resilience, then governors must be integrated into national security planning in a structured and sustained manner. This does not require new constitutional authorities, but it does require alignment between responsibility and design. Four principles should guide this alignment:

First, governors and adjutant generals should be formally integrated into national planning processes. National risk assessments, intelligence priorities, critical-infrastructure protection strategies, cyber defense frameworks, and continuity planning all depend on state execution. Federal national security agencies should formally integrate governors and adjutant generals into the design of these strategies, while governors must assert their role as operational stakeholders. Without structured, two-way integration, national plans will continue to rely on state implementation without incorporating state insight, undermining effectiveness downstream.

Second, states require timely access to intelligence and situational awareness. Guard units and emergency management agencies cannot respond effectively without visibility into cyber threats, infrastructure vulnerabilities, public-health indicators, climate-risk modeling, and supply-chain disruptions. Federal departments and intelligence agencies must establish routine, real-time sharing with governors, adjutant generals, and state emergency management directors, reducing unnecessary classification barriers and expanding state access to relevant briefings and fusion centers. Preparedness improves when those responsible for execution have timely access to the intelligence shaping national risk decisions.

Third, sustained investment in state-level resilience platforms is essential. States must prioritize and institutionalize the systems that allow governors to coordinate public agencies, Guard forces, and private-sector partners. At the same time, Congress and federal homeland security agencies should direct funding and grant structures toward interoperable data platforms, joint exercises, and public-private integration at the state level. These systems form the backbone of modern crisis response.

Fourth, national readiness frameworks must reflect state capability. Measuring preparedness solely through federal assets obscures where response capacity actually resides. A framework that treats the Guard as peripheral rather than connective tissue is strategically incomplete.

Building a stronger security architecture

The United States can no longer afford a domestic security strategy that treats states as downstream implementers rather than upstream partners. In emergencies, governors are often the first to act and directly accountable for the systems that keep communities functioning.

Elevating governors—and the National Guard forces they command—does not weaken national security. It strengthens it by distributing resilience, accelerating response times, and grounding strategy in operational reality. In an era defined by compound risk and constrained federal capacity, a whole-of-state architecture is not an alternative to national security; it is its foundation.

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Negotiating with Putin’s Russia

Donald N. Jensen, Iuliia Osmolovska — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged much of the common Western understanding of Russia. How can the world better understand Russia? What are the steps forward for Western policy? The Eurasia Center’s “Russia Tomorrow” series seeks to reevaluate conceptions of Russia today and better prepare for its future tomorrow.

Toplines

Russia has a markedly different approach to diplomatic negotiations than the United States. For Russian leaders, negotiations are a form of warfare by nonmilitary means, a competition that they seek to win with few or no compromises.
The Kremlin’s views of negotiations are also powerfully shaped today by the elites’ attitudes toward a rules-based international system, which they view as inimical to Russian interests and in need of a radical overhaul. They see the United States as being in a prolonged period of decline, a view they believe provides opportunities for Russia to exploit.
The United States can significantly empower itself in negotiations by better understanding the sources and range of Moscow’s behaviors at the table and adapting effective counter-measures. It can temper the impact of the Kremlin’s tactics and advance progress toward lasting agreements by selecting and shaping the negotiating environment. Success should not be defined by seeking good relations or a good deal as ends in themselves, but by negotiating in a way that advances US foreign policy goals.

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Introduction
Clash of strategic cultures
Russian behavior at the negotiating table: Theory and practice
The current state of play in Ukraine
Lessons learned and reconsidered

A diplomat’s words must contradict his deeds—otherwise what sort of a diplomat is he? Words are one thing, deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

—Josef Stalin, “Elections in Petersburg”

The Alaska summit, held in Anchorage on August 15, 2025, brought together Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin for a widely publicized but inconclusive meeting. This was Putin’s first visit to the United States since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian delegation, under Putin’s leadership, used the meeting to define a new relationship between the United States and Russia and showcase Russia’s place in the world.

Putin had specific objectives in Alaska.

He aimed to position Russia as a global power on par with the United States, excluding Ukraine and other European allies.
He intended to use the summit to strengthen Russia’s control over parts of Ukraine, preventing it from hosting Western troops and keeping it locked outside of NATO.
He hoped to leverage the summit to persuade the United States to postpone or defer the implementation of additional sanctions.
He intended to leverage the summit to underscore Russia’s historical and cultural connections to the United States and Ukraine, portraying the conflict as “a family tragedy” rather than an invasion, and to compel Kyiv to capitulate by exhausting its forces.
He sought to effectively engage Trump on a personal level, presenting the talks as a starting point, giving the impression of progress while avoiding any concrete agreements that would require Russian concessions. This narrative could potentially help him exploit potential divisions between the United States and European leaders, who are more aligned with Ukraine’s position.

Russia’s negotiating tactics in pursuit of the objectives were a master class of strategic positioning.

Putin engaged in flattery and appealed to Trump’s stated desire to make deals. By presenting economic and strategic opportunities, such as joint Arctic development, Putin created a dynamic in which Trump focused on a potential deal rather than a clear resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. Putin’s personal approach appealed to his counterpart’s focus on overarching gains, encouraging him to overlook the importance of intermediate details. This psychological tactic appeared intended to give Russia a negotiating advantage.
Putin forwarded maximalist demands—such as Ukraine’s neutrality, recognition of seized territory, and handing over Ukrainian land under Russia’s control—framing them as a basis for peace. He probably expected some of his proposals, like resuming direct flights and major economic deals, to be rejected by the United States. But these proposals helped present a narrative in Russian media that Moscow was seeking normalization of relations.

This approach also had some setbacks. Putin’s extended “history rant” at the summit—offered as a justification for the war and as a dismissal of cease-fire proposals—nearly brought him to failure in talks. According to the Financial Times, Putin launched into a long discourse on Russia’s medieval past, invoking figures such as Rurik of Novgorod, Yaroslav the Wise, and Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky—names he frequently uses to argue that Russia and Ukraine constitute a single historical nation and that Ukraine should not exist as a sovereign state. Sources familiar with the exchange told the newspaper that Trump, surprised by the lecture, raised his voice several times and at one point even threatened to leave the meeting. It is also not clear why the long agenda for the day was cut short and the Russian delegation left before the planned lunch.

Overall, Putin’s approach to the meeting once again demonstrated a broader tactic of undermining the US-led global order, asserting Russia’s historically driven special place in the international system, and challenging institutions like NATO. By bringing issues affecting European security to negotiate bilaterally with the United States, he implicitly wanted to restore the “big powers’ deals” approach and de-emphasize the role of other important stakeholders, including Europe and multilateral bodies such as NATO.

While Trump publicly described the summit as productive, it resulted in little tangible progress. Despite Trump’s stated goal of securing a cease-fire in Ukraine, one was not reached. Putin refused to back down from Russia’s core demands. As a former KGB officer, Putin views diplomacy as a battle of narratives: Russian state media portrayed the summit as a win for Moscow, showing Putin meeting the US leader as an equal. They hailed the summit as a demonstration that Russia was not isolated. Indeed, simply having a summit with the US president made it a success. It boosted Putin’s international image and pretended to demonstrate Russia’s continued relevance as a global power.

Russia’s negotiating behavior in Alaska was true to Moscow’s long-standing playbook. It demonstrated Moscow’s view that diplomacy is a means to gain an advantage in war (broadly construed), rather than to achieve peace, maintain stability, or compromise with other interested parties.” Indeed, Putin’s activity at the summit aligns with the Kremlin’s broader history of using such meetings not as forums for compromise but as tactical opportunities to advance long-term strategic goals.

This report will examine that negotiating playbook, and not just as it applies to Ukraine. First, it will analyze Russian strategic culture, which provides the broad context for Russian diplomatic activity. Second, it will examine how that culture is reflected at the negotiating table with its adversaries, particularly the United States. Finally, the report will suggest effective countermeasures for the United States to significantly empower itself in negotiations with Russia. It will conclude that success should not be defined by seeking good relations or a good deal as ends in themselves, but by negotiating in a way that advances US foreign policy objectives. Above all, the United States must project firmness and strength in any dealings with the Kremlin.

Clash of strategic culture

The Russian state treats negotiations as political instruments for advancing the country’s strategic objectives. Today, these objectives include increasing Russian power over the countries of the former Soviet empire, dislodging US and Western influence in other strategic regions, enhancing Russia’s influence at a global level, and preserving the Russian regime.

In pursuing these objectives, Russia views diplomacy very differently than the West. Since at least the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, Western diplomacy—though likely not an approach favored by Trump—has been grounded in three basic concepts: that all states are sovereign and thus nominally equal; that the purpose of negotiations is to reduce the likelihood of conflict by reconciling conflicting interests; and that diplomacy and espionage are separate domains so deception is not part of the negotiator’s tool kit.

Russia shares none of these premises. In the Russian diplomatic tradition, sovereignty is a relative and contingent factor dependent upon size and power (i.e., it is only applicable to the very largest states), as well as geographic and historical factors. It does not apply to former colonial possessions close to the traditional Russian imperial heartland. This long-standing outlook derives from the Russian state’s historical experience of seeking domination over weaker neighbors. Recent articulations of this outlook include Putin’s seven-thousand-word editorial essay on Ukraine in July 2021, his address to the Russian people in June 2022, and his interview with US commentator Tucker Carlson in February 2024. Russian international relations theory and commentary talk about great powers such as Russia as the only truly sovereign states.

Russia’s view of negotiations also stems from its distinctive view of war and peace. The West sees war and peace in black and white—as diametrically opposed ideas. In Russia, war and peace exist on the same continuum. Negotiations are a means to provide the Kremlin with an edge in a competitive process that can, theoretically, lead to conflict.

Russian diplomacy today continues these premises from the imperial era. Russian elites have a long-standing consensus about the state’s legitimate and necessary foreign policy goals—a strategic culture that “is a product of a country’s geography, history, and the shared narratives that shape the prevailing worldview of its national security establishment, which in turn guides its responses to challenges and threats.” Moscow’s diplomatic behavior and policy are thus influenced by a set of shared, deeply ingrained “norms, values, beliefs, assumptions, and narratives” about Russian national security in the broadest sense, both internally and externally.

Narratives under the imperial, Soviet, or current regime have focused on encirclement by external enemies, as well as Russia’s exceptionalism and special mission in the world. The operational codes of different Russian decision-makers over the decades—their personal beliefs and appetite for risk or enrichment—as well as the external environment and chance have also determined how different regimes approached specific policy goals within this general strategic framework. Boris Yeltsin and Putin, for example, both sought to make Russia a great power and to dominate Ukraine, but differed markedly in how to do so.

The impact of strategic culture has ebbed and flowed. After Mikhail Gorbachev, its influence waned, and Soviet foreign policy and negotiating behavior momentarily resembled the win-win approach long practiced by the West. This led to Russia and the United States achieving important arms control agreements and cooperation in other areas. Between 1992–1996 under Yeltsin, a majority of the public and elites accepted ideas that were firmly at odds with traditional Russian strategic culture: that Russia must become a “normal” law-abiding democracy with a market economy; integrate with the West; and maintain a robust Russian military—not for external threats but to prevent internal collapse.

In the final years of Yeltsin’s presidency (i.e., 1996–1999), more Russian elites and the public started to re-embrace traditional strategic culture. Perceptions of threats from the West and resentment about Russia’s lost status grew, partly because of NATO enlargement and intervention in Serbia. Russians blamed Western leaders, advisers, and greedy businesses for the “bandit privatization and capitalism” in the 1990s that left the majority of Russians impoverished and engendered a despised class of wealthy, politically influential oligarchs. The Kremlin’s view of negotiations has always reflected the overall state of its relations with the West—so new agreements became harder to achieve while those already in place began to unravel.

After Putin became president in 2000, some cooperation with the West continued. However, Russian foreign policy continued reverting to its more traditional anti-Western orientation, blurring imperial tsarist and Soviet ideas about Russia’s exceptionalism and invented threats to the state, alongside rising post-Cold War grievances and the increasing militarization of society. The revival of the special services drove this approach. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Federal Security Service (FSB), and Federal Protective Service (FSO)—which reported to Putin directly —and the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (the military intelligence organization still widely known by its outdated acronym GRU) increasingly merged power, nationalism, imperialism, secrecy, and business, and did so with the president’s encouragement. These siloviki (men of force) descended from the old Soviet KGB; after all, Putin and his cronies were their products.

With the idealistic goal of building a democracy discredited in the eyes of many Russians, the intelligence services filled an ideological and institutional void by capturing the mantle of legitimacy once held by the discredited Soviet Communist Party. By the mid-2000s, these services were no longer the “sword and shield of the revolution,” in Lubyanka’s famous motto, but the regime’s institutional core—even as competition over power and money persisted. Unlike in the Soviet era, they were unencumbered by bureaucratic oversight because they ultimately reported directly to Putin. His return to the presidency in 2012 strengthened siloviki control over politics, money, the security services, and access to the Kremlin. As domestic repression increased and relations with the West worsened, Russia evolved further into an intelligence state, with Putin acting as the dominant Chekist at its center. He led a small circle of security service veterans who saw themselves as defending Russian civilization, a worldview symbolized by reports that he once kept a statue of secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky on his desk.

For Putin and his cronies, the Cold War never ended. Many public statements, such as those by Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and SVR chief Sergey Naryshkin, suggest that top leaders agree that the United States and Europe are Russia’s main enemies; the war in Ukraine is part of a broader global struggle against the West; the global system is irreversibly changing to the disadvantage of the United States; the United Nations, where Russia has veto power, should play a decisive role in helping great powers manage interstate relations; and Russia is a Eurasian civilization distinctly different from and threatened by the West.

These sentiments have been fertilized with the living Russian concept of psychohistorical warfare, which claims the West has been attempting to destroy Russia’s statehood, national and historical identity, and culture. Notoriously, modern Russian philosophers argue that this psychohistorical warfare of the West against Russia dates back to the sixteenth century and, since the 1820s, has been deliberately focused on ethnohistorical, national, cultural, and state and political components.

These attitudes reflect Russia’s traditional strategic culture. So when the Kremlin now engages in negotiations, it is less to compromise and mitigate conflict and more to invert Carl von Clausewitz’s axiom, to wage war by other means. Moscow engages in negotiations to lock in favorable battlefield outcomes or “stabilize gains;” leverage issues on which Russia has a vital national security interest to pursue wider objectives; offload burdens following a strategic reverse; sideline the United States and interpose Russia as a “peacemaker;” distract opponents while advancing militarily; constrain adversaries while keeping their options open; and advance Russia’s status in multilateral organizations as a great power.

This approach has also backfired. Russia’s cynicism and sharp elbows have undermined international goodwill, and its repeated violation of international agreements has caused concern about the Kremlin’s good faith and durability in negotiations. The blind spots in the Kremlin’s worldview have also caused Russian leaders to overestimate the effects of money, bluster, and overreach—and to pass up chances for better results through good-faith talks.

Still, the Kremlin’s anti-Western worldview does not drive every Russian position—and these views do not prevail among all elites or the entire government apparatus. The Kremlin can be highly pragmatic, transactional, and situational. Assessing which form of Russian behavior appears at the negotiating table and why is critical to shaping future bargaining outcomes in the West’s favor.

Russian behavior at the negotiating table: Theory and practice

How Russia acts at the negotiating table is a product of strategic culture, as well as a policy process involving the presidential administration, the foreign ministry, other government entities, the military, and think tank experts, among other participants. Putin makes the most critical decisions, especially on national security issues and relations with the United States, often relying on an ad hoc network of advisers rather than formal structures.

Russian delegations are well-prepared, but delegation members have been called “rats in a box” by opposing diplomats, as they often have little discretion to interpret instructions from Moscow. One of the most public of them, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov (a major public player on US-Russian affairs), needed to answer “unofficially but completely” to the FSB and SVR, according to US Ambassador John J. Sullivan, who met him often. These two agencies are known for having a major say in negotiations; however, intelligence officers are often given a junior rank as a cover to watch developments and their own delegations. For example, in 2022 those agencies were responsible for undermining an agreement on diplomatic visa reciprocity.

Because the Kremlin believes it is engaged in multidimensional warfare with the West, its conduct admits a broader array of tactics far beyond compromise and win-win outcomes. These tactics are a combination of tsarist, Soviet, and more recent diplomacy and intelligence practices that keep the West off balance: “In preserving the power of the state in the person of Putin, Russian leadership . . . shamelessly advances any position or argument, no matter how counterfactual or ahistorical, that is useful to support Putin (the state) at any given moment.”

At the negotiating table: The Kremlin school

The rules governing how Russian diplomats behave at the table are codified and taught to generations of diplomats. Some of these lessons are contained as sequential steps in Igor Ryzov’s 2016 book, The Kremlin School of Negotiation.

Step 1: Stay quiet and listen attentively to what your opponent says. If one person is silent during a conversation, the other tends to fill the silence and say more than intended. It also allows the Russian interlocutor to focus on finding flaws in the opponent’s logic.
Step 2: Ask questions. Russian negotiators ask questions quickly, in an interrogatory manner, to establish control. Questions point out contradictions to make an opponent look silly and lose control of the agenda.
Step 3: Diminish your opponent. Being passive-aggressive, hostile, direct, and almost rude—or alternatively polite and soft-spoken—can undermine an opponent using fundamental human emotional triggers from positive to harmful extremes.
Step 4: Make magnanimous gestures. The Russian negotiator can then create a sense of relief by giving the opponent an honorable path to escape the unpleasantness by showing his magnanimity and considering a second chance for an opponent to prove he is worth dealing with.
Step 5: Put the opponent in the realm of uncertainty. While the preceding four steps are apparently enough to ensure psychological superiority in more than 90 percent of negotiations, finishing a conversation with constructive or destructive ambiguity is an efficient tool to hook an opponent in conflicting thoughts. Issuing a veiled threat of unspecified dire consequences, or hinting at a potentially good outcome conditioned on certain actions required to prove the opponent’s reliability, is a common practice within this model and is aimed at keeping control and leadership.

Similar themes, reinforcing the major postulates of the Kremlin School, are included in the curriculum at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy and at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where young diplomats are trained how to walk into a room, smile, pursue a conversation, frame an argument, and use the media.

Russian negotiation behavior includes additional tactics observed at the negotiating table.

Use legalism and vague legal language. In negotiations, Russian diplomats often have a firmer grasp of the particulars of international agreements than their counterparts. They use the pretense of legalism to burnish claims of legitimacy and play to the “gallery” of international audiences. Equally, while drafting agreements, they tend to leave provisions vague and open to as many interpretations as possible, especially clauses on breach definitions and penalties, in order to tinker with them later and serve Russian interests in the enforcement phase. For example, they did this with an agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the exploitation of the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait, signed in December 2003, and in the Minsk Accords II.
Foster time and energy exhaustion. Russian diplomats aim to leave opponents so exhausted, disoriented, and unable to concentrate that they agree to suboptimal outcomes. The Soviets would overwhelm the other side by not taking restroom breaks or by timing other delegates’ speeches to apply pressure. Other examples include the Normandy format meeting on concluding the ill-fated Minsk-II agreements (which lasted more than sixteen hours), the US-Russia talks on energy, and Black Sea cease-fire in Saudi Arabia on March 25, 2025 (which lasted around twelve hours). Russian negotiators often field two teams of officials while counting on the other side to continue with already exhausted negotiators. Alternatively, they limit even complicated talks to a formal timeline when they are not interested. This occurred with two rounds of the Ukraine-Russia talks on a complex peace settlement on May 16, 2025 (which lasted less than two hours) and on June 2, 2025 (lasting forty-five minutes). Also notorious is a Russian custom to keep interlocutors waiting for hours before talks begin. This is particularly true for Russian leadership, but also for mid-ranking delegations.
Create urgent needs or too much motivation for the other side. The side with the more urgent need to resolve an issue is a priori in a weaker position, and the Russians are determined to create such a situation for the opponent before talks begin. For example, they used the encirclement and ambush of the Ukrainian column exiting Ilovaisk in August 2014 to extort concessions from Ukraine during the Minsk I negotiations. They also capitalized on the dire situation of Ukrainian forces at Debaltseve to secure more concessions at Minsk II, but repeatedly violated the cease-fire to secure advantages prior to formal negotiations. In the current war in Ukraine, Russian shelling and drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians are a regular occurrence before the Ukrainian political leadership makes an important decision about the war.
Seek flexibility and one-way commitments. Russian negotiators relentlessly search for flexibility for themselves, even past the point of nominal agreement. They have a one-sided interpretation of rebus sic stantibus: in their eyes, once an agreement is made the conditions evaporate for Moscow but hold for the other side indefinitely. The Russians calculate that the West is more likely to abide by agreements and less able to cut loose of treaty obligations, even after Russian noncompliance. This likely motivated Russia to insist on NATO honoring the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and similar behavior with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
Bluff and deceive. Russian negotiators attempt to create the impression that they are the most important, powerful side at the table—even if that is not the objective reality—and use disinformation to supplement this tactic. This approach is deeply embedded in their culture, as reflected in the famous Russian folk saying, “It does not matter who you are, but how you are perceived by others.” Lies and deception are justifiable tools to pursue the course of action. A recent example of this tactic is a fast-cooked fake about attacks by Ukrainian drones on the Valdai residence of the Russian president, which was denied by US intelligence after fact-checking. Nevertheless, the Russians used this as a pretext to change their commitments to a peace settlement and a justification of another deadly missile attack on civilians in Ukraine. The firewall that has existed between diplomats and spies for three hundred years in Western practice is absent in Russia. Spies operate under diplomatic cover, and Russian diplomats are encouraged to utilize the spy’s methods (maskirovka) to conceal, entrap, mislead, or swindle.
Engage in brinkmanship. Bravado is very popular in Russian culture. It is similar to the US macho “chicken” game but grounded in fatalism, blind luck, and the expectation that the other side will blink first. Moscow uses brinkmanship to force an interaction to the threshold of confrontation. For example, the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even though there is little evidence that it will do so. The same approach has been applied with penetrating drones in Poland, intruding into the airspace of other countries in Northern Europe, and missile targets in Ukraine close to its western borders with NATO countries.
Denigrate an opponent. Rudeness is common to both distract an opponent from the substance of the talks and put them in a highly emotional state, unable to control themself and think clearly. For example, during the MH-17 case hearings in The Hague Court of Justice, a female member of the Ukrainian delegation raised concerns about Russia’s behavior. The head of the Russian delegation replied, “Oh, we see that you have some clear concerns” (using a Russian word with a dual meaning suggesting the woman had some sexual obsession).
Lay a principal-agent trap. Russian negotiators stall discussions by claiming they need extra time for consent from Moscow (which can be linked to the time and energy exhaustion tactic). After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia put forward a delegation with little authority. When presented with draft proposals for a future framework peace agreement in late March 2022, the Russian delegation took many weeks to respond.
Play the “too busy to be reached” game. Resort to an absent mode in negotiations by claiming to be preoccupied with other things, thus effectively blocking any efforts to move forward. Here Russian negotiators exploit their favorable tactics of “no body, no crime” (in practical terms, with “no person at the table, no progress in negotiations.”) Not responding to phone calls, making references to “no-sense” or “premature,” and avoiding contact seemed to be signatures of the Russian approach to Ukrainian political leadership between 2016 and 2019, when the latter tried to achieve a breakthrough in stalled Normandy and Minsk talks. Moscow also abstained from meetings in the defunct Normandy format before February 2022.
Move talks toward Russian views through deep anchoring. Russian negotiators advance highly unrealistic proposals at the beginning of talks and then press the other party to respond. This anchors the opponent around Russian views, moving discussions and a potential zone of agreement closer to the Russian position. In December 2021, Russia called for a new security order in Europe by submitting two unrealistic drafts to the United States and NATO, forcing them to consider and reflect on the Russian papers instead of quickly offering their own to balance discussions. Similarly, the Russians submitted a peace memorandum to the Ukrainian delegation on July 2, 2025, which was full of ultimatum demands, including the renunciation of territories including some not occupied by the Russian army. In contrast to good-faith diplomatic practice, in which a draft is submitted in advance with sufficient time for the other side to review it and form a preliminary reflection, the memorandum was handed over shortly before the talks, and the Russian delegation demanded the Ukrainian side respond immediately during negotiations.
Alter commitments. Russian diplomacy likes to deliver a low blow, a sudden change of terms when the other party expects a solution. An opponent might pay less attention to the details of an altered deal because it anticipates the completion of talks. In the 1990s, during negotiations over prolonging the stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, the Russian side initialed the agreement but then swapped one page of the original document with another to alter the terms in its favor. The Ukrainian delegation noticed the switch, and the ruse failed. The Russians might also deliver a low blow trick with the principal-agent trap by justifying the sudden withdrawal of previous commitments through appeals to the authority of an unnamed superior official. Alternatively, they might create an artificial pretext to change their commitments, as they did with the fake story of Ukrainian drone attacks on Putin’s Valdai residence as a cause for changing their negotiating position. The actual reason for that was the progress achieved following negotiations between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States at Mar-a-Lago, which the Russian political leadership tried to undermine.
Package a deal or trade-offs. Russia withholds agreement on one issue as a hostage to settling others. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet leadership refused to negotiate agreements on missile reductions without limiting the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Only after bilateral tensions were reduced and Congress cut SDI’s budget did the Kremlin delink SDI from the INF Treaty. In 2023, Ryabkov objected to the United States “compartmentalizing” strategic stability from broader talks on Russia’s relations with the West. In the negotiations over the Black Sea Grain Initiative in 2022, Russia demanded that its agricultural exports, allegedly blocked due to Western sanctions, be eased before signing a new initiative while also increased other demands. In a similar way, in Anchorage, the Russians wanted to tie Trump’s interests to a bigger set of issues by promoting a US-Russian bilateral agenda mixed with issues of strategic stability in Europe and the war in Ukraine in one basket. By doing so, they sought to downplay the war in Ukraine as a minor issue subordinate to the broader picture of future mutual benefits.

The current state of play in Ukraine

With Trump’s reelection in 2024, the Russians were reportedly optimistic about their ability to handle the US political leadership. They then set out to play the United States with the Russian spiderweb of lies, deceits, and other psychological tricks to conceal the genuine goal of subordinating the entirety of Ukraine militarily and politically. Such a calculus was likely based on the assumption that Trump would have a profit-oriented, big-power mindset, coupled with the idea that he could be easily enchanted with flattery and captivated by prospects of prosperity once the issue of Ukraine was solved. Moscow was likely convinced that showing a friendly face and repeating the mantra of acting in good will to stop the war in Ukraine would serve its purpose and be enough to make Trump believe the Russian narrative. They partially succeeded. After a year in power, the US president might still believe that Russia is interested in peace. Fact-checking, however, provides compelling data about Russia’s actual position. All major peace proposals that the United States made in 2025 were rejected by Russia, whereas Ukraine backed every single one, signaling Kyiv’s willingness to engage in both cease-fires and long-term agreements.

In contrast to Ukraine, Russia has so far shown no willingness to compromise or step back from its initial demands. Its public readiness to consider any newly revised draft of a peace deal is offset by the Kremlin’s hardline position since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. However, the justification for taking this position has changed constantly, with the fake Valdai attack the most recent example. What hasn’t changed is the Kremlin has stuck to its usual negotiating tactics to ensure that the results of any talks to end the war tilt in its favor, while showing constructive and destructive ambiguity in talks with the United States, Ukraine, and Europe.

Many tricks from Russia’s negotiation toolbox can also be found in its current state of play.

Bluffing. Despite Russia’s manpower shortages, the exorbitant cost of the war, and serious morale problems in the armed forces, Kremlin information operations have stressed the inevitability of its military victory on the battlefield to convince the United States to pressure Ukraine to hand over the parts of the Donbas region that Russia has little chance of capturing on its own anytime soon.
Deception. Kremlin officials have claimed that Russia and the United States reached an understanding based on Putin’s June 2024 demands during the August 2025 summit in Alaska, but no evidence of any agreement has emerged since the summit.
Time and energy exhaustion. Ryabkov has stated that the Kremlin will not sign any peace agreements to end the war in Ukraine “right now,” even though US officials have repeatedly stated that an agreement is near and that Putin is interested in a settlement.
Deal packaging or trade-offs. Russia has held out the prospect of future economic cooperation and progress on arms control if the United States meets its demands regarding Ukraine.
Brinkmanship. Despite their own dangerous nuclear war rhetoric, Putin and Russian officials have repeatedly issued warnings that a direct conflict between Russia and NATO could lead to World War III or a global catastrophe, especially if the West continues to escalate support for Ukraine.
Hidden and explicit threats. During the last direct Ukraine-Russia talks on May 16, 2025, in Turkey, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, pushed Ukrainians to agree on the suggested terms of Russia claiming just four regions of Ukraine by saying that next time Russia would raise its demands and claim six. He also warned the Ukrainian delegation that “Russia was ready for an endless war against Ukraine” and that “some delegation members [of Ukraine] may lose more relatives” by the next time they meet.

Lessons learned and reconsidered

Above all, the West should understand that history, culture, and worldview make Moscow’s diplomatic theory and practice markedly different—including even the meanings of “war” and “peace.” The Kremlin is fully aware of these disparities and employs both traditionally Western and Russian strategies. The West is still largely illiterate regarding Russian tactics and does not play as equals—yet. But it is not too late to learn, and it is high time that countries engaging with Russia do so before becoming trapped in another prolonged diplomatic deadlock.

The recent US military operation in Venezuela opens an opportunity to force Russia to reconsider its strategic calculus of military adventurism in Ukraine. In military terms, this US projection of power in the Western Hemisphere could send a signal to the Russians that the United States can act in a decisive and harsh manner to ensure a desired outcome. Trump is determined to put an end to the war in Ukraine, but for this he would need the willingness of both parties in the conflict to engage and act in goodwill. Ultimately, the process is about personal political credentials and Trump’s promise to deliver a peace deal. Further testing of the US president could cost Russia not just its military and economic positioning, but the fate of the political regime.

At the same time, the shift in US focus to the Western Hemisphere might embolden Russia to tighten its grip on Ukraine. Russia might interpret this as a green light to act without accountability for promises made to the US side, as the latter might be preoccupied with security challenges other than what is happening in Ukraine. Recent brutal combined drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, the launch of a hypersonic Oreshnik missile on Lviv, and the rejection of any proposal for the presence of international reassurance force troops in Ukraine are all signs that Moscow is inclined to interpret the US stance on Ukraine as encouragement for further Russian aggression. This calculus could lead to a vicious circle of unfulfilled commitments and the inevitable failure of the peace talks, severely undermining Trump’s political prestige.

The tightening of sanctions under the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, which is still awaiting final passage, and resolute US actions against the Russian shadow fleet, providing Ukraine with means to advance militarily, might become the best US incentives to discourage Russia from playing dangerous games and to act responsibly.

Putin will only engage constructively in Ukraine when his strategic calculus indicates that it is in his best interest to do so. That calculus would be most effectively altered by a shift in US policy toward Kyiv’s empowerment. Ukraine should have the capability to disrupt Russian forces across air, land, and maritime domains at operational depths of roughly 30 kilometers (km) to 300 km behind the front. Such neutralization would make continued Russian offensive action increasingly ineffective. At the same time, this approach would free the United States to shift more of its military attention and resources toward defending the first island chain in the Indo-Pacific region: Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and the northern Philippines.

Russia would experience a decline in power if Europe’s partnership with Ukraine intensifies. Secondary sanctions on states that purchase Russian oil, which funds the conflict, would exacerbate the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic pressure that erodes the intangible aspects of Russia’s great-power status. Additionally, societal disturbances inside Russia might result from the freezing or unreliability of banking transactions and the economic effects at home of secondary sanctions on the Russian energy sector. Three of Russia’s thirteen systemically important banks are presently pursuing bailout negotiations with the Central Bank of Russia, according to one report. Putin would also consider the potential social instability that could result. He might then see the conflict as effectively over and irrelevant, especially as Russia would be experiencing losses across the board and could conclude that negotiations are the least detrimental alternative. Or Putin could nonetheless continue to favor the certainty of a bad conflict over the unpredictability and perils of a good peace.

Being nice to Putin will likely yield few results and send the message that the United States is weak. Instead, the United States will need to apply a proactive approach to selecting and shaping the environment for negotiations with a clear tool kit and determination regarding the when, how, who, and what. The United States should also take advantage of the shortcomings and vulnerabilities in the Russian approach. Moscow’s sense of supremacy over rivals sometimes contributes to overestimating its strengths, leading to misreading and strategic mistakes. The Kremlin also values top-down coercion and does not fully understand civil society’s central role in shaping a country’s ability to sustain an agreement. Clear-eyed awareness of these weaknesses will help the United States make the most of its opportunities.

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About the authors

Donald N. Jensen is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, and the Gino Germani Institute in Rome. A former US diplomat in Moscow, Jensen provided technical support for the START, INF, and SDI negotiations and was a member of the first ten-person US inspection team to inspect Soviet missiles under the INF Treaty in 1988. From 1996–2008, he was associate director of broadcasting and head of the research division at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where he helped lead that organization’s expansion into new broadcast regions after the end of the Cold War and the adaptation of multimedia technology to deal with the broadcasting challenges of the twenty-first century. In 2016, he was a visiting scholar at the NATO Defense College in Rome.

From 2020–2025, he was senior fellow and director of Russia and Europe at the United States Institute of Peace.
Jensen writes extensively on the domestic, foreign, and security policies of Russia, Ukraine, and the other post-Soviet states, with a special emphasis on Russian negotiating behavior and national security policy. He also regularly appears as a commentator on domestic and international media. He has lectured at a variety of universities in the United States and abroad.

An award-winning baseball historian specializing in the Deadball Era and the nineteenth-century game, Jensen has written or co-authored numerous books and articles on the sport. He is a regular lecturer at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

He is fluent in Russian and Italian and received his PhD and MA from Harvard and a BA from Columbia.

Iuliia Osmolovska is a director of the Kyiv office of GLOBSEC and a member of the Civil Council of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. She was a career diplomat with fifteen years of diplomatic service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, with particular focus on EU integration and European security. Her past work for the governmental sector of Ukraine includes working for the Office of the President of Ukraine, as well as with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, channeling the communication between the government, the expert community, and civil society with regard to reforms in Ukraine.

Osmolovska has also done professional consulting and training in negotiations, for both political and commercial clients. Her experience also includes an advisory role with the Ukrainian state company Ukrspecexport, where she advised the top management on cooperation with NATO member states.

Her areas of expertise include geopolitics, geoeconomics, international relations, negotiations and diplomacy, Ukrainian foreign policy, foreign economic policy, EU integration, European security and defense policy, and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement

Osmolovska is a recognized media expert on international relations, diplomacy, and Russian-Ukrainian conflict. She appears regularly on TV and radio channels in Ukraine and internationally.

She holds a master’s of philosophy in European Studies from the University of Cambridge, a master’s in foreign policy from the Diplomatic Academy in Ukraine, and a master’s of international management from Kyiv State Economic University. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Osmolovska studied psychology and mediation of negotiations at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

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Vladimir Putin is trapped in a war he cannot win but dare not end

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:50:16 +0000

More than a year since he returned to the White House vowing to end the Russia-Ukraine War within 24 hours, US President Donald Trump remains upbeat about the prospects for peace. “Very, very good talks today,” Trump stated on February 6 following the latest round of negotiations in Abu Dhabi. “Something could be happening.”

Few in Kyiv share this optimism. While Ukrainian officials are loathe to dismiss Trump’s peace efforts for fear incurring his displeasure, a majority of Ukrainians remain utterly unconvinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has any interest whatsoever in ending hostilities. A poll conducted by Kyiv’s International Institute of Sociology in late January found that only 20 percent of Ukrainians think the war will end by July, while 43 percent expect fighting to continue into 2027 or beyond.

Such skepticism is easy to understand. Ukraine agreed to an unconditional ceasefire way back in March 2025, but Putin has so far refused to follow suit. Instead, he has spent much of the past year engaging in blatant stalling tactics while constantly moving the diplomatic goalposts in a transparent bid to prevent any progress toward a lasting settlement. This has resulted in what most Ukrainians and many others regard as a phony peace process.

As fruitless US-led negotiations rumble on, Putin has underlined his true intentions by dramatically increasing Russian attacks on the Ukrainian population, leading to a 31 percent surge in civilian casualties during 2025. The most recent escalation saw Russia attempt to freeze millions of Ukrainians in their own homes by systematically bombing critical heating and power infrastructure amid Arctic conditions. Some believe this ruthless winter bombing campaign qualifies as an act of genocide; it is most certainly not the act of a man seeking a compromise peace.

Trump has difficulty reading Putin’s true intentions because he fundamentally misunderstands the motivations behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To Trump, the current negotiations are a geopolitical real estate deal, with the Russians playing hardball to secure better terms. In reality, Putin is operating on a completely different wavelength altogether.

The Kremlin dictator is not looking to make deals, acquire additional land, or push the Russian border a few hundred kilometers to the west. Instead, he wants to secure his place in history. Putin genuinely believes he is on an historic mission to reverse the injustice of the Soviet collapse and revive the Russian Empire. In order to achieve this, he has convinced himself that he must erase Ukraine as a state and as a nation.

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For more than two decades, Putin’s Ukraine obsession has shaped his reign and defined Russian foreign policy. His relationship with the West first became openly hostile in the aftermath of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which Putin bitterly denounced as a Western plot to destabilize Russia.

Since that watershed moment, Ukraine has been at the heart of virtually every single new crisis in relations between Moscow and the democratic world, from the 2014 seizure of Crimea to the full-scale invasion of 2022. Throughout this period, Putin has repeatedly demonstrated his readiness to sacrifice Russia’s other national interests in pursuit of his anti-Ukrainian crusade.

Meanwhile, he has used the full weight of the formidable Kremlin propaganda machine to poison Russian society against all things Ukrainian and prepare the ground for a war of national extermination. Putin has become notorious for insisting that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), and has repeatedly dismissed independent Ukraine as an illegitimate state and an artificial “anti-Russia.”

Anyone in Ukraine who dares to disagree with Putin’s claims has been dehumanized and branded a Nazi or a stooge of the West. This hate campaign has proved remarkably successful and has contributed to the almost complete absence of visible anti-war sentiment in today’s Russia, despite widespread public knowledge of the atrocities taking place in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s importance to Putin is twofold. As the largest non-Russian former Soviet republic by population and the closest to Russia in terms of shared heritage, Putin sees Ukraine as the key to undoing the verdict of 1991. If he can end what he regards as the aberration of Ukrainian statehood, this will redeem Russia and reestablish the country’s credentials as a great power.

Likewise, Ukraine’s perceived closeness means that the further consolidation of an independent and democratic Ukrainian state represents an existential threat to authoritarian Russia. As a KGB officer in East Germany during the late 1980s, Putin witnessed firsthand how grassroots movements can topple empires. If Ukraine’s transition from Kremlin vassal to European democracy continues, he fears this could serve as a catalyst for the next stage in a Russian imperial retreat that began in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This helps to explain why Putin has shown so little interest in the seemingly generous peace terms proposed by Trump. The US leader has indicated that Russia would be allowed to keep the territories it has captured in Ukraine while facing no meaningful consequences for launching the largest European invasion since World War II. At first glance, these terms might appear to represent a major Russian victory, but Putin himself obviously does not think so.

Putin’s reluctance to accept Trump’s offer makes perfect sense when viewed from the perspective of the Russian ruler’s revisionist worldview and imperial ambitions. Crucially, Putin is well aware that any peace deal based on the current front lines of the war would leave 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to integrate into the democratic world. That is exactly what he is fighting to prevent.

In line with the present proposals, the Kremlin would retain control over the rust belt towns of the Donbas, but would cede iconic Odesa and sacred Kyiv, the mother city of all Russia, to a hostile neighbor. Most Russians would regard this as a defeat of historic proportions. Instead of being remembered as a new Peter the Great, Putin would be doomed to enter Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

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With a compromise peace out of the question, Putin has no real choice but to fight on. Doing so offers some obvious advantages. As long as the war continues, Putin can delay a reckoning over the huge Russian losses in Ukraine and the damage done to the country’s international standing. But as the fourth anniversary of the invasion draws near, it is becoming increasingly difficult to disguise the fact that the war is not going according to plan.

Putin’s problems are most immediately apparent on the battlefield. When he launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin vowed to “demilitarize” Ukraine. Four years on, Ukraine now boasts the largest army in Europe and has emerged as a world leader in drone warfare.

The radically upgraded Ukrainian military has already defeated Russia in multiple major engagements and is now seeking to gain the upper hand in a grueling high-tech war of attrition. Putin’s army suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in 2025, while seizing less than one percent of Ukraine. At the current glacial pace, it would take the Russian military decades to conquer the country.

In public, at least, Putin continues to project confidence and insist that the goals of Russia’s invasion will be unconditionally met. However, his boasts of battlefield dominance are now starting to ring hollow. With so few actual victories to cheer, he has recently resorted to inventing imaginary advances.

Putin’s habit of exaggerating Russian gains came back to haunt him in late 2025 when he repeatedly claimed to have captured the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to personally visit the city and record a selfie video exposing the Russian ruler’s lies. This embarrassing episode underlined the growing credibility gap between Putin’s bold talk of inevitable Russian victory and the far less impressive battlefield reality of his faltering invasion.

Putin’s other stated war aim was the “denazification” of Ukraine. This is Kremlin code for the erasure of a separate Ukrainian national identity and the imposition of Russian imperial doctrine in every sphere of public life, from education and culture to politics and religion. If this was the intention, it has backfired disastrously.

The war unleashed by Putin in 2022 has fueled an unprecedented consolidation of Ukrainian patriotism alongside a wholesale rejection of all things Russian throughout Ukrainian society. As a result, the entire notion of a pro-Kremlin government in Kyiv is now inconceivable unless propped up indefinitely by Russian bayonets, which would be ruinously expensive for the Kremlin.

This geopolitical divorce is also evident in the international arena. For centuries, Ukraine was widely seen by the outside world as indivisible from Russia itself. Putin still clings to this imperial mythology, but his propaganda slogans of “brotherly nations” now sound absurdly outdated. Instead, today’s Ukraine is widely recognized as an emerging democracy and a member of the wider European community of nations.

It would be extremely reckless to underestimate the Russian military, of course. Russia’s sheer size means that it remains a formidable threat and will likely continue to grind forward in Ukraine. However, after nearly four years of limited progress and staggering losses, it is now difficult to imagine how Putin could achieve the maximalist goals of his invasion on the battlefield.

Many Russians had pinned their hopes on a new Trump presidency, but even the dramatic reduction in US military aid to Ukraine over the past year has failed to produce any significant Russian breakthroughs. Furthermore, US weapons continue to flow to Ukraine via the PURL initiative, with indications that the White House has also relaxed earlier restrictions on strikes inside Russia.

America’s withdrawal from transatlantic commitments also means European leaders are more motivated than ever to maintain their support for Ukraine in the coming years. In a rapidly changing security environment, they are acutely aware that the Ukrainian army is now indispensable for the defense of Europe. With Ukraine’s own revitalized defense industry meeting around half of the country’s military needs domestically, Kyiv looks well positioned to continue defending itself despite the decline in support from the United States.

As the war enters a fifth year, Putin finds himself in an unenviable predicament. He has no obvious pathway to victory but cannot agree to a compromise peace without acknowledging what would amount to an historic defeat and placing his own political survival in question.

Faced with a bloody quagmire on the front lines, Putin will likely seek to break Ukrainian resistance in the coming months by expanding Russian attacks on the general population and making as much of the country as possible unlivable. In parallel, he will continue to play for time on the diplomatic stage, while attempting to bribe the United States with wild proposals and bully Europe into inaction with thinly-veiled threats of escalation.

If President Trump is serious about ending the war, he needs to recognize that his Russian counterpart currently dare not risk any peace that safeguards Ukrainian independence. Putin knows that if Ukraine survives, he loses. A sustainable settlement will therefore only be possible if he comes under significantly more pressure and is confronted with the prospect of a fate far worse than failure in Ukraine.

Putin will abandon his invasion when he begins to fear that continuing the war could threaten the future of his regime and the stability of Russia itself. The current occupant of the Kremlin still dreams of emulating Stalin and Katherine the Great, but he has no desire to become the next Tsar Nicholas II.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The current ban on Russian football teams competing in international competitions was one of many similar measures imposed in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee placed restrictions on Russian athletes, as did the World Athletics Council. Other sports that imposed a full ban on Russian athletes included archery, badminton, baseball, basketball, biathlon, canoeing, ice hockey, rowing, sailing, softball, skating, skiing, taekwondo, and volleyball.

As the war has progressed, some international sports organizations and governing bodies have begun to soften their stance toward Russia. The country’s tennis stars have returned to the sport’s most prestigious tournaments, while Russian athletes in a range of disciplines have been permitted to participate in international events under a neutral flag.

Some sports have opted to lift restrictions entirely. In September 2025, the International Paralympic Committee announced that it would end its ban on Russian athletes, allowing them to participate fully in the 2026 Winter Paralympics. Similarly, in November 2025, the International Judo Federation, the International Sambo Federation, and the European Gymnastics General Assembly all removed bans on Russian athletes.

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Many of those advocating for or justifying the relaxation of restrictions on Russian athletes have done so by insisting on the separation of sport from politics. Others have noted that with the Russian invasion of Ukraine soon set to enter a fifth year, there is no indication that the bans have had any impact on Kremlin policymaking. Instead, they claim, these restrictions have merely imposed unjustified costs on individual Russian athletes and hindered their development.

These arguments conveniently overlook Russia’s long record of routinely exploiting sports for propaganda purposes. Throughout the Cold War, the Kremlin pioneered the practice of generating political capital from sporting success. While the USSR did not permit the development of professional sport, the Soviet authorities invested heavily in sophisticated training programs in a wide range of sports.

This trend has continued into the twenty-first century. Russian President Vladimir Putin spent tens of billions of dollars hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Both events provided the Kremlin with an opportunity to whitewash modern Russia’s image among international audiences.

Russian sporting successes abroad are also frequently celebrated in Moscow as victories for the country as a whole and brandished as proof of Russia’s standing on the world stage. When Russian hockey player Alex Ovechkin made history in spring 2025 by beating Wayne Gretzky’s record as the US National Hockey League’s all-time goal scorer, the Kremlin propaganda machine was quick to toast a national triumph.

On numerous occasions, Russian athletes have directly participated in Putin regime propaganda, including appearing alongside the Kremlin dictator at public events. The BBC reports that some prominent Russian athletes have direct ties to the Russian military, while others have shared pro-Putin and pro-war content on social media in support of the Russian military.

Efforts to ease restrictions on Russia’s participation in international sports are particularly painful for Ukraine. Russia has killed hundreds of Ukrainian athletes during the current invasion, while preventing countless thousands of young Ukrainian talents from continuing with their training and fulfilling their potential. To many Ukrainians, the entire notion of allowing Russians to return to the international sporting arena amid the ongoing war seems exceptionally unethical.

Any further moves to lift existing international bans on Russian athletes may have consequences far beyond the sporting arena. Welcoming Russia back would risk normalizing the invasion of Ukraine and sending a message that the international community ultimately lacks the resolve to hold major nations to account for acts of aggression. This would be potentially disastrous not only for Ukraine, but for countries across the globe.

Mark Temnycky is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and a freelance journalist covering Eurasian affairs.

In this year’s installment, a part of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series, our experts analyze exclusive new findings from a survey of leading strategists and foresight practitioners around the world on how human affairs could unfold over the coming decade across geopolitics, diplomacy, the global economy, technological disruption, changing Earth systems, and other domains. Our team scans the horizon for hidden or under-the-radar phenomena—which we call “snow leopards”—that could have significant consequences in the future. And the Atlantic Council’s best tech minds take a critical look at how artificial intelligence could reshape not only the future, but our ability to predict it.

Welcome to 2036

What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

To survey the future, we polled geostrategists and foresight experts on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the future of NATO to the rise of cryptocurrency.

Six snow leopards to watch for in the decade ahead

The underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize global impact

Receiving relatively little attention in the press, these phenomena can be hard to spot as drivers of change. Yet just like the stealthy big cats, they could sneak up and vividly remind us of their power.

AI and the future

Can artificial intelligence predict global affairs?

Our experts on the ability of artificial intelligence to forecast the decade ahead—and how AI itself will change over that time.

Interact with Global Foresight 2036

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Feb 10, 2026

The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results

In the fall of 2025, the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security surveyed the future, asking leading geostrategists and foresight experts around the world to answer our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next ten years. Here are the full results. 

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Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Mary Kate Aylward, Peter Engelke, Uri Friedman, and Paul Kielstra — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Welcome to 2036

What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

By Mary Kate Aylward, Peter Engelke, Uri Friedman, and Paul Kielstra

Explore findings on…

1. China’s power

2. NATO’s future

3. The fate of Ukraine—and Russia

4. Human-like AI

5. Nuclear proliferation

6. European autonomy

7. Water wars

8. Weakening multilateralism and democracy

9. Crypto versus the dollar

10. The view from the Global South

China eclipses the United States economically. A diminished Russia’s war in Ukraine becomes a frozen one, while conflict over Taiwan turns hot and threatens world war. More countries acquire nuclear weapons. A democratic depression coincides with the decline of today’s multilateral system. Cryptocurrencies challenge the dollar. Artificial intelligence matches or even surpasses human capabilities. NATO endures, but fundamentally changes.

These are just some of the future scenarios that geostrategists and foresight practitioners pointed to when the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security surveyed them in November and December 2025 on how they expect the world to change over the next ten years.

We found respondents generally in a dark mood, with 63 percent expecting the world in 2036 to be worse off than it is now. Just 37 percent think that it will be better off ten years hence—roughly on par with the results of this temperature-check question in the previous year’s survey.

The 447 survey respondents were citizens of 72 countries—the highest number of countries represented in the four years we’ve been conducting our annual Global Foresight survey. Roughly half were citizens of the United States, more than one-fifth were from Europe, and just under a fifth were from countries in the so-called Global South. Respondents skewed male and older (roughly three-quarters were male and a similar proportion were over 50 years of age) and were dispersed across the private sector, nonprofits (think tanks, advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations), government, academic or educational institutions, independent consultancies, and multilateral institutions.

So what kind of world do these forecasters envision in 2036? Below are the survey’s ten biggest findings.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Feb 10, 2026

The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results

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1. Most respondents think China will surpass the US economically, as concern about a Taiwan conflict rises and 40 percent foresee another world war

Most survey respondents do not believe that the United States will be the world’s dominant power in 2036, with only seven percent saying that it will be. And while an even smaller percentage (four percent) believe that China will be the dominant global power, the great majority of polled experts (around nine in ten) believe that these powers will compete for supremacy either in a bipolar world largely divided into China-aligned and US-aligned blocs or in a multipolar one with multiple centers of power.

The survey results indicate widespread perceptions that China will wield considerable power over the coming decade. While nearly three-quarters of respondents predict that the United States will be the world’s leading military power in 2036, most respondents (58 percent) expect China to be the world’s top economic power within the next decade—with only 33 percent saying the same about the United States. Similarly sized minorities expect either China or the United States to be the leading power in technological innovation (47 percent for the United States, 44 percent for China) and diplomatic influence (38 percent for the United States, 33 percent for China), suggesting they could be peer competitors in these domains. The message respondents appear to be sending is that, by 2036, the “China rising” era will have given way to a “China risen” one, characterized by a significant erosion in relative US power in certain respects and an end to the US-dominated world order. (A deeper dive into the data reveals that Global South respondents rate China’s future power higher than respondents from other regions do; see finding 10 below.)

More than two-thirds of respondents (70 percent) believe that China will try to forcibly take Taiwan in the next decade—up from 65 percent in our previous year’s survey and 50 percent two years ago, signaling an increasing likelihood of this scenario materializing. The intensity of this concern seems to be growing as well: Twenty-one percent of respondents “strongly agree” that China will attempt to forcibly retake Taiwan over the next decade, up from 15 percent who felt this way in our previous two surveys.

And what starts in Taiwan wouldn’t necessarily end in Taiwan. In keeping with the top finding from our previous year’s survey, more than 40 percent of respondents envision another world war, involving a multifront conflict among great powers, erupting over the next decade. And within that group, 43 percent think the likely trigger will be in Taiwan or the East/South China Seas—the most-cited origin point for such a conflict, with Eastern Europe (25 percent) and the Middle East (13 percent) in second and third place. This result suggests that growing competition between China and the United States, if improperly managed, will become a global powder keg.

Expert insight by Dexter Tiff Roberts: China “could easily be derailed”

It’s clear that most respondents believe that China is poised to unseat the United States as the global economic superpower over the next ten years, challenging the United States on multiple fronts from currency to international institutions to political stability.

It’s also obvious that Beijing is feeling a newfound confidence as it leverages the international trade chaos wrought by President Donald Trump’s tariffs to position itself as a global leader advocating for a more open international trading system. Of course, Beijing continues to use a host of protectionist measures—from industrial subsidies to non-tariff barriers favoring domestic companies—to tilt the field in its favor.

But China’s ascent to economic supremacy could easily be derailed by its limited progress in shifting from export-driven growth to a more sustainable, consumption-driven economy. China’s present model is facing ever larger challenges as countries push back against a flood of Chinese electric vehicles, solar panels, and electronics.

— Dexter Tiff Roberts, founder and publisher of the newsletter Trade War on Chinese economics and politics, former China bureau chief and Asia News Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub

Expert insight by Markus Garlauskas: Military power alone won’t deter China

The clear majority of respondents who assessed that China will attempt to take Taiwan by force in the next decade included those respondents who also assessed that the United States would be the strongest military power at the time—suggesting many respondents believe overall military power alone is insufficient to deter Beijing.

Given that Beijing has ramped up its aggressive rhetoric and military exercises against Taiwan, which are starting to look like dress rehearsals for an attack, now is the time for action. To strengthen deterrence, the United States and its allies should improve intelligence to provide timely attack warning, posture forces to decisively win a first battle against China, and establish a victory plan to prepare for a long war. Meanwhile, the United States should encourage Taiwan to further strengthen its defenses and mobilize the whole of its society to deter China.

While Taiwan was most commonly cited as the flashpoint for a potential global multifront war in the coming decade, only one respondent cited the Korean peninsula, which suggests respondents are underestimating the potential for a larger war to start with North Korean aggression there. As we explored in a report based on a tabletop exercise, either a conflict in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean Peninsula could escalate into a broader war, including nuclear escalation.

— Markus Garlauskas, former National Intelligence Officer for North Korea on the US National Intelligence Council and director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Expert insight by Josh Lipsky and Jessie Yin:
A day may come when the United States
is not the world’s largest economy, but it won’t be in 2036

The experts are very likely wrong on this one—or at least, they’re missing crucial context.

This idea that China was on track to take over the United States as the world’s largest economy was conventional wisdom in Washington (and New York) before the COVID-19 pandemic. Before 2020, Bloomberg Economics expected China to surpass US nominal GDP by the early 2030s. Even during the pandemic, many were impressed by the resilience of China’s economic growth when other major economies faltered. As late as 2022, Goldman Sachs predicted that China would overtake the US economy around 2035. But economists have been re-adjusting their predictions across the board. In 2023, Bloomberg Economics changed its forecast and projected that it would take until the mid-2040s for China’s economy to catch up to that of the United States. Simply put, Beijing’s economy in 2026 isn’t what it was in 2020.

While China’s growth has slowed down from pre-pandemic expectations, the United States has actually outperformed previous growth projections. In 2019, the International Monetary Fund projected that China’s GDP growth would hit 5.5 percent in 2024, while the United States would only grow by 1.6 percent. In 2024, however, the United States grew by 2.8 percent, while China grew by 5 percent. It’s definitely strong growth coming out of Beijing, but the United States’ nominal GDP was $10 trillion more than China’s in 2024. This makes it less likely, as China’s growth slows, that it will surpass the United States in 10 years. Assuming that 2025 growth rates continue, China would surpass the United States in nominal GDP in 2041. And some experts question the veracity of the growth numbers China releases, with some suggesting a 2025 growth rate as low as 2.5 percent.

Economic forecasting is not a precise science, but there are a few factors to look at when it comes to forecasting China’s economic growth vis-a-vis the United States. Let’s break down some of these factors behind China’s economic slowdown. Beijing is dealing with the sticky negative effects of its prolonged real estate slump—a sector which used to be a major driver of economic growth and investment. As the housing market struggles, consumer confidence remains low, and local governments are bogged down by debt. The country also has a population crisis on the horizon. By 2060, it’s projected that there will be around 70 elderly dependents for every 100 working-age people. China remains a strong export-driven economy with a high-tech sector that is continuing to innovate, but Chinese high-tech firms are only one sliver of its overall economy, and we’re still seeing the vast majority of AI investments worldwide being directed towards the United States. Indeed, it’s the United States that is leading the development of the most important technology of the twenty-first century.

None of this is to downplay the strengths of China’s economy or to neglect the headwinds that are facing the United States, but so far, the data doesn’t suggest that China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2036.

— Josh Lipsky is chair, international economics at the Atlantic Council and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

— Jessie Yin is an assistant director with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

2. Expect NATO to endure but undergo fundamental changes

Amid major ups and downs for NATO in the first year of the second Trump administration—from commitments to ramp up defense spending at The Hague summit in 2025 to the standoff between Denmark and the United States over the status of Greenland—survey respondents are split evenly on whether the Alliance will grow more influential (35 percent) or less (35 percent) in ten years’ time. Behind these equivocal answers about NATO’s future power, however, is a clear and substantial measure of doubt regarding the future of the Alliance itself: Nearly half of respondents (44 percent) believe that NATO will no longer exist in its current form in 2036. Among this group expecting fundamental change, half (51 percent) anticipate that a reconfigured NATO will be less influential than the current alliance.

This finding likely relates to the part that the United States is expected to play in the Alliance going forward. A significant minority of respondents—39 percent—don’t envision the United States, by the year 2036, still having the central, commanding role in NATO that it has had since the Alliance’s founding, though the majority (61 percent) believe the United States will remain in this position. Among the group that envisions the United States no longer retaining its dominant role in the Alliance, 65 percent expect a coalition of states to take a leading role in NATO if Washington steps back, with smaller but still significant percentages citing Germany (33 percent), Poland (20 percent), France (19 percent), and the United Kingdom (18 percent) as potential Alliance leaders. (Respondents could choose more than one answer.)

Respondents also indicated that several NATO member states without nuclear weapons might acquire them by 2036. Among the 85 percent of survey respondents who think that at least one new country or territory will obtain nuclear weapons within the next decade, about 30 percent expect Turkey to acquire these weapons, 24 percent believe Germany will do so, and 15 percent anticipate Poland doing the same. This may reflect an assessment that a possible US withdrawal of its nuclear umbrella from Europe or from its leading role in the Alliance could prompt these NATO member states to go nuclear.

Notably, of the respondents who believe that the United States will be the world’s leading military power a decade from now, 70 percent think that the United States will retain its security alliances and partnerships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; among those who think another power will lead in the military field , that figure drops to 49 percent. Similarly, among those in the camp of the United States as the leading military power in 2036, 67 percent expect Washington to maintain a central role in NATO relative to just 39 percent who see another country or bloc leading militarily. These findings indicate a link between US military leadership and the maintenance of the country’s alliances and partnerships around the world.

Expert insight by Ian Brzezinski: NATO “will not function” without Washington

The polling serves as a troubling warning sign. It reflects frustration with the long-term failure of European allies to fulfill their defense obligations and the Alliance’s failure to leverage its massive overmatch in power over Russia to end Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on just and enduring terms. Another factor is surely the Trump administration’s determination to dilute US military commitment to and leadership in NATO. The Alliance simply will not function in the absence of robust leadership from Washington and a demonstrable commitment of force that inspires confidence in US allies and fear in US adversaries.

The good news for NATO is that the Europeans are now finally increasing their defense spending with haste, the United States continues to have vital interests in Europe that justify the aforementioned leadership and commitment, and the American public expect that of their government. Polls consistently show that some 65 to 75 percent of the American public believe that the United States should sustain or increase its commitment to NATO. That is what gives me an optimistic outlook about NATO’s future.

— Ian Brzezinski, former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy and resident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Trackers and Data Visualizations

Jun 20, 2025

NATO Defense Spending Tracker

By Kristen Taylor, Julia Salabert

The Transatlantic Security Initiative’s NATO defense spending tracker delves into data and figures to analyze current defense spending trends.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

3. Many respondents envision a diminished Russia heading toward a frozen conflict in Ukraine

A high-profile, US-led push for a final negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine dominated headlines while this year’s survey was in the field. Despite that, respondents shifted in the direction of anticipating a frozen conflict. Just 34 percent of respondents think that the war will end on terms largely favorable to Russia, down substantially from the nearly half of respondents (47 percent) who answered that way in our previous year’s survey. Conversely, slightly more than half of respondents (52 percent) now think the war ultimately will turn into a frozen conflict, up from 43 percent a year ago.

Meanwhile, respondents believe that Russia is destined to be a lesser power. By 2036, respondents expect minimal Russian clout across all five metrics of power tested in the survey. Just 2 percent of those surveyed believe that Russia will be the world’s leading country in cultural or soft power by 2036 and 1 percent say the same regarding military power. In all other areas, the figure rounds down to 0 percent. Respondents also cited Russia more than any other world power as a candidate to break up internally as a result of developments such as revolution, civil war, or political disintegration, with 36 percent expecting such an outcome relative to 30 percent in the previous year’s survey. (The latest figure is only slightly below this question’s high of 40 percent of respondents forecasting Russia’s breakup a few years ago, shortly before Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a rebellion against the Kremlin.)

Russian weakness, however, doesn’t necessarily reduce the danger it poses in Ukraine and beyond; in fact, it could increase the threat. Among the minority of respondents (22 percent) who expect a state or terrorist group to use nuclear weapons in the coming decade, 60 percent believe that Russia will do so, making it the most-cited actor.

Expert insight by John Herbst: Only pressure on Putin will lead to durable peace

Contrary to pundit chatter, in 2025 US policy largely did not veer in Putin’s direction. It has jumped back and forth between criticizing and placing pressure on Ukraine and Russia. It is fair to say that the US president seems reluctant to hammer Putin for his clear rejection of numerous American ceasefire and peace proposals, and rarely criticizes Putin without also hitting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yet Trump still has sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil firms. And he continues to provide essential military intelligence to Ukraine that has enhanced the effectiveness of Ukraine’s very successful attacks on Russia’s hydrocarbon production, with serious impact on Russia’s revenue and its staggering economy.

If the White House policy continues, it is safe to expect another year like 2025—at most minor gains for Putin on the battlefield, at a terrible cost in casualties, and with no strategic success and more strain on the Russian economy. The Ukrainians will muddle through because Western support will be at least adequate, and because they have no other choice if they want to live freely as Ukrainians.

If Team Trump is able to digest the lessons of the past year, the United States will provide more support for Ukraine—with the sale of more advanced weapons, including Tomahawks—and put more pressure on the Kremlin in the form of sanctions. The administration would also embrace the position some of its members spoke about publicly a year ago and use its influence to persuade Belgium and other influential players to provide remaining frozen Russian state assets to Ukraine. This combination of measures, if pursued consistently for many months, would 1) weaken Moscow’s position on the battlefield and 2) increase the odds of Putin accepting terms to establish a durable peace, which is Trump’s stated aim and something Putin would only agree to under duress.

— John Herbst, former US ambassador to Ukraine and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center

4. AI could match human capabilities within a decade, as concerns about the technology’s impact mount

Survey respondents expect artificial intelligence (AI) to progress rapidly over the coming decade. A clear majority (58 percent) believe that, by 2036, the world will have gone beyond today’s predictive and generative AI systems to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is defined in the survey as “an artificial intelligence system matching or exceeding the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task”—one of the most ambitious goals AI companies are currently pursuing.

More than half of respondents (56 percent) expect that, on balance, AI will have a positive effect on global affairs over the next decade, while less than a third (32 percent) believe it will have a negative effect. These results suggest that the polled experts generally are more optimistic about the technology’s future impact than, for example, the general public in the United States is. But notably, expectations of AI’s negative impact are increasing, rising three percentage points relative to the previous year’s results.

Similarly, while worries about AI’s economic impact remain low among respondents, they are growing. Fourteen percent of respondents now see job losses and economic disruption due to advancements in technology such as AI as the single biggest threat to global prosperity in the coming decade. That’s more than double the previous year’s figure of 6 percent.

When it comes to social media, our survey respondents have expressed consistently negative views about the technology’s impact on the world—perhaps because social media is now a mature technology with clear downsides, in contrast with the positive expectations people had for the technology fifteen or twenty years ago. Views about AI could follow a similar course if its downside impacts ultimately outweigh its positive ones.

Expert insight by Tess deBlanc-Knowles: We don’t know if we’re on track for AGI

It is not certain that we’re going to get to artificial general intelligence with current trajectories, and there’s also a tremendous amount of uncertainty about which approaches would get us to more generalizable and true reasoning capabilities—or whether those capabilities are even possible to achieve. What we’re seeing with each generation of the current models is higher performance, but it is not clear that training on larger and larger swaths of data, using more compute, is necessarily going to get us to that breakthrough capability of true artificial thinking.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

5. Brace for more countries with nuclear weapons—including Iran despite the Israel-Iran war—though not necessarily nuclear use

Our respondents overwhelmingly expect greater proliferation of nuclear weapons over the next decade, with 85 percent believing additional countries or territories will acquire these arms during that timeframe. The most-cited next entrant in the nuclear club is Iran, selected by 66 percent of those anticipating the spread of nuclear weapons—indicating a widespread assumption that the war waged this past summer by Israel and the United States to destroy Iran’s nuclear program did not definitively extinguish that program or Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. This finding may also explain why the second-most-cited actor to obtain nukes in the next ten years (chosen by 53 percent of those expected nuclear spread) is Iran’s rival and neighbor Saudi Arabia.

But many surveyed experts also foresee nuclear proliferation beyond the Middle East. Those who imagine additional nuclear powers emerging also point to East Asia (with 47 percent citing South Korea, 37 percent Japan, and 11 percent Taiwan) and to non-nuclear NATO members as mentioned in our second finding above.

Respondents appear to believe that this nuclear proliferation will occur in the absence of global governance to curb the spread of these weapons, with only 4 percent expecting the greatest expansion of global cooperation over the next decade to occur in the realm of nuclear nonproliferation.

Even with this likelihood of proliferation, however, respondents seem less concerned that nuclear weapons will actually be used over the next ten years, with 78 percent of respondents predicting no nuclear use relative to 52 percent who said the same in the previous year’s survey. Among the fifth of respondents who are forecasting nuclear use, 60 percent envision Russia employing such weapons, with 42 percent pointing to North Korea and, notably, 34 percent citing the United States.

The reduced expectation of nuclear use may stem from assessments that particular actors seem less likely to take such a drastic step relative to assessments a year earlier. For example, 15 percent of all respondents expect Russia to use nuclear weapons in the next ten years—down from 26 percent in the previous year’s survey. For North Korea those numbers dropped from 24 to 10 percent, for terrorist groups 19 to 8 percent, and for Israel 12 to 5 percent. The only actor registering a notable increase is the United States, with 8 percent of all respondents foreseeing US nuclear use. That’s up from 5 percent in the previous year’s survey.

Expert insight by Amy Woolf: Growing concern about China’s nuclear arsenal—and US deterrence

The results present a somewhat contradictory picture. More than 80 percent of the participants expect more nations to acquire nuclear weapons in the coming decade, but nearly the same percentage (78 percent) expect that nuclear weapons will not be used in conflict. It’s possible these responses reflect reduced concern about Russia potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It does, however, raise questions about why respondents believe more nations would seek nuclear weapons in the absence of circumstances where they might need to employ them in a conflict.

The answer to this conundrum may be evident in respondents’ concerns about the potential for proliferation in Asia, where 47 percent of those anticipating nuclear proliferation expect South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons and 37 percent expect Japan to do so. These numbers likely reflect continuing concerns about a threat environment that includes China’s regional ambitions and the growing nuclear arsenals of both China and North Korea.

They may also reflect concerns about the reliability of US extended nuclear deterrence and credibility of the US commitment to come to the defense of allies. In Europe, this concern has led to occasional discussions among US allies about developing an independent nuclear deterrent. Respondents may have considered whether the nuclear threat environment and proliferation risks might evolve in response to ongoing changes in US national security goals and frequent threats of US military intervention. If the United States is seen as a threat to stability, it could become a source of nuclear risk rather than the foundation of a stable nuclear order.

— Amy F. Woolf, former specialist in nuclear weapons policy at the Congressional Research Service of the US Library of Congress and nonresident senior fellow with Forward Defense in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

6. Respondents are forecasting a more autonomous Europe, but one that still lags behind China and the US across most measures of power

Our latest survey offers mixed results for Europe and the European Union (EU). Respondents are bearish on the EU’s prospects for joining the top tier of global powers. No respondents forecast the EU becoming the world’s foremost military power in 2036, which isn’t surprising given its history as an economic union. Yet respondents are also pessimistic about the EU’s prospects for becoming the world’s foremost economic power (only 3 percent expected this) or tech power (5 percent) in ten years’ time. Just 8 percent of respondents predict that the euro will make the biggest inroads into the US dollar’s dominance over the next decade. Cryptocurrency, the renminbi, and gold all rated higher as challengers to the dollar. A significant minority of respondents (22 percent) foresee the EU breaking apart by 2036.

However, there is another more bullish side to the ledger. A substantial portion of respondents envision the EU as an important player in the diplomatic arena (17 percent say the EU will be the world’s foremost diplomatic actor in 2036). Thirty percent believe the EU will be the leading power in cultural or soft power, just below the percentage that say the same of the United States and nearly twice the percentage that foresee China occupying this position. For three years now, Global Foresight survey results have also shown steadily rising expectations that Europe—not necessarily defined in this instance as the EU—will have achieved “strategic autonomy” by 2036 through taking more responsibility for its own security, with 57 percent of respondents answering to that effect in our latest survey. That’s up from 48 percent in the previous year’s survey and just 31 percent the year before that.

Expert insight by Jörn Fleck: Europe is facing “simultaneous abandonment and entrapment”

The survey results about Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy seem to track the prevailing sentiment on the continent about its future in a brave new world of power politics.

A year into the Trump administration’s second term, the terms of Europe’s debate about greater sovereignty have changed under the impression of simultaneous abandonment and entrapment by the United States. Europeans still remember last year’s disconcerting Oval Office meeting with the Ukrainian president and the freeze of US military and intelligence support for Kyiv—even if it was ultimately temporary. That episode accelerated a fundamental shift for Europeans as they faced up to some deeply uncomfortable and costly realities about the continent’s posture in a new geopolitical era without predictable US support. French politicians and strategists could hardly hold back their collective “told you so.” But even among former skeptics of “strategic autonomy” in Central and Northern Europe, there has been a growing realization that Europe has to rapidly address capability gaps and grow its independent military, economic, and technological means to confront an aggressive Russia, an exploitative China, and a disruptive America.

In fact, we can see this already happening. In her September 2025 State of the European Union speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for Europe’s “independence moment” after launching a slew of defense-related initiatives including the “Rearm Europe 2030” plan and “Security Action for Europe” to mobilize fresh cash for European defense spending.

The policy follow-up to this realization has been more mixed. Europe has stepped up financially and politically to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia. It has proposed a package for €800 billion in new defense spending. European NATO countries have committed to new spending and capability targets. Some, like Poland, are already meeting them. Others are obliterating long-held orthodoxies—for example, Germany with its half-trillion-euro surge in defense investment. Beyond defense, the EU has sought to address its economic competitiveness, diversify its trade relations, counter China’s unfair economic practices, boost investment in technology and research and development through a restructured multi-annual budget, and more. But as so often happens in Europe, fragmentation, national interests, and pet projects, plus weak leadership from Brussels to Berlin to Paris, are holding back a more ambitious and concerted drive toward greater autonomy in any one area.

The survey responses share the contradictions and ambiguities of Europe’s political realities around strategic autonomy. Over a fifth of respondents believe the EU could break up over the next decade—not exactly a boost for building up European capacity. Even more strikingly, only miniscule minorities see the EU becoming the leading global power when it comes to diplomatic influence, the economy, or technology. Without Europe-wide coordination and leadership in at least some of these categories, European sovereignty will remain little more than an aspiration.

— Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center

7. Respondents see water wars coming, as global warming surpasses key thresholds and climate cooperation cools

Our polling results surfaced some warning signs for climate change as a priority item on the global policy agenda. For the first time in three years of asking this question in Global Foresight surveys, climate change is not the leading perceived threat to global prosperity over the next decade. In our latest survey, just 17 percent of respondents cite climate change as the single biggest threat, relative to the 30 percent who mention war between major powers. That’s roughly half of the percentage of respondents who identified climate change as the biggest threat in our past two surveys. Moreover, only 19 percent of respondents now believe that climate change will generate the greatest increase in international cooperation over the coming decade, just behind technology governance (20 percent) and well down from the 49 percent of respondents who listed climate change just two years ago.

These findings on international climate action contrast with respondents’ forecasts about the changing climate itself. More than 80 percent of respondents expect the world to become hotter, including at least one year over the next decade where the global average temperature is 2 degrees Celsius (or more) warmer than preindustrial levels. The 2-degree increase is a threshold beyond which scientists believe the climate will become less stable; the central goal of the Paris climate accord, negotiated a decade ago, was to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—a temperature level that was passed in 2024.

This pessimism about limiting global warming may be connected to another finding: Only 40 percent of respondents think that global greenhouse-gas emissions will have peaked and begun to decline by 2036 (up only slightly from our prior year’s survey). Perhaps because of the expectation of rising temperatures, 57 percent of respondents think that public support for action to counter climate change will have increased by 2036. But as our findings indicate, that surge in public support may not correspond with more cooperation at the global level on these issues.

Likely anticipating this hotter, drier, and more unstable climate, two-thirds of respondents (64 percent) expect a war to be fought, at least in part, over access to fresh water in the next decade.

Expert insight by Kathleen Euler: When climate impacts feel “remote,” effective action gets harder

Climate change remains a threat—whether or not it is perceived as an urgent one. This is clear from the science and the 80 percent of respondents who anticipate a hotter world, which will mean more deaths, illnesses, and dramatic, untenable changes to our infrastructure, economies, and way of life.

Yet climate change is increasingly absent from the global news cycle. Headlines are crowded with concerns about AI, immigration debates, and extreme weather events that are ironically often climate-driven but rarely identified as such. Climate change, as a result, feels to some like an abstract, remote threat rather than an immediate one. We can only process so many crises each day, but climate change is a constant undercurrent. Unfortunately, deprioritizing climate change only intensifies its consequences, leading to more costly disasters and losses in the not-far-off future.

— Kathleen Euler, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Climate Resilience Center

8. Many experts anticipate international institutions decaying as democracy weakens

There’s been a lot of speculation recently about whether the decades-old rules-based international order is collapsing. Our survey respondents suggest we should prepare for such a reality. They express little confidence that today’s multilateral architecture will be influential a decade hence.

The international system put in place at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 endured, with modifications, for nearly a century. The international system associated with the Treaty of Versailles and related treaties ending World War I lasted a much shorter time. The international infrastructure that arose after World War II, including the United Nations (UN), regional security arrangements and alliances such as NATO, and the Bretton Woods economic institutions not only weathered the Cold War but came through it with enhanced authority.

Eighty years on, respondents seem to assess these bodies as increasingly creaky. An overwhelming majority of respondents (71 percent) believe that the UN will become less influential in the coming decade, compared with just 6 percent who say the opposite. For the Security Council, the UN’s most powerful body, 58 percent expect a decline in influence by 2036 and only 9 percent a rise.

On the economic front, survey participants also are much more likely to expect the post-World War II global financial institutions to grow less influential by 2036 than they are to anticipate them becoming more influential. A majority of respondents (65 percent) foresee the World Trade Organization losing influence relative to only 11 percent who imagine it gaining influence. For the World Bank, the equivalent figures are 50 percent and 14 percent; for the International Monetary Fund, 41 percent and 14 percent. Perhaps even more remarkable, only 5 percent of respondents cite declining trade as a result of protectionism as the biggest threat to global prosperity over the next ten years—a decline from the 14 percent who said the same in the previous year’s survey. The fact that this decline occurred after Trump dramatically increased tariffs on countries around the world indicates, apparently, minimal concern about the decline of free trade as a challenge to global prosperity.

This year’s survey also shows that nearly half of respondents (44 percent) believe that over the coming decade the current democratic recession will deepen into a democratic depression. In contrast, only 24 percent foresee a democratic renaissance during that timeframe.

Predictions about the decline of the international order intersect with those of global democratic decline. Respondents expecting a democratic depression are more likely to foresee core international bodies losing influence over the coming decade than those who forecast a democratic renaissance: from the UN (77 percent vs. 60 percent) and UN Security Council (64 percent vs. 53 percent) to the World Trade Organization (71 percent vs. 48 percent), International Monetary Fund (50 percent vs. 27 percent), and World Bank (53 percent vs. 44 percent).

Respondents who envision continued democratic decline have less faith that over the coming decade major-power war will be avoided, global cooperation will expand, and minority rights around the world will be protected. The vast majority of those anticipating a worsening democratic recession (83 percent) believe that the world overall will be worse off in ten years’ time, whereas 66 percent of those expecting a democratic renaissance think the world will be better off a decade from now.

Expert insight by Matthew Kroenig: US leadership and the strength of democracy worldwide are intertwined

Many respondents predict democratic decline, decaying international institutions, a risk of major-power war, and generally fear the world will be worse off in ten years’ time. These findings make sense given emerging challenges to US global leadership coming from both without and within.

The US-led, liberal international system has produced unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom over the past eighty years. In this timeframe, we have witnessed zero great power wars, a quintupling of per capita gross domestic product in the United States and dramatic growth in global GDP, and a tenfold increase in the number of people living in liberal democracies. Contrary to a common perception that US grand strategy went off the rails in the post-Cold War world, the data show that the world was safest, richest, and freest during America’s unipolar moment in the 1990s and 2000s.

Unfortunately, these indicators have leveled off and begun to decline in the 2010s and 2020s. Global democracy, for example, has declined in each of the past nineteen years. Our respondents project a continued diminution of US leadership and a corresponding acceleration of these negative trends in the decade to come.

— Matthew Kroenig, former US official in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, and vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

9. The dollar is likely to remain the world’s currency of choice, but keep an eye on crypto

Economists are engaged in an intense debate right now about whether the US dollar can hold on to its status as the world’s leading reserve currency—a position it’s held since World War II. (The Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center tracks the dominance of the dollar on an ongoing basis.) Although the dollar is likely to remain the world’s currency of choice in 2036, our survey results indicate that it won’t go unchallenged. About 80 percent of respondents expect other currencies, commodities, or assets to make inroads into the dollar’s dominance over the next ten years.

The most-cited asset expected to make the biggest inroads into the dollar’s dominance is not a national currency but rather cryptocurrency (34 percent of respondents), with a further 11 percent saying that a commodity—gold—will pose the greatest challenge (we conducted the survey before Bitcoin suffered a precipitous decline in value, dimming optimism about crypto’s future prospects—for the time being at least). Contrast those findings with those for other national currencies besides the dollar: Twenty-one percent of respondents predict that China’s renminbi will make the biggest gains relative to the dollar, while just 8 percent say the same for the euro and 5 percent for the Japanese yen, with no votes for the British pound.

Respondents who foresee China as the world’s leading economic power a decade from now are more likely to imagine the dollar’s dominance eroding. But they are split on its most formidable challengers, with higher figures for China’s currency but also the Japanese yen and gold.

Expert insight by Alisha Chhangani: Dollar dominance under increasing threat

The dollar has had a turbulent year, down more than 9 percent against major currencies in 2025. Against that backdrop, it is interesting that survey respondents see cryptocurrency as the greatest threat to dollar dominance.

The concern is understandable. Crypto’s volatility and recurring crises have coincided with the growth of a “grey economy” where crypto-assets increasingly facilitate sanctions evasion, tax avoidance, and illicit trade beyond US oversight. This undermines the effectiveness of US financial sanctions, a cornerstone of dollar dominance. At the same time, the rise of dollar-backed stablecoins, alongside the United States’ first stablecoin regulation (the 2025 GENIUS Act), suggests Washington increasingly sees these crypto-assets as a way to preserve dollar dominance and bolster demand for dollar assets such as US Treasuries, even as the long-term risks and global spillovers are not yet fully understood.

When it comes to China, the survey results align with reality. While Beijing has been discreet about diversifying away from the dollar, it continues to do so methodically. Its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) project has tested transactions in the digital renminbi, and China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) has expanded significantly over the past five years, reducing reliance on dollar-based payment infrastructure.

Still, the dollar’s status remains stable. Data from the Bank for International Settlements shows the dollar on one side of 89 percent of all foreign-exchange trades. Its liquidity keeps it embedded in the plumbing of global markets. Ultimately, the foundations of dollar dominance still lie in trust in US political and legal institutions, including the preservation of central bank independence, which has come under increasing threat.

— Alisha Chhangani, associate director at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center

Dollar Dominance Monitor

This monitor analyzes the strength of the dollar relative to other major currencies. The project presents interactive indicators to track BRICS and China’s progress in developing an alternative financial infrastructure.

10. The Global South sees the future differently

Roughly one-fifth (18 percent) of this year’s survey responses came from citizens of countries located in what is often called the Global South. Although it’s an inexact and contested term, the Global South is a useful shorthand to describe countries that are outside the wealthiest group of industrialized nations. While respondents in this category are heavily weighted toward Latin America and the Caribbean (54 percent of the Global South group), forecasts from geostrategists and foresight practitioners across the Global South countries differ from those in the Global North in significant ways.

For example, respondents from Global South countries are much more likely to rate Russia’s chances in its war in Ukraine higher than other survey participants: Forty-six percent say that the outcome will be on terms favorable to Russia, versus 31 percent who say the same among the rest of the pool. Those from the Global South are also much more likely to see China as a leader in key fields, with 76 percent expecting it to be the top economic power by 2036 compared with 54 percent who feel that way among the rest of the respondents. Global South experts also are more skeptical about the longevity of US power, with only 60 percent of this group expecting the US to retain military dominance over the next ten years relative to 76 percent of other respondents. Remarkably, 22 percent of respondents in the Global South expect the United States to break up internally in the next ten years, compared with 10 percent of other respondents. Those from the Global South are more likely than respondents from elsewhere to expect a global multifront war in the coming decade (48 percent relative to 40 percent) as well, with a larger proportion expecting such a conflict to be sparked by events in the Middle East (35 percent compared with 8 percent).

Expert insight by James Mazzarella: Concerns about US stability may reflect Global South history

The percentage of respondents from the Global South who expect the United States to break up internally in the next ten years is more than twice as high as that of respondents from outside the Global South. Similarly, 76 percent of Global South respondents expect China to overtake the United States as the world’s dominant economy, compared with 54 percent for the rest of the respondents.

These expectations may be due to a combination of factors. One is the US withdrawal to a position of greater economic isolation. Another is the perception that the United States is pulling back from humanitarian engagement in the Global South, and that it is undergoing a period of political discord—an assessment that may reflect the Global South’s own experiences with weak institutions.

Perceptions aside, political discord as a factor is measurable, especially when examined alongside data from the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes. Among “high freedom” countries since 1995, no country has experienced a greater decline in freedom than the United States. The decline is driven by institutional erosion and executive aggrandizement. Because some developing countries in the Global South have more recent history with political discord and breakdown than others, it is very possible that Global South respondents view political developments in the United States as existential threats to America’s unity, while others living in countries with stronger institutions have different understandings of and greater faith in the resilience of American democracy.

— James Mazzarella, former senior director for global economics and development at the National Security Council, now senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center.

About the authors

Mary Kate Aylward, Publications Editor, Atlantic Council

Aylward was an editor at War on the Rocks and Army AL&T before joining the Council. She was previously a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Peter Engelke, Senior Fellow, GeoStrategy Initiative

Engelke is on the adjunct faculty at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is a frequent lecturer to the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. He was previously a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Complex Risks, an executive-in-residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, a Bosch fellow with the Robert Bosch Foundation, and a visiting fellow at the Stimson Center.

Uri Friedman, Senior Editorial Director, Atlantic Council

Friedman is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he writes a regular column on international affairs. He was previously a senior staff writer at The Atlantic covering national security and global affairs, the editor of The Atlantic’s Global section, and the deputy managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Paul Kielstra, Freelance Analyst

Kielstra is a freelance author who has published extensively in fields including business analysis, healthcare, energy policy, fraud control, international trade, and international relations. His work regularly includes the drafting and analysis of large surveys, along with desk research, expert interviews, and scenario building. His clients have included the Atlantic Council, the Economist Group, the Financial Times Group, the World Health Organization, and Kroll. Kielstra holds a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford, a graduate diploma in economics from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto. He is also a published historian.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

We polled geostrategists and foresight practitioners on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the future of NATO to the rise of cryptocurrency.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Artificial Intelligence Climate Change & Climate Action

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

The post Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results

Andrea Ratiu — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Global Foresight 2036 survey

Full results

This survey was conducted from November 14, 2025, through December 5, 2025.

Demographic data

Survey questions

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Artificial Intelligence Climate Change & Climate Action

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

The post The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

Panthera uncia—the snow leopard that inhabits high mountain ranges in Central and South Asia—is one of nature’s best-camouflaged animals. The majestic cat’s beautiful white coat, with gray and black spots, blends seamlessly into the rocky and snowy landscape in which it lives. Known as “the ghost of the mountains,” it seems to appear out of thin air. The reality, of course, is the snow leopard has been there all along, an unseen sight.

In world affairs, there are numerous under-the-radar phenomena that are difficult to spot but crucial to understand given their capacity for disruption and transformation. Like the Himalayan cat, these metaphorical “snow leopards” may appear invisible but in fact are all around us: early-stage technologies that, if developed and scaled, might yield revolutionary results; social movements that, while just beginning to gather strength, could have enormous political consequences in the years to come; demographic trends that only a few experts study but that could overhaul societies in the long run; ecological changes that are not yet fully understood by scientists but could portend disaster ahead should they worsen. These phenomena present underrated risks or opportunities. Each of them could reshape the future. Some already are. We just need to know where to look.

Each year, our Global Foresight series identifies a new set of snow leopards. In this year’s edition, as in previous editions, this challenging task fell to the Atlantic Council’s younger staff, who are well-positioned to identify trends, events, technologies, and forces that their older colleagues might overlook. They scrutinized the world around them and came up with a list of underappreciated but potentially world-changing phenomena.

In the years to come, keep an eye on these six snow leopards.

The tech companies altering the course of conflicts

When businesses are first movers on the battlefield

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, among the first responders were a conglomeration of cyber and tech companies of all sizes. These companies did critical work to ensure that Ukraine’s cyber defenses held up against an unprecedented onslaught of Russian cyberattacks. Combined with assistance from allied governments, such efforts helped keep the lights on in Ukraine. But the companies’ interventions amounted to entering a conflict of their own volition, without a state’s authorization or direction—which triggered profound geopolitical risks.

The private sector participating in conflict is nothing new; governments have contracted with private companies in war and peacetime for centuries. But three elements are new: First, cybersecurity companies have begun entering interstate conflicts without the authorization of or at least direction from states. Second, these companies effectively possess state-grade capabilities—and, with that, the ability to make world-changing decisions—but without the policy, legal, or risk frameworks states erect around such capabilities to constrain their use. Third, states, citizens, and businesses are increasingly dependent on these companies’ infrastructure and services in peacetime and for cyber defense in conflict. Microsoft recognized this in a June 2022 reflection on the company’s assistance to Ukraine, declaring that the technology sector has an “inevitable” role to play in the “cyber defense of nations.”

The risks of this kind of private-sector involvement in conflict are already emerging. Civil society has raised questions about whether cyber and tech companies constitute combatants under international humanitarian law, particularly where their capabilities intersect with state capabilities—as when, for example, private firms identify exploitable vulnerabilities (or “zero days”) in other companies’ software code. As states and others increasingly contest privately owned digital infrastructure, ideologically motivated cyberattacks (“hacktivism”) have also risen—creating heightened risks of retaliation. The whims of tech executives also have geopolitical consequence. In September 2022, for example, Elon Musk reportedly cut internet access in Ukraine provided via his Starlink satellite technology, disrupting a key Ukrainian counteroffensive. In response, a British member of parliament decried the “dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains.”

Where these risks could amount to world-changing impact is during a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and both Taipei and Beijing are clearly paying attention. Musk’s reported decision to cut Ukraine’s internet access was one reason Taiwan set up its own satellite internet infrastructure. There is some evidence that the Chinese state also is learning lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine about the role of US cyber and tech companies as a source of advantage in conflict. This development might not be so concerning were it not for the significant business dependencies that Apple and other US tech giants have in China, which could muddy decision-making during any period of conflict. The clarity and unity of purpose seen in cyber companies’ efforts to help Ukraine cannot be guaranteed in the future.

This is an issue that the international security community must address through dialogue and policy development with the private sector. Goals should include firmer guardrails and improved accountability mechanisms—or outright deference to states as primary decision-makers. Such dialogue will prepare states and industry to jointly navigate future conflicts and collective preparedness without generating unintended consequences when the private sector jumps ahead of states.

Nikita Shah is a former senior resident fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative with ten years’ experience as a national security professional in the UK government specializing in cyber security.

The migrants moving in loops, not lines

Leave, learn, return—and start a business?

Many countries have experienced migration as a driver of “brain drain”—a one-way outflow of human capital. But a more dynamic pattern is reshaping global talent flows in some parts of the world. A growing number of migrants who work or study overseas are returning to their home countries with new skills—a pattern known as “brain circulation”—or staying closely connected to their home countries and turning their global experiences into new opportunities there.

Brain drain refers to the loss that occurs when a country’s citizens, especially highly skilled and educated workers, pursue opportunities abroad. Host countries often gain productivity, tax revenue, and innovation—except when migrants are pushed into low-skilled work (such as when immigrants holding master’s degrees work at jobs requiring a high-school diploma), a phenomenon known as “brain waste.”

Another concept, “brain gain,” captures the positive effects of emigration for sending countries: The prospect of opportunities abroad motivates more people to pursue higher education, most of whom remain at home. Those who do leave often continue to contribute through remittances and stronger trade ties.

But these concepts overlook the circulation of talent that is quietly changing the geography of opportunity worldwide. “Brain circulation” first became visible in countries such as India and China, where engineers and entrepreneurs who had lived and worked in the United States returned and used their US career experience to start businesses at home.

What began as a modest trend in the early 2000s is accelerating as travel and digital connectivity become more accessible. The circulation of skilled, educated workers is now remaking national and regional economies. Studies show that returning immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial and resilient than their peers and are significantly more likely to start businesses. Migrants return with expertise and global exposure they could not have acquired domestically.

Central and Eastern Europe illustrate how transformative this loop can be. After experiencing decades of outward migration, Central and Eastern European countries are now registering rising return flows. Romania, for example, has had three consecutive years of positive net migration driven by returning citizens. They launch startups, invest in local ecosystems, and open doors to new practices and global markets, sometimes with the support of government financing programs. Such ventures are helping power a regional boom. In 2024, startups in the region raised nearly €3.7 billion, a 56 percent increase from the previous year. Nearly half of that total—more than a billion euros—came from companies whose founders studied or worked abroad, or worked at big multinational companies.

At a time when many countries are grappling with aging populations, talent shortages, and relentless competition, this loop of leaving, learning, and returning is becoming a critical source of national advantage. Brain circulation offers a replicable model for countries that need to catalyze growth and sustain innovation. Countries that recognize this opportunity build policies and institutions that drive people, skills, and capital to move in loops, not lines, so that yesterday’s emigrants become tomorrow’s nation-builders. The future belongs to dynamic societies that treat mobility as a renewable resource, turning migration into a story of shared prosperity and, ultimately, into the backbone of a global innovation system that can respond to challenges and opportunities no country can tackle alone.

Uliana Certan is an assistant director for European engagement at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and Atlantic Council Romania.

The underwater forests helping heal the climate

Big seaweed could be big business

In the waters off one-third of the world’s coastlines grows a powerhouse plant: kelp. Towering kelp forests capture twenty times more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than do land forests of equivalent size. They promise lower-cost and lower-carbon ways to feed the world’s population, and they protect coastlines from the effects of more powerful storms. As scientists and policymakers increasingly turn to nature-based solutions to take on climate change, these colorful stalks of algae may be the next big thing.

Kelp forests can remove one ton of carbon emissions from the atmosphere for somewhere between $20 and $85. To do the same with direct-air-capture machines costs $1,000 per ton. Not only is kelp an incredible carbon sink, it drives other forms of environmental conservation and protection. The stalks reduce the size of tidal waves by up to 60 percent, prevent soil erosion, and absorb agricultural runoff. Studies show that kelp supports the development of the biogenic aerosols that help clouds form, reducing the temperature of water, soil, and air. Kelp also is an ingredient in biodegradable biopolymers, which can replace petroleum-based plastics.

In the food and agriculture sectors, kelp is both a nutritional food source and a protective habitat for hundreds of plant and animal species, including commercial fish such as cod, crab, octopus, and lobster.

And it doesn’t stop at seafood: Sprinkling seaweed on cattle feed can reduce cows’ methane emissions by between 40 and 80 percent. Kelp can be processed into natural, liquid biostimulants for agriculture, which can reduce the need for artificial fertilizers that release greenhouse gases. These kelp-based treatments also could reduce the large amounts of water required by many high-value cash crops such as almonds, avocados, strawberries, and grapes.

Beyond the environment and agri-food industries, kelp generates health and cosmetic products, attractive tourist destinations for snorkeling, and critical supplies for indigenous communities.

Kelp, however, faces an uncertain future due to predators, pollution, and marine heatwaves induced by climate change. Efforts to regrow damaged kelp forests off the coast of California offer a prime example for other coastal governments. Scientists and conservationists are planting specific kelp varieties that grow three times faster and absorb double the amount of CO₂ compared with other kelp. When this kelp matures, by some calculations it could absorb as much CO₂ as the global aviation sector emits. Kelp could help the state meet its target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045—five years sooner than the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

To help kelp survive in warmer oceans, scientists use remotely operated vehicles and motorized growing lattices, raising the kelp toward the water’s surface during the day to absorb sunlight and lowering it into deeper, more nutrient-rich water at night.

The effects of climate change on the world’s coral reefs have grabbed headlines. The United Nations Decade on Environmental Restoration has increased attention on coral-reef, mangrove, and seagrass restoration efforts. But so far, there has been limited funding focused specifically on kelp growth and management.

Global cooperation on kelp will be crucial for future climate efforts, as new research proves that oceanic carbon sinks are 15 percent larger than land sinks. But even in the absence of such coordination, expect continued momentum for work on kelp. Kelp and seaweed farming is the fastest-growing global aquaculture industry, increasing 6.2 percent per year over the last twenty years. Countries in Asia, particularly China and Indonesia, produce 98 percent of farmed seaweed by volume globally, but there is enormous potential for growth and applications in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. And with a $500 billion market, kelp has plenty of potential to combat climate change, mitigate the biodiversity crisis around the world, and develop a more profitable and sustainable “blue economy.”

Ginger Matchett is an assistant director for the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The crumbling human rights order

Are we going back to the bad old days?

In recent years, an alarming number of countries have withdrawn from or defied human rights treaties and humanitarian conventions. Global norms about how human beings should be treated were a key part of the international system that arose after World War II, including the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specialists have said for years that this postwar system is under stress. But the consequences for individuals are underappreciated. If the postwar order was a bulwark against the horrors of the twentieth century, the idea that ordinary citizens should be protected from unrestrained state power was a load-bearing pillar. The weakening of that pillar is ominous and risks a future with fewer human rights than exist today.

The retreat from human rights is happening at two levels: through actors exiting treaties, and through changes in the societal expectations that those treaties both reflect and reinforce.

Consider the developments of just this past year. In 2025, the United States, Israel, and Nicaragua withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, reducing the reach and legitimacy of one of the few multilateral bodies tasked with universal monitoring of rights.

That same year, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Poland withdrew from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, while Lithuania separately pulled out of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Proposals for other NATO members to take similar steps further highlight the erosion of norms against weapons that can indiscriminately harm civilians long after conflicts end. These shifts are coming as countries facing new security pressures increasingly prioritize military flexibility over humanitarian restrictions. The withdrawing states—all of which border Russia or Belarus—have cited the dangers they are confronting in the wake of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has been rife with human rights abuses. In light of the withdrawing countries’ statements, it seems unlikely that any would have withdrawn had Russia not invaded Ukraine—which underscores the snowball effect of diminishing postwar humanitarian norms, and why each violation matters.

Norms may be intangible, but after 1945 countries codified many of them into binding commitments in an effort to build a better world with such norms at its core. Once these norms are weakened, as appears to be occurring now, they may never recover. This diminishes international law, emboldens perpetrators of human rights violations and war crimes, fuels cycles of impunity, and leaves civilians increasingly vulnerable. The cumulative effect is a weakened global system of accountability at precisely the moment when conflicts and authoritarian forces are on the rise.

Sarah Wallace is a former program assistant for the GeoStrategy Initiative and Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The cultural erasure driven by AI

Out of the dataset, out of mind

We know who we are because of our memories, our history, and our stories. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important part of how people store information, as generative AI tools are woven into search engines, social media platforms, and everyday interfaces like virtual assistants. The data these generative AI tools draw on to answer our questions or summarize our emails shapes how people understand the world.

The current generation of AI, however, is built on Western-centric datasets that are disproportionately produced, curated, and governed in North America and Western Europe, largely in English. Knowledge that is oral, community-held, locally archived, or produced outside these systems is far less likely to be captured. Optimized for volume rather than nuance, these systems put cultures that fall outside dominant data flows at risk.

The phenomenon of cultural erasure can take two forms: omission, where cultures fail to appear entirely, and simplification, where complex traditions are reduced to stereotypes. The cases of small and developing states illustrate these risks most vividly. Much of the intangible heritage of the world’s island states, for instance, remains under-digitized, preserved instead through oral storytelling, music, ritual, and collective memory. When generative AI encounters such cultures, it often only reflects what can be easily retrieved from training data. For example, AI-generated media depicting “Caribbean culture” tends to reproduce a narrow canon of beaches, rum, and steelpan. Missing are the complexities: linguistic diversity and multi-ethnic histories that define the region’s melting-pot identity. Pre-AI search engines didn’t return a complete, nuanced picture of these small cultures either. But generative AI can process so much data so quickly that the speed and scale of the threat have changed. The kind of responses AI tools offer can also create the impression of a more definitive answer. Where search engines returned a page of links or a variety of pictures for the user to browse and evaluate, generative AI products offer a more finished-looking result: complete sentences and paragraphs, or a single composite image. For the people living in these smaller states, AI-driven “data colonialism” shapes how the world sees them and, potentially, how they see themselves.

If AI advances to a point where it becomes the default lens through which people encounter culture, then nations and groups underrepresented in AI training data risk losing authorship of their own stories. The version that survives may be the one defined by external markets. Indigenous groups, minority-language speakers, and marginalized communities around the world all face this threat.

But small island states can use their position at the United Nations and elsewhere to elevate concerns around cultural data representation and press for international standards, compelling actors who can shape the global AI ecosystem to take action. These nations can play a catalytic role in making cultural representation a priority for technology governance, even if the power to execute change lies elsewhere.

Preventing cultural erasure means embedding diverse heritage into datasets, creating frameworks and metrics that assess cultural harm through an interdisciplinary lens, and ensuring AI governance treats cultural erasure as seriously as information manipulation or digital privacy. The question is not just whether AI models are accurate, but also whether they reinforce or erode the cultural foundations communities rely on. As AI increasingly shapes what the world finds, learns, and imagines, we must confront a pressing question: If a culture isn’t in the dataset, can it survive the AI era?

Dominique Ramsawak is the associate director of communications at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

The neurotechnology that could read your mind

Whether you want it to or not

The next tech disruption could be the human mind paired with cutting-edge neurotechnology. New kinds of neurotech create pathways for communications between the human brain and external devices, some implanted in the brain. Recent developments in neurotech that don’t require an implant—and could eventually even be portable—signal a future in which there could be ways to read someone’s thoughts, with or without their permission.

One such development is a semantic decoder that translates the brain’s electromagnetic waves into a continuous stream of text capturing what someone is thinking about, with varying degrees of precision. Currently, the decoder works with a trained model—a version of the large language models powering chatbots—using brain activity measured on a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Earlier versions required a user to lie down in an MRI machine for the better part of a day to train the system. In 2025, researchers tested a version of the decoder that only requires an hour of training. Developments like these, coupled with investments expected to surpass four billion dollars in 2025, indicate the potential for additional advances in the field. And if neurotech follows the trajectory that computers did—the first computers took up an entire room; now billions of people carry one in their pocket—it’s possible there will be portable systems in the future.

While the idea of something invading your thoughts might be alarming, there are both positive and negative potential applications of this technology. Any patient with a medical condition that makes it difficult or impossible for them to speak—Parkinson’s disease, aphasia, the aftereffects of a stroke—could benefit. So could patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who find it difficult to speak about their trauma.

Ethical considerations must also be taken into account. While it’s hard to predict exactly how this technology will evolve, laws protecting neural data privacy will be needed. In November 2025, UNESCO adopted the first global ethical framework for neurotechnology, seeking to ensure that “neurotechnological innovation benefits those in need without compromising mental privacy.”

In 1992, the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour observed that all technological advances are multifaceted in nature, acting as a liberator, a threat, and an instrument of power. That framework will hold true for the neurotech transformations we’ll experience in the years ahead.

Tatevik Khachatryan is an assistant director for events at the Atlantic Council.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Artificial Intelligence Climate Change & Climate Action

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

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African soccer needs digital innovation, not just investment

Tom Bonsundy-O’Bryan — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:43:40 +0000

The Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament that took place around the turn of the year was record breaking. It drew 1.3 million fans to stadiums across Morocco and generated a 90 percent surge in commercial revenue compared to the previous tournament. Globally, it raked in record viewership numbers.

Both Senegal and Morocco rank among FIFA’s global top twenty, with high expectations heading into this summer’s World Cup in North America. Yet decades after Brazilian soccer legend Pelé predicted an African nation would win the World Cup by 2000, African soccer has not fulfilled its potential.

Soccer represents Africa’s most potent soft power asset and largely untapped economic engine, generating $625 million in 2025. Major powers have recognized African soccer’s strategic value: China has invested in around ninety Sub-Saharan African soccer stadiums since the 1960s, including $600 million on four facilities in Angola. Qatar spent more than one billion dollars on its Aspire Academy and launched Football Dreams, the largest talent search in soccer history, scouting millions of African youth for potential star players.

African players feature prominently in leagues around the world, in part because Africa has exported thousands of professional footballers, with Nigeria and Ghana leading. As of 2022, more than five hundred African players were competing in European leagues—approximately 6 percent of all elite-tier footballers in these leagues. African players are particularly prevalent in France, representing at least 25 percent of France’s Ligue 1 rosters. After a $94-million transfer to Manchester United in 2025, footballer Bryan Mbeumo (who was born in France but represents the country of his heritage, Cameroon) became one of the most expensive African players ever.

Yet this extraordinary talent pipeline coexists with systemic dysfunction. About 30 percent of players at this year’s AFCON were born outside Africa. An estimated 80 percent of talented African youth migrate to Europe before age eighteen, with African clubs earning just 0.1 to 1.1 percent of global transfer revenues as of 2022. Domestic league attendance has plummeted—Ghana Premier League attendance, for example, declined from an average of more than ten thousand per game in the early 2000s to fewer than eight hundred in 2023, while millions of fans in Ghana watch European leagues.

The root causes are economic extraction and governance failure. The African Football Confederation generated just $9.4 million in profit in the 2023-2024 financial year from a total revenue of $166.4 million—dwarfed by the Union of European Football Associations’ $208 million in profits from $6.8 billion in revenue. Domestic leagues, therefore, lack capital for infrastructure or talent retention. Instances of corruption and mismanagement have eroded fan trust. Young players often see no viable path to stardom within Africa, creating a vicious cycle where talent and capital flight weakens domestic leagues.

Additionally, while the Premier League in England and La Liga in Spain dominate African airwaves, African leagues suffer from poor technical quality and infrastructure. What’s more, viewer attention spans are growing shorter, and more interactive sports offerings (such as fantasy leagues and avenues to engage directly with athletes) are competing for watchers’ time, drawing them away from typical hours-long broadcasts. Viewers just aren’t engaging with African soccer in the ways they used to: For context, in Africa, 91 percent of people who streamed videos such as sports did so on phones rather than stationary devices such as laptops. But this is an opportunity for the continent; it could pioneer a new soccer product for the digital age.

The continent could reinvigorate African soccer with a new “Global African League” that adapts to the streaming and engagement habits of Africa’s young—and growing—population. It can do so by emulating the Kings League in Spain, which focuses on digital-first entertainment. It includes seven-a-side games lasting forty minutes, in addition to features that make the games more accessible and dynamic for viewers: For example, creative fan-voted rules and free streaming on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. The 2023 inaugural Kings League season generated 47 million hours of streaming, attracted major sponsors, and expanded to Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, and the Middle East. African legends such as Didier Drogba could become club presidents with participatory fan ownership models, mirroring how Neymar and Sergio Agüero have stepped into Kings League roles.

Enthusiasm for this new format could drive the creation of thousands of new jobs across Africa’s booming billion-dollar creator economy. Operating outside traditional soccer governance structures, a Global African League could generate revenue needed to reinvest in grassroots talent—offering African youth a viable path to stardom at home, stemming the exodus that has hollowed out domestic leagues.

Exhibition matches featuring diaspora stars could also attract huge global streaming audiences—in turn unlocking sponsorship from global brands and opportunities for in-game purchases or live e-commerce with mobile money integration for the continent’s 600 million users. Major African telecoms like Vodacom, MTN, and Safaricom could bid for streaming rights, integrating matches into their data subscriptions and offering free streaming to subscribers.

African entrepreneurs, telecoms, and investors should seize this opportunity to generate jobs and revenue. By doing so, they can demonstrate that Africa can innovate for the digital age, building world-class sporting competition and soft power on the global stage.

Tom Bonsundy-O’Bryan is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, the author of Football, War & Peace, and Meta’s global affairs policy manager.

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The Putin regime faces mounting pressure but is still far from collapse

Will Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:07:49 +0000

With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine set to enter a fifth year, there are growing indications that things are not going according to plan for Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the front lines of the war, Russia continues to suffer catastrophic casualties while failing to achieve any meaningful breakthroughs. Despite holding the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, the invading Russian army managed to capture less than 1 percent of additional Ukrainian territory.

Putin also has cause for mounting concern on the home front. The Russian economy is showing signs of strain amid sanctions pressure and other negative factors including falling oil prices and declining energy export revenues. Meanwhile, the recent US raid in Venezuela and subsequent seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean have underlined how the war in Ukraine is diminishing Moscow’s ability to project power internationally.

This deteriorating picture is now fueling debate over how much longer Russia can maintain the current invasion. It is also raising more fundamental questions about the fragility of the Putin regime. Given the Russian state’s multiple twentieth century implosions, such speculation is inevitable. However, there is currently little to indicate that the country is close to repeating the collapses of 1917 and 1991.

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Most studies of autocracies have concluded that the biggest single threat to regime stability comes from existing elites. Putin is apparently well aware of this and has worked hard to minimize the danger of a potential palace coup. While dissent is still possible among Kremlin powerbrokers, Russia’s current ruling class is too closely tied to Putin to mount any serious challenge. One of the Russian ruler’s longstanding allies, Dmitry Kozak, reportedly opposed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and advocated for de-escalation. But rather than triggering open resistance, this disagreement led to Kozak’s quiet removal from office.

There have also been reports of disagreements within the Kremlin over the handling of the war economy, with diverging opinions on key issues such as financial policy and attracting international investment. However, these differences of opinion have not translated into a serious public split.

The single biggest wartime test for the regime so far came in summer 2023 with the Wagner mutiny. This dramatic episode exposed a potential regime vulnerability, but the uprising ultimately proved short-lived due to a lack of defections from within the Russian military and political establishment.

Crucially, while there was little evidence of any rallying around the flag during the brief mutiny, no major security institutions or regional authorities sided with the Wagner rebels. Instead, most chose to wait rather than commit. Once the initial threat had been contained, Putin was able to reassert his authority. This was widely seen as vindication of the highly personalized style of government established during Putin’s reign, with no rival power bases capable of presenting a direct challenge.

Further opposition from disgruntled military personnel cannot be ruled out, but there appears to be virtually no prospect of a broader anti-regime protest movement emerging within Russia. A number of protests took place during the first weeks of the full-scale invasion but failed to gain momentum. Draconian new legislation is now in place, increasing the penalties for any public opposition to the war. An unprecedented round of mobilization in September 2022 proved deeply unpopular among the Russian public, but most opponents chose to flee the country rather than protest.

The degree of Russian public support for the invasion remains disputed. While polling data consistently demonstrates strong pro-war sentiment, skeptics point to obvious issues regarding the credibility of opinion surveys conducted in military dictatorships. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the organizational capacity for any meaningful opposition in today’s Russia is weak, while the information environment is tightly controlled.

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The Putin regime has been careful to minimize the risk of any backlash over heavy Russian losses in Ukraine. During the last decade of the Soviet era, public anger over the deaths of conscript soldiers in Afghanistan helped destabilize the USSR. Similar processes were also evident during the Chechen wars of the early post-Soviet period.

Putin has tailored his military recruitment policies with this threat very much in mind. Rather than relying on conscripts, he has focused on enlisting men predominantly drawn from ethnic minorities and the prison population. The Russian army also depends heavily on volunteers enticed by the promise of large initial bounties and generous salaries.

Despite the Kremlin’s best efforts, risks remain. Russia’s disproportionate use of ethnic minority troops could lead to a surge in anti-regime moods and separatist sentiment in places like Ingushetia and Dagestan. If current downward economic trends continue, Moscow may also find it increasingly challenging to fund the big payouts necessary to secure a steady flow of new volunteers. The war will inevitably remain Putin’s top priority, but money diverted to the army from other sectors will create the potential for discontent elsewhere.

The same logic could also apply to Russian losses in Ukraine. So far, the huge human cost of the invasion has not sparked a major domestic backlash, but with monthly casualty figures now reportedly reaching record highs, public dismay may yet become a destabilizing factor.

Western policymakers need to be aware that while there is no reason to expect an imminent collapse of the Putin regime, the end could come suddenly. Few were predicting the demise of the Tsarist Empire in 1916, or the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Putin has constructed formidable defenses during his twenty-six years in power and has done much to anticipate any possible sources of internal opposition. Nevertheless, the costs of maintaining this system could spiral out of control amid a fifth year of war, leading to dangerous consequences that he may be unable to contain.

An awareness of the Putin regime’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities should inform the Western approach to the war and help shape the faltering peace process. Western leaders will also likely be guided by concerns that if Putin does fall, this could lead to a future Russia that may be far darker and even less predictable than the current regime.

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Russia’s current attacks on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure are neither accidental nor isolated. Power plants, transmission lines, substations, and heating systems have been repeatedly targeted throughout the entire country in a methodical manner to inflict maximum damage. These strikes have intensified in recent weeks as temperatures plunged, underlining the Kremlin’s deadly intent. During the coldest months of the Ukrainian winter, heating and power are not mere conveniences; they are essential for survival.

The present talk of a “kholodomor” in Ukraine not only captures the essence of Russia’s winter bombing campaign. This language also consciously echoes the term “Holodomor” (“death by hunger”), which is used to describe the artificially induced famine of the early 1930s that killed at least four million Ukrainians. Then as now, the Kremlin objective was the destruction of the conditions necessary for life in Ukraine.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian analysts and other experts have been warning that history is in danger of repeating itself. By December 2022, humanitarian agencies assessed that 17.7 million Ukrainians would need emergency aid simply to survive the first winter of the war amid the large-scale bombardment of the country’s power grid, a campaign that later resulted in International Criminal Court arrest warrants for the Russian military commanders who orchestrated it.

Putin’s escalating weaponization of winter mirrors Stalin’s use of famine against Ukrainians almost one century earlier. Both atrocities are rooted in genocidal logic that treats the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation as an existential threat to Kremlin imperialism. However, unlike the Soviet authorities during the Holodomor, Putin has made no real effort to disguise or conceal the current targeting of Ukraine’s civilian population. On the contrary, Russian officials and media personalities have praised the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the suffering this inflicts.

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Russia’s winter bombing campaign is not only about depriving Ukrainians of the conditions to sustain life. It is also part of a broader strategy to reshape Ukrainian society and force the country to accept an artificially imposed Russian identity. This goal is most immediately apparent in occupied regions of Ukraine, where schools and social services have been repurposed to indoctrinate the population and erase all traces of Ukrainian identity. Rendering large parts of Ukraine unlivable is the first step; remaking the country on Moscow’s terms is the second.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure cannot be dismissed as an example of ordinary wartime brutality. Instead, the current bombing campaign must be viewed as part of a deliberate plot to destroy the conditions necessary for Ukrainian society to endure. Genocide is not defined only by mass killing; it is also defined by the deliberate destruction of the conditions of life required for a group’s survival.

As US-led peace talks continue, it is vital that the international community now avoid repeating the mistake of ignoring Ukraine’s warnings about Russia’s true intentions. In 2014 and 2022, Ukrainians were not taken seriously when they tried to alert the outside world to the danger. They are now once again raising the alarm over calls for Kyiv to cede heavily fortified areas of the Donbas to Russia in exchange for ambiguous promises of peace. Ukrainians warn that this would only encourage Moscow and create the ideal conditions for the next stage of Putin’s invasion.

When Ukrainians speak of facing death by cold, they are not attempting to shock or provoke. On the contrary, they are describing the latest stage in a Russian strategy that is historically all too familiar, and one that has become increasingly apparent since 2022.

The sheer scale of Russia’s current winter bombing campaign makes a mockery of attempts to broker a compromise peace and underlines the Kremlin’s determination to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. While international audiences rightly acknowledge the remarkable resilience of the Ukrainian population, they must also recognize the need to address the sense of impunity driving Russia’s invasion. This impunity has convinced Putin that he can now freeze millions of Ukrainians in front of the watching world. Failure to hold him accountable for this crime will condemn other European countries to face a similar fate.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 led to the emergence of a new social contract between Ukrainians and the state that saw party politics placed on pause. With the survival of the country in question, the Ukrainian public entrusted the government with extraordinary authority, while attention turned to urgent issues of national defense.

In practice, wartime realities meant an unprecedented concentration of power in the office of the president. As a result, the influence of the Ukrainian parliament on policy-making declined markedly. The dangers of this shift did not go unnoticed by politicians and activists alike, but there was a general consensus that such temporary political measures were justified by the existential nature of the fight against Russia’s invasion.

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The unspoken social contract of 2022 finally began to unravel in summer 2025, when the government passed controversial legislation undermining the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption architecture. This was widely perceived as a direct threat to the institutional progress achieved following the country’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

The Ukrainian public response was emphatic. Almost immediately, crowds gathered in central Kyiv and in a number of other Ukrainian cities to voice their opposition to the bill. This rapidly escalated into the country’s largest wartime protests. Faced with public outrage and widespread expressions of concern from Ukraine’s international partners, the authorities backed down and introduced fresh legislation protecting the independence of the country’s anti-corruption agencies.

This episode confirmed the underlying strength of Ukraine’s democratic instincts. Even in extreme wartime conditions, Ukrainians were ready to stand up in defense of their democracy. The summer 2025 protests established a clear red line between the temporary delegation of power and the permanent erosion of institutional safeguards.

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A further test of the wartime political status quo came in November 2025, when Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions went public with allegations of systemic corruption within the country’s energy sector and accused numerous senior figures of involvement. The ensuing scandal led to a string of high profile resignations, including multiple ministers and the president’s chief of staff.

This political firestorm has raised fundamental questions about the monopoly of power in wartime Ukraine. While most Ukrainians continue to oppose the idea of holding national elections until a peace deal is in place, the energy sector corruption scandal in late 2025 has led to widespread calls for greater accountability, and has sparked heated debate over the need for changes in the country’s political leadership.

In this dynamic political climate, Ukraine’s parliament has begun to play a more prominent role. In December 2025, parliament voted to establish a temporary investigative commission to examine alleged violations related to corruption, human rights, and the defense sector. Crucially, this move received cross-party support.

An overall picture is emerging of a political system adapting to wartime realities but still very much atuned to core democratic values. Parliament is once again exercising oversight and influencing key political decisions, while anti-corruption institutions, civil society, and the country’s independent media act to expose violations. Meanwhile, Ukrainian society remains ready to defend the country’s hard-won democratic gains.

Most Ukrainians still recognize the need for wartime measures that would be seen as problematic in peacetime. However, the Ukrainian public has also established a number of firm red lines during the past four years of full-scale war. These are boundaries that no Ukrainian politician can afford to ignore, especially as negotiations to end the war progress. In fiercely democratic Ukraine, any potential peace deal must win public approval before it can be successfully implemented.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament with the European Solidarity party.

The takeaway from the GAO report is more an indictment of how unmoored the public debate has become from reality and available evidence. Questions of reform, restructuring, or replacement should focus on what the agency does and does not do, rather than arguments that conflate humanitarian provision with political causation. In the absence of a political settlement, it has become clear that UNRWA has become a proxy theater for unresolved political questions of responsibility, sovereignty, and accountability. The GAO report makes it clear that eliminating UNRWA will not resolve the political issues at stake and should be a guide to policymakers in addressing the real issues at hand.

Exceptional origins

To better understand the controversy surrounding UNRWA, it is necessary to examine its institutional origins. UNRWA was established prior to the creation of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was never integrated into the UNHCR system. As a result, it remains a functionally unique organization, and the only UN agency dedicated to a single refugee population.

As of 2023, UNRWA employed approximately thirty thousand staff, around 99 percent of whom were Palestinian, making it one of the largest operational agencies within the UN system. In the absence of a political resolution to the Palestinian refugee question, its mandate has been repeatedly renewed by the UN General Assembly. Over time, this has transformed UNRWA from a temporary relief body into a de facto public service provider in environments where no sovereign authority fills that role.

This seeming exceptionalism has long fueled criticism, but it is more a product of history than politics. Some argue that UNRWA’s continued operation perpetuates Palestinian refugee status and entrenches political stagnation. Others counter that the agency exists because diplomatic failure persists. The GAO report does not attempt to adjudicate this debate. Instead, it narrows the inquiry to whether UNRWA’s education programs, as supported by US funding, were operated in accordance with stated neutrality and oversight requirements.

Critiques that attribute the persistence of refugee status to UNRWA often conflate service provision with status determination. Refugee status is defined independently under international law and UN General Assembly resolutions, not by UNRWA’s operational presence. While some contend that UNRWA’s services allow host governments or Palestinian leadership to defer responsibility for refugee integration or political resolution, the termination of UNRWA’s operations would not, on its own, confer legal status, citizenship, or rights on refugee populations. These outcomes remain contingent on unresolved diplomatic negotiations involving Israel, host states, and the broader international community.

Education, textbooks, and allegations of incitement

Prior to October 7, 2023, the most persistent and politically salient criticism of UNRWA concerned its education system, particularly the use of Palestinian Authority textbooks. UNRWA uses host-country curricula as a matter of institutional policy to ensure accreditation and enable students to transition into local secondary and post-secondary education systems. The GAO confirms that no US funds were used to purchase these textbooks, which were provided free of charge by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Recognizing concerns that some textbook content did not align with UN values or United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) standards, UNRWA implemented layered review mechanisms, including curriculum framework reviews, semester-based rapid reviews of revised textbooks, the development of supplementary teaching materials, and a self-described “critical thinking” approach designed to contextualize or counter problematic content in classrooms.

PA textbooks provide the baseline materials, and then the critical thinking approach aims to highlight UN values and encourages discussions that explore different perspectives on an issue, while offering teachers techniques, concepts, and activities to support such classroom discussions.

During the 2024–2025 academic year, UNRWA reviewed more than thirteen thousand textbook pages and identified “issues” on approximately 3.85 percent of pages. The majority of these issues related to terminology, maps, or political framing, rather than explicit incitement, according to the GAO report. For example, identified issues include a “reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine,” or “mathematics problems that compare the number of prisoners across two years and use the number of martyrs to teach a mathematical concept.” The GAO notes that both internal and external audits acknowledged UNRWA’s commitment to neutrality while also identifying persistent implementation challenges, including teacher resistance, community pressure, and resource or access constraints. Some of these constraints include that the teachers are already overwhelmed, and asking them to create new critical thinking-led approaches has been challenging, as many of them were not able to receive direct training. Moreover, challenges include students and teachers questioning the relevance of learning about human rights when they feel they do not experience those rights themselves.

Importantly, the GAO finds no evidence that UNRWA systematically ignored identified concerns or that US oversight failed to detect widespread incitement during the funding period under review.

Clearly, this does not render all criticism invalid. It does suggest, however, that claims linking UNRWA’s education, like those by UN Watch—a prominent watchdog organization that also functions as a pro-Israel lobby group—directly to political violence are often overstated. This is particularly true when considering the education content as a primary explanatory or causation variable for political violence, despite the reality students face of prolonged conflict, displacement, and humanitarian deprivation. Similarly, the European Union-funded findings by the George Eckert Institute show that there is little evidence to establish a link between textbooks’ content and students’ world views.

Critics of UNRWA are not wrong to identify real vulnerabilities. The agency operates under extraordinary political pressure, relies on host-authority curricula it does not control, and faces genuine challenges enforcing neutrality among a locally recruited workforce of Palestinians living largely under conflict conditions in Gaza and the West Bank. Oversight mechanisms, while extensive, are imperfect, and implementation gaps are real. There is evidence to suggest that there is influence by staff members who are aligned with Hamas, something that UNRWA has attempted to address, but cannot avoid due to the political realities of the population from which it draws its employees, particularly in Gaza.

Where critics often overreach is in treating these constraints as evidence of institutional intent or systemic failure. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, for example, claimed that UNRWA “is literally funneling American tax dollars to terrorism,” while Rep. Ritchie Torres called UNRWA “long a purveyor of anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish hate.”

The GAO tells a different story. Through their interviews with UNRWA educators, administrators, students, and diplomatic leaders in the US Embassy, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the PA Ministry of Education, and UNRWA leadership and field staff, GAO staff collected significant data and input. Their report, analyzing US funding for assistance, the extent to which UNRWA and the US State Department identified and addressed problematic content, and the extent to which the State Department reported accurately to Congress, does not find sufficient evidence to substantiate claims that UNRWA’s education programs functioned as vehicles for incitement during the period reviewed, nor that US funds were misused.

Post–October 7 allegations and funding consequences

Following October 7, Israeli authorities alleged that some UNRWA employees participated in or supported Hamas’s attack. Subsequent investigations by the UN confirmed that a small number of current or former staff had ties to Hamas or involvement in the events. UNRWA dismissed implicated employees and cooperated with external reviews. While serious, these findings did not substantiate claims of institutional complicity nor did it find evidence of systemic infiltration.

Still, the UN’s self-investigation garnered criticism that it failed to address the wider problem of Hamas ties, and the US Agency for International Development later said UNRWA refused to provide further information about the fired personnel.

The political consequences were swift, with the Biden administration’s suspension of funding to UNRWA and the subsequent complete prohibition of funding from Washington. According to the GAO, this decision contributed to a significant budget shortfall, placing core education and humanitarian programs at risk and exacerbating financial instability that predated the funding cutoff.

The unresolved political question

What remains unresolved is whether defunding UNRWA meaningfully advances US foreign policy objectives. Ending US support does not alter the legal status of Palestinian refugees, nor does it resolve the political questions that underpin UNRWA’s continued existence. What it does do is remove a major service provider in environments where alternatives are limited or nonexistent and encourages the shifting of costs and risks onto host governments, other donors, and vulnerable populations themselves, all of whom, without a political resolution, are unable to absorb these costs or added economic burden.

The GAO report does not argue for or against UNRWA’s future. It does, however, underscore how far the public debate has drifted from the evidentiary record. If UNRWA is to be reformed, restructured, or eventually replaced, those decisions should be grounded in a clear-eyed assessment of what the agency does and does not do, rather than in claims that collapse humanitarian provision into political causation. In the absence of a political settlement, UNRWA remains a proxy for unresolved questions of responsibility, sovereignty, and accountability in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Removing UNRWA does not resolve the dispute and will certainly deepen humanitarian consequences. The US withdrawal of funding is not only a disservice to the humanitarian realities on the ground, but also decreases possible US influence over the education system and the impacts UNRWA can have. While there is good reason to consider other politically viable options for assistance and refugee support to the Palestinian people, the US decision to withhold funds only exacerbates many of the existing problems, while solving none of them.

Melanie Robbins is the deputy director of Realign for Palestine, a project of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs.

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To repair US-Colombia ties, Trump and Petro should focus on counternarcotics and Venezuela

Kevin Whitaker — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:44:03 +0000

Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s Oval Office visit on February 3 comes on the heels of the tensest year in the US-Colombia relationship in the past three decades. Based on significant policy disagreements and inflamed by the US and Colombian presidents’ affinity for bombastic declarations, the two nations careened from crisis to crisis over the past twelve months.

There have been several notable low points: In January 2025, Petro refused to accept deportees from the United States, only to back down after US President Donald Trump threatened to levy crippling tariffs on Colombia. In September 2025, Petro made an outrageous speech in New York, calling on US troops to ignore Trump’s orders. Trump retaliated by revoking visas from several Colombian officials, including Petro. And in October, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Petro and his family. But all this was just a prelude for an even more dramatic moment—when last month, Trump suggested that the United States might stage military operations inside Colombia, possibly even targeting Petro. For two nations accustomed to close cooperation and a long tradition of defusing disagreements in private, this seemed to be a startling display of how far the two governments had diverged.

However, that may not be fully accurate. On key issues such as stability in Venezuela and the need to address transnational criminal activity, including illegal migration and drug trafficking, Colombia and the United States appear to agree on the ends they seek, even if they differ on how to reach those ends. The Trump administration obviously favors a more aggressive approach on transnational crime, including the use of military force and restarting the aerial eradication of Colombian coca crops. Petro’s team understands the threat posed by transnational crime but has failed to achieve a negotiated solution. It is in the interests of both nations that Venezuela again become a “normal” nation, a good commercial partner that no longer suffers from such turmoil that it causes millions of its citizens to flee as migrants.

So what would a productive approach to US-Colombian relations look like? Petro has some cards to play when it comes to counternarcotics and Venezuela. With the failure of his Paz Total (Total Peace) strategy, Petro is now willing to use force against illegal armed groups. That needs to be done in the context of a rigorously designed strategy—an approach that the Colombian armed forces are well prepared to develop and execute. And consistent with the long and successful history of bilateral military cooperation, US support could underpin the execution of a serious and effective military effort to push back on illegal armed groups to the benefit of both nations. Petro asking for such help is likely to get a favorable response from Trump.

Additionally, Colombia should want the US effort in Venezuela to be a success and should say so. It appears that the meaning of Trump’s claim that the United States will “run” Venezuela is that Washington has taken control of Caracas’s petroleum industry and is giving nonnegotiable instructions to the Bolivarian regime on issues such as the release of political prisoners, as well as Venezuela’s commercial and security relations with Cuba, Iran, Russia, and China. The ultimate goal, which US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described in his Senate testimony last week, is that Venezuela again become a stable partner in the region.

Real stability in Venezuela is profoundly in Colombia’s interest. No country has received more Venezuelan migrants than Colombia, so no nation would benefit more from the return of those individuals to their home country. But they will only return to a stable and safe Venezuela. Further, Colombia would benefit economically from trade with a stable Venezuela. In 2008, two-way trade between those two nations peaked at more than seven billion dollars. Colombian exporters will be anxious to recover those markets; Petro would be wise to use this meeting to position Colombian businesses to benefit from these opportunities.

This meeting could put the bilateral relationship on a better path. Colombia will hold presidential elections this year, and Petro is term-limited. It would be a gift to his successor, who will take office on August 7, as well as to the nation, for Petro to begin the process of recuperating the relationship between two nations that have accomplished so much together over the past quarter-century.

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Haiti’s week ahead is the next test for Trump’s Western Hemisphere focus

Camilla Reitherman and Diana Roy — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:45:39 +0000

WASHINGTON—Two deadlines in the first week of February—the end of US temporary protected status (TPS) for Haiti and the expiration of the mandate for Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC)—threaten to intersect in ways that could further destabilize Haiti and the broader region.

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, Haiti has found itself mired in turmoil. The government is largely nonfunctional, the economy is effectively paralyzed, basic services are collapsing, and gangs now control nearly 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than 1.4 million people are internally displaced, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, while close to two million are facing acute food insecurity. The result, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned the Security Council this past August, is “a perfect storm of suffering.”

Haiti’s slow decline isn’t occurring in isolation. For the United States, a top destination for Haitians, the country’s continued deterioration is not a distant tragedy but a policy challenge with profound consequences. For the Trump administration, which has reasserted the importance of the Western Hemisphere in its strategy documents and actions, this is an opportunity to continue those efforts. To prevent Haiti’s further collapse, the Trump administration should focus on leveraging pre-existing, common-sense policies to stabilize the country in the short term and build state capacity to lay the groundwork for its longer-term recovery. The result would be a safer, more stable Haiti—and a safer, more secure Western Hemisphere.

TPS expires . . .

The primary US policy tool—and the more immediate deadline—is TPS, a bipartisan humanitarian protection program that allows migrants from countries deemed unsafe to live and work in the United States for a temporary but extendable period. Haiti was first designated for TPS just days after a catastrophic earthquake struck the country in January 2010, and it has since remained eligible amid worsening political and security crises. As of March 2025, 330,735 Haitian nationals living in the United States had TPS, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The US-based diaspora sends billions of dollars home each year in remittances, an economic lifeline for Haitians facing economic deprivation.

Barring further extensions, which are not expected at this point, TPS for Haiti is set to expire on February 3. After that date, Haitians in the United States will need to have another lawful status to remain in the country or risk deportation, even though crisis conditions persist in Haiti.

. . . and so does the TPC’s mandate

Just days after TPS ends, Haiti faces an internal deadline that reveals another layer of dysfunction: governance.

This year marks the country’s fifth without a president, its tenth without holding presidential elections, and its third without a single democratically elected official in power. On February 7, the TPC—the nine-member interim body currently running the Haitian government—will reach the end of its mandate.

Since 2024, the TPC’s principal duty has been to create the conditions needed to hold free and fair elections by the time their term expired. Despite undertaking several notable efforts, the TPC stated that the country’s unfettered security situation rendered elections “materially impossible” by the February deadline. The first round of elections is now set for August 2026, though experts warn the timeline will be difficult to meet absent meaningful security gains.

As the clock winds down on the TPC’s mandate, some members have launched a last-ditch effort to remove the sitting prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Appointed by the TPC and viewed as Washington’s preferred pick to run the government after February 7, Fils-Aimé has become the target of members’ efforts to maintain influence beyond the transition window. In response, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Fils-Aimé to offer support and restricted the visas of multiple members of the TPC.

There is little consensus on what will replace the TPC when its term inevitably ends. Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, will gangs fill it? Fils-Aimé has ruled out negotiations with powerful gangs regarding Haiti’s political future. This lack of clarity risks undermining legitimacy and further weakening the state’s capacity to combat the security crisis.

Consequences of these looming deadlines

While the expiration of both TPS and Haiti’s interim government in the same week is coincidental, the possible consequences of each could exacerbate Haiti’s internal crisis and expand the risks it poses to regional security.

In this context, the Trump administration’s decision not to renew TPS for Haiti risks accelerating the country’s decline and backfiring by fueling additional migration. In the absence of a stable government in place to manage returns, large-scale deportations to an already fragile country—even though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has deemed it “safe” enough for return—could deepen internal displacement and drive more irregular migration, including to the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Early signs of this strain are already visible on the ground. With Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince closed for more than a year due to gang violence, US deportation flights have arrived in Cap-Haitien, a comparatively stable northern city already strained by internal displacement and limited municipal services. Cap-Haitien is also home to Haiti’s vital textile sector, which the US Congress recently voted to continue supporting through reauthorization of the HOPE and HELP Acts. Any large-scale increase in deportations could further overwhelm local capacity, risking the destabilization of one of the country’s most stable regions.

And the repercussions of these deadlines would extend beyond increased migration. According to the Organized Crime Index, Haiti’s porous borders and weak enforcement mechanisms have enabled transnational criminal networks to thrive, engaging in drug and weapons smuggling that is likely to continue. As of May 2025, two Haitian gangs—the powerful Viv Ansanm coalition and the Gran Grif gang—have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the US government, underscoring the security threat that they pose.

What Washington can do

Haiti’s overlapping crises are multi-pronged and deeply rooted, and no single policy measure will remedy years of state collapse. Amid renewed discussions of the Monroe Doctrine, past US involvement in Haiti—from the 1915 occupation to later interventions in the 1990s and 2000s—can rightly be critiqued for contributing to the erosion of Haitian institutions. Despite these challenges, it remains in the United States’ best interest to help restore a measure of stability in Haiti.

Redesignating Haiti for TPS would help advance the administration’s broader goal of ensuring the Western Hemisphere “remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough” to prevent mass migration to US borders. Extending TPS would provide humanitarian protection and create economic opportunity for Haitians while also giving Haitian authorities time to rebuild governing capacity after the TPC’s mandate expires. However, the Trump administration is unlikely to pursue this option.

But the administration has options to improve state capacity beyond immigration policy.

One is the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force (GSF), which has received US support in its aim to both suppress violence and pave the path for eventual elections. Although intended to improve previous models, critics warn that the GSF, which is expected to reach full strength by summer, is still unlikely to produce meaningful results.

The GSF illustrates a long-recurring pattern in Haiti policy, in which external actors construct parallel structures separate from Haitian institutions to address short-term challenges, only to leave little to no state capacity once funding or political support inevitably dissipates. Rather than repeating this pattern, a comprehensive vision for US-backed security policy should explicitly prioritize training and supporting Haitian forces—whether that be the Haitian National Police or a revitalized national military—so that security gains can endure long after international forces depart.

The same logic should guide US thinking on a democratic transition. While holding elections is politically necessary and could help re-establish the rule of law, conditions on the ground mean a vote is currently infeasible and could result in a worse outcome than the status quo.

To ensure elections are the result of stability rather than a substitute for it, the United States should prioritize institution-building approaches such as the Global Fragility Act (GFA), which was signed into law by US President Donald Trump in 2019 and implemented under the Biden administration. Although the GFA has since lapsed (and Haiti is no longer listed as a target country), a similar whole-of-government approach would align US diplomatic, security, and development tools around bolstering Haiti’s resilient civil society and the preliminary work done by the TPC. The framework for this involvement already provides a clear roadmap—now it is up to lawmakers and policymakers to follow it.

Critics of US involvement in Haiti often argue that the country is beyond repair. Yet, if the United States wants to send Haitian temporary residents home and build a more prosperous Western Hemisphere, it should support positive change rather than compound Haiti’s crises.

The United States may not be able to deliver immediate prosperity in Haiti, but promoting stability through coordinated action that strengthens Haitian state capacity is firmly in the US strategic interest.

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Why Syria’s government must turn inward in 2026

Gregory Waters — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Syria’s political and security landscape has not stopped evolving in the one year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. 2025 saw major security incidents across the country in conjuction with significant structural state-building initiatives by the new government, but the year ended with most of the Sweida governorate and the country’s northeast still outside of Damascus’s control. Months of negotiations between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led armed group which controlled parts of Aleppo city and the northeast, had failed to achieve a peaceful integration of the two sides. Following renewed skirmishes between the two sides earlier this month, Damascus launched a widescale military operation that has, in a matter of weeks, returned most of the country to Syrian state control.

Both the negotiations and military operations against the SDF have relied heavily on the relationships the new government has built with the international community in general, and the US government in particular. These relationships are a result of a strong focus in 2025 by Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani on re-connecting Syria to the international world. Now, in 2026, Syria’s government must turn inward, prioritizing further domestic reforms and improvements. Chief among these are continued security reforms, economic development, and writing a new constitution.

Changing domestic perceptions

On November 25, thousands of Alawis took to the streets across western Syria. It wasn’t just the first Alawi demonstration since the fall of Assad; it was the first time the community had voluntarily held a protest to voice their demands in Syria’s modern history.

One resident of rural Jableh described the event to me a few days later with a proud smile on his face,“ I am fifty five years old, during my entire life any protest here was forced by the regime,” he said. “Yesterday was special, it was by our own free will, we said our demands and returned to our homes relaxed.”

The demonstrators had three demands: rejecting sectarianism, releasing the Alawi soldiers captured during the final weeks of Assad’s reign, and implementing federalism in the coast. The demonstrations were guarded against Sunni counter-protestors by the new government’s General Security Forces.

In the hours and days afterwards, many Alawi activists and residents of the coast—those who did and did not participate—spoke to me with pleasant surprise about the security forces’ professional conduct. Other commentators noted that it was the first time in Syria’s history the government had protected people criticizing it.

“So many were terrified of how the government would respond,” remarked a media activist from rural Jableh, “but we made our speeches and we were safe, and now the area feels relaxed for the first time.”

Several Alawi activists who had previously distrusted security forces told me that the day was a potential turning point in how they view local government forces.

“We trust the Ministry of Interior now, even if we don’t trust the government politically,” added the activist.

It was a stark change from the first months after Assad fell, when members of the nascent General Security forces were frequently accused of robbings and beatings, engaging in sectarian harassment, and at times executing Alawi civilians and ex-regime soldiers during raids on insurgents.

Their discipline in these most recent protests was a result of a year of reforms and institution building, reflecting broader developments across all Syrian ministries. This first year focused on rebuilding core state institutions, from security to basic administration.

Rebuilding government institutions

Outside of the public’s view, Syria’s new government spent much of its first year rebuilding the basic bureaucratic capacities of the state, which had been left gutted and derelict by the Assad regime. Regulatory agencies, courts, and basic services departments all needed to be repaired, staffed up, and streamlined. Critical but mundane state functions like water well licensing and civil registries took much of the year to rebuild. By the fall of 2025 many of these offices had begun functioning again, though often inundated with paperwork and requests from their communities.

In Homs, for example, the central court processes nearly two thousand cases a month involving administrative registrations such as property transfers, birth and death certificates, and marriage and divorce papers, a senior official told me in December. Of the twelve sub-courts across the Homs countryside, those in Palmyra and Qusayr remain non-functional due to physical damage while the courts in Talkalakh and Hassiyah are only partially functioning, having received only basic emergency repairs, according to the same official.

The massive task of (re)building the state forced the new authorities to adopt a pragmatic approach to employment. Most government employees today are the same people who were employed under the old regime. Even the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has retained non-Sunni administrative staff across several departments. Yet, every ministry still had to investigate and purge corrupt, regime-era employees or those who had criminal records, according to my discussions with officials from multiple ministries. Replacing these individuals with a qualified workforce has taken time. For the Ministry of Justice, it has been training a new batch of government judges and lawyers throughout the second half of 2025, with the first class slated to finish by early 2026.

Partial security reforms

These core state-building steps have begun to bear fruit in recent months. Governorate-level institutions have now expanded into the countrysides, and basic services like electricity have improved across both cities and the countryside (though to a lesser extent in the latter). Parallel to this, the new government had also undertaken the monumental task of creating new security and military forces. The MoI and Ministry of Defense (MoD) faced unique challenges and circumstances, each pursuing its own path and ultimately resulting in divergent outcomes. The MoI, responsible for civil policing and internal security, had to rapidly expand its forces while immediately dealing with the triple threat of ongoing Islamic State attacks, inter-communal and vigilante violence, and a growing ex-regime insurgency. The MoD, on the other hand, has had to merge dozens of armed factions with a long history of competition and violations against civilians into a single army.

Security reforms have been centered around internal accountability and coordination mechanisms. For example, Damascus formed the Military Police and Military Intelligence to monitor, investigate, and arrest security members implicated in crimes, and created additional command layers to strengthen command and control. Despite these structural improvements, Syrian opinions of the two security branches remain mixed. One year on, the MoI is generally viewed as responsive and professional, based on my months of fieldwork. Nearly every one of the activists and civilians that I have worked with over the past year have spoken about the improved professionalism and the positive engagement by most local MoI officials. Nonetheless, many remain unsure if this improvement is structural or simply, “a response to American pressure.”

Yet the army is widely distrusted due to its role in the March coastal massacres and July Sweida massacres. While its conduct has markedly improved during the fighting against the SDF in Aleppo and the northeast, many Syrians still distrust army units, especially compared to the MoI. Most army units have been pulled away from civilian areas, yet the presence of small bases on the outskirts of some rural areas remains a major complaint.

One man in southern Tartous governorate put concisely a feeling many have expressed to me in recent months: “Please just replace the army with general security checkpoints.”

Key goals in 2026

The first year of liberation saw the foundation laid for a new Syrian state. The two most important projects were the aforementioned security reforms and al-Sharaa’s tireless campaign to reconnect the country with the international community. Hundreds of diplomatic meetings in Damascus and international visits have succeeded in removing the final major sanctions against Syria and its leaders. Now, the country’s new government must prioritize three key domestic files: the economy, the constitution, and civil peace.

In September, I attended a meeting with al-Sharaa in which the president emphasized the importance of providing jobs and economic security to the entire country. Al-Sharaa has repeatedly linked economic development to social stability, something echoed by most Syrians I have met. Damascus is now largely unfettered in this pursuit as it enters its second year post-Assad, but it must begin to make tangible progress on the ground where most Syrians feel there has been little to no economic improvement.

The second most common complaint I’ve heard from Syrians is the lack of a new constitution or transitional justice for regime-era criminals. These two developments are directly linked and will likely be the two biggest milestones of 2026. Serious transitional justice steps have been delayed by the lack of a new constitution, as the current regime-era constitution lacks the necessary legal codes for trying regime officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Therefore, the first test will come when al-Sharaa appoints the remaining one-third of the People’s Assembly, whose first two-thirds were elected by committees across the country in August. The People’s Assembly will then be tasked with drafting a new constitution. The composition of the al-Sharaa-appointed third and the contents of this constitution will be closely judged and must reflect a commitment to equal rights under a civil state. Once ratified, this new constitution will allow for the full transitional justice process to unfold.

Despite the significant structural improvements that have been within government institutions over the past year, major fault lines remain within the society. These divisions are more nuanced than simple sectarian divides and are unique to each locality. For this reason, a local approach to national dialogue and inter-communal peace is required. The improvements that have been made within the MoI must be joined by improvements in local dialogues, particularly in coastal and central Syria, led by civil society and influential locals with the support of local security officials. These can take the forms of civil peace committees, civil councils, or civil and humanitarian work that brings together members of diverse communities.

Local security and political leaders will play a key role in addressing the grave security threats and civil strife prevalent across many regions. But their efforts are limited at times by ineffective or oppressive local officials, who can be damaging to trust building. This year should be one of local dialogue, both within communities and between them, with an expanded effort from the central government in Damascus as well as Syrian and international non-governmental organizations to work on social cohesion and civil peace. This requires consistent government engagement with local civil society as well as tangible changes on the ground regarding economic and security concerns.

The government would be remiss to view these solely as state-building files. Syria faces ongoing internal and external security threats exacerbating a fragmented society reeling from sixty years of Assad regime crimes. These three files are the foundations of Syria’s near future. Damascus should support the work of local and national activists, whether in civil peace initiatives or humanitarian outreach, to strengthen its approach to the constitutional drafting process and to local civil peace. Syria’s new government may feel confident in the real progress it has made in rebuilding the state after one year of liberation, but it cannot underestimate the difficulty it faces in gaining the trust of the country in year two.

Gregory Waters is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and writes about Syria’s security institutions and social dynamics.

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Unable to win on the battlefield, Putin escalates war on Ukrainian civilians

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:05:41 +0000

Russian strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure are nothing new, of course. On the contrary, such attacks have been a routine feature since the onset of the full-scale invasion nearly four years ago. However, the current bombing campaign is by far the most comprehensive of the war. In recent months, Russia’s attacks on civilian targets have expanded dramatically in scope as the Kremlin seeks to inflict maximum harm on Ukraine’s population by denying them access to heating, electricity, gas, and water during the coldest period of the winter season.

The impact has been devastating, particularly as most residential districts in Ukrainian cities continue to rely on Soviet-era central heating systems powered by huge plants that are almost impossible to defend. The Kremlin has ruthlessly exploited this weakness with repeated bombardments of the same facilities to disrupt repair efforts. While teams of Ukrainian engineers continue to work miracles, each successive attack makes their task more difficult.

Ukrainians have responded to plummeting temperatures and freezing apartments with a range of improvised solutions such as erecting tents indoors and heating bricks on gas stoves to generate some precious warmth. There has also been plenty of trademark Ukrainian wartime defiance on display, with local communities rallying in support of one another, posting lighthearted videos on social media, and holding street parties in the snow.

At the same time, many have expressed frustration over the continued media emphasis on Ukrainian resilience amid a mounting humanitarian crisis that has left much of the country in desperate need of help. “Resilience doesn’t mean immunity. Ukraine cannot withstand everything indefinitely,” wrote Ukrainian commentator Iryna Voichuk on January 16. “Framing this as only a story of strength risks dulling the urgency of what’s happening.”

Others have echoed this sentiment, including some of Ukraine’s most prominent international supporters. “Mythologizing endurance is a quiet form of abandonment. Resilience does not mean invulnerability,” cautioned R.T. Weatherman Foundation president Meaghan Mobbs in a recent post. “When we speak as if Ukrainians can simply ‘take it,’ we absolve ourselves of responsibility.”

With the present arctic weather conditions expected to continue well into February, the situation in Ukraine is critical. In the high-rise apartment blocks that dominate Ukraine’s cities, many less mobile residents have already been housebound for weeks and will likely remain trapped in frigid darkness throughout the coming month. The outlook is particularly grave for the elderly, those with young families, and people in need of medical care. In other words, Russia’s present bombing strategy appears to have been specifically tailored to target the most vulnerable members of Ukrainian society.

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As the potential for large-scale loss of life becomes increasingly apparent, international audiences are waking up to the true extent of Russia’s criminal intentions. Wall Street Journal chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov recently referred to Russia’s winter bombing campaign as “Putin’s genocidal effort to make Kyiv unlivable.” It is easy to see why such terms are now being employed. The 1948 UN Genocide Convention identifies “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” as one of five recognized acts of genocide. At the very least, Russia’s current actions closely resemble this definition.

The current winter bombing campaign reflects a broader trend of mounting Russian attacks against Ukraine’s civilian population. According to UN data, 2025 was the deadliest year of the war for Ukrainian civilians since 2022, with more than 2,500 people killed and over twelve thousand injured. This was 31 percent higher than the figure for the previous year and 70 percent more than in 2023. Many of these deaths were due to a spike in Russian missile and drone strikes on civilian targets including residential buildings, hospitals, and a children’s playground.

Russia also stands accused of conducting a systematic campaign of drone strikes targeting members of the public in the front line regions of southern Ukraine. These attacks have been dubbed a “human safari” by terrified locals. They involve the use of drones with video camera guidance systems to hunt individual victims, underlining the deliberate nature of the killings. An October 2025 United Nations investigation into this drone terror found that Russia was guilty of “systematically coordinated actions designed to drive Ukrainians out of their homes,” and concluded that the Kremlin’s actions in southern Ukraine qualified as the crimes against humanity of murder and of forcible transfer of civilians.

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Putin is dramatically escalating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population because he cannot win the war on the battlefield. When he first launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin was expecting a quick and complete victory. Instead, his army has become bogged down in a brutal war of attrition that will soon enter a fifth year.

Despite pouring vast resources into the invasion and placing his entire country on a war footing, the Kremlin dictator has been unable to secure a decisive breakthrough. Many in Moscow had hoped the return of Donald Trump to the White House would transform the military situation, but even a dramatic decline in US aid for Ukraine over the past year has failed to turn the tide in Russia’s favor. Putin’s army captured less than one percent of Ukrainian territory during 2025, while suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties. At the present glacial pace, it would take Russia decades and millions of men to fully subjugate Ukraine.

In his official statements, Putin continues to project confidence and boast of his invading army’s success. However, with so few genuine victories to toast, this has often meant inventing imaginary advances. Putin’s habit of exaggerating Russian gains came back to haunt him in late 2025 when he repeatedly claimed to have captured the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to personally visit the city and record a selfie video exposing the Russian ruler’s lies. This embarrassing episode underlined the growing credibility gap between Putin’s bold talk of inevitable Russian victory and the far more sobering battlefield reality of minimal Russian gains and disastrous losses.

With no obvious route to military victory, Putin is now openly embracing a strategy of terror tactics against Ukraine’s civilian population. He hopes that by weaponizing winter and putting millions of lives at risk, he can finally break Ukrainian resistance and force Kyiv to capitulate. Europe has not witnessed criminality on such a grand and terrible scale since the days of Hitler and Stalin.

So far, the international response to Russia’s winter bombing campaign has been utterly inadequate. While many of Kyiv’s partners have rushed to provide humanitarian aid, no additional costs whatsoever have been imposed on the Kremlin. Instead, it is Ukraine and not Russia that is reportedly being asked to make concessions. Unless this changes, the normalization of Russian war crimes will continue and Putin’s sense of impunity will become even more deeply entrenched. It will then only be a matter of time before other civilian populations experience the horrors currently taking place in Ukraine.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure have been a routine feature of the war ever since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, every single energy-generating facility in the country has been bombed. “There is not a single power plant in Ukraine that has not been hit by the enemy since the beginning of the war,” he commented last week. “Thousands of megawatts of generation capacity have been knocked out. Nobody else in the world has ever faced a challenge like this.”

Russia’s current aerial offensive began to escalate noticeably during the final months of 2025 ahead of the cold season. As temperatures plummeted in early January, there was a further intensification of attacks on Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure, with large numbers of drones and missiles concentrated on specific cities to overwhelm air defenses. The timing of Russia’s bombing campaign leaves no room for reasonable doubt; this was a premeditated attempt to target the Ukrainian population by weaponizing the winter weather.

The Kremlin’s goal is easy enough to decipher. By making Ukrainian cities unlivable and threatening to freeze millions of civilians, Moscow aims to break Ukraine’s resistance and force the Kyiv authorities to accept peace on Russian terms. In other words, the present bombing offensive is Putin’s response to US President Donald Trump’s peace efforts. Rather than agree to a ceasefire or offer concessions, Putin uses terror as a negotiating tool to secure Ukraine’s surrender.

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The targeting of Ukrainian civilians is not limited to attacks on critical infrastructure. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, 2025 was the deadliest year of the invasion for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. In a report released in early January, United Nations officials confirmed that more than 2500 Ukrainian civilians were killed in 2025. This was 31 percent higher than the figure for the previous year and 70 percent more than in 2023. A separate assessment by European governments reached similar conclusions and found that the scale of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians increased whenever the Trump administration attempted to advance peace negotiations.

The rising civilian death toll in Ukraine is largely due to increased Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities. Moscow’s mounting air offensive owed much to a spike in domestic drone production, which has made it possible to launch hundreds of drones at Ukraine in a single night. Russia has also been accused of conducting a large-scale campaign of individual drone strikes against civilians in southern Ukraine that terrified locals have branded a “human safari.” UN investigators reported in October 2025 that Russia’s targeted drone strikes on civilians were a crime against humanity.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians have increased amid mounting frustration in Moscow over the slow pace of the invasion. Despite holding the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, Putin’s army failed to achieve any significant breakthroughs and gained less than one percent of Ukrainian territory while suffering heavy losses. With little immediate prospect of military success, Putin seems to have decided that his best chance of victory lies in terrorizing the civilian population.

So far, Russia’s terror tactics do not appear to be working. A nationwide poll conducted in mid-January by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that a majority of Ukrainians continue to reject the Kremlin’s territorial demands in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Ukrainians do not believe the present round of US-led negotiations will result in a lasting peace. Instead, most Ukrainians remain convinced that Russia aims to continue the war.

Today’s arctic conditions will eventually give way to milder weather, but the damage done to Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in recent weeks will take months to repair. Nor is there any reason to believe that Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians will abate. On the contrary, the Kremlin is likely to escalate further in a bid to demoralize, destabilize, and depopulate the country. By seeking to freeze millions of Ukrainians, Putin has underlined his readiness to target civilians as he seeks to impose an imperialistic vision of peace through submission.

Yuliya Kazdobina is a senior fellow at the “Ukrainian Prism” nongovernmental analytical center.

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Ukraine’s enhanced fortifications are increasing the cost of Putin’s invasion

David Kirichenko — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:01:39 +0000

Russian forces continued to gradually advance in Ukraine during 2025, but suffered huge losses in exchange for minimal gains. This unfavorable ratio reflects the increasing effectiveness of Ukraine’s defensive lines, which now feature a combination of layered fortifications backed by deadly drone coverage. Together, these elements have turned much of the front line into a controlled kill zone that makes large-scale offensive operations extremely challenging while dramatically raising the cost of each new assault.

As Ukraine focuses on preventing further Russian advances and solidifying the front lines of the war, Kyiv has invested consideration resources in a major upgrade of the country’s defenses. This has resulted in what Britain’s The Economist recently described as a “massive fortification system” up to two hundred meters in depth covering much of the Ukrainian battlefield. “Ukraine now has the fortress belt it wishes it had in 2022,” the publication reported in early January.

Physical obstacles play an important role in this approach. Anti-tank ditches, razor wire, and concrete obstacles are layered to slow Russian advances. Defensive lines are often spaced within mortar range of one another, allowing Ukrainian units to trade space for time and counterattack against exposed enemy assault groups before they have had an opportunity to consolidate. The emphasis is on attrition and disruption rather than rigid territorial defense.

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Ukraine’s defensive strategy goes far beyond a reliance on traditional static barriers. Over the past year, there has also been a growing emphasis on dispersed, concealed, and flexible defensive networks. These small-scale fortified positions are often located underground or embedded in tree lines at strategic locations, and are supported by remote fires and decoys. Each individual node in these networks is designed to shape enemy movement rather than stop it outright, channeling attackers into deliberately prepared kill pockets without exposing defenders. By creating choke points for Russian troops, Ukraine aims to maximize Kremlin casualties and capitalize on its in-built advantages as the defending party in a war of attrition.

There are growing signs that this approach is working. Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi commented recently that the current strategy has proved particularly effective on the Pokrovsk front, which has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting of the entire war over the past year. According to Syrskyi, “timely and high-quality fortifications and engineering obstacles” enabled Ukrainian forces to inflict maximum losses on Russian units close to Pokrovsk and disrupt their plans, even when facing numerical superiority.

Where Ukrainian defenses have failed, the reasons are instructive. In areas such as Toretsk and parts of the Kharkiv front, troop rotations occurred without sufficient time or equipment to construct proper fortifications, leading to Russian gains. Constant Russian drone surveillance made the use of heavy engineering machinery dangerous, leaving units unprepared when assaults followed. These cases serve as confirmation that fortifications are not optional enhancements but foundational to battlefield survival under drone saturated conditions.

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Drones are at the heart of Ukraine’s defensive strategy, serving as a ubiquitous presence over kill zones and preventing localized Russian advances from consolidating into more substantial breakthroughs. Meanwhile, in some sectors of the front such as Pokrovsk, ground robotic systems are now being used to deliver the vast majority of supplies to troops. With this in mind, Ukrainian commanders argue that all future defensive lines should be optimized for both aerial and ground drones.

These technological advances do not eliminate the need for manpower. Even the most sophisticated fortifications require soldiers to react to emerging threats. When Russian units manage to infiltrate defensive lines or push into urban areas, infantry forces remain essential in order to clear and secure ground. While Ukraine’s improved fortifications are an encouraging development for the war-weary nation, no physical barrier can realistically stop Russia unless it is supported by sufficient quantities of well-trained troops.

Strengthening Ukraine’s fortifications and addressing manpower shortages will be among the top priorities for incoming Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took up his post this week. Fedorov made his name in government as Minister of Digital Transformation. Since 2022, he has been one of the driving forces behind Ukraine’s rapidly expanding drone warfare capabilities.

Fedorov’s extensive defense tech background, along with his reputation as a modernizer who has countered institutional corruption through the digitalization of state services, has led to considerable optimism over his appointment. He is now faced with the twin challenges of improving Ukraine’s front line defenses while addressing the mobilization and desertion problems hindering the Ukrainian war effort. If he is able to make progress on these two fronts, Ukraine’s prospects for 2026 and beyond will begin to look a lot better.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

Veterans can shape the future of Ukrainian democracy

Vasyl Sehin — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:04:12 +0000

The participation of veterans in public and political life has the potential to transform Ukrainian democracy. If managed inclusively and responsibly, it can strengthen legitimacy and trust. However, this trend could also carry real risks if veterans are used by traditional political actors or inadequately prepared for their role in public life.

Ukrainian legislation does not allow for elections under the current martial law conditions. Beyond legal constraints, the practical obstacles to wartime elections are also overwhelming. Fair campaigning conditions and safety during voting cannot be guaranteed. Meanwhile, over ten million Ukrainians have been displaced by Russia’s invasion, with millions more currently serving in the military or trapped in Russian-occupied regions.

The impracticality of elections is broadly accepted by Ukrainian society and among the country’s European partners. They recognise that any premature vote would risk undermining the legitimacy of Ukraine’s institutions and eroding public trust at a moment when democratic resilience is essential. Tellingly, the idea of wartime elections is mainly promoted by Russia as part of Kremlin efforts to weaken Ukraine from within.

When conditions allow for free and fair Ukrainian elections to take place, a key issue will be the inclusion of those who are currently defending the country. According to a preliminary forecast by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, after the war ends, the number of war veterans and their family members will reach five to six million people, or one in six Ukrainians.

Opinion polls indicate strong public trust in the Ukrainian military along with widespread support for the participation of veterans in Ukrainian politics. In contrast, Ukraine’s existing democratic and political institutions are among the least trusted entities in society. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that veteran involvement in politics could help counter this trust deficit and strengthen Ukrainian democracy.

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It is important to note that most Ukrainian veterans are not career military personnel. The vast majority of today’s Ukrainian soldiers joined the military voluntarily or were mobilized and expect to return to civilian life in peacetime. Veterans are also not a homogeneous group and do not represent a specific political agenda. They differ in views, values, and priorities, and should be understood as individuals seeking meaningful participation within legitimate democratic institutions.

Electing military personnel to public office is not without risk. Military experience does not automatically translate into political skill. Veterans transitioning from the battlefield to politics may face challenges in terms of essential political know-how such as policy coherence, negotiation tactics, coalition-building, and working within institutions. Without targeted support and a clear civilian framework, veterans risk being marginalized within political parties or exploited as symbolic figures without real influence.

Ukraine has previous practical experience of veterans entering politics, notably during the country’s 2014 parliamentary elections. One of the former military personnel elected on that occasion was Oksana Korchynska, who recalled at a recent Kyiv event how she “came from the front line, from Mariupol, two days before taking the oath of MP.”

Korchynska noted that in 2014, veterans were frequently included on electoral lists without being integrated into decision-making structures. While veterans enjoyed high public trust, their actual influence within parties and parliament has so far often been limited. This experience underscores a critical lesson: Political inclusion must be substantive, not symbolic. Veterans need pathways to real influence within parties and institutions, not mere visibility.

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Members of Ukraine’s veteran community do not need to wait for elections to take up a role in public life. Many are already serving in local government or building civic organizations and veteran associations. Kateryna Yamshchykova is a veteran who became acting mayor of Poltava in 2023. “Opportunities already exist for everyone,” she reflected. “Did I really want the position of acting mayor? It was the last thing I wanted in my life, but I understood that this responsibility had to be taken on in order to build the country we are fighting for.”

This kind of local engagement can help veterans develop the skills they need to run as candidates in national elections after the war ends. Democratic participation, civic habits, and political responsibility cannot be developed overnight. Instead, early engagement can help bring about a stable postwar transition.

For established Ukrainian political parties, engagement with the country’s veteran community is already becoming increasingly necessary to maintain public support. This will likely lead to intensified internal competition as veterans seek leadership roles alongside longstanding party members.

Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and former commander of the Ukrainian army, has warned that established political elites might see veterans as a threat to their position. If this happens, everyone in Ukraine stands to lose. Public trust in politicians would erode further, undermining the legitimacy of decisions that will be essential for European integration and postwar recovery.

A critical step toward the meaningful political participation of veterans is the development of a clear legal framework for Ukraine’s first postwar elections. This should ensure inclusive participation, clarify registration requirements for new political parties, and potentially impose stricter campaigning rules to protect electoral integrity.

Ukraine’s democracy is not on pause; it is being reshaped under fire. The emergence of veterans as political actors represents a profound structural change in Ukrainian society. In and of itself, this change is neither a threat to democracy nor a guarantee of positive change. Instead, it requires a deliberate and inclusive approach. If Ukraine succeeds in integrating veterans into civilian political life while preserving pluralism, accountability, and fair competition, it may emerge from the war with a more resilient democracy capable of sustaining inclusive recovery, reforms, and European integration.

Vasyl Sehin is the WFD Country Director in Ukraine.

Voices from Iran: As rejection of government reaches all-time high, Iranians also wary of foreign intervention

Tara Kangarlou — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 20:01:43 +0000

Unlike any other time in modern history, a US president is encouraging protestors in a foreign country to “take over the institutions” in Iran, saying that “help is on its way”—potentially with the backing and support of Israel—while offering no clear policy toward either the fate of the country’s theocratic dictatorship or that of its ninety million people.

As of January 13, the Human Rights News Agency, a US-based human rights group, estimated that the death toll has climbed above two thousand since the start of the protests on December 28 last year. This is while the Iranian government, as it has done previously, enacted a complete internet blackout, where the entire nation continues to remain under the world’s largest digital prison.

“I saw snipers in our neighborhood—in all these years I’ve never seen such scenes,” said Sahar, a doctoral student in the Saadat Abad neighborhood in Tehran, in a brief phone conversation via Starlink satellite connection.

Her voice was more distraught than in our previous conversations earlier in the week. She also explained how, since Saturday, fewer people have been going on the streets. “At first, there were families, old, young, but now everyone’s terrified, given the bloodbath.”

So far, Tehran’s crackdown on the demonstrations appears to have turned into a bloodbath, in which the only victims appear to be ordinary Iranian people—those who for long have been paying the price of the brutality of the Islamic regime, topped with the global isolation resulting from decades of sanctions and pressure imposed by the United States and its allies.

Against this backdrop, US President Donald Trump may have a real opportunity to be an effective dealmaker with Iran. However, if he is serious about a durable, win-win outcome for both the United States and Iranians, there is only one asset worth betting on: the Iranian people.

Today, Iranian society is more unified against the Islamic Republic than at any point since 1979. Nearly three weeks into the latest nationwide protests, this time ignited not by a single spark but by the country’s wider economic freefall, Iranians have taken to the streets in extraordinary numbers.

Speaking shortly before the regime’s blackout began, Sepideh, an Iranian journalist who has been arrested multiple times and isn’t using her last name for security concerns, explained how she believes Iran is at one of the “most dangerous junctures” in its modern history.

“There is zero possibility of reform within this regime,” she told me. “But history also shows that the [United States], the UK, and Israel don’t prioritize the Iranian people either—only their own interests. This is what makes me afraid of what’s coming.”

Asked about Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch, she says with a deep sigh that “he has some supporters because there is no strong domestic opposition, as those voices have been crushed domestically over the years. But I struggle to believe in someone backed by foreign powers, tied to monarchy, and unable to form a coalition.”

Some others express a more fatalistic openness, including Sahar, who—prior to the internet blackout—told me how many Iranians “believe anything after this regime will be better. We want a complete separation of religion and state. This deck of cards needs to be reshuffled.”

These voices capture the nuances within the Iranian society today—united in its rejection of the Islamic Republic, deeply wary of foreign agendas, and desperate to reclaim agency over their own future.

For the United States, meaningful support for the Iranian people requires resisting the impulse to frame their uprising through the language of takeover or intervention, and instead prioritizing concrete protections for civilians in light of the brutal repression inside Iran. This means keeping Iran connected to the world, shielding protesters and journalists from digital isolation, and ensuring that accountability efforts target perpetrators of violence rather than a population already trapped between domestic repression and coercion from abroad.

Furthermore, it means treating internet access as humanitarian aid—funding circumvention support, satellite connectivity where feasible, and protection for independent journalists. This can help to ensure that the regime cannot repeatedly convert blackouts into a weapon of mass impunity.

An open, empowered Iranian civil society would not be a liability to US interests; it would be one of Washington’s greatest assets.

If the goal is to empower Iranians rather than freeze them into permanent victimhood, economic engagement must run alongside pressure on the state. This does not mean enriching the regime or reopening a flood-gate of funds to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-backed entities. Rather, it means expanding lawful, carefully assessed, people-to-people commerce that bypasses state hijacking and manipulation.

This includes enabling small and medium-sized Iranian businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to access global markets; lifting travel bans for Iranian students, artists, medics, scientists and civil society members while banning entry to government-affiliated individuals; widening licenses that allow US and European firms to provide cloud services, payment rails, logistics support, and professional tools directly to Iranian users; and supporting diaspora-led investment vehicles that fund Iranian startups, cooperatives, and cultural industries without routing capital through regime-controlled entities. Such engagement gives Iranians income, skills, and stake—converting isolation into leverage and dignity rather than dependency.

Despite decades of sanctions, Iran has cultivated one of the most educated populations in the region and a resilient tech ecosystem that mirrors Silicon Valley’s platforms under far harsher conditions. Iranian youth have built local equivalents of Amazon, Uber, YouTube, and DoorDash with little capital and almost no global access. With the right engagement, Iran could generate trillions in long-term value—benefiting not only Iranians but also US businesses and consumers. A reintegrated Iran, charged by its people, would open a new frontier in trade, education, technology, and culture.

Meanwhile, none of this negates Iran’s military capacity. After more than four decades of isolation, Iran recently went head-to-head with the world’s most powerful militaries. Even Israeli defense analysts were surprised by some of its capabilities—proof that such sophistication does not emerge from a broken society. Beneath the Islamic regime’s aggression lies decades of scientific and technological investment made by the Iranian people themselves, who—if empowered and allowed self-determination—could become Washington’s strongest allies in the region.

Trump’s rhetoric amplifies the contradictions Iranians already live with. His warnings to Tehran and expressions of solidarity have landed with equal parts validation and fear. For some protesters, his words signal that their struggle is finally seen as entwined with an uncertainty of what’s to come. For others, Washington’s bombast risks giving the regime a pretext to paint the Iranian people’s unified dissent as foreign-engineered. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s accusations that protesters act “to please Trump” reveal just how threatening even rhetorical pressure can be to a regime terrified of losing control—one that’s now at its weakest point than ever before.

Iranians understand the stakes. They have watched Russia and China extract economic leverage from their isolation, and they fear becoming yet another bargaining chip. As Behzad, an Iranian journalist who is going by his first name for security purposes, told me, “everyone wants a piece of Iran. Sometimes I wish we lived in a poorer, smaller country; so at least we could live freely—far from domestic corruption and foreign interference.”

Still, across class, gender, and belief, Iranians remain united in one demand: the dismantling of the current regime. They do not ask the United States for bombs or saviors. They ask for surgical, effective, and thought-through support that enables them to reclaim their own agency in the absence of the current regime.

If Trump is serious about peace, stability, and a lasting legacy, the path forward does not run through air strikes or transactional deals with a failing theocracy. It runs through the Iranian people who, if given the chance, could build one of the world’s most dynamic democracies and one of Washington’s most valuable partners.

Tara Kangarlou is an award-winning global affairs journalist, author, and humanitarian who has worked with news outlets such as NBC, CNN, CNN International, and Al Jazeera America. She is also the author of the bestselling book The Heartbeat of Iran, the founder of nonprofit Art of Hope, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, teaching on humanized storytelling and journalism.

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Transatlantic cooperation on protecting minors online

Michèle Ledger — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Bottom lines up front

While US and EU policies differ in their approaches to the regulation of the internet, recent policy roundtables made clear that there is agreement on the need to protect children online.
Areas of commonality include the use of primary legislation, an emphasis on platform design rather than censoring content, and the need to balance protection of children with other fundamental rights.
Further dialogue between the United States and the EU on these questions could help facilitate faster and more efficient rollout of services and technologies to protect users.

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Executive summary

While US and European Union (EU) policies differ in their approaches to online safety and the regulation of the internet, there is agreement about the need to protect children online. That is one high-level takeaway from a recent round of US-EU dialogue hosted by the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) and the Atlantic Council.

Such dialogue helps to identify common policy approaches for the protection of minors and common approaches to enforcing rules. Ultimately, it can also help facilitate faster and more efficient rollout of technologies to protect users. Dialogue will also help global platforms develop services to comply with rules and expectations on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the recent roundtable hosted by CERRE and the Atlantic Council, the synergies and differences in regulatory approaches and philosophies on both sides of the Atlantic centred on four themes. For each theme, some common threads seemed ripe for further discussion and cooperation.

New legislation and approaches to enforcement: In terms of the overall governance landscape, legislation has a key role to play in Europe and in the United States, where long-standing federal rules have been supported by an increasing number of state laws.The bulk of legislation in the EU—such as the Digital Services Act (DSA)—is adopted at the EU level, while some member states are adopting supplementary rules. In the United States, most legislation is now being adopted at the state level. Public enforcement by regulators plays a big role in the EU and the United Kingdom (UK). In the United States, state attorneys general are taking action to enforce rules, with powers similar to those of regulators in Europe. More alignment and cooperation on enforcement would be beneficial. Private enforcement through courts is also possible but, while this is already widespread in the United States, it is just emerging in Europe.
The harms from which children should be protected: On both sides of the Atlantic, there is a large degree of alignment on the harms from which children need to be protected. A strong commonality is that rules in Europe and the US both require compliance by design to avoid particularly harmful conduct, such as unwanted contact by unknown adults. Other common design elements include data minimization, which is a central component of the European Commission’s guidelines on protecting minors under Article 28 of the DSA and in the UK Office of Communication’s (Ofcom) age-appropriate design code and guidance under the Online Safety Act (OSA).
Balancing rights: To balance the protection of fundamental rights (in particular, privacy and freedom of expression) against the need to protect children, there is widespread agreement that everyone—not just children—deserves protections online. The EU, UK, and United States are all cautious about dictating which content is acceptable online and are instead converging on approaches that require platforms to use processes and systems to ensure safety by design. Ensuring the protection of fundamental rights is a common concern and, ultimately, a matter of balance, including at the enforcement level.
Age verification: Current debates about banning access to social media and about age verification are critical in Europe and in the United States, both in general and in relation to certain types of platforms (particularly those that host pornographic content). There is no agreement on a single type of technology that should be used, but there are prototypes and guidance on the high-level principles that the technologies should reflect. There are similar discussions on both sides of the Atlantic about how to attribute responsibility for age assurance across the supply chain—i.e., where in the supply chain age verification should take place—and how the division of responsibilities between players in supply chains could work in practice.

Introduction

The EU has put in place important legal building blocks to protect children online. These include the DSA and the European Commission’s guidelines on Article 28 of the DSA, which require providers of platforms accessible to minors to “put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors.”¹ They also include the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), which contains rules to safeguard minors’ personal data and to protect children online, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which provides rules on collection and processing of minors’ data. Other proposals yet to be finalized include the pending Digital Fairness Act (DFA) proposal and the Regulation on Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).² Member states retain certain powers to enact national laws to protect minors online.³

In the United States, the protection of minors online is an important consideration at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) proposal, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the COPPA 2.0 proposal all seek to address certain aspects of children’s safety online (in particular, privacy, advertising, and CSAM).⁴ At the state level, California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (CAADCA) has been challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.⁵ Other states, including Nebraska and Vermont, have recently adopted similar codes that they hope will withstand First Amendment scrutiny.⁶ Utah has also recently enacted a law to protect content-creating minors from financial exploitation and privacy violations.⁷

News headlines focus on apparent differences between US and European policies, which are spiraling into growing transatlantic tension. However, there is a large degree of alignment on the need to protect children online while also safeguarding fundamental rights such as privacy and freedom of expression.

The overall governance landscape

The European and US approaches are fairly aligned on some governance aspects of regulating child protection online. Since the adoption of its rules for video sharing platforms in 2018, the EU has embraced a legislative path to protect minors online.⁸ This legislative framework was strengthened in 2022 with the adoption of the DSA. Both the video sharing platform rules and the DSA are largely principle based and rely on a form of collaboration with the industry,placing the onus on the platforms themselves to decide what constitutes an appropriate and proportionate level of protection for minors. The UK has also adopted a legislative path with the OSA and the detailed guidance produced by Ofcom.⁹ Like the DSA, the OSA adopts a risk-based approach, with the larger and riskier platforms subject to stricter measures. The UK regulator, Ofcom, has supplemented the legislation with detailed guidance.

The European Commission recently adopted guidelines to help online platforms understand and comply with their obligations under Article 28 of the DSA, including setting out a list of recommendations for platforms, but these are nonbinding. Safety by design is at the heart of the guidelines. The EU’s legislative approach focuses on ensuring platforms put in place systems and processes, while steering away from regulating the type of content that should be outlawed.

So far, the EU’s legislative framework has not led to a full harmonization of approaches to protect minors, and some member states have adopted more restrictive approaches. For example, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy have adopted supplementary legislation to protect minors from harmful content such as online pornography.¹⁰

In the United States, the federal government has adopted legislation such as the COPPA to tackle some problematic areas such as the need to protect minors’ personal data.¹¹ Despite heightened partisanship in Congress, leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Parties have expressed interest in supporting additional bipartisan legislation to protect children online.¹² Although there is less appetite for federal legislation with binding obligations on platforms in terms of platform liability, there is appetite at the state level to embrace the legislative path, and safety by design is the cornerstone of many of these initiatives.¹³ That being said, the Kids Online Safety Act (a federal initiative) received the support of sixty co-sponsors at the federal level, which shows that this is an area with some bipartisan support. The EU and the United States are also converging on some important aspects: more obligations are placed on larger platforms; there is an emphasis on protection and safety by design; and there is no “one size fits all” solution.

There is broad consensus among experts that, irrespective of geopolitical tensions, there has never been so much space for alignment at the policy level between different jurisdictions—and between Europe and the United States in particular. This is partly because Europe (with the DSA at the EU level and the OSA in the UK) takes a systemic risk approach and does not focus on moderating individual pieces of content. That places responsibility on the platforms to have processes and systems in place to design safe spaces at the outset.

There are also similarities in public and private enforcement of norms. In the EU and the UK, regulators play an important role in making sure that industry complies with the DSA, the AVMSD, and the OSA. In the United States, even if new federal laws are adopted, the creation of a dedicated federal regulator to publicly enforce the legislation is unlikely, though existing agencies such as the US Federal Trade Commission already have a remit over some of these issues. At the state level, attorneys general are empowered to enforce COPPA via civil actions despite it being a federal law. State attorneys general have many enforcement tools at their disposal, including the power to undertake industry-wide investigations. These are broadly in line with the enforcement powers of national competent authorities and the European Commission under the DSA (and Ofcom under the OSA). On both sides of the Atlantic, private enforcement through courts is also set to play an important role, though, to date, it has been more common in the United States than in either the EU or UK.

Harms against which children should be protected

In the EU, the harms against which children should be protected are potentially very wide and are not specifically defined in the DSA, which refers only to protecting minors’ “privacy, safety and security.”¹⁴ Furthermore, member states are free to set their own rules provided they are in the line with EU legislation.

Some harms are outlawed at the EU level, such as the sharing of child sexual abuse material, dark patterns (i.e., deceptive techniques used by online platforms to manipulate users’ behavior), the processing of minors’ personal data without the consent of parents, and the sending of targeted advertising to children based on profiling.¹⁵ US policy initiatives at the state and federal levels also identify these harms as targets for regulation. The dissemination of child sexual abuse material, for example, is already a criminal offense.

A strong focus of legislation to protect minors on both sides of the Atlantic is to make sure that children cannot be contacted on platforms by unknown adults. At the state level (Vermont in particular) lawmakers frame these as safety bills to avoid framing them as content regulation, which could bring challenges on First Amendment grounds. These design architecture elements, such as default settings that prevent children being findable, are also central in the European Commission’s guidelines on Article 28 of the DSA in the UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s age-appropriate design code and in Ofcom guidance under the OSA.¹⁶

Data minimization (meaning only a minimum amount of data can be gathered and processed) is seen as critical to mitigating harms in general, because there is a strong correlation between collecting vast amounts of data about children’s behavior online and using the data to target minors with harmful content. Also, data minimization could lead to stronger protection for all users. While enforcing data minimization principles is a challenge, it can be done. In the UK, for example, Ofcom is required to work closely with the data protection authority. Operational coherence and cooperation between regulators are crucial in this area.

Balancing fundamental rights

The debate about balancing the need to protect children against the protection of certain fundamental rights (especially privacy, freedom of expression, and the rights of the child) is critical in the United States and in Europe. Initiatives in Europe and the United States tend to focus on tools and processes to protect minors, but steer away from regulating content on the platforms. Despite this, there is mounting debate regarding whether laws are creating a form of censorship or unlawfully constraining free speech, limiting users’ choices, or infringing on the rights of children. The question is wider than the need to protect children online, in the sense that some content can be inherently dangerous for some individuals whereas that same content might not be harmful for another person (minor or adult). This need to protect users from harmful (but legal) content is the most difficult to reconcile with the need to protect freedom of speech and the need for data minimization.

In the United States, the question is being argued in court. Some federal courts have ruled that laws requiring age verification are unconstitutional because they undermine the US Constitution’s First Amendment and threaten privacy rights.¹⁷ Age verification laws are being challenged by NetChoice (a coalition of tech companies) and by free speech coalitions. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the age verification law in Texas does not violate the First Amendment because it only requires proof of age to access content that is obscene to minors; it does not directly regulate adults’ speech.¹⁸ In both the EU and the United States, a considerable amount of policy work and research is being conducted on how to balance safety and privacy, especially in the context of age assurance requirements.¹⁹

At the EU level, the debate about balancing rights was not prominent while the DSA and the AVMSD were being adopted, probably because the rules were principles based and did not mention bans or age verification per se. Furthermore, the DSA contains safeguards to protect fundamental rights, such as giving users’ the right to challenge content moderation decisions (such as removals of posts, demotions of content, and account suspensions). The central article on the protection of minors in the DSA (Article 28) assumes that there cannot be safety for minors unless other rights, such as privacy, are protected as well.

Now that the DSA is being enforced, the protection of minors has become an enforcement priority for the European Commission, and some member states are calling for bans on children accessing social media platforms, some political parties are questioning the legislation and the push for age verification solutions on free speech grounds. This debate is particularly intense in the context of the regulation on the fight against CSAM, which the European Parliament and the Council of the EU are amending in an attempt to reduce the impacts of CSAM detection mechanisms on privacy, particularly in the context of end-to-end encryption.

The ultimate goal should be to protect everyone online, not just minors. This would avoid the need to put in place age assurance and age verification.

The debates on getting the balance right on the need to protect minors online and the need to protect some fundamental rights are crystallizing on age verification and on proposals for an outright ban on access to social media for children.

To date, there is no outright ban at the EU level on children accessing social media. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had pledged to examine the questionwith the help of a panel of experts originally scheduled to be set up before the end of 2025.²⁰ Some member states are also discussing the option of a social media ban for children.²¹ There is a strong call in the commission’s recently adopted guidelines under the DSA for certain platforms (such as adult content platforms) to prevent children from accessing them. Also, the Danish presidency of the EU and ministers from twenty-five member states recently adopted the Jutland Declaration, which welcomed “assessments” of a digital majority age.²² This assessment could help to determine the age at which minors should be allowed access to social media and other digital services—“giving them more time to enjoy life without an invasive online presence.”²³ This question is also high on the agenda in the United States, with some states requiring social media to ban minors from accessing them (or requiring parental consent for a minor to have an account).²⁴

On age verification, there is no mandatory technology at the EU level, but the EU guidelines on the protection of minors adopted under the DSA set out principles that age verification technology used by online platforms should meet.²⁵ In particular, the systems should be based on the “double anonymity” principle. According to this principle, the platform knows the age of users without identifying them, whereas an external site—which carries out the age verification by issuing a token—does not know which site the user will visit. The EU is also about to launch an EU mini-wallet as a temporary solution, pending the adoption of national solutions.²⁶ Some member states have also set requirements on age verification that are enforced by national regulators.

In the UK, the OSA has just entered into force, and the biggest and most popular adult platforms such as Pornhub must now deploy age checks for users based in the UK. Other platforms—including Bluesky, Discord, Reddit, and X—have also announced that they will deploy age assurance in the UK as a result of the act. This has led to a surge in virtual private network (VPN) downloads, which shows the importance of global alignment where possible.

In the United States, as noted above, state legislation imposing age verification is subject to frequent court challenges.²⁷ As in Europe, there is little agreement among the states on the methods and tools to use when verifying the age of online users. Also, like in Europe, states seem to recognize that age assurance alone is not the solution.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the debates are similar in practice, including debates regarding how to attribute responsibility for age assurance across the supply chain (i.e., at what level age verification should take place, whether at the app store layer or by individual applications or websites). Questions about where verification happens raise additional questions about the extent to which other players in the chain can rely on this, or whether relying on a single point of verification could undermine safety by discouraging applications and websites from making their own assessments.

About the author

Michèle Ledger is a researcher at the Research Centre in Information, Law and Society (CRIDS) of the University of Namur where she also lectures on the regulatory aspects of online platforms at the postmaster degree course. She has been working for more than twenty years at Cullen International and leads the company’s Media regulatory intelligence service.

This issue brief benefits from the insights of discussants at an online roundtable on EU-US regulatory co-operation hosted jointly by CERRE and the Atlantic Council. However, the contents of this brief are attributable only to the author.

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1 “Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services and Amending Directive 2000/31/EC,” European Union, October 19, 2022, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/oj; “Communication from the Commission—Guidelines on Measures to Ensure a High Level of Privacy, Safety and Security for Minors Online, Pursuant to Article 28(4) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065,” European Union, 2025, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:C_202505519.

2 “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council Laying Down Rules to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse,” European Union, May 11, 2022, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:52022PC0209; “Digital Fairness Act,” European Commission, last visited December 22, 2025, https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act_en.

3 Miriam Buiten, Michèle Ledger, and Christoph Busch, “DSA Implementation Forum: Protection of Minors,” Centre on Regulation in Europe, March 25, 2025, https://cerre.eu/publications/dsa-implementation-forum-protection-of-minors/.

4 A new version of the KOSA has been introduced in Congress with changes in an attempt to clarify that KOSA does not censor, limit, or remove content from the internet. “Blumenthal, Blackburn, Thune & Schumer Introduce the Kids Online Safety Act,” Office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, press release, May 14, 2025, https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-blackburn-thune-and-schumer-introduce-the-kids-online-safety-act; “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule,” Federal Trade Commission, April 22, 2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/22/2025-05904/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule; “S.1418—Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act,” US Congress, July 27, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1418/text.

5 “AB-2273: The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act,” California Legislative Information, November 18, 2022, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2273&showamends=false; “NetChoice v. Rob Bonta, Attorney General of the State of California, D.C. No. 5:22-cv-08861- BLF,” US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, August 16, 2024, https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/08/16/23-2969.pdf.

6 For a comparison between both initiatives see: Bailey Sanchez, “Vermont and Nebraska: Diverging Experiments in State Age-Appropriate Design Codes,” Future of Privacy Forum, June 4, 2025, https://fpf.org/blog/vermont-and-nebraska-diverging-experiments-in-state-age-appropriate-design-codes.

7 “Child Actor Regulation,” State of Utah, 2025, https://le.utah.gov/Session/2025/bills/enrolled/HB0322.pdf.

8 “Directive (EU) 2018/1808 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 November 2018 Amending Directive 2010/13/EU on the Coordination of Certain Provisions Laid Down by Law, Regulation or Administrative Action in Member States Concerning the Provision of Audiovisual Media Services (Audiovisual Media Services Directive) in View of Changing Market Realities,” Article 28b, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2018/1808/oj/eng.

9 “Online Safety Regulatory Documents and Guidance,” Ofcom, last updated December 15, 2025, https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/online-safety-regulatory-documents.

10 Michèle Ledger, “Protection of Minors: Age Assurance,” Centre on Regulation in Europe, March 2025, https://cerre.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/CERRE-DSA-Forum-Age-Assurance.pdf.

11 “Part 312—Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA Rule),” Code of Federal Regulations, last updated April 22, 2025, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-312.

12 “Chairmen Guthrie and Bilirakis Announce Legislative Hearing on Protecting Children and Teens Online,” Office of Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, press release, November 25, 2025, https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/chairmen-guthrie-and-bilirakis-announce-legislative-hearing-on-protections-for-children-and-teens-online.

13 “Public Interest Privacy Center Releases Updated State Law Maps,” Public Interest Privacy Center, press release, May 29, 2025, https://publicinterestprivacy.org/state-law-maps.

14 “Article 71 Commitments—the Digital Services Act,” European Union, last visited January 3, 2025, https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/Digital_Services_Act_Article_71.html.

15 The European Commission defines dark patterns as unfair commercial practices deployed through the structure, design, or functionalities of digital interfaces or system architecture that can influence consumers to take decisions they would not have taken otherwise. “Questions and Answers on the Digital Fairness Fitness Check,” European Commission, October 2, 2024, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fi/qanda_24_4909.

16 “Age Appropriate Design: A Code of Practice for Online Services,” Information Commissioner’s Office, last visited December 22, 2025, https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/childrens-code-guidance-and-resources/age-appropriate-design-a-code-of-practice-for-online-services/.

17 Ibid.

18 Texas Legislature, Relating to the publication or distribution of sexual material harmful to minors on an Internet website; providing a civil penalty, HB 1181, Passed June 12, 2023, https://capitol.texas.gov/billlookup/History.aspx?LegSess=88R&Bill=HB1181; “Free Speech Coalition, Inc., et al. v. Paxton, Attorney General of Texas,” US Supreme Court, June 17, 2025, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1122_3e04.pdf.

19 Stephen Balkam and Andrew Zack, “Balancing Safety and Privacy: A Proportionate Age Assurance Approach,” Family Online Safety Institute, October 10, 2025, https://fosi.org/policy/balancing-safety-and-privacy-a-proportionate-age-assurance-approach/.

20 “2025 State of the Union Address by President von der Leyen,” European Commission, September 9, 2025, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/ov/SPEECH_25_2053.

21 In particular, these states include Denmark, Greece, France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Poland.

22 “The Jutland Declaration: Shaping a Safe Online World for Minors,” Danish Presidency, Council of the European Union, October 10, 2025, https://www.digmin.dk/Media/638956829775203140/DIGMIN_The%20Jutland%20Declaration%20Shaping%20a%20Safe%20Online%20World%20for%20Minors%20101025.pdf.

23 Ibid., 2.

24 These states include Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Utah.

25 These principles concern accuracy, reliability, robustness, privacy and data protection safeguards, and non-discrimination.

26 “Communication from the Commission.”

27 “Age Assurance & Age Verification Laws in the United States,” Centre for Information Policy Leadership, September 2024, https://www.informationpolicycentre.com/uploads/5/7/1/0/57104281/cipl_age_assurance_in_the_us_sept24.pdf.

The post Transatlantic cooperation on protecting minors online appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:39:41 +0000

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country. “Today, Russia launched an attack just five days after the previous bombardment, using drones and ballistic missiles. We see that the enemy is going all in, deploying its forces to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure,” he commented.

The current wave of attacks have hit the Ukrainian capital Kyiv particularly hard. “The Russians are trying to disconnect the city and force people to move outside Kyiv,” Ukrenergo CEO Vitaliy Zaichenko told the Kyiv Independent. According to Zaichenko, around 70 percent of the Ukrainian capital’s approximately 3.5 million residents were left without electricity on Tuesday. Meanwhile, large numbers of apartments also had no heating amid subzero winter conditions.

Kyiv is one of multiple Ukrainian population centers currently facing rolling blackouts that in many cases can last for over 24 hours. Russia’s air offensive has also struck energy infrastructure supplying Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, and many other major cities.

Teams of engineers are working around the clock to repair damaged facilities, fix power lines, and reconnect Ukrainian homes and businesses to the electricity grid. However, repeated Russian attacks are making it increasingly difficult to patch up battered equipment and find the necessary replacement component parts.

The bombing campaign appears to have been timed to coincide with the coldest period in over a year, with temperatures plummeting to minus fifteen Celsius (five degrees Fahrenheit) for extended periods of time. “ They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” stated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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This is not the first time Russian President Vladimir Putin has attempted to weaponize winter in his war against Ukraine. Russia launched a major air offensive against Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure in October 2022, establishing a pattern that would be repeated each year as the cold season approached. While this tactic is not new, the present destruction of the Ukrainian power grid is widely recognized as the most severe of the entire war.

In Kyiv and other cities, the Ukrainian authorities have established so-called Points of Invincibility in heavily populated areas featuring heating and internet access along with electricity sources that can be used to charge up personal devices and power banks. Visitors can also expect hot drinks and a warm welcome.

Throughout Ukraine the buzz of generators has become the background noise of the winter season. Many Ukrainians have installed backup power sources in their homes, which are typically able to provide electricity for a limited period of time. Portable gas stoves are also a common feature as people adapt and improvise in the extreme conditions caused by Russia’s bombardment.

With millions of Ukrainian civilians at risk of being trapped in freezing darkness for days at a time, the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe is obvious. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has already urged residents of the Ukrainian capital to temporarily leave the city if they are able to and move to less affected areas where power and heating are more readily available. With the present cold snap set to last for at least another week and further Russian attacks widely expected, fears are now mounting over a possible winter exodus to neighboring EU countries.

That may be exactly what Putin has in mind. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian civilians in a bid to break Ukraine’s resistance and depopulate large parts of the country. In addition to attacks on energy, heating, and other critical infrastructure, Russia has also launched large-scale drone strike campaigns designed to make entire towns and cities unlivable. A recent United Nations probe into Russia’s campaign of drone attacks throughout southern Ukraine’s front line regions concluded that Moscow’s actions amounted to the crimes against humanity of “murder and forcible transfer of population.”

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As Russia attempts to freeze Ukrainians into submission, Kyiv desperately needs a wide range of international support. This includes alternative energy supplies to replace domestic gas production damaged in Russia’s attacks, along with spare parts to mend the country’s power stations and associated infrastructure.

Ukraine also urgently requires additional air defense systems and interceptor missiles. At present, Ukraine’s existing air defenses are struggling to cope with the dramatically increased intensity of Russia’s aerial attacks, which now routinely feature hundreds of drones along with dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles.

Most of all, Ukraine needs to be able to strike back. However much Ukraine’s network of air defenses improves, the sheer scale of the Russian bombardment means that a percentage of missiles and drones will inevitably reach their targets. The only truly effective defense is deterrence. In other words, Russia’s attacks will continue until Putin is restrained by the knowledge that Ukraine has the capacity to reply in kind.

The next few weeks will be among the most challenging of the war for Ukraine’s civilian population that will test the country’s famed resilience to the limit. “I think the Russians want to break us. They want to make Ukrainians angry and unhappy. They think this will make us go out on the streets and protest but that won’t happen,” Kyiv resident Valentina Verteletska told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “This makes us tougher and more determined. War doesn’t make people bad or good but it amplifies who you are. It allows people to show who they are inside and we have seen a lot of people volunteering to help their neighbors.”

Many believe Russia’s wintertime bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure now represents Putin’s best chance to achieve some kind of breakthrough at a time when his army is struggling to advance on the battlefield. Russia gained less than one percent of Ukrainian territory in 2025 despite suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties, and is still fighting over villages located within walking distance of the front lines at the start of the invasion in February 2022.

Despite this lack of progress, Putin remains committed to his original invasion objective of extinguishing Ukrainian independence and forcing the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He clearly has no qualms about targeting millions of Ukrainian civilians in pursuit of this criminal goal. “You can see with your own eyes what is going on,” commented Kyiv building manager Oleksandr Matienko. “They are trying to kill us. They can’t win any other way. So they are willing to do anything to destroy Ukraine.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

There are no signs that this trend will change anytime soon. Despite mounting economic challenges on the home front amid falling energy export revenues, Russia’s defense budget for 2026 remains close to record highs. Moscow will continue to prioritize domestic drone production this year, while also allocating large sums to finance the system of generous bonus payments and salaries for army recruits who volunteer to serve in Ukraine.

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Russia’s refusal to embrace the idea of a compromise peace should come as no surprise. After all, Putin has built his entire reign around the promise of restoring Russian greatness and reversing the perceived humiliations of the Soviet collapse. After nearly four years of full-scale war, a negotiated settlement that secured Ukraine’s status as an independent country would represent a major political failure.

Since 2022, Kremlin officials and Russian state media have consistently portrayed the invasion of Ukraine as an existential struggle against Western aggression with the aim of establishing a new world order and returning Russia to its rightful place as a great power. However, a peace deal based on the current line of contact would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and firmly anchored in the West. Such an outcome would be viewed in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat.

This framing creates a political trap of Moscow’s own making. Putin knows he would face a potentially disastrous domestic backlash if he accepted anything less than a clear Russian victory in Ukraine. Peace terms that failed to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit would raise difficult questions about the enormous costs of the invasion. Russians would want to know why the country had spent vast sums of money and sacrificed so many men in order to achieve so little. Putin would risk entering Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

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Putin has begun 2026 in a challenging position. He remains reluctant to upset Trump, but he dare not accept the compromise peace the US leader is proposing. Instead, Putin needs either total victory in Ukraine or indefinite conflict. Any attempt to end the war without establishing complete political control over Ukraine would threaten the stability of Putin’s own regime. His interests are therefore best served by seeking to prolong negotiations while working toward a military solution.

If Western leaders wish to change the current political calculus in Moscow, they must first acknowledge that there is no alternative to increasing the pressure on Putin. At present, the Kremlin dictator views escalation as necessary for regime survival and has no plans to end the war.

Two scenarios could disrupt this trajectory. A collapse in global oil prices combined with successful secondary sanctions enforcement could create an economic crisis that would force Putin to revise his priorities. Alternatively, mass casualties during a failed spring 2026 Russian offensive could trigger domestic instability, while also highlighting the fading prospects of a military breakthrough.

Both these outcomes are realistic but would require significant additional action from Ukraine’s partners. If the West is unable to muster the requisite political will, escalation remains Moscow’s most rational path in 2026. Putin has little choice but to continue his invasion. Even if Russian victory remains out of reach in the coming year, he knows he cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood.

William Dixon is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute specialising in cyber and international security issues. Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security.

Our experts unpack why violence erupted, what it means for Kurdish and wider minority safety and integration under the new Syrian government, and how Washington is engaging.

1. What is the political and military background of this conflict?

On April 1, Damascus and the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG)-dominated SDF agreed on a localized integration arrangement covering the two SDF-held neighborhoods of Aleppo city. Despite the initial atmosphere of goodwill, SDF-affiliated Asayish forces that remained in these neighborhoods obstructed the implementation phase and refused to subordinate themselves to Aleppo’s Internal Security Forces, as stipulated in the agreement.

On multiple occasions, Asayish units attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure, triggering violent clashes. Throughout this period, Damascus repeatedly agreed to cease-fires in an effort to preserve negotiations over the broader March 10 integration agreement with the SDF. However, after the deadline of the integration deal expired, final US-mediated talks in Damascus failed, and Asayish forces again targeted civilian infrastructure, and the Syrian army opted to launch a limited military operation.

—Ömer Özkizilcik is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

For the last fourteen years, the Kurds enjoyed de facto autonomy, and they currently control a large chunk of eastern and northeastern Syria. An agreement inked in March last year, which the Kurds reluctantly agreed to under immense external pressure, was meant to see the SDF and the Kurdish civilian institutions integrated into the Syrian state. It has effectively gone nowhere, with both sides blaming each other.

The fighting in Aleppo broke out just days after negotiations stalled again and came to an end after external forces, notably the United States, intervened, preventing a potentially greater bloodbath. Turkey stated it would take action—if needed—on behalf of the Syrian government, and Israel threw its weight in behind the Kurds.

—Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA).

2. What does the withdrawal of SDF-affiliated units mean for stability in Aleppo?

The withdrawal does bring with it a sigh of relief for the residents of Aleppo. But taking stock of the destruction, for those who lost loved ones, it’s hardly a win. The days-long fighting further ripped open one of the many fissures that the Syrian government says it has been trying to repair as it attempts to consolidate power under Damascus. The Kurdish population—who largely remain wary of President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government—might just prove to be the toughest to win over.

While an even worse scenario has been avoided for the time being, if anything, the fighting is evidence of how much more work lies ahead for Syria and how its path to “stability” will not necessarily be free of suffering.

—Arwa Damon

3. What does the dismantling of the Kurdish military presence in Aleppo mean for SDF status in Syria?

Civilians carry their bags and belongings as they flee following renewed clashes between the Syrian army and the Syrian Democratic Forces in Aleppo, Syria on January 8, 2026. Photo via REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano.

Losing Aleppo weakens the SDF’s negotiating position significantly. Damascus will never support the SDF in retaining an autonomous military or administrative structure in the northeast, but al-Sharaa has repeatedly said that Kurdish language and cultural rights will be enshrined in the future constitution. The current government is already highly localized, and we will likely see the same model applied to the northeast with or without a peaceful integration of the SDF.

—Gregory Waters is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and writes about Syria’s security institutions and social dynamics.

4. How credible are government assurances of inclusion and rights protections to Kurdish communities?

The components of the new Syrian government have a mixed track record of treatment towards Kurds. The factions that came from Idlib, most notably Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have no serious history of ethnic targeting of Kurds, while several Syrian National Army (SNA) factions, which now serve in parts of the new army, have been sanctioned for years for systematic abuses against Kurds in northern Aleppo. It is now up to Damascus to ensure these ex-SNA factions no longer abuse or exploit Kurdish communities.

—Gregory Waters

There were no reports of large-scale violations by government security forces during the fighting in the Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiye neighborhoods, unlike the abuses that occurred in coastal areas or in Swaida last year. This demonstrates progress in managing security operations in areas where diverse communities live. Another episode of violence and killings would be too costly politically for Damascus. In Aleppo, security forces have been overall mindful to show that they are able to protect the Kurdish community.

—Marie Forestier is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. She is also currently a consultant for the European Institute of Peace.

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5. What does the Aleppo violence imply for future negotiations with other armed groups?

The issue in Aleppo is distinct from more general political or ideological dissent in Syria because it involved an armed group that controls territory. However, the government’s slower, methodical approach to the dispute this week, mixing continued diplomatic outreach with military pressure, shows a more mature leadership in Damascus compared to how it approached similar dissent in Swaida in July.

—Gregory Waters

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The operation in Aleppo was not a response to dissent, but rather a consequence of the deadlock of negotiations. A significant part of the Syrian population would like to see Kurds and the northeastern region fully integrated into the new Syria. The positive outcome of the military operation in Aleppo—at least from the government’s perspective—and the way security forces managed it raise the question of a possible replication of a similar operation in other areas in the northeast.

—Marie Forestier

6. How does the confrontation fit into the broader Turkish-Israeli rivalry over Syria?

Israel and Turkey hold fundamentally opposing views on Syria. Ankara sees the evolving situation as an opportunity to promote stability through a strong and centralized Syrian state, while Israel views such an outcome as a strategic threat and prefers a weak and fragmented Syria.

During the clashes in Aleppo city, both countries once again positioned themselves on opposite sides. The intensity and limited duration of the fighting did not allow for direct or indirect intervention by either actor. Nevertheless, Turkey publicly signaled its readiness to support the Syrian army if requested, while Israel called on the international community to protect the Kurds. This contrast underscores Turkey’s greater capacity to intervene in northern Syria, as well as the constraints on Israel’s options.

In light of the outcome in Aleppo city, Turkey’s vision of a unified Syria appears to have scored a tactical victory. At the same time, the episode served as a reminder that Turkish-Israeli competition over Syria—rooted in irreconcilable strategic perspectives—will persist.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

7. Where does the United States stand in all of this?

The escalation highlights two key realities for US policy in Syria. First, US mediation efforts aimed at facilitating integration and supporting a unified Syrian state have failed. Washington repeatedly brought Damascus and the SDF to the negotiating table and attempted to steer the process in a constructive direction, yet no breakthrough was achieved.

Second, the crisis has created a new opportunity for the United States. The exposure of the SDF’s fragility in Aleppo city may increase its willingness to make concessions and accept Damascus’s terms. If Washington seeks to prevent a broader military escalation in northeastern Syria, it can once again convene talks and press the SDF to adopt a more pragmatic stance. Should the SDF demonstrate genuine willingness, the United States could play a constructive role in facilitating integration and rebuilding trust between the parties.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

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8. Did disagreements among SDF factions contribute to the violence?

The exact degree of internal disagreement within the SDF—and the extent of central command control over Asayish forces in Aleppo—remains contested. Nonetheless, it is evident that multiple decision-making centers are involved. Following the escalation, Damascus and the SDF agreed, under international mediation, to evacuate all Asayish forces from the contested neighborhoods. Some Asayish units, however, refused to comply and instead chose to fight.

According to Turkish intelligence sources cited in the media, this decision followed orders issued by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) cadres in Qandil, reportedly led by Bahoz Erdal. This suggests a rift between the Syrian branch of the PKK, which dominates the SDF, and the PKK’s central leadership in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq.

A second layer of fragmentation became visible on the battlefield itself. While the Syrian army initially pursued a limited operation, cohesion within the Asayish ranks collapsed, with many fighters deserting or laying down their weapons.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

The post Eight questions (and expert answers) on the SDF’s withdrawal from Syria’s Aleppo appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Belarus hosts nuclear-capable Russian missiles despite talk of US thaw

Mercedes Sapuppo — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 23:50:18 +0000

Russian nuclear-capable Oreshnik missiles are now in Belarus, Kremlin officials have confirmed. A video released by Russia’s Defense Ministry on December 30 showed multiple Russian Oreshnik mobile missile systems deployed in the forests of Belarus, a move designed to enhance the Kremlin’s ability to strike targets throughout Europe. This very deliberate act of nuclear saber-rattling has underlined the continued role of Belarus in Vladimir Putin’s war machine at a time when Minsk is also seeking to improve ties with the Trump administration.

In addition to hosting Oreshnik missiles, Belarus has also recently been accused of aiding Russian drone attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed on December 26 that Russian drone units are using Belarusian territory to penetrate Ukraine’s air defense network and strike targets across the country. “We note that the Russians are trying to bypass our defensive interceptor positions through Belarus. This is risky for Belarus,” Zelenskyy commented. “It ⁠is unfortunate that Belarus is ‌surrendering its sovereignty in favor of Russia’s aggressive ambitions.”

Meanwhile, Russia is reportedly building a major ammunition plant in Belarus to help supply the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Construction is said to be underway close to Belarusian capital Minsk, according to opposition group BELPOL, comprised of former members of the Belarusian security services. Responding to news of the plant, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya accused Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka of “dragging Belarus deeper into Russia’s war.”

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Evidence of Belarusian involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine is not new, of course. On the eve of the invasion, Lukashenka allowed Putin to station tens of thousands of Russian troops in Belarus. The country then served as the main gateway and logistics hub for Russia’s blitzkrieg offensive to seize Kyiv in spring 2022. The Lukashenka regime is also implicated in the Kremlin campaign to abduct and indoctrinate thousands of Ukrainian children.

Reports of Lukashenka’s ongoing involvement in the Russian war effort come amid speculation of a potential thaw in diplomatic relations between Belarus and the United States. In December, 123 political prisoners were freed by the Belarusian authorities, with the US easing sanctions measures in exchange. This followed two smaller scale trade-offs earlier in 2025 as the Trump administration seeks to increase diplomatic dialogue with Minsk as part of ongoing efforts to broker a negotiated settlement to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Despite these headline-grabbing humanitarian steps, there is little sign of a more comprehensive shift in Minsk away from domestic repression or any reduction in support for Russia’s aggressive foreign policy agenda. On the contrary, the available evidence indicates that while Lukashenka may seek increased engagement with the West, he has no intention of turning away from Moscow or ending human rights abuses inside Belarus.

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By continuing to provide Moscow with its full backing, Belarus enhances Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine. This is undermining the Trump administration’s efforts to end the Russian invasion and secure a lasting peace settlement. Belarus also remains deeply implicated in Putin’s hybrid war against Europe and stands accused of weaponizing everything from migrants to balloons against its EU neighbors.

US outreach to Minsk over the past year has secured the release of many prominent prisoners, but continued arrests mean that the overall number of political detainees in the country remains high. Naturally, Lukashenka is happy to reengage with American officials in order to secure a relaxation of sanctions pressure, but there are also concerns that the current approach risks incentivizing hostage-taking.

Yes, a less isolated and more neighborly Belarus remains a worthwhile goal, but in the current circumstances, Lukashenka has little motivation to compromise. He is looking at possible gains without actually reducing the current level of repression in Belarus.

Sanctions relief would be a significant gain for Lukashenka. In exchange for that, the US should be able to achieve some limits on Belarusian facilitation of Kremlin aggression in Ukraine or, at a minimum, a notable decrease in the number of political prisoners in Belarus.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Over the past year, Russian attacks on Ukraine’s agricultural sector have escalated alarmingly. According to research conducted by the University of Strasbourg, the University of Maryland, and NASA’s Harvest program, the number of farmland fires identified in Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Kherson region during 2025 rose by 87.5 percent.

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The Kherson farming community’s wartime experience is mirrored throughout Ukraine, particularly in areas close to the front lines of the invasion. By attacking agricultural infrastructure, Russia seeks to undermine Ukraine’s food security, just as it targets the country’s energy infrastructure to deprive Ukraine’s civilian population of access to electricity and heating.

The implications of Russia’s war on Ukrainian farmers are international in scope. Known historically as the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine is home to around one quarter of the world’s black soil, the most fertile farmland on the planet. This makes Ukraine a potential agricultural superpower and a key contributor to global food security. Ukrainian farmers are among the leading exporters of foodstuffs to the European Union, with Ukrainian produce also playing a prominent role in aid programs to counter hunger throughout the developing world.

Russia’s invasion has had a devastating impact on Ukrainian agricultural output. In addition to mined fields, burned crops, and bombed facilities, large numbers of Ukrainian farms are currently in Kremlin-controlled regions, leading to seized harvests.

Kherson region farmers received a further blow in summer 2023 when a suspected Russian sabotage operation destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. This act of ecocide undermined one of Europe’s largest irrigation systems, leaving hundreds of thousands of hectares without access to water. The impact on the environment was catastrophic, leading to drought conditions, failed crops, and the loss of farmland.

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Despite the unprecedented challenges posed by Russia’s ongoing invasion, Kherson’s farmers continue to work. In 2025, they managed to harvest a remarkable quantity of the watermelons that serve as the region’s unofficial calling card. Other key Kherson crops include wheat and potatoes.

Since 2022, domestic and international support programs have proved instrumental in bolstering the resilience of the Kherson agricultural industry. Initiatives in recent years have included subsidies for farmers and technical assistance focused on areas such as irrigation, with the goal of helping farmers adapt to the new wartime realities.

Kherson agricultural businesses are also responding to the changing conditions. Due to water scarcity and rising temperatures, some farms have reduced planting areas and turned to cultivating crops that utilize soil moisture more efficiently. Research is also underway to develop additional drought-resistant crops better suited to the current environment.

Further international support for Ukrainian farmers will be critically important during 2026. Ukraine’s agricultural industry is one of the cornerstones of the national economy and a major exporter to global markets. By targeting farmers and their land, Russia aims to make Ukraine unlivable and break the country’s resistance. This strategy poses a significant threat to international food security and must be addressed.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov is Deputy Head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration.

Recommendations for the United States and its partners

Pause all major non-protest-related policy initiatives. Now is not the time for renewed nuclear negotiations or military strikes. The Biden administration famously paused negotiations about resuming the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action during the protests in response Mahsa Amini’s death. This does not mean diplomacy is dead, but any hypothetical nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran need to be postponed indefinitely. This is also not the time for Israel (or the United States) to restart military attacks. The Iranian people deserve the time and space to see these protests through. In June, the Iranian government benefited from an ill-conceived Israeli strike on Evin prison that attempted to liberate, but ended up killing, a number of prisoners. It is vital to not give the government a similar propaganda victory.
The US government should designate a new Iran envoy. The Trump administration should immediately name or designate an envoy or senior official to engage with the Iranian diaspora and to more broadly focus on all aspects of Iran policy full-time. Regular engagement with this community and other Iran-focused government and nongovernment contacts is important to emphasize that the administration is serious about the Iranian people. This individual would not replace US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff but would report to him and other senior officials who remain focused on wider-ranging issues. Full-time attention on the portfolio would also help provide an internal advocate within an administration focused on budget cuts for low-cost, high-reward spending to advance a broader Iran policy, such as internet circumvention funding.
Partner governments should fund Iran initiatives that the administration ended. At the height of the Mahsa Amini protests, thirty million Iranians used US-funded circumvention services. Some of these services are being temporarily funded by private enterprises. Over the long-term, they require consistent support from a government entity. The same is also true of the Iran human rights programs that the current administration proposed cutting in its entirety in the Congressional Budget Justification. If the administration does not reconsider its cuts, other foreign governments would have an opportunity to pick up the technical and moral leadership that the United States has relinquished.
The international community should unite in backing the Iranian people. We authors have heard directly from Iranians who participated in past protests that a unified signal from the international community not only helped buoy sentiment within the movement but also served as a deterrent against human rights abuses by the regime. For instance, Iran significantly decreased its executions of drug offenders following sustained international pressure. Joint statements, including those issued by the Group of Seven and United Nations, have the best chance of impacting Iranian behavior.
Create a nimble emergency funding mechanism. During the Mahsa Amini protests, several Iranian advocacy groups suggested to us that there was need for urgent funding, and they proposed possible emergency initiatives such as setting up funds to help pay striking workers living wages. Although we supported these ideas, the Biden administration was not nimble enough to fully evaluate and fund them in a timely manner. The United States or other partner nations should consider establishing a fund or program to explicitly facilitate crisis response operations. If the United States is unable or unwilling to fund it, the Treasury Department should, at a minimum, issue (or reissue) guidance to allow private individuals and organizations quick and legal ways to send money to protestors.
Increase human rights sanctions. The United States and partner governments should move quickly to issue targeted sanctions against human rights abusers and those involved in the crackdown against protestors. The 2024 bipartisan MAHSA Act provides the Treasury and State Department with new sanction authorities. To date, not a single designation has been imposed under this authority. Implementing MAHSA sanctions now—ideally in coordination with actions from our foreign partners—would send a symbolic, but powerful, message that the international community condemns Iran’s crackdown on protestors.

Recommendations for nongovernmental actors

Minimize partisan politics. Iran policy has long been a victim of brutal partisan politics in Washington. Support for the Iranian people should be an approach that both parties should be able to get behind, as it aligns with US interests and values.
More constructive engagement with the diaspora. As admittedly non-Iranian Americans involved in Iran policy, we authors will never fully understand the intricacies of the diaspora. From our past experiences, the online and in-person abuse directed at other members of the diaspora and at proposed policies limited government-diaspora engagement, and hindered the diaspora’s ability to effectively advocate for policy changes.
Provide clear and tangible recommendations. During the Biden administration, then-Vice President Kamala Harris led efforts to support the Iranian people’s call for the regime to be removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. This was a direct result of lobbying by civil society. Once the Harris team had a clear recommendation and knew it aligned with US policy priorities and values, the United States successfully led the campaign to remove Iran from the Commission.

A final recommendation for everyone: Keep the focus on Iran

The Iranian people themselves are bravely leading the current protests. It is essential to keep the focus on them, rather than on Washington politics and social media, to ensure the Iranian people get the support they need at this critical juncture.

Abram Paley is an incoming nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He most recently served as acting special envoy for Iran from 2023 to 2025 and, before that, Middle East advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nate Swanson is a resident senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council. He most recently served as director for Iran at the National Security Council in the Biden White House and a member of the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team.

The post As Iran protests continue, policymakers should apply these key lessons appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What to watch as anti-regime protests engulf Iran

Nate Swanson — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:28:21 +0000

WASHINGTON—The Iranian regime appears to be at its weakest point in its nearly half century in power. For the past two weeks, Iranians throughout the country have taken to the streets in protest over Iran’s deepening economic crises, stirring up memories of the Mahsa Amini protests of 2022-2023 and the Green Movement demonstrations of 2009-2010. This is compounded by a record level of inflation, a potentially existential water crisis, and an open admission from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that his government is incapable of meeting the needs of its own people. Moreover, these protests follow a series of strategic setbacks for the regime, including Israel’s near destruction of Iran’s foreign proxies, the Assad regime’s fall in Syria in December 2024, and the devastation of the twelve-day war in June 2025.

Yet, this confluence of factors has been partially overshadowed by US President Donald Trump and his increasingly interventionist administration. Trump’s social media post on January 2 offering lethal protection to Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on them was shocking even before this week’s events in Venezuela. Although I initially saw Trump’s post as a rhetorical and cost-free gesture, it cannot be dismissed entirely considering that the Trump administration was willing to attack Venezuela and arrest former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro earlier this month. Indeed, Trump’s threat could increase turnout at the protests. In theory, hesitant Iranians might be more likely to protest if they might have some form of US support.

As the protests continue, it is worth following several important indicators that may determine how they differ from past mass movements in Iran, what trajectory they may take, and what they might mean for the Islamic Republic’s future.

Mass protests are, of course, not new in Iran. They have played a critical role in shaping Iran’s modern political landscape, helping to bring the current regime to power in 1979 and consolidate its rule. In the 1990s, protests evolved to challenge the regime’s governance. The 1999 student protests and the 2009 Green Movement primarily focused on regime reform, with the latter adopting the slogan “Where is my vote?” Since the December 2019 Bloody Aban uprising, which began following an increase in fuel prices, there has been a significant shift in the tone and objective of protests. Initially sparked by social or economic issues, mass protests in Iran have morphed into broader and prolonged anti-regime demonstrations, with protesters increasingly chanting “Death to Khamenei!”

Here is what to watch as the current protests unfold:

1. The size of the protests in Tehran

The 2009 Green Movement protests challenged the rigged presidential election and, for the first time in Iran, used social media to draw millions to the street, mainly in Tehran. Iran ultimately employed brutal repression and detained opposition leaders to quell the movement. Subsequent protests have had a wider geographic scope and more aggressive platform—revolution, not reform—but have not drawn the same volume of people to the streets. Absent massive, sustained protests in Tehran, it is difficult to envision the regime falling or making major changes.

2. Opposition unity and a viable alternative

There is no elected leader that the opposition fully supports who could take power immediately after a potential transition. Perhaps the imprisoned former official Mostafa Tajzadeh or the deposed Shah’s eldest son, Reza Pahlavi, could become a transitional leader following the fall of the current government. Pahlavi has a devoted following among certain segments of the diaspora and appears to have name recognition inside Iran, given some videos coming out of the country. However, he is also a controversial figure, and his supporters were partially blamed for sabotaging attempts to unify the Iranian diaspora opposition in 2022. Infighting within the Iranian diaspora has continued during this round of protests, but one interesting development is the near-unanimous perspective from social media that Iran will never be the same. Maybe that is progress.

Nonetheless, the lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran. There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Wałęsa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted, and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addresses recent protests in Iran on January 3, 2026, saying authorities are working to address economic concerns. (Iranian Supreme Leader’s office via ZUMA Press Wire and Reuters Connect.)

3. Regime fissures (and defections)

Iran has done a masterful job maintaining regime unity and avoiding high-profile defections. Regime survival is always the paramount consideration, perhaps partially because the country’s leaders don’t have anywhere to go. Russia would likely harbor certain elites, as it took in Bashar al-Assad after his flight from Syria. But the mid-level security officials implementing the crackdown would have no safe refuge. This is why the work my Atlantic Council colleagues at the Strategic Litigation Project are doing is so important. Exposing and holding officials responsible for crackdowns raises the costs of individual actions. This may contribute to additional regime fissures and security defections in this round of protests.

All of this is to say that despite working on Iran policy for nearly twenty years, it is not possible to predict how the ongoing protests will end. I see the same images and reports as everyone else, and I can ask individual Iranians for their assessment. But I don’t know whether this is the protest that brings down the regime, or whether the Islamic Republic will be able to successfully repress these protests as it has done before.

Regardless, the protests are important. They once again demonstrate the Iranian people’s courage, tenacity, and yearning for freedom. The protests also expose the Iranian government’s inability to meet the economic, social, and political demands of its people. They are a clear directive sent up from the streets and heard around the world that the status quo in Iran is not sustainable.

The post What to watch as anti-regime protests engulf Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Charai for The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune: The Iranian People Will Not Be Silenced

Atlantic Council — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 19:00:25 +0000

Original Source

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Caroline Costello in Foreign Policy

Caroline Costello — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:04:37 +0000

On September 9th, 2025, Global China Hub Assistant Director Caroline Costello published an op-ed in Foreign Policy about China’s role in fueling illegal logging in Africa.

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The evolution of Latvia’s defense and security policy in resilience building

Armands Astukevičs and Elīna Vrobļevska — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 21:35:29 +0000

Executive summary
Introduction
A comprehensive approach to defense and resilience
Key pillars of Latvian resilience
Challenges and future imperatives for resilience
Annex 1: Management structure
Annex 2: Framework of concepts, plans, laws, and regulations

Executive summary

Latvia has significantly evolved its defense and security policy, focusing on national resilience as a cornerstone of its statehood, as analyzed in LVARes: The Evolution of Latvia’s Defense and Security Policy in Resilience Building, a project of the Centre for East European Policy Studies and the Atlantic Council. This transformation is anchored in Latvia’s Comprehensive National Defense (CND) framework, a whole-of-society strategy that integrates civilian, military, and private-sector efforts to deter aggression and manage crises. Key to this approach are legal underpinnings from evolving state defense concepts and amendments to foundational laws like the National Security Law.

Pillars of this resilience include ensuring the continuity of essential services and critical infrastructure, with a shift from mere asset protection to guaranteeing operational functionality through public-private partnerships and an enhanced role for municipalities. Regular exercises like Namejs and Pilskalns test these preparations.

To counter hybrid threats, Latvia formally recognizes the information space as a defense domain, implementing multilayered strategies that combine government-led strategic communications, support for independent media, civil-society engagement against disinformation, and international cooperation, notably through hosting the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. Societal resilience is further boosted by public-preparedness campaigns like “72 Hours: What to do in case of a crisis,” media literacy programs, and integrating national defense education, including psychological defense and nonviolent civil resistance, into curricula.

Significant reforms are modernizing Latvia’s crisis management, with the planned National Crisis Management Center (CMC) under the prime minister, centralizing coordination and decision-making. Civil-protection measures are strengthening as well, with new legislation for public shelters and updates to the State Civil Protection Plan.

International cooperation is indispensable, with NATO providing collective defense, the EU offering funding and policy coordination, and robust bilateral ties with the United States and regional cooperation with Baltic and Nordic partners. The LVARes project itself exemplifies Latvia’s proactive international engagement in studying national capabilities, raising awareness, and sharing best practices.

Challenges persist, including resource constraints, interagency coordination complexities, evolving threats, and the need to bolster societal cohesion. Future imperatives involve fully operationalizing the CMC, implementing the shelter program, sustained investment in capabilities, and deeper public engagement in CND. Strategic recommendations for policymakers emphasize CMC effectiveness, civil-protection investments, public-private partnerships, psychological resilience, volunteer engagement, and integrating nonviolent resistance. For international partners, continued support for Latvian capability development, amplifying LVARes findings, facilitating resilience benchmarking, and supporting cross-border exercises are crucial. Through these efforts, Latvia fortifies its security and contributes valuable lessons to the Euro-Atlantic community.

Introduction

The contemporary security environment is characterized by an array of complex and interconnected threats. These range from the potential for conventional military aggression to the more pervasive and persistent challenges of hybrid warfare, sophisticated information operations, and malicious cyber activities. Russia’s aggressive foreign policy and its full-scale war against Ukraine have significantly amplified these threats, underscoring the vulnerability of states in the region and the urgent need for robust national preparedness. Latvia’s position as a frontline state of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), sharing a direct border with the Russian Federation, has inherently shaped its national security posture and necessitated a continuous adaptation of its defense strategies, pushing for an essential shift in Latvia’s defense thinking.

The traditional focus on military defense, while still fundamental, is increasingly understood as insufficient on its own. Consequently, Latvia has progressively embraced a broader concept of national resilience encompassing not only military strength but also the resilience of its society, the continuity of government and essential services during crises, the protection of critical infrastructure, and the cultivation of psychological defense among its populace. This evolution reflects a growing understanding that national security in the twenty-first century is a whole-of-society endeavor.

Latvia’s pursuit of national resilience is not confined to a single strategy but is realized through a multifaceted approach that addresses various dimensions of security. These include ensuring the operational continuity of essential services and the resilience of critical infrastructure, actively countering hybrid threats in the information and cyber domains, fostering broad societal resilience through public preparedness and education, and acknowledging the potential role of nonviolent civil resistance. The aim of this report is to systematically analyze the evolution in Latvia’s defense and security policy, particularly its implementation of a comprehensive national defense framework, and to share the insights and lessons learned with allies, partners, and the broader public to enhance collective security in the Euro-Atlantic region.

A comprehensive approach to defense and resilience

Latvia’s approach to national defense has undergone a significant evolution, moving from a primary focus on conventional military capabilities and professional military service orientation toward a more encompassing strategy known as Comprehensive National Defense (CND). Adopted in 2018, the CND system is designed to ensure security and crisis preparedness across all sectors of the state and society, thereby enhancing Latvia’s overall deterrence posture and its resilience against armed conflicts or a wide spectrum of potential crises. The overarching aims of CND are the following:

Preparing the Latvian population to actively participate in the defense of their country.
Facilitating efficient and effective crisis management at the national level.
Ensuring the continuity and support of critical state functions, including government operations, energy supply, healthcare, and logistics, even under duress.

A fundamental and defining characteristic of Latvia’s CND is its “whole-of-society” approach, which recognizes that national defense and resilience are not the sole responsibility of the armed forces or government ministries but require the active involvement and cooperation of every element of society. This comprehensive vision entails the systematic integration of municipalities, the owners and managers of both public and private critical infrastructure (spanning sectors such as energy, communications, finance, and healthcare), nongovernmental organizations, the broader business community, and individual citizens into national defense planning and preparedness efforts.

A significant emphasis within this approach is placed on building and nurturing mutual trust and robust partnerships between public authorities at all levels and private-sector entities. These collaborative efforts are seen as essential for creating a networked civil and military defense system where each component is prepared and able to work in sync. The success of the CND model hinges on the ability to overcome traditional challenges and foster a shared sense of responsibility for national security.

The whole-of-society approach is further strengthened through the way the CND is managed and its legal basis, both of which are designed as a multitiered framework to ensure a whole-of-government and -societal approach to national resilience. The management structure (detailed in Annex 1) integrates political leadership, ministerial responsibilities, operational agencies, local governments, and societal actors to prepare for and respond effectively to a diverse spectrum of threats, ranging from military aggression to civil emergencies. Whereas the framework of strategic concepts, national plans, legal acts, and supporting regulations (a detailed list provided in Annex 2) ensure that CND is not merely a theoretical construct but a systematically planned and implemented national effort. Strategic concepts like the National Security Concept and the State Defense Concept, both approved by the parliament, articulate Latvia’s high-level strategic assessments, goals, and priorities in response to the evolving security environment, providing the overarching vision and direction for the development of the CND.

This approach also aligns with the direction set by NATO at its 2016 Warsaw Summit, where the Alliance adopted seven baseline requirements for national resilience. For the first time, NATO established clear conditions that member states’ civilian institutions must meet to support Article 4 and 5 military operations. These requirements include: continuity of government and critical services; resilient energy, food, and water supplies; the ability to manage uncontrolled population movements; resilient civil communication and transportation systems; and the capacity to handle mass casualties. In this regard, Latvia’s CND system goes beyond these NATO requirements by also incorporating societal resilience and the involvement of the private sector in defense operations and other aspects.

Alongside NATO’s framework, relevant EU-level initiatives provide significant complementary support for resilience. These include the EU’s crisis-management framework, particularly its Civil Protection Mechanism, and the Military Mobility initiative, which supports development of civilian infrastructure to facilitate the rapid movement of military forces across Europe. These efforts directly reinforce both NATO and national resilience objectives, providing practical tools and funding to enhance collective defense.

Beyond multilateral alliances, Latvia cultivates strong bilateral partnerships and engages actively in regional cooperation formats to enhance its security and resilience. The 2020 State Defense Concept emphasizes the strong military cooperation between Latvia and the United States, highlighting the long-standing and highly valued partnership between the Latvian National Armed Forces and the Michigan National Guard. The United States is widely regarded as a major strategic partner for Latvia’s security and independence.

The three Baltic states also work closely together to develop their collective security and defense capabilities. This cooperation includes joint efforts to strengthen their external borders, deepen collaboration in civil protection and crisis management, combat disinformation through shared intelligence and strategies, and enhance overall societal resilience. Joint military exercises are also a regular feature of this trilateral cooperation.

Nordic-Baltic cooperation provides another layer of security collaboration. Latvia’s comprehensive defense approach shares many similarities with the strategies adopted by Nordic countries, facilitating mutual learning and coordinated efforts. The Nordic and Baltic countries have also demonstrated solidarity through joint statements and coordinated actions, for example, in reaffirming their support for Ukraine.

Latvia’s multifaceted international engagement—spanning NATO, the EU, key bilateral relationships such as with the United States, and intensive regional cooperation—is not merely about receiving security assistance or aligning with external frameworks. It increasingly reflects a strategy of proactive contribution. As a frontline state that has rapidly developed its resilience concepts and capabilities in response to direct and evolving threats, Latvia is well-positioned to share valuable expertise and lessons learned.

Key pillars of Latvian resilience

Since the adoption of CND, Latvia has pursued a comprehensive approach to defense based on an understanding that every element of the government and population plays a part in creating a networked civil and military defense system—and recent lessons from Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression have further reinforced this understanding. This approach grew out of necessity: Latvia, a small country with limited strategic depth, neighbors Russia, a large, aggressive military power that has attacked countries in its so-called near abroad. Latvia’s approach, like those of its fellow Nordic-Baltic countries, is built on a straightforward idea that the country’s civil and military defense systems can achieve a greater deterrence and defense impact if they collaborate and if each part is prepared. Meanwhile, Latvia’s pursuit of national resilience is not confined to a single strategy but is realized through a multifaceted approach that addresses various dimensions of security.

While the CND concept encompasses eight dimensions, ranging from military development to psychological resilience, our report examines it through four perspectives: military, civil, societal, and governmental resilience. This approach allows for a cohesive, strategic evaluation of the dimensions of readiness without sacrificing the scope of the original concept.

Military resilience

Latvia’s military resilience is a central aspect of its national defense, resting on the fundamental pillars of domestic responsibility for developing its own capabilities and a robust collective defense provided by its allies.

Lessons learned from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine since 2014 have driven initiatives to ensure that Latvian institutions and society can respond effectively to any unconventional or hybrid threat scenarios. Changes to the National Security Law have empowered the National Armed Forces (NAF), from the lowest level up, with the authority to respond to any military threat, conventional or unconventional, even without immediate orders from the political leadership. The law explicitly states that armed resistance may not be prohibited in times of war or occupation and affirms that every citizen has the right to take up arms to resist an aggressor. This legal framework solidifies the principle of total defense, ensuring that the entire nation is prepared and authorized to contribute to the defense of the country.

To maintain this posture, Latvia has steadily increased its defense budget. By 2018, Latvia had met the NATO defense spending goal of 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which has significantly contributed to the development of military capabilities, including within the National Guard. Military resolve is evident in the budget’s rapid growth, which is projected to reach approximately 3.65 percent of GDP in 2025, with announcements indicating a further increase to 5 percent by 2026. This funding is crucial for keeping military modernization on track through the strategic procurement of advanced weapon systems. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Latvia has significantly increased investment in conventional war-fighting capabilities to enhance its deterrence posture. The commitment to acquiring advanced systems—such as High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, IRIS-T air defense systems, and coastal defense missiles—sends a vital message that the country is serious about bolstering its defense. National resilience also necessitates forging a cohesive fighting force from diverse sources of manpower. Latvia is proactively addressing manpower challenges, most notably through the reintroduction of mandatory conscription in the form of the State Defense Service (SDS). Introduced in 2023, the SDS aims to increase recruitment and build a larger, well-trained reserve force. This policy of eleven-month mandatory service has shown early signs of success. Latvia plans to enlist four thousand new recruits annually by 2028 and, notably, 40 percent of the 2024 intake opted for professional careers after their mandatory service. Current military plans envision 31,000 troops by 2029, complemented by an equally large reserve contingent thereafter. However, this rapid expansion presents significant challenges. The primary obstacles include a lack of sufficient modern training infrastructure to accommodate the larger number of recruits, a shortage of qualified instructors to lead the training, and the immense organizational task of building a functional reserve system that can effectively manage and retrain thousands of new reservists annually after their active service ends. Successfully overcoming these hurdles is critical to ensuring the SDS translates into a genuine increase in combat-ready forces.

Comprehensive defense exercise “Nameis 2024,” National Armed Forces of Latvia, https://www.flickr.com/photos/latvijas_armija/54023090223/in/album-72177720320603776.

Advanced capabilities and increased manpower are only effective if they are maintained at a high state of readiness. This is achieved through a rigorous schedule of military exercises designed to test plans and ensure interoperability. The flagship event is the annual Comprehensive Defense Exercise “Namejs,” which tests the armed forces in joint operations at every level.

These exercises are crucial for more than just military units, serving as the primary mechanism for implementing the whole-of-society defense concept in practice. During Namejs, the NAF systematically drills its cooperation with the civilian sector. This includes collaborating with municipalities and state-owned companies to support military mobility and countermobility efforts, and working with private-sector entrepreneurs on resource mobilization. Similarly, through this whole-of-society approach, Latvia has demonstrated both ingenuity and cooperation. It is exemplified by efforts to formalize the roles of civilian groups in national defense, such as the involvement of hunters in the national defense system—a patriotic and armed segment of society that can be integrated with the National Guard and tasked with support assignments. As comprehensive defense evolves into a societal reality, it demonstrates credible national will, complicates adversary planning, and builds the societal backbone needed to withstand pressure and deter aggression, including hybrid attacks from Russia.

Civil resilience

Civil resilience in Latvia focuses on the comprehensive preparedness of its civilian structures and population, encompassing robust civil-defense planning across all government levels, from national ministries to local municipalities. This emphasis recognizes the critical role of municipalities in fostering a society-wide culture of preparedness and resilience.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine beginning in 2014 and 2022 deeply reverberated across Latvian society, creating significant momentum for action. The latter created public demand that pushed local governments beyond mere declaratory contingency plans to proactively explain preparedness strategies to their constituents. Latvia has adopted the necessary legislative basis that mandates that Latvian municipalities ensure the continuity of essential services during crises or war, therefore actively participating in developing a society-wide culture of preparedness and resilience.

Pilskalns Exercises

The Pilskalns exercises stress-test the developed defense and crisis management plans, enhance knowledge, and inform participants about potential challenges during a military crisis at the municipal level. These exercises provide the opportunity to engage national and local institutions and the National Armed Forces to test their ability to communicate, mobilize resources, and manage evacuation in the event of a crisis.

This is primarily achieved through civil-defense plans, which are now mandatory for all municipalities. Developed in close cooperation with the National Armed Forces, these plans must be exercised at least annually. A prime example of this is the Pilskalns series of tactical exercises. While all municipalities are now mandated to develop such plans, some have been more proactive. For instance, Jelgava, Latvia’s fourth-largest city, established a municipal operation information center in 2011, preceding many other local governments. In peacetime, this center functions as a municipal hotline for damaged infrastructure, but in a crisis, it transforms into the municipal early warning system.

Another key aspect of civil resilience involves ensuring the continuity of essential services and protecting critical infrastructure. Latvia has strategically shifted its crisis-management thinking from solely focusing on infrastructure protection to prioritizing the uninterrupted delivery of essential services and functions. While this shift presents additional planning challenges, it stems from the understanding that critical infrastructure cannot operate in isolation from broader national defense factors; it is rendered ineffective without skilled personnel, operational processes, and supporting services vital for its functioning. Businesses are consequently required to develop robust continuity plans.

Latvian Mobile Telephone

Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is one of the first companies in Latvia to establish its own National Guard subdivision, underscoring its role as a critical infrastructure provider. LMT is responsible for maintaining national connectivity, even in times of war, and actively develops innovative solutions for military use. Composed of the company’s own employees, the subdivision’s primary mission is to strengthen the security and defense of LMT’s critical infrastructure and essential services, defending against attacks aimed at destabilizing the country by targeting its critical infrastructure.

The Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the NAF retain a central role in comprehensive defense planning. This reflects both the fundamental need to integrate military and civilian planning factors closely within comprehensive defense systems and the traditionally high level of societal trust in the National Armed Forces. Consequently, even private industry’s preparedness plans are drafted in close cooperation with both the relevant sectoral ministry and the MoD. This collaborative approach ensures that the government is aware of civilian-sector resources, can provide expertise and experience, and can monitor how these plans integrate into the broader national resilience system and warfighting plans. Furthermore, industrial actors participate in joint exercises with their specific sectoral ministry and the MoD at least once every four years. An innovative development is the creation of specific National Guard units staffed by personnel from critical infrastructure entities, whose primary role is to defend critical infrastructure objects in case of military contingencies.

Latvian electricity company Sadales tīkls undergoing National Guard Training. Ministry of Defense of Latvia, https://www.sargs.lv/lv/latvija/2022-10-27/sadales-tikls-veido-zemessardzes-apaksvienibu-ar-merki-aizsargat-uznemuma.

The ability to ensure the flow of money for goods and services constitutes another critical service. Societal upheavals, crises, and wars often disrupt peacetime payment systems, as demonstrated by Ukraine’s experience. To address this, the Bank of Latvia (which is analogous to the US Federal Reserve) is developing crisis payment solutions, both cash and noncash, for a society with a high adoption rate for noncash transactions. For example, the Bank of Latvia is collaborating with major commercial banks to develop approved offline solutions, ensuring individuals can use their bank cards for basic necessities even if bank communications are down. Similarly, during a crisis or war, banks are required to maintain a predefined network of ATMs, with at least one ATM per municipal center, and have developed a map of critical ATMs that would operate in case of crisis.

Latvia also has proactively sought to improve the integrity of its communications systems. This involves ensuring that critical data—including sensitive healthcare, defense, security, and economic data—remains within Latvian territory and that critical information technology systems continue to function without interruption even if the connection to the global internet is disrupted. To achieve this, the government now mandates that national and municipal institutions, companies, and owners/managers of critical IT infrastructure prioritize using a single national internet exchange point, GLV-IX, a statewide and state-operated local internet ecosystem, for their data flows if the outer perimeter of electronic communications is compromised.

Finally, Latvia has actively addressed two common challenges in building preparedness: improving the communication of preparedness requirements and funding resilience efforts. Many national governments struggle with effectively communicating military crisis and war preparedness expectations to municipalities and private industries. While both disseminating information and issuing legislation are important, these efforts must be augmented by activities that encourage thoughtful planning, accurate understanding of requirements, and knowledge development. Indeed, Latvian municipalities have sometimes voiced concerns about insufficient resources for civil preparedness, arguing it should be a national responsibility. Similarly, even large, well-funded hospitals struggle to meet the three-month supply requirement for medicine and supplies, while smaller hospitals lack adequate funding altogether.

Latvia has sought to address these questions through legislative changes, clarifying responsibilities and tasks, and mandating regular exercises. Over time, continuous cooperation and the mandatory requirement of yearly exercises are expected to foster a better understanding of the overall defense system, individual roles within it, and mutual expectations among all parties involved. Regular exercise schedules significantly benefit Latvia’s preparedness across sectors by stress testing developed plans, building knowledge, and informing participants about potential organizational challenges during a military crisis or war. For example, the yearly state-wide comprehensive defense exercises Namejs involve municipalities, allied forces, and local companies playing out different scenarios alongside the National Armed Forces. On a local level, Pilskalns exercises, in use since 2020, test municipalities’ planning and practical response capabilities under wartime scenarios, involving national and local institutions, the NAF, and local companies. These exercises are crucial for stress testing plans, identifying gaps, and building practical experience among all involved parties. Ultimately, however, private enterprises are expected to fund their own preparedness planning and implementation activities.

Societal resilience

Societal resilience in Latvia is built on the principle that national security is a shared responsibility that extends to every citizen, empowering individuals with the practical knowledge and tools needed to withstand a crisis. The government has fostered a “culture of readiness” through regular information campaigns and hands-on materials that include tips to spot false information.

The most visible example of this is Latvia’s “72-hour preparedness guide,” a practical tool aimed at bolstering individual and, by extension, societal resilience. This campaign advises citizens on how to be self-sufficient for the first seventy-two hours of a crisis, a critical period before state emergency services may be able to provide widespread assistance. The booklet provides practical guidance on reliable information sources, identifying and countering disinformation, essential supplies to stock like water and food, preparing an emergency kit, and developing a family crisis action plan. This proactive approach is rooted in both general emergency-management principles and Latvia’s specific geopolitical and historical context. It not only promotes self-sufficiency that reduces the immediate burden on state resources, but also empowers citizens with concrete actions they can take, which reduces feelings of helplessness and fosters a sense of control and readiness. Public preparedness campaigns like this booklet encourage citizens to volunteer and self-organize, which are foundational elements for any form of collective resistance. The State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD) plays a vital role in this public preparedness effort by actively informing the population on safety measures. To significantly enhance these capabilities, Latvia fully implemented a national cell broadcast system in early 2025. This modern alert system allows the VUGD to instantly send critical warnings directly to all mobile phones within a specific geographic area during an emergency, functioning without requiring users to install an application. This technology provides an immediate and widespread communication layer, complementing existing tools like sirens and the “112 Latvija” mobile application, which is also promoted by the VUGD as a key resource for emergency information.

Youth Guard

The Latvian Youth Guard (Jaunsardze) is Latvia’s largest state-sponsored youth movement, operating under the Ministry of Defence to provide education in national defense. Its primary mission is to foster patriotism, civic consciousness, leadership skills, and physical fitness among young people aged ten to twenty-one. By providing voluntary training in military basics, first aid, and survival skills, the Jaunsardze strengthens the nation’s will to defend itself, serving as a vital component of Latvia’s comprehensive state defense system and a primary pathway for future service.

This culture of readiness is reinforced through long-term educational investments designed to foster an informed, critical, and defense-aware society. The national defense education program in schools aims to instill patriotism, civic responsibility, and basic preparedness skills, fostering an understanding among young people of their role in national defense. Media literacy training is a central component, being built into both school curricula and community programs.

These practical and educational efforts are underpinned by a broader national defense strategy that formally acknowledges psychological defense and nonviolent civil resistance as crucial components of CND. A noteworthy aspect of Latvia’s posture is the formal integration of nonviolent civil

resistance, where the 2020 State Defense Concept explicitly includes “nonviolent civil resistance against occupation forces” as a component of the societal dimension of “total defense.” This signifies a preparedness to resist aggression through a wide spectrum of means, not limited to armed conflict. This is, in large part, a direct response to Russia’s information manipulation and its treatment of the information space as a critical front. Securing an open media space and bolstering psychological resilience against manipulation is now a paramount security goal, involving the cultivation of critical thinking skills to withstand attempts to sow discord.

To defend this front, Latvia employs a multilayered approach. The state has bolstered strategic communication resources, with a dedicated unit under the State Chancellery that coordinates messaging and works to disarm foreign malign information activities. Quality journalism is supported by funding and policy, and authorities have banned most of the Russian propaganda channels. In 2021, Latvia became the first Baltic state to prosecute individuals for willfully spreading dangerous falsehoods as per the criminal law, though there have been few convictions due to legal ambiguity in Article 231 around the definition of “fake news.” This state-led approach is complemented by a vibrant ecosystem of nongovernmental organizations, academics, and volunteers—such as the “Baltic elves”—who actively debunk falsehoods. Investigative journalists, fact-checkers, and initiatives like the Baltic Centre for Media Excellence also work to expose disinformation and promote high standards in journalism.

At the community level, these principles are put into practice through societal and municipality-led initiatives. Continuing work started in the previous year, the Riga municipality has organized a cycle of seven practical civil-defense seminars across various city neighborhoods. During the workshops, residents learn about specific risks in their area, such as nearby high-risk objects and evacuation routes, as identified by the Riga city municipality. They also receive practical training on how to: adapt a basement into a safe shelter; properly assemble a seventy-two-hour emergency bag; and build mental resilience with psychological self-help techniques.

To address the wider Russian threat to Western society, Latvia is sharing what it is learning with its allies and partners. It hosts NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, and it works with allies and partners to combat malign influence. Examples of this kind of cooperation are IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), which conducts media training in the Baltic area, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which investigates disinformation and debunks narratives, educates media consumers, and has had staff based in Latvia since 2017.

Governmental resilience

Governmental resilience is the central pillar that ensures the state can continue to lead and function during a crisis, providing the necessary command, control, and coordination within the CND system. This is achieved through a robust legal framework, a clear institutional hierarchy, contingency and crisis-response planning, and a commitment to testing these plans through regular exercises to guarantee the continuity of government.

The crisis-management system of Latvia is multilayered. The State Civil Protection Plan clearly outlines the responsibilities and leading roles of all state institutions in case of state-level contingencies. The system is designed to be flexible; for example, the Ministry of Health has the leading role and responsibility for management of pandemics, as was the case with COVID-19, with all institutions (including the armed forces) supporting these efforts. Meanwhile, in the case of a military threat or war, civilian institutions have the role of supporting the armed forces and ensuring continuity of governance and essential services. At the practical level, the system envisions the establishment of the Civil Protection Operational Management Centre (abbreviated in Latvian as CAOVC), that is formed in case of state-level contingencies, including war. It would be led by the Ministry of the Interior and composed of delegated experts from across the government, tasking it with coordinating interinstitutional response, compiling a comprehensive situational picture, and providing support to the NAF.

This role is to be complemented by municipal-level responsibility through the establishment of municipal civil-protection commissions that are obliged to plan and execute response activities on a regional level, as well as coordinate with state-level efforts.

The “Kristaps” series involves the Cabinet of Ministers in simulating strategic decision-making, as well as NATO Crisis Management Exercises (CMX), while the operational comprehensive defense exercise Namejs includes tests of civil-military cooperation, the practical implementation of civil defense plans, and the coordination functions of the planned CAOVC.

Latvia’s current push to improve its crisis-management system and governmental resilience is a direct response to lessons learned from a series of major crises. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a stark, real-world test of cross-sectoral crisis management, exposing significant shortcomings in interministerial coordination, public communication, and the ability to manage state material reserves effectively. The 2021 hybrid attack and instrumentalization of migration organized by Belarus on the EU’s eastern border tested the state’s ability to coordinate a response between interior, defense, and foreign policy bodies under “gray zone” threat conditions that are, as another Atlantic Council report put it, diffuse and hard to attribute. Most significantly, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has provided an invaluable, albeit grim, case study in the requirements of modern national defense. It underscored the absolute necessity of a resilient government able to overcome the massive scale of civil-defense challenges and pervasive hybrid threats. These events collectively created a clear need for reevaluation and reform of the crisis-management system in Latvia, highlighting systemic challenges in achieving effective horizontal coordination across ministries.

To resolve these issues, Latvia is establishing a new centralized National Crisis Management Center (CMC). The concept for the CMC, approved by the government in early 2025, represents the keystone of the nation’s reformed resilience architecture. Its creation is a direct answer to the lessons learned from past crises, designed to provide the professional, permanent, and agile coordination that was previously lacking. Operating under the direct authority of the prime minister, the CMC is designed to provide a single, empowered hub for analysis, planning, and, crucially, to improve coordination in crisis management between key state institutions, especially in complex threat scenarios, and provide support to decision-makers and political leadership.

The core functions of the CMC will include: continuous monitoring of the situation and information gathering; identifying potential risks and threats; conducting analysis of information and data to assess these risks and threats; strategic planning and coordination of operational planning; coordinating the planning, logistics, and recovery of state-level civilian crisis-management resources, including state material reserves; and coordinating crisis-communication efforts. Meanwhile, in the specific context of a military crisis, the CMC will be responsible for coordinating the civilian sector’s response and ensuring seamless cooperation with the military sector.

In essence, this new structure, continuously validated through planning and exercises, aims to ensure the leadership and effective whole-of-government coordination deemed essential for navigating these complex security challenges.

Challenges and future imperatives for resilience

Latvia has been systematically working to integrate all societal elements into its national defense posture, particularly since 2014. This ongoing effort, while showing significant progress, presents a range of challenges and necessitates clear future developments to ensure sustained and enhanced security in a complex geopolitical landscape.

Latvia’s commendable strides in building a comprehensive national resilience model are met with several persistent and evolving challenges; therefore, for the continued evolution and strengthening of Latvian resilience it is crucial to address them in a timely manner:

Building and maintaining robust military defense capabilities. Maintaining momentum in military modernization programs and ensuring the capacity to sustain combat operations beyond an initial phase are crucial for credible deterrence and defense. This includes addressing the timeline for military buildup in relation to potential Russian force reconstitution. While Latvia’s defense spending is projected to reach 3.45 percent of GDP in 2025, with ambitions for 5 percent by 2026, efficient allocation across diverse needs—from military modernization to civil protection and societal programs—remains a complex undertaking. This financial strain also impacts critical infrastructure operators and municipalities tasked with new preparedness responsibilities. Therefore, continued investment in critical military capabilities, including air defense, coastal defense systems (like Naval Strike Missile systems), and long-range precision fires (HIMARS) should be pursued.
Expanding the National Armed Forces. Planned expansions of the NAF and the full implementation of the State Defense Service face manpower constraints, requiring substantial investment in training infrastructure, qualified instructors, and innovative recruitment policies. The current reserve system also requires significant overhaul. Latvia should continue the expansion of the NAF, overhaul the reserve system to effectively integrate SDS graduates, and implement both dedicated reservist training and early military education. Ensuring adequate infrastructure, qualified instructors, and innovative policies for recruitment and training is crucial.
Developing targeted strategies for critical areas. The development of industry-specific expertise for business and service continuity, particularly for critical infrastructure, can be a bottleneck. Cultivation of a deeper culture of shared responsibility with the private sector through targeted incentives, joint training programs, and secure information-sharing platforms should be continued. Additionally, mechanisms for improving intermunicipal coordination and resource sharing can alleviate the burden or strain associated with this issue. Latvia should also move beyond awareness campaigns to foster active participation, skill building, and a sense of ownership among the citizenry. Relatively low levels of public trust in certain state institutions can potentially hinder the full engagement of society in defense and resilience efforts. Actively integrating civilian agencies, businesses, and citizens into national resilience and defense planning through practical taskings and drills could help resolve this challenge. A primary challenge is also extending the intensity of preparedness from military threat scenarios to encompass nonmilitary crises across all civilian institutions. Intermunicipal coordination, particularly in resource sharing, needs strengthening. Consistent funding for new municipal responsibilities in civil defense is also a point of discussion, which the municipalities have on previous occasions cited as one of the reasons for their inability to build up civil defense capacities.
Interagency coordination and centralized leadership. Ensuring seamless collaboration and clear, consistent communication of preparedness requirements across all sectors and among numerous actors remains a continuous task. Latvia faces persistent interagency coordination complexities. While the spirit of comprehensive national defense promotes collaboration, the practicalities of aligning different ministries, agencies, and even different levels of government can be challenging. Each entity has its own priorities, budgets, and institutional cultures. The MoD, while a key actor, cannot guarantee or ensure the engagement and resource commitments of other ministries. Effective comprehensive national defense requires a process led by a centralized authority with the power to direct and synchronize efforts across government—ideally the prime minister’s office or a dedicated high-level body. This is especially true for distributing tasks effectively among ministries and bodies of equivalent hierarchical power. Therefore, the establishment of the new Crisis Management Center is a promising development that could further leadership in the implementation of comprehensive national defense and serve as a central actor for confronting crisis situations. However, its mandate, authority, and resourcing will be critical. It must be empowered to not just coordinate but also to direct and enforce; it also must avoid becoming yet another silo and instead act as a true hub for national crisis response and comprehensive national defense implementation. The assurance that the CMC is rapidly and effectively staffed, resourced, and empowered to coordinate across all government levels, municipalities, and the private sector is paramount. The CMC should also be tasked with leading institutionalized, regular, complex cross-sectoral crisis-management exercises. Engaging all nongovernmental organizations and local media more consistently in preparedness exercises and overcoming local political inertia are both ongoing efforts. Effective Comprehensive National Defense coordination across ministries, especially in horizontal tasking, presents difficulties.
Countering evolving threats in the information landscape. Democratic countries like Latvia must counter influence within political, ethical, moral, and legal constraints, while adversaries often operate without such limits, giving them an advantage in proactive narrative projection. Latvia must continuously adapt its resilience strategies to counter new and evolving hybrid threats, sophisticated disinformation techniques, and novel cyberattack methods. Sustaining and enhancing programs to equip the population to withstand long-term information influence operations and maintain morale during crises is crucial. Further exploration and integration of nonviolent resistance concepts into national defense training and public guidance could promote the adaptability of resilience in this area. Latvia’s main approach to countering malign activities in the information space has been blocking narratives rather than proactively projecting its own strategic messages. A shift in policy is also needed from primarily blocking disinformation to more proactive narrative projection by developing and disseminating national strategic narratives that reinforce democratic values and societal cohesion. Expanding media literacy and critical thinking education is still an option; so, too, is allocating more support to independent and local media. Collaboration with allies on resilience benchmarking particularly for critical services, countering hybrid threats, and protecting critical infrastructure could bring about collective benefits in resilience building.
Reviewing the conceptual framework of national defense. Latvia has made impressive progress in defining and implementing the CND concept. However, we believe that the evolution of its conceptual framework must continue to better adhere to the complexities of real-life challenges and diverse crisis situations. As time passes, a review of the initially laid out core principles is needed. A primary concern is preventing comprehensive national defense from becoming a catch-all concept. While its all-encompassing nature is a strength there is risk that its boundaries are too wide and therefore its core purpose can become diluted, leading to a diffusion of effort and resources. For instance, if every societal issue is framed as a comprehensive national defense matter, prioritization becomes difficult and the focus on core security and defense preparedness could be lost. Future work should aim to refine the operational scope of the comprehensive national defense, ensuring it remains a focused and effective framework while clearly delineating its relationship with broader societal well-being initiatives. We need to clearly define what falls within comprehensive national defense and what is supportive but distinct to maintain its strategic integrity.
Deepening societal engagement and cohesion. Latvia should continue its efforts to make its comprehensive defense concept a nationwide reality not just a government policy on paper. As comprehensive defense evolves into a social reality, it demonstrates credible national will, complicates adversary planning, and builds the societal backbone needed to withstand pressure and deter aggression, including hybrid attacks from Russia. Although we have seen great examples of civil engagement from businesses in actively pursuing their role in the defense system, challenges remain with broad-based individual and community-level engagement. Latvia, for various historical and societal reasons, doesn’t always exhibit the strong deeply embedded community culture seen in some other nations. This can make reaching individuals and fostering grassroots resilience initiatives more challenging. Simply put, many individuals may not yet fully internalize their role or feel connected to a local preparedness network. Achieving genuine societal cohesion and developing the resilience of individuals within their respective communities must become a more pronounced strategic goal. This requires more than just information campaigns. It means investing in local leadership development, supporting community-based organizations, designing exercises that actively involve ordinary citizens in practical ways, and perhaps leveraging existing structures like schools, cultural centers, or even hobby groups to build networks of mutual support and preparedness. The aim should be to empower individuals and communities to self-mobilize for constructive action in crisis rather than relying solely on top-down directives.
Continued advocacy for enhanced support from NATO, the EU, the United States, and regional allies for Latvia’s capability development, military modernization, joint exercises, and resilience projects is crucial, as is maximizing the prepositioning of allied military equipment and stocks. The current strategic window, while Russian forces are degraded by the war in Ukraine, should be used to rapidly build up defense capacity and societal resilience, secure continued US commitment, generate a greater NATO forward presence, deepen regional integration, and refine reinforcement mechanisms. Other regional resilience priorities include transitioning the Baltic defense line from a concept to a concrete reality with fortified positions, leveraging natural terrain, and ensuring forces train to fight effectively from these prepared positions.

Editors: Armands Astukevičs, Elīna Vrobļevska.

Contributors: Mārcis Balodis, Hans Binnendijk, Marta Kepe, Beniamino Irdi.

Annex 1: Management structure

A. Strategy and policy level

President of Latvia and National Security Council (NSC): The president, as NAF supreme commander, chairs the NSC. The NSC, comprising top state officials and security heads, advises and coordinates on national security and defense, and offers recommendations to the Saeima (see below) and Cabinet.

Saeima (Parliament): Enacts national security, defense, and civil-protection laws; approves key strategic concepts (National Security Concept, State Defense Concept); and provides parliamentary oversight.

Key committees:

National Security Committee: Prepares national security policy documents for Saeima approval.
- Defense, Internal Affairs and Corruption Prevention Committee: Oversees relevant ministries, legislation, and budgets.
- Comprehensive National Defense Subcommittee: Monitors government implementation of Comprehensive National Defense (CND) elements within the National Security and State Defense Concepts.
- Other committees: May address specific CND implementation aspects as needed.

Cabinet of Ministers (CoM): The highest executive body, implementing national CND policy, approving strategic plans and regulations, allocating resources, and directing ministries.

Key bodies:

Crisis Management Centre (CMC): Concept approval in early 2025; planned to be fully operational when legislation has been passed. Envisioned as the central, national crisis-management coordinator (monitoring, analysis, strategic planning. Its potential role in leading overall CND coordination is under active discussion.
- Ministerial-Level Working Group for CND: Chaired by prime minister or lead minister. Ensures political alignment and high-level interministerial CND strategy coordination.

B. Planning and coordination level

State Secretary-Level Working Group for Comprehensive Defense (CND): Chaired by MoD state secretary. Coordinates CND plan development, harmonization, and monitoring across ministries at the senior-civil-servant level, translating Cabinet decisions into actionable plans.

Ministry of Defense (MoD): Lead institution for the State Defense Concept/Plan and CND concept development; responsible for military defense, NAF development, and civil-military cooperation planning.

Ministry of Interior (MoI): Lead institution for public order, internal security, and the State Civil Protection Plan; oversees the State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD), State Police, and Border Guard; coordinates the Civil Defense Operational Management Centre.

Line ministries (e.g., health, transport, economy): Develop and implement sector-specific resilience plans and CND measures, ensuring continuity of essential services and participating in relevant working groups and exercises.

Bank of Latvia: Ensures financial-sector resilience, including payment systems and cash circulation, in cooperation with commercial banks.

C. Implementation and operations (state level):

National Armed Forces Headquarters (NAF HQ): The NAF’s highest military headquarters and main operational command and control entity under the chief of defense; manages NAF operations, plans/executes joint operations (peacetime, crisis, war), and coordinates with civil authorities such as the Operational Control Centre of Civil Protection.

Operational Control Centre of Civil Protection: A state-level coordination body for major crises or military threats; integrates multiagency expert groups and works closely with NAF HQ to coordinate civil-military efforts.

State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD): Primary state agency for firefighting, rescue operations, and practical civil-protection measures; implements elements of the State Civil Protection Plan.

Other key state agencies and services (e.g., Emergency Medical Service, State Police, Border Guard): Implement crisis response and resilience measures according to their mandates and plans, participating in exercises and interagency coordination.

Municipal and private-sector actors:

Civil Defense Commissions (thirty-seven at municipal level): Develop and implement local civil defense plans; coordinate local resources and crisis response (including public notification, evacuation, basic services, shelters); cooperate with regional NAF units and state services.

Private sector/critical infrastructure operators: Develop and implement business continuity plans for essential service resilience; cooperate with state and municipal authorities; may be involved in resource mobilization.

Annex 2: Framework of concepts, plans, laws, and regulations

Project editors

Armands Astukevičs is a researcher at the Center for East European Policy Studies in Riga, Latvia. Currently, he is working on his doctoral dissertation on authoritarian regime resilience. He has a master’s degree in political science from University of Latvia. Astukevičs’ previous work experience includes policy analysis and planning in the Latvian Ministry of Defense, where he focused on crisis management and comprehensive national defense issues. His current research interests relate to topics on the defense and security policy of the Baltic states, national resilience and resistance to hybrid threats, and analysis of Russia’s foreign policy processes.

Elīna Vrobļevska is a researcher and deputy director at the Center for East European Policy Studies in Riga, Latvia. She has a doctoral degree in international relations from Rīga Stradiņš University, with her thesis on “Russia’s foreign policy identity ideas and their manifestation in foreign policy (2012–2022).” Vroblevska serves as a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Rīga Stradiņš University. Her research interests include the analysis of Russia’s foreign policy narratives and their impact on political processes, the study of Russia’s foreign policy and the security challenges it poses, as well as the examination of Russia’s activities in the information space.

Contributing authors

Mārcis Balodis is a researcher and a member of the board of the Center for East European Policy Studies. His primary research focuses on Russia’s foreing and security policy as well as Russia’s use of hybrid warfare.

Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, part of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Marta Kepe is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is also a senior defense analyst at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

Beniamino Irdi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also the head of strategic and international affairs at Deloitte Legal Italy and founder and CEO of HighGround, a political risk consulting firm.

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The Transatlantic Security Initiative aims to reinforce the strong and resilient transatlantic relationship that is prepared to deter and defend, succeed in strategic competition, and harness emerging capabilities to address future threats and opportunities.

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Prioritizing Canada’s investment in Arctic infrastructure

Jason C. Moyer — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 20:16:33 +0000

Bottom lines up front

Canada’s new budget promises a “generational investment” in infrastructure, with significant funding earmarked for Arctic dual-use infrastructure.
These funds advance multiple goals set by the new government: improving its military presence in the north, accessing untapped critical mineral reserves, and offering new economic opportunities to Arctic communities.
Translating this funding into tangible projects and incorporating Canada’s climate goals into their development will be critical.

The Canadian government is making a “generational investment” in its infrastructure—including pipelines, ports, and roadways. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first federal budget, unveiled in early November 2025, establishes Canada’s long-term prosperity as a driver for this investment and enables the new government to approach linked global challenges from a place of strength. Canada’s budget process differs from the US budget process, producing a more concrete plan with less room for deviation once the budget is set. The Canadian government budget outlines actual revenue and the government’s expenditure plans. Indeed, infrastructure investments combine two priorities in the current threat landscape: economic ambition and military necessity. To achieve the stated goals of doubling Canadian exports to non-US markets over the next decade and meeting the new defense spending pledge to which NATO allies committed at the Hague summit, Canada’s new budget begins a major effort to have infrastructure catch up to ambition.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Canada’s Arctic, where infrastructure investment has sorely lagged. Canada’s vast and remote north is a challenging environment for building infrastructure. It is costly to build and to maintain, with prohibitively high initial costs and the “tyranny of distance” often deterring investment. Amid growing international interest in the Arctic, including pressure from the United States, Canada’s north can no longer be ignored, especially as Carney’s new nation-building agenda pushes for investment in infrastructure. Investing in Canada’s northern infrastructure addresses multiple necessities: It bolsters Canada’s military footprint in the Arctic; it contributes to NATO commitments on defense spending, particularly toward the goal of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on infrastructure; it strengthens the economic opportunities available to communities in the region; and it improves access to critical minerals.

The Canadian Arctic is facing a profound period of transformation. It is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe, dramatically impacting attempts to build infrastructure in the region. Permafrost thaw, less sea ice, and rising sea levels are all challenges facing Canada’s north. Ultimately, this reality needs to be central to the development of infrastructure projects in the region. Canada seeks to become a “clean energy superpower” by supporting the development of low-emission energy projects such as nuclear reactors and low-carbon liquefied natural gas. The government is pushing for the development of carbon capture and storage technologies, as well as enhanced methane regulations. It is also affirming its commitment to the industrial carbon tax. The new federal budget’s approval by parliament was only possible with support from the Green Party. The environment must remain central to Carney’s plans for economic and infrastructure expansion in order to maintain support for his minority government.

One highlight of the new budget is the Arctic Infrastructure Fund. The government is proposing C$1 billion over four years for Transport Canada to invest in “major transportation projects in the north,” including “airports, seaports, all-season roads, and highways.” These infrastructure investments have both civilian and military uses. The Mackenzie Valley Highway is a prime example of the challenges facing major infrastructure projects in the region. The all-weather highway extension is designed to connect remote communities in the Northwest Territories. While this project’s origins date back to the 1960s, it is still several years from breaking ground. The Mackenzie Valley Highway alone is projected to cost C$1.65 billion, with the majority of the cost covered by the federal government. In this context, C$1 billion over four years—while an admirable start—is simply not enough to make a significant difference. To address infrastructure needs in Canada’s north, and to transform its portion of the Arctic so it is no longer the “soft underbelly” of the North American Arctic, this funding must be only the beginning of the Canadian government’s investments. As Carney’s large-scale projects continue to unfold, the Canadian Arctic will require more resources to meet civil and military infrastructure needs and effectively project power into the north.

In late 2025, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative hosted a workshop with government officials, academic experts, and participants from the public and private sectors of Canada, the United States, and Europe. The insights gathered from these conversations helped inform this issue brief, which assesses challenges, recommendations, and opportunities for Canada’s infrastructure in the Arctic.

Recommendations for the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces

Incorporate sustainability and climate security in Arctic infrastructure planning

Many of the Canadian government’s plans for infrastructure in the Arctic are dual use in nature, with the goal of increasing its military footprint in the region. Increased military or infrastructure presence in Canada’s north will invariably have environmental ramifications. Air- and sea-based military activities can generate excessive noise levels and air pollution, while military exercises can result in soil compaction and the destruction of vegetation. As Canada grows its infrastructure footprint in the north, it will need to include countermeasures to offset this damage—such as creating specific operational zones to protect ecosystems or paying to mitigate harm done to the environment.

Despite these challenges, Canada has extensive resources at its disposal, such as NATO’s new Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence (CCASCOE), headquartered in Montreal. This center can coordinate best practices, act as a standard-setting body, and provide guidance for allies and partners to operate sustainably in the region. Drawing on lessons from the European Arctic and adapting them for the North American Arctic is one area in which this center of excellence can benefit dual-use infrastructure projects.

Another reason to ensure infrastructure in the Canadian Arctic meets environmental standards is to support Canada’s new Climate Competitiveness Strategy. By linking climate sustainability to economic growth, the Canadian government is building a competitive advantage at a time when other Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union are walking back pledges to meet green targets.

Include local communities’ expertise and experiences in infrastructure development

As investments in Canada’s Arctic infrastructure increase, environmental considerations are being taken into account—and the experiences and expertise of those living in Canada’s northernmost regions must also be integrated into planning. Indigenous and local communities are on the forefront of the challenges facing the region, from sinking roads and runways to access to healthcare. Calls to work with Indigenous and First Nation communities are integrated throughout the budget.

Starting in 2025–2026, the government is allocating C$40 million over two years to Indigenous Services Canada through the Strategic Partnerships Initiative “to support Indigenous capacity building and consultation on nation-building projects,” some of which will be in the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Infrastructure Fund, with its C$1 billion over four years, is specifically tasked with advancing Indigenous economic reconciliation. The budget highlights that “dual-use infrastructure investments in the north will reliably meet both military and local needs, and the government recognizes that Inuit, First Nations, and other communities are best placed to identify community needs.” Spending on infrastructure in Canada’s north has military, economic, and local resilience factors. Ensuring local and Indigenous perspectives are integrated into all stages of infrastructure development—from the planning stages to design, groundbreaking, and finalization of projects—will be key to ensuring the investments successfully meet the needs of both the military and the local community. Investing in roadways, ports, and railways in the Arctic, in close alignment with the local community, will amplify whole-of-society resilience in ways not yet realized.

Recognize critical minerals’ potential as a driver of infrastructure development in the region.

The Canadian government’s decision to increase investment in infrastructure and its northern territories can be partially understood by the global race for rare earth materials heating up. At the G7 meeting in Alberta, the prime minister introduced the Critical Minerals Production Alliance—a Canadian-led initiative that leverages trusted international partnerships to enhance critical mineral supply chains for collective defense and advanced technology.

Canada is one of the top five producers of ten critical minerals, and minerals account for 5 percent of Canada’s nominal GDP. Its northern regions are home to significant deposits of iron ore, gold, diamonds, and rare earth elements. The Mary River Mine on Baffin Island is one of the world’s northernmost reserves of high-grade iron ore, producing millions of tons annually. Similarly, the Hope Bay and Meliadine gold mines contribute substantially to Canada’s mineral output. These resources are critical for economic development and for national security.

Another major priority identified in the new budget is the Port of Churchill Plus. A series of projects will upgrade the Port of Churchill—Canada’s only Arctic-region deepwater port for more than 106,000 miles of coastline—and expand trade corridors with an all-weather road, an upgraded rail line, a new energy corridor, and marine icebreaking capacity. The goal is for the Port of Churchill to become a major four-season and dual-use gateway for the region. Expanded export capacity in the north through Hudson Bay will contribute to increased and diversified trade with Europe and other partners, while more strongly linking Churchill to the rest of Canada.

While this push for access to critical minerals makes sense from an economic perspective, it has several notable roadblocks to overcome. First is the lack of processing and refinement capabilities in Canada, and in the West more broadly. China has exerted a global chokehold over rare earth materials globally, partly due to its technical expertise in the processing stage. Western companies have struggled to compete with China over environmental and regulatory concerns, which leads to the second point: Extraction of critical minerals has an environmental tradeoff. Canada’s economic expansionism and green ambitions will eventually collide—likely in the critical minerals space. In the ever-shifting global market for critical minerals, Canada cannot prioritize short-term economic gain over long-term environmental consequences.

As always, one of the core challenges facing infrastructure projects in Canada’s north lies in sustaining this momentum in the long term. The narrow passage of this budget by parliament demonstrates the challenges of minority government rule. Improving affordability for average Canadians was the main refrain of those who voted against the new budget—a challenge that will not go away in the short term. In the long term, Carney must break the chronic habit of previous governments promising on defense spending without following through. The budget also highlights upcoming sacrifices—C$60 billion in total spending cuts in the next five years—including a 10 percent cut to the public sector (amounting to roughly forty thousand jobs). Although the C$1 billion in funding through the Arctic Infrastructure Fund is a strong step forward, it will need considerably more funding to meet Canada’s ambitions in the region and must be supported by action.

About the author

Jason C. Moyer is a nonresident fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

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Reclaiming Russia’s ‘historical lands’: How far do Putin’s imperial ambitions extend?

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:42:53 +0000

As US officials talk up the prospects of a compromise peace with the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again signaled that his expansionist appetite is far from sated. In a bellicose address delivered to Russian Defense Ministry officials in Moscow on December 17, Putin declared that the maximalist goals of his Ukraine invasion will be met “unconditionally” and framed the war as a crusade to reverse Russia’s post-Soviet retreat. “If the opposing side and their foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive discussions, Russia will achieve ⁠the liberation of its historical lands by ‌military means,” he declared.

None of this is entirely new, of course. Putin has long been notorious for delivering rambling history lectures to justify Russia’s war against Ukraine, and has directly compared the current invasion to Russian Czar Peter the Great’s eighteenth-century wars of imperial conquest. Nevertheless, at a time when European leaders are already looking to the eastern horizon with trepidation, it makes sense to explore what Putin means by “historically Russian lands” and examine just how far his imperial ambitions may actually stretch.

The most straightforward interpretation of Putin’s latest comments would suggest that he was referring to the portion of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that remains under Ukrainian control. After all, this small but heavily fortified and strategically important territory is currently at the heart of negotiations and has been named by Moscow as its price for a ceasefire. However, Kremlin officials are well known for sending contradictory signals regarding their territorial objectives in Ukraine, with Putin himself speaking this month about the “inevitable liberation of the Donbas and Novorossiya.”

Putin’s reference to “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”) raised eyebrows and was widely seen as a signal that Russia may be preparing to increase its territorial demands. The Czarist era term “Novorossiya” was first employed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by imperial administrators to describe large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine then under Russian rule. It fell into disuse during the Soviet period, only to be resurrected by the Kremlin following the onset of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in 2014.

Russian nationalists have yet to agree on the exact boundaries of Novorossiya, but most envisage a territory stretching far beyond the partially occupied Ukrainian provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that are currently claimed by the Kremlin. Putin has indicated that his definition of Novorossiya encompasses approximately half of Ukraine, including the country’s entire Black Sea coastline and major cities such as Odesa and Kharkiv.

Then there is the question of Kyiv. According to Russia’s own national mythology, the capital of Ukraine is also the mother of Russian cities and the spiritual birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. Putin has repeatedly referenced the sacred status of Kyiv in his many essays and speeches denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood. It is therefore extremely difficult to imagine him accepting any peace proposal that secures Kyiv’s postwar position as the capital of an independent Ukraine. Putin can hardly claim to be reuniting Russia’s historic lands if he leaves the most Russian city of them all firmly in the hands of a hostile state.

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Based on his own public pronouncements and extensive writings on the subject, it seems reasonable to conclude that Putin’s understanding of historically Russian lands includes the whole of Ukraine. Indeed, he has made no real secret of this conviction. “I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” Putin told guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in summer 2025. The real question is whether his imperial agenda extends beyond the borders of Ukraine.

In a geographical sense, Putin’s vision of historical Russia is definitely not confined to Ukraine alone. Instead, it includes the vast additional expanses of the Czarist Russian Empire and its Soviet successor. “What is the Soviet Union? It is historical Russia,” Putin declared in 2022. A year earlier, he had lamented the fall of the USSR as “the disintegration of historical Russia” by another name. “We turned into a completely different country,” Putin stated. “And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost.”

When European dictators start ranting about lost thousand-year empires, it rarely bodes well for international security. Putin is no exception. The Kremlin dictator’s determination to reverse modern Russia’s fall from grace has come to dominate his reign and has led directly to the biggest European war since World War II. His deeply felt sense of historical grievance over the Soviet collapse has fueled a poisonous obsession with Ukraine, which Putin regards as the ultimate symbol of the injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Due to its large size, geographical proximity, shared history, significant ethnic Russian population, and perceived cultural closeness, Ukraine occupies a prominent place in Russia’s imperial identity. However, it is wishful thinking to imagine that sacrificing Ukraine will appease Putin or persuade him to forget about the rest of the former Russian Empire. Instead, the same bogus historical arguments used to justify the invasion of Ukraine could easily be applied to a host of other nations. Any country that was previously subjected to Russian imperial rule could technically fall within Putin’s broad definition of historically Russian lands. “We have an old rule,” he commented earlier this year. “Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.”

Based on the boundaries of the Czarist Empire at its greatest extent on the eve of World War I, potential targets of future Russian aggression could include Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the nations of Central Asia. Nor is this list exhaustive. A truly maximalist approach would also require the inclusion of the many former Soviet satellite states that made up the Eastern Bloc during the second half of the twentieth century.

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Central Asia Economy & Business Europe & Eurasia Politics & Diplomacy

With the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine about to enter a fifth year, many in the West are now beginning to take Putin’s imperial ambitions increasingly seriously. According to Reuters, recent United States intelligence assessments confirm that Putin has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that once belonged to the former Soviet Empire. “The Europeans are convinced of it. The Poles are absolutely convinced of it. The Baltics think they’re first,” the report noted.

Not everyone is so sure. Skeptics tend to question Putin’s ability to wage a major war against the West, with many pointing to his army’s underwhelming performance in Ukraine as proof of Russia’s military limitations. This is comforting but dangerously misleading. In reality, Russia’s lack of progress since 2022 is not a sign of any fundamental weakness; it is testament to the formidable strength and staggering sacrifices of the Ukrainian nation. However, Ukraine’s remarkable resistance against overwhelming odds cannot continue indefinitely and must not be taken for granted. If Ukraine falls, Europe will face a challenge it is utterly unprepared for.

Today, the Ukrainian army is by far the biggest and most experienced fighting force in Europe, other than Russia itself. It is backed by a rapidly expanding and highly innovative domestic military industry that is rewriting the rules of modern warfare. If Putin is permitted to succeed in establishing control over Ukraine, all this will be rapidly integrated into the Kremlin war machine. A partially disarmed Europe will then find itself confronted by a dramatically emboldened Putin, who will have the continent’s two largest armies at his disposal. In such uniquely favorable circumstances, the chances of him choosing not to press home his advantage are next to zero.

The internal logic of the Putin regime is an additional factor driving Russia’s expansionist impulse. Economically, politically, and culturally, Russian society is now deeply militarized in ways that will be extremely difficult to reverse without destabilizing the country. Nor is the Kremlin in any hurry to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers currently fighting in Ukraine. These men are now used to receiving vastly inflated salaries and have been brutalized by the bloodiest invasion in modern history. Keeping them occupied, and preferably as far away from Russia as possible, is now a very real national security priority for Moscow.

Putin may also be encouraged to act by the current geopolitical climate, which presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to advance Russia’s imperial agenda. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has signaled a radical shift in US policy toward the war in Ukraine and the broader defense of Europe. This has led to a mounting sense of insecurity in European capitals amid unprecedented concerns over America’s commitment to NATO collective security. Would a Russian attack on the Baltic states trigger an Article 5 response from the US? Given Trump’s posturing on NATO budgets and his administration’s ambivalent attitude toward Europe, some believe this can no longer be taken for granted.

Europe alone is not yet in a position to defend itself against Russia. After decades of defense sector neglect, effective rearmament will take years to complete. European leaders have also failed to demonstrate the kind of collective political will necessary to deter the Kremlin. The recent failure to agree on the use of frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort was the latest in a long line of climb downs that have signaled Europe’s chronic disunity and crippling fear of escalation. There are many good reasons why Putin may not rush to expand the war, but concern over a potentially decisive European response is not one of them.

As evidence of Western weakness continues to mount, Putin is growing bolder. In recent months, he has escalated Russia’s hybrid war against Europe with sabotage attacks on critical infrastructure and drone incursions across the continent. In the diplomatic arena, Kremlin officials recently renewed calls for NATO to retreat from central and Eastern Europe, a move that would expose more than a dozen countries to the threat of Russian aggression for the first time in a generation. Meanwhile, rhetoric in the Russian state media targeting Finland, the Baltic states, and other front line countries now increasingly echoes the propaganda that preceded the invasion of Ukraine.

As he plots to rebuild the Russian Empire, Putin is unlikely to be working to any set schedule or clearly defined territorial goal. Instead, the gradual escalation of Russia’s Ukraine invasion over the past twelve years indicates that he is an opportunistic imperialist whose appetite grows with eating. At the same time, it is obvious that his radical revisionist agenda is not limited to Ukraine and poses a very real threat to European security.

Putin believes he is on an historic mission to restore Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower and the dominant force in Europe. Erasing Ukrainian statehood is just the beginning. While we cannot know for sure where he will strike next or how far he ultimately plans to go, it is delusional to think that handing Putin victory in Ukraine will convince him to stop. On the contrary, a Russian success in Ukraine would almost certainly mean more war and lead to decades of European instability.

Putin’s vow to liberate historically Russian lands is an open-ended excuse for imperial expansion that makes a complete mockery of US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace based on limited Russian gains in southern and eastern Ukraine. Clearly, this would not be enough to placate Putin and cannot serve as the basis for a sustainable settlement.

The peace terms currently being discussed would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue integrating with the West. This is exactly what Putin aims to prevent. After four years of fighting to reverse the verdict of the Cold War, any peace deal that safeguards Ukrainian independence would be recognized in Moscow as a Russian defeat of historic proportions. Instead, Putin knows he must continue the invasion until a fully subjugated Ukraine can become a stepping stone for the next stage in his expansionist agenda.

In his quest to secure a place in history among Russia’s greatest rulers, Putin has long since passed the point of no return. He will not deviate from this messianic goal for the sake of sanctions relief or minor territorial concessions. Any efforts to establish a lasting peace must be firmly grounded in this sobering reality. Peace is possible, but only if the pressure on Putin is increased to the point where he begins to fear defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine and potential collapse on the home front inside Russia.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

José Antonio Kast will head to La Moneda in March 2026. Chile’s president-elect won the second round of the election with 58.2 percent of the vote—winning by a margin of more than 16 percentage points. The day after the election, Kast met with outgoing President Gabriel Boric and emphasized afterward that he will advance a “government of national unity on priority issues: security, health, education, and housing.”

Kast will enter office with a slew of economic pressures in his inbox: slow growth, weak investment, stagnant productivity, high inequality, limited social mobility, and regional gaps. The labor market remains segmented, with low female participation and high informality. Along with these economic pressures, security and rising crime rates dominated the electoral campaign and addressing them will be central to Kast’s government plan.

In 2024, Chile’s economy showed signs of stable but uneven recovery, with moderate 2.6-percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth driven largely by mining, easing inflation, and falling poverty, while unemployment and informality remained elevated and investment growth lagged. Looking ahead to 2026, growth is expected to remain steady at 2.6 percent. Alongside a narrowing fiscal deficit and inflation stabilizing, this suggests a macroeconomic environment that is steady but still dependent on restoring investment momentum.

Chileans want to see changes and expect Kast to deliver some economic wins quickly. But the ability to do so goes hand in hand with addressing the increased rates of crime and violence. Kast’s campaign focused on the security of the country with proposals such as his Plan Implacable, which aims to “restore state authority and curb organized crime” through tougher penalties, more federal control over prisons, and stronger security operations, while also reasserting state authority in areas where criminal networks have expanded. This plan might be among the things on which Chileans want Kast to take action first. However, Kast and his administration need to balance what they want and what they can actually get done, especially regarding migration and deportation.

A challenging congress

The first one hundred days of the Kast administration will test the executive’s ability to move legislation that supports faster growth, rebuilds investor confidence that has been weakened by security concerns and political fragmentation, and signals a clearer economic direction.

That said, Kast takes office with a congress that leans right but does not give him full control. Right and far-right parties aligned with Kast hold seventy-six of the 155 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, with his second-round opponent Jeannette Jara’s left and far-left coalition of Unidad por Chile controlling sixty-one. The swing party of Franco Parisi, Partido de la Gente, holds fourteen seats.

Kast will need a simple majority to pass most legislation. But constitutional amendments and reforms of the electoral system would require two-thirds of votes in the congress. Kast’s coalition cannot reach either threshold on its own, and must work with partners to move any major bill forward. This makes the Partido de la Gente especially important. Because no bloc controls a majority, its fourteen deputies are in position to decide whether a proposal advances or fails. Its votes can tilt negotiations, shape the final text of legislation, and determine how governable the next term becomes.

Passing legislation through the lower house will be easier, but major legislation such as Kast’s proposed mass deportations will need broader support. The evenly split senate will require him to work with the traditional right as well as swing actors to move legislation. As such, Kast will be faced with increased pressure to deliver short-term results on crime and economic growth, signaling early whether his administration can translate public demand for order and stability into a more predictable environment for investment, something US investors typically look for before committing capital in Chile.

How Chile’s investment environment has shifted

Since the mid-1980s, Chile has implemented significant reforms that opened its economy and encouraged foreign investment. These included changes in the financial and social markets, such as Law No. 20.848 of 2015 establishing the framework for foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as other tax and labor reforms. However, social unrest in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, two failed constitutional reform attempts, and rising crime have affected investor confidence.

The trade relationship between Chile and the United States is one of the deepest and most strategic for our country. Since the Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 2004—which allowed 100 percent of bilateral trade to be duty-free by 2015—trade between the two countries has more than doubled, and Chilean exports to the US have grown steadily. Today, the United States is our second-largest export destination and also the second-largest foreign investor in Chile, reflecting a mutual trust built over time.

The opportunities to deepen this partnership are enormous: sustainable energy, critical minerals, green hydrogen, water and digital infrastructure, and advanced technologies. Chile contributes stability, legal certainty, and strategic resources; the United States brings innovation and capital. Strengthening this cooperation is key to driving investment, productivity, and new opportunities for both countries.

—Susana Jiménez Schuster, president, Confederation of Production and Trade (CPC)

The foundation for investment in Chile lies in democracy, rule of law, and a predictable regulatory environment. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has indicated that Chile’s growth might be reaching a ceiling, making continued reforms—such as streamlining permits, encouraging innovation, digitalizing paperwork, simplifying regulations, and removing bottlenecks—essential for reigniting momentum.

Chile has economic sectors with great potential that meet global demand for a wide range of goods and services, as well as developed markets and a stable institutional framework. Just as our country can offer attractive conditions to foreign investors, we can also provide knowledge and talent in those industries where we have developed a high level of know-how and expertise. Chile’s growth has been founded on strong collaboration, and free trade agreements with various economies around the world.

—Francisco Pérez Mackenna, board member, AmCham Chile

What makes Chile an attractive destination for US investors

Several conditions strengthen opportunities for US investment in Chile. Together they shape a more attractive environment for long-term investment is likely to be a priority for the incoming Kast government.

Chile is a key tech hub in Latin America. This is because of its stable economy, strong startup ecosystem, skilled workforce, advanced digital infrastructure, and government-backed innovation programs. Successful tech projects require a strong and solid workforce. According to CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2025 report, Santiago has the third-highest tech talent pool in Latin America, with more than 143,000 professionals. This positions Chile as an attractive hub for companies to expand. That said, most initiatives are heavily concentrated in Santiago, emphasizing the need for additional training in both the northern and southern regions to ensure successful new project implementation.
US companies benefit from working with reliable local partners, in part because Chile has clear rules for contracts and strong institutions and because local firms usually have long experience navigating permitting, local procurement, cultural nuances, and sector-specific regulations. These conditions create an environment where these partnerships give foreign investors a dependable base of support on the ground.
Investors trust Chile because its infrastructure is strong, and its politics stay steady. In 2024, Chile received $15.3 billion in FDI, one of the highest inflows in recent years. A big share of that comes from reinvesting earnings, which shows that companies already in Chile are confident enough to expand. The government agency InvestChile closed 2024 with a portfolio of $56.2 billion in foreign-backed projects, with US companies investing the largest share at $20.5 billion. Major investments target clean energy: green hydrogen, mining, and infrastructure. These numbers show that foreign investors, especially those from the United States, believe in Chile’s long-term stability and the clarity of its rules. They see a country where projects can start quickly and scale up, thanks to predictable regulations and reliable systems. That confidence in both infrastructure and political stability strengthens the case for more investment.

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)’s mandate prioritizes investments in markets that offer predictability, stability, and clear rules, conditions that have historically made countries like Chile attractive for engagement. The DFC, a US federal agency, was created under the 2018 Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development (BUILD) Act, which merged the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) with USAID’s Development Credit Authority. Its core purpose is to mobilize private capital to advance US development and foreign policy objectives by leveraging financial tools such as loans, equity investments, guarantees, and political risk insurance to support private-sector-led solutions in markets where commercial finance is limited or unavailable.

In December 2025, Congress reauthorized and modernized the DFC through the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), extending its authorization through 2031, and significantly expanding its scope and authorities. Under this reauthorization, the DFC’s investment cap (Maximum Contingent Liability) was raised to $205 billion, and the agency gained new tools, including a $5 billion equity revolving fund and increased equity investment authority. The legislation also broadened DFC’s ability to invest in more countries and sectors while placing limits on financing in the wealthiest countries, ensuring that no more than 10 percent of its portfolio may support high-income markets, with specified sector exceptions such as energy, critical minerals, and information and communications technology.

While Chile’s high-income status means that large-scale DFC engagement is still limited compared with developing markets, the agency can support selected projects in strategic areas, including clean energy, critical minerals, infrastructure, and technology, particularly where there is a clear economic or strategic rationale and consistent with the statutory constraints on participation in wealthy countries.

Addressing bottlenecks to further FDI in Chile

Following the presidential election, Chile enters a new political phase with renewed attention on how the next administration will translate campaign promises into policy. Chile continues to take steps to strengthen its investment environment, while facing persistent bottlenecks that shape foreign investor confidence and will influence the country’s economic direction in the months ahead.

Regulatory delays are a major concern and become impediments. Permitting and environmental review processes can take several years. However, the Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations (Law 21.770)—better known as the Ley de Permisología, which creates the Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations (LMAS)—was enacted and posted in September 2025. The goal is to update and speed up the permit process to encourage investment. The law creates a single digital portal called SUPER to manage permits simultaneously, introduces simplified procedures for low-risk projects, and establishes administrative silence. Streamlining and updating procedures are expected to drop processing times between 30 percent and 70 percent without lowering regulatory standards. This will also be a step forward for attracting foreign investment.
Policy uncertainty remains a concern for long-term investors. Over the past decade, shifts between governments of the right and left have created questions about the direction of future regulations. Relations between Santiago and Washington are expected to further deepen under a new administration. Kast will need to show that he can meet public expectations for stronger growth and higher investment. Here, it’s critical to balance the demands of [JF1] parties across the political spectrum as this congressional balancing act is what’s needed to advance legislation reassuring to investors. Although Chile has struggled lately to attract FDI, the United States remains its second-largest source, with a strong presence in energy, data centers, and mining.
The economy also plays a major role in the current political moment. Chile has experienced slow growth for several years and unemployment sits at about 9 percent. Investment remains stagnant, with inflation and high living costs shaping daily choices for many Chileans. Voters widely see the current government as falling short in addressing these issues. The national budget was also a central topic of conversation during the election. The legislative commission in charge of reviewing the annual budget recently rejected the proposal for 2026; Kast will now likely express his approach to next year’s spending plan in the short term. That said, his proposal of gradual elimination of property taxes on primary residences, starting with those on homeowners over sixty-five, would reduce government revenue, meaning the 2026 budget will need to account for this shortfall. The administration will need to balance funding public services and implementing the policy in a fiscally responsible way.
Security is another major risk. While Chile remains relatively safe in comparison to select other countries, crime has risen in recent years—including organized crime, drug trafficking, and violence in northern regions and Santiago. Researchers estimate crime costs the country nearly $8 billion annually, discouraging some foreign investment. Kast made public safety a core part of his platform through the previous mentioned Plan Implacable, which includes tougher penalties for organized crime, high-security prisons, expanded self-defense laws, protections for law enforcement and judicial actors, and targeted border security measures with his Plan Escudo Fronterizo.

American investment has been central to the growth of Chile’s strategic industries, while Chile’s stability, talent, and infrastructure have enabled US companies to scale across Latin America. Significant opportunities remain. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and holds 25 percent of global lithium output, with growing mineral-processing capacity and emerging resources such as rare earths and cobalt. The country is also becoming a regional digital hub, supported by projects like Google’s Humboldt Cable and expanding data-center infrastructure. Upcoming port concessions and the need for energy storage solutions in a rapidly growing clean-energy system offer additional avenues for deeper US investment.

—Beatriz Herrera, investment commissioner for North America, Embassy of Chile

Sectors in Chile with investment potential

Information technology (IT): Chile’s IT sector is expanding rapidly, driven by high internet penetration, widespread mobile connectivity, and growing demand for digital services. Key emerging sectors include fifth-generation (5G) deployment, big-data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) integration, supported by initiatives such as Chile Digital 2035 and the National AI Policy. To accelerate growth, Chile can build on existing programs by expanding Chile Digital 2035 and Digital Talent for Chile, increasing investment in digital infrastructure, scaling training and education initiatives, and deepening public-private partnerships to ensure broader access to advanced IT solutions, close the skills gap, and achieve full digitalization of public services.
Critical minerals (copper and lithium): As the world’s largest copper producer, supplying 24 percent of global output, and home to 41 percent of lithium reserves, Chile is a strategic source of materials essential for clean technologies. These include electric vehicles, energy storage, and digital infrastructure. With public policies promoting sustainability and high environmental standards, Chile is positioning itself to attract investment that advances technological innovation, supports the global energy transition, and fosters inclusive economic growth. China currently dominates global demand for Chilean copper and lithium, but Kast could attract more Western-aligned investment by promoting legal certainty, officering incentives, and fostering partnerships with companies that meet high environmental and governmental standards.
Water management and drought mitigation: Chile is increasingly leveraging public-private partnerships to improve water management and climate resilience. Investments focus on both traditional infrastructure, such as dams, and natural solutions including reforestation and wetland restoration. There is demand for technologies that enhance water efficiency, like advanced treatment and recycling systems, data-driven water management tools, and construction waste reduction. Sustainable agricultural practices that conserve water and lower input costs also present promising opportunities. Water management could become a strategic priority for Kast, with the advancement of such projects allowing the administration to deliver visible results, balance regional needs, and contribute to Chile’s robust agriculture sector.
Seismic-resilient infrastructure: Situated on one of the most active fault lines in the world, Chile experiences frequent earthquakes, including several above magnitudes of eight. Critical infrastructure—such as ports, airports, and energy facilities—requires modern seismic design. There is strong demand for engineering and technology services in risk modeling, resilience planning, and early warning systems. Opportunities include digital twins, smart sensors, and integrated solutions to strengthen utilities, transportation networks, and urban development.

How can the new Kast administration help unlock Chile’s economic potential and attract investment?

Visit Washington before the March 11 inauguration. This would reinforce Chile’s shared interests in economic security and investment cooperation, present project pipelines aligned with DFC priorities and clarify Chile’s commitments in areas such as energy transition and trade. Early engagement would allow Chile to secure a proactive position in shaping US investment decisions, demonstrate commitment to close cooperation with the United States, and build political support in the US Congress and executive branch for stronger bilateral financing ties. When in Washington, use the visit to generate broader public interest in the importance of Chile as a strong US partner.
Identify emerging skills and priority growth sectors in Chile and encourage private-sector programs that link education directly to industry needs. Kast can do this by providing tax incentives and speeding up the processing of paperwork for companies involved in workforce training. Scholarships, vocational training, apprenticeships, and partnerships with universities that teach technical skills can help equip students and current workers with the skills required for mining, technology, energy, and other strategic industries.
Maintain continuity in key policies on permitting reforms. This applies to policies such as the Ley de Permisología, which aims to streamline and coordinate environmental and sectoral permitting across government agencies, and they should be expanded to ensure that the ministries and offices involved are actively collaborating with each other. If government entities are not coordinating—for example, in the processing of environment permits—the procedures for key sectors such as mining and technology will continue to be delayed. Demonstrating consistency will reinforce Chile’s reputation as a stable investment destination and encourage both new and reinvested capital.
Avoid over-centralizing these initiatives in Santiago. This can be done by collaborating with regional partners or established private-sector actors to develop and train local workforces. This could include local recruitment, training programs at regional universities, and ongoing partnerships between the government and private sector.

These measures strengthen security in ways that matter for investors by creating clearer rules, steadier institutions, and stronger local trust. When the government improves workforce training and expands formal job opportunities, it reduces pressures that fuel crime in regions tied to mining and energy. Better coordination on permits lowers chances of corruption or operational disruptions because companies face fewer conflicting decisions from different agencies. Together, these steps create a safer and more predictable environment for investors.

Conclusion

Chile remains a trusted and stable partner for the United States. Its democratic values, institutional strength, and openness to trade make it a strategic destination for US investment. But sustaining and expanding this partnership will require continued economic reforms and political engagement between both countries to ease processes for doing business, improve regulatory efficiency, enhance human capital, and foster political stability toward a robust, long-term strategic partnership. As Kast prepares to take office, he has an opportunity to set a foundation to ignite Chile’s economic growth and attract investment. And with the Western Hemisphere as a top priority for Washington, Chile has the potential to be an even more strategic partner to the United States.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors alone. Some of the investment opportunities discussed in this issue brief were informed by an October roundtable discussion on US-Chile investment relations, which included the participation of US and Chilean private-sector leaders, public-sector representatives, and multilateral organizations. The roundtable was organized in partnership with AmCham Chile and with the support of MetLife. Neither were involved in the production of this issue brief.

About the authors

Maite Gonzalez Latorre is program assistant at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council.

Jason Marczak is vice president and senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council

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The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

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Employment needs to take center stage in Gaza security plans

Melanie Robbins — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 16:40:38 +0000

Employment and economic opportunity are two of the most overlooked areas for strategic development in Gaza. The benefits of focusing on these are rather straightforward: populations stripped of economic opportunity are vulnerable to becoming dependent on armed groups or nonstate actors, especially those that have a monopoly on access to social services and economic opportunity. This means every family in Gaza without an income is an opening for Hamas, militias, or the black-market war economy. Gaza’s economy has long been shaped by coercion, taxation, and armed patronage networks because no legal economic alternative has been built.

Many political and security leaders remain unconvinced that employment should be its own goal or that employment is central to immediate security. While US President Donald Trump’s twenty-point peace plan for Gaza refers to employment in broad terms, it is only referenced as an outcome of investments and large-scale development, but employment is not viewed as a goal in and of itself.

For example, point number ten states that “many thoughtful investment proposals . . . will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for the future of Gaza.”

Gaza cannot function without guaranteed pathways to work. To disarm Hamas, there must be a fiscal strategy alongside effective street-level security. Most critically, the best way to undermine Hamas’s power on the ground is to employ the people Hamas pays today. Security requires a fiscal plan; in Gaza, Hamas controls labor, resources, and opportunity, eliminating competition. To break this chokehold, Gaza requires deliberate intervention to generate employment across sectors.

Hamas and Gaza’s employment crisis

Before the launch of war in 2023, Gaza already faced some of the worst labor conditions in the region. Hamas-led public sector employment accounted for nearly one-third of all those working in the Strip, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2017, the average monthly household expenditure in Gaza was 934 dinars, or roughly $1,300. Meanwhile, Hamas is paying young fighters up to three hundred dollars per month, according to Wall Street Journal reporting citing Israeli officials—an amount that pays for a crucial portion of those expenses. Additionally, the patronage network system of Hamas meant that those in the militant group’s networks were able to access aid, resources, and other market goods in a way that those unaffiliated could not, something that has continued throughout the war as well.

This meant that the few available jobs or reliable opportunities inside Gaza were disproportionately Hamas-affiliated—whether related to civil service or fighting. Against this backdrop, youth unemployment reached as high as 70 percent in Gaza, and overall unemployment reached 80 percent.

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Today, close to 70 percent of Gaza’s population is homeless or displaced, with no clarity on when they will return to stable housing. This has made the need for new employment even more urgent.

When more than a million people have no work, no prospects, and no timeline for rebuilding their lives, the outcome is predictable: Many will return to the only functioning economic structure available, which is dominated by the Hamas-led network. Gaza’s geographic isolation exacerbates this, as the majority of Gazans have never left the Strip. Without jobs, mobility, or legitimate income, dependency becomes permanent.

If Hamas were no longer the leading source of employment, its patronage networks would weaken, reducing its control over communities’ access to salaries, goods, and services. Peacebuilding experience shows that employment changes daily incentives. People with families, stability, and predictable income see militancy as a high-cost and less rational choice.

Ignoring the central variable

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) belief that it has sufficient institutional capacity to rehabilitate Gaza, as its prime minister wrote recently in its economic plan, is troubling to most long-term analysts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Almost every major Arab country and Western ally has made it clear through numerous UN resolutions and diplomatic statements (including most recently in Trump’s twenty-point plan and the New York declaration by Saudi Arabia and France) that the PA requires significant reformation before it can take on control of Gaza.

In the PA’s recently released economic plans, unemployment is treated only as a minor humanitarian issue, rather than a development factor or as a central determinant of whether a cease-fire can hold or Gaza returns to terrorism and war. Specifically, the plan suggests providing $4.2 billion in cash assistance for food, supplies, minor reconstruction, and housing support. Yet, the plan’s development of employment schemes and workforce participation receives only $500 million—far short of what is required for serious job creation.

To underscore just how ill-prepared PA thinking is regarding employment outcomes, to match the current income provided by Hamas employment, the plan would need several billion dollars annually to enable workers to earn the same as they do now from Hamas coffers, as either civil servants or fighters. Yet the PA plan, similar to the Trump plan, does not explicitly focus on the details of making new workforce access available or on pursuing long-term job creation through strategic development, nor does it seek to put significant resources towards the goal of earned income. Instead, it commits Gaza to being an aid-dependent economy, in which international investors are expected to operate without a reliable labor force. This is a direct path back to patronage, dependency, and long-term instability.

Employment as a human rights and security imperative

In my book, What Role for Human Rights in Peacebuilding, I argued that peacebuilding has traditionally overemphasized political rights, institution-building, and security-sector reform while relegating economic, social, and cultural rights to a secondary status. Yet, human rights are interconnected and cannot be pursued as separate goals. Political participation cannot be realized when people are uneducated, unhealthy, unhoused, or unemployed. Civil and political rights must be linked to economic, social, and cultural rights for transitions to be viable.

The models often employed in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process do not address foundational gaps in economic, social, and cultural rights, especially in the area of long-term employment. Unless international leadership takes seriously the central role employment plays in deradicalization and stabilization, Gaza’s reconstruction will replicate past failures. Employment is a framework for disarmament, but only when sustained for the long term—not when limited to temporary per diem labor, food-for-work schemes, or short-term projects.

A sustainable employment paradigm must be put at the center of Gaza’s next phase. Many Gazans will explain, when asked, that many of the flanks of Hamas fighters are not driven by ideology but by predictable payrolls and access to goods for Hamas-affiliated families. Without a competing legal economy, Hamas will always have recruits.

Gaza needs macroeconomic and microeconomic development schemes that create market infrastructure capable of supporting the entire workforce. Education, vocational training, private-sector investment, and targeted upskilling can all generate meaningful employment. In Gaza, ignoring this is not simply poor economics. It is a direct security risk. This requires understanding the actual size of Gaza’s labor force, reasonable income targets, and priority sectors where workers can quickly enter employment with existing or modestly enhanced skills. Both public- and private-sector models will be required, with private-sector growth as the long-term engine of prosperity.

A full-employment-oriented mandate is not extreme government intervention, nor is it a call for the PA to dominate the labor market; rather, it should be defined as a strategy for long-term private-sector growth, carried out in partnership with and supported by public actors.

Impact on Palestinian sovereignty

Palestinian self-sovereignty requires economic independence and access to the world. One of the strongest inoculations against Hamas is broad access to markets and opportunities. Some of this will require long-term planning and sector-specific analysis, but many aspects are straightforward. For example, if private firms and the international community could employ Gazans to rebuild at even a slightly higher wage than Hamas salaries, stable employment could ultimately extend to swaths of the population, with Gazans able to support their families without using dollars tied to the militant group.

Sectors such as environmental rehabilitation, food production, education, medical care, infrastructure, and vocational services all require new labor. If a transitional authority seeks to meet the moment, it should invest heavily in private-sector job creation so that disarmament, deradicalization, and reintegration can begin.

Gaza’s next phase must recognize what weakens Hamas’s grip: economic independence and freedom of movement. Employment severs Hamas’s patronage networks by providing a reliable income not tied to armed actors. It rewires daily incentives, making militancy too costly for most people. The appeal of armed groups declines as economic opportunity expands.

Gaza’s future depends on far more than security forces or humanitarian aid. It depends on whether people see a path out of the rubble that is grounded in economic self-sovereignty, dignity, and the possibility of success. If security and political leaders ignore this reality, they will guarantee that the next war comes even while the debris of this one remains.

Melanie Robbins is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Realign For Palestine project.

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Narrating the war: Analyzing Russia’s narratives for its invasion of Ukraine

Casey Michel — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:00:00 +0000

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Introduction
Russia’s relationship with Ukraine
Russia’s global standing
About the author

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been, by any metric, a strategic nightmare for Moscow. Not only has Russia lost more soldiers in Ukraine than in any war since World War II—and might well end up losing more troops than the United States lost during the entirety of WWII—but the Russian economy has lurched between overheating and stagflation. All the while, the Kremlin’s decision to expand its invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a NATO both enlarged and enhanced; in Russia’s transition from regional hegemon to a “junior partner” (and even potential vassal) of China; in waning influence in places such as the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe; and the creation of a heavily armed, deeply resentful neighbor in Ukraine, which will see Kyiv nurse both an animus toward Russia and a desire to reclaim much of the occupied territories for years to come.

The entire war has been an exercise in Russian myopia, accelerating Russian decline and leading to a broad range of self-inflicted wounds. Mirroring other neo-colonial wars—France in Algeria, the Netherlands in Indonesia, Portugal in southern Africa—the war has exposed Russia as a pretender to great-power status and a shell of a once-swaggering empire. While Moscow might yet gain more towns scattered throughout Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, any remaining victories will remain pyrrhic, with Russia continuing to sacrifice its future prospects for any present gains.

Much of Russia’s failure rests on Ukrainians’ ongoing sacrifices, as well as on the broader West’s willingness to back Ukraine’s troops. But a great deal of this disaster also stems from a series of muddled narratives that Russia has peddled about precisely why it launched the expanded invasion in the first place. Pushing a sprawling, occasionally contradictory series of goals and rationales, and without a clear narrative push to consolidate either support or success, Moscow has flailed for years, lurching from one rationale to another—all while its troops continue dying en masse and its domestic population continues to feel escalating pain and stress as the war drags on.

Given all of the competing claims Moscow has put forth to defend its invasion of Ukraine, it is worth analyzing how the Kremlin has justified its expanded war and how Moscow has tried to sell the deadliest war Europe has seen since the days of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Such analysis can not only help Western allies of Ukraine figure out how best to back Kyiv’s efforts but can provide a roadmap for sounder Russia policy in the West overall. In sifting and sorting these narratives, we can identify precisely what is motivating the Kremlin—and, better yet, how to stop it.

Selling the war

The Kremlin’s public rationales for its war in Ukraine fall into two broad buckets.

The first rests directly on Russia’s relationship with Ukraine, focusing specifically on the links, both historic and contemporary, between Moscow and Kyiv. The narratives focused specifically on Ukraine, and on Russians’ relationships with Ukrainians, can be broken down further into three primary prongs.

The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”
Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.
“Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

However, the Kremlin’s rhetoric explaining its war in Ukraine has often expanded far beyond Ukraine itself. Indeed, while the fighting might take place largely on Ukrainian (and occasionally Russian) territory, the Kremlin has often claimed that the war is both global and epochal, linked directly to the second broad bucket of narratives and focused on the status of Russia’s global standing. Those narratives centering on Russia’s role in the broader international context, as well as the creation of a new geopolitical order, can also be broken down into three primary threads.

This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”
This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.
This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

None of the narratives above are mutually exclusive. Indeed, one of the difficulties in assessing these narrative components is the multiple instances of reinforcing themes and topics. For example, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—or even the notion that Ukraine does not exist—can be directly tethered to the idea that NATO must never extend to Ukraine and that the war is necessarily defensive. The false claim that Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was in reality a coup is also often paired with the idea that the war is about rolling back Western influence and meddling in non-Western nations. These narratives can often work in conjunction—and are often included in the same speeches and writings from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Adding to the difficulty, many of these narratives are also in tension with one another. For example, Putin wrote at length about the supposed brotherly relationship between Ukraine and Russia, yet he has simultaneously claimed that Ukraine is a mere fabrication set to be annulled. Likewise, the idea that this is somehow an anti-colonial war grates against the claim that some countries are civilization-states destined to rule over smaller nations.

Still, each of these narratives is worth analyzing on its own. The remainder of this paper will be dedicated to just that: detailing the primary contours of each of these narratives, as well as offering analysis (and often corrections) therein. The paper will also offer a brief conclusion about what these competing and contradictory narratives reveal about Russia’s aims—and how best to combat Russian expansionism in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Russia’s relationship with Ukraine

The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”

Details

One of the primary narratives that Russia has relied on since its expanded invasion did not originate in February 2022, or even in the months beforehand. It instead traces back to at least early 2014, when Ukrainian protesters successfully ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych in the democratic Euromaidan Revolution—and when Putin launched Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in Crimea and parts of the Donbas.

At its simplest, Russia’s post-Euromaidan narrative boiled down to the idea that the Ukrainian protesters were illegitimate usurpers, ousting a democratically elected leader and instituting a new regime dedicated not only to wresting Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit but focused especially on the immiseration of Russians and Russian speakers. The “junta” responsible for this “coup” was secretly in hock to its “real masters in the West,” who were simply using Ukraine and its post-2014 government as a means of targeting Russia and Russian interests. In this view, these new Ukrainian leaders—including Volodymyr Zelenskyy—should be considered fascists and Nazis, simply because they were opposed to Russia writ large, whether that meant not recognizing Russia’s claims to Crimea or encouraging the use of the Ukrainian language throughout the country.

According to Russia, this supposed junta continued its persecution for years until things reached a breaking point in early 2022. That February, Moscow was supposedly forced to invade Ukraine for the express protection of Russians in regions like eastern Ukraine. As Putin claimed, Russia did not need to annex any further parts of Ukraine, but authorities in Kyiv needed to recognize the nominal independence of both the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic—building upon previous demands that these entities must also have a veto over Kyiv’s foreign policy decisions. According to Moscow, Ukraine also needed to renounce any fascist or Nazi leaders and sympathies forevermore.

As Putin said during his address announcing the expanded invasion, “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” As he added in 2025, the crisis did not begin with Russia’s invasion but was the “result of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West.” More specifically, Putin said in 2022 that Russia’s expanded invasion was a direct response to the “tragedy” in the Donbas. As Tass reported, Putin told a twelve-year-old girl that Ukraine’s “bombardments, artillery strikes and combat operations” in Donetsk and Luhansk “compelled Russia to start this military operation.”

Putin’s rhetoric also built on this narrative to call for the notion of “denazifying” Ukraine. As he memorably claimed during his February 2022 address, Russia would “seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian ambassador to the United Nations echoed this language.

Analysis

The idea that Russia needed to invade Ukraine in order to rescue compatriots and remove Nazi elements from Ukraine’s leadership is, to outside observers, perhaps the most farcical of the narratives detailed here. The notion that Ukraine—whose president is Jewish—requires denazification was immediately met with ridicule and mockery. However, this argument also provided a sense of flexibility for Putin. After all, it remains unclear what denazification would actually entail—whether regime change, full lustration, the ending of any pro-Western trajectory policies, a mix of these options, or something else entirely. Likewise, the call has a clear domestic component, with Putin able to sell the war as a battle against a new generation of supposed fascists and a reprise of Moscow’s victory in World War II.

The calls that Moscow must rescue ethnic Russians suffering in Ukraine, especially in the Donbas, also have significant salience for domestic audiences in Russia. For many Russians, the Donbas remains a traditionally Russian land and Moscow maintains a unique role in protecting Russians in neighboring nations—including beyond Ukraine. Given its salience, this line of argument would likely be employed again should Russia launch another invasion of a neighboring nation in the future, with potential usage from Estonia to Kazakhstan.

Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.

Details

As with the narrative on Ukraine suffering a coup via fascists in 2014, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—and that they are destined for embrace, with Russia lording as the “elder brother” over Little Russia—long predated Russia’s 2022 expanded invasion. Indeed, such a narrative stretches back to at least the middle of the nineteenth century, when young Russian aristocrats “discovered” Ukraine and began “to work intensely to uncover the region’s supposed original Russianness,” wrote Johns Hopkins University’s Eugene Finkel, whose 2024 book traced the origins of such efforts. No longer was Ukraine a separate polity with a distinct history; by the 1830s and 1840s, as Russian Slavophile writer Aleksei Khomiakov noted, Ukraine was “an organic and inseparable part of a single Russian nation.” Russia and Ukraine, alongside Belarus, formed a supposed triune state, in which all three nations were part of one greater Slavic nation headed by Russia.

It is an idea that, nearly two centuries later, remains largely unchanged—and which helped provide the outline for one of Moscow’s prime narratives about why it needed to launch its expanded invasion in 2022. This narrative formed much of the basis for Putin’s lengthy 2021 treatise on the topic, in which he detailed the supposed “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” As Putin wrote:

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.

If anything, Putin’s beliefs in the historical unity binding Russia and Ukraine have only grown despite the military setbacks and massive casualty rates continuing to climb. In late 2022, Putin announced the supposed “annexation” of further Ukrainian territory, including territory Moscow had not yet even conquered. As a means of getting around this awkward fact, Putin pointed to the supposed unity already extant between Ukraine and Russia—found, naturally, in the land he was now claiming as Russia’s. As Putin said, those in Ukraine were “our compatriots, our brothers and sisters . . . the native part of our united people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a pro-war concert at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia. February 22, 2023. (Sputnik/Maksim Blinov/Kremlin via REUTERS)

Nor is it just Putin who has peddled such tropes. In a malicious, revelatory article originally posted on (and later removed from) RIA Novosti, one Russian writer laid out what Russian victory in Ukraine would look like. “Ukraine has returned to Russia,” the article begins. “It will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world . . . [Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine] will now act in geopolitical terms as a single whole.” Thanks to the invasion, “Russia is restoring its unity” via a “de facto civil war” waged by “brothers.” And thanks to Moscow’s victory, “Russia is restoring its historical completeness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in all its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [i.e., Ukrainians].”

Analysis

In this narrative, Ukraine and Ukrainians still exist in concept, but only as a nation and people subordinated to Russia and Russian sovereignty. It is, if anything, a vision that posits Ukraine as simply another Belarus: a state that retains nominal independence but is nonetheless tightly embraced by Moscow and subservient to the Kremlin’s demands. This, as Moscow sees it, is the natural state of things—and anything else would simply be a historical anomaly.

This narrative, of course, is chock-full of historic revisionism, outright fabrications, and warmed-over excuses for empire. As Finkel noted, Kyiv’s origins predate Moscow’s founding by centuries, and few if any Russian intellectuals ever considered Ukraine part of their history and identity until the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, this narrative grossly ignores what Ukrainians actually think—and blinded Moscow to just how fiercely Ukrainians would fight to preserve both their state and their nation moving forward.

“Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

Details

This narrative flips the notion of a supposed triune state on its head. Instead of Ukraine being a constituent part of a greater Russia, there is no Ukraine whatsoever—and any claims of a separate Ukrainian nation, language, or identity are simply slander against the one, true, and indivisible Russia. It is a narrative that tips into the genocidal, giving Russia cover to try eliminating Ukrainian identity entirely.

As with other narratives mentioned above, the idea that Ukraine is not a separate polity but is simply a “project” meant to target and undercut Russia has a lengthy lineage. In the 1860s, Russian officials shunted the idea of Ukraine entirely to the side, claiming that the Ukrainian language “never existed, does not exist and cannot exist,” culminating in a tsarist edict banning the teaching of Ukrainian and marking the first instance of Russian authorities trying to stamp out the idea of Ukraine entirely.

The key inflection point in this narrative—that Ukraine is a mere fabrication, rather than a fraternal nation that has lost its way—came in the early 1920s, when Lenin and other Soviet higher-ups began outlining the borders of the new Soviet republics. Given the levels of support in Ukraine for Ukrainian nationhood, Soviet leadership granted Ukraine (and a number of other polities) republican status, effectively placing it on par with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. For Putin and others, this decision was a “time bomb” that ultimately detonated in the Soviet Union’s dissolution and is a historic wrong that must be corrected.

We see elements of this narrative throughout Putin’s speeches and writings. In the same essay mentioned above about the supposed historical unity of Russia and Ukraine, Putin claims that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” created “on the lands of historical Russia.” As he added when announcing the expanded invasion, “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia—by separating, severing what is historically Russian land . . . When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake.”

As such, the time had come to rectify that “mistake”—even to the point of destroying and subsuming Ukraine entirely.

Analysis

Putin might play-act as a historian, but his reading of history is saturated in grievance and mythmaking, cherry-picking facts and concocting details of his own. The idea that Ukraine is a fabrication or some facile project is, of course, belied by the fact that Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to exist and continue to fight back against Russian forces.

Moreover, Putin’s shoddy history is easily dismissed by those who have actually studied the region. As acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy noted, the idea that Ukraine exists on historical Russian lands is nonsensical. “Even a cursory acquaintance with the history of the Russian Revolution and fall of the Russian Empire that accompanied it indicates that the modern Ukrainian state came into existence not thanks to Lenin but against his wishes and in direct reaction to the Bolshevik putsch in Petrograd in October . . . of 1917,” Plokhy wrote. “The Bolsheviks tried to take control of Kyiv as well but were defeated, jumpstarting the process of the modern Ukrainian state-building.”

Putin is hardly the only Russian nationalist who has learned the hard way the peril of dismissing Ukrainian identity. During the Russian Civil War, the pro-tsarist White forces refused to grant Ukraine (among other nations) any political freedoms or sovereignty. They instead claimed they were fighting for “Russia, one and indivisible”—a cry that rallied few non-Russians and eventually doomed the White forces to defeat.

Russia’s global standing

This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”

Details

Not all of the Russian narratives backing the expanded invasion center on Ukraine. In fact, a number claim that Ukraine is simply the latest flashpoint in a far broader struggle Russia is waging against a perfidious West, and the United States in particular. A case in point is the claim that the war in Ukraine is not just about toppling Kyiv’s “regime,” or even preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, but that it is about unwinding NATO’s post-1991 gains and preventing the wholesale encirclement of Russia by Western forces.

Such a narrative came to the fore in the weeks leading up to the expanded invasion in early 2022. In December 2021, the Kremlin moved from demanding that Ukraine simply acquiesce to Russian demands (especially foregoing NATO membership) to demanding that NATO deployments leave much of Eastern and Central Europe entirely. Moscow specifically called for the removal of NATO forces and weapons from countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, and formally called for NATO to pull back to its 1997 borders, effectively abandoning Poland, Czechia, the Baltics, and others—and effectively restoring military parity between the United States and Russia in Europe.

The Kremlin has justified these demands by claiming that the United States pledged in the early 1990s not to expand NATO eastward. Putin has regurgitated these claims multiple times, including after Russia first launched its invasion in 2014, when the Russian leader stated that Western leaders “have lied to us many times . . . This happened with NATO’s expansion to the east, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders.” According to Putin, all NATO enlargement following the Soviet dissolution is invalid and must be rolled back. Preventing Ukraine from NATO membership is simply the first domino in a far broader effort to push NATO out of all of its newest member states.

Analysis

Putin’s claims that the United States pledged not to expand NATO are ahistorical and fabricated. The United States never pledged any such veto. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, then ruling as Soviet premier, attested to this, saying that the “topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not . . . brought up in those years.” Moreover, the key comment in question, in which Secretary of State James Baker floated the idea of NATO moving “not one inch east,” referred solely to NATO troops from West Germany moving into East Germany. The George H. W. Bush administration, however, never adopted this or any prohibition on NATO expansion as formal policy.

However, such a lie is a handy means of cultivating support among gullible audiences, both domestically and internationally, and helps present Russian aggression as being defensive in nature. Of course, this kind of framing—that invading a neighbor is not imperialism but is actually a defensive move—long predates Putin. It can be found in everything from the US decision to invade Mexico in the 1840s to Japan’s decision to invade much of Asia in the 1940s. This “defensiveness” was also the basis for much of the Soviet Union’s rationale for invading numerous neighbors, from Hungary in 1956 to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and beyond. Putin will almost certainly not be the last imperial leader to claim his country’s expansion is defensive in nature.

Thankfully, the Kremlin’s demands have been roundly dismissed by NATO and Western governments alike, and Ukraine remains dedicated to joining NATO. Yet the demands highlight how Russia has spun the war in Ukraine as a means not simply of thwarting NATO’s enlargement but of restoring a military parity between the United States and Russia on the European continent. It implies, in other words, an effective return to the Cold War military status quo within Europe and an unwinding of all the post-Cold War gains that have helped beat back malign Russian influence and military dominance in Europe, far beyond just Ukraine.

This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.

Details

While the war is taking place in Ukraine, this narrative posits that the war is about far more than simple NATO expansion or Ukrainian nationhood. Instead, it is about finally standing up to Western predation and perfidy, and to the West’s attempts to spread supposedly liberal values around the world—including all those elements opposing so-called traditional values.

Russia’s efforts to transform itself into a bastion of these supposed traditional values dates back at least a decade, when the Kremlin first began positioning itself as the primary bulwark for those opposed to liberal democracy. These include those opposed to LGBTQ rights, those opposed to so-called “gender ideology,” and even those opposed to democracy writ large. This effort has been largely successful, with Russia and Putin widely viewed as the lodestar for these anti-democratic forces.

The war in Ukraine, then, is simply a continuation on this theme. Announcing the expanded invasion in 2022, Putin claimed that the West “sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within.” Patriarch Kirill, one of the key spokesmen for Putin’s regime and the titular head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, echoed Putin’s claims that the war was predicated on those in eastern Ukraine “refus[ing] to accept the so-called values that are being offered by” the West, including “the gay parade.” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, one of the war’s biggest boosters, warned that Ukraine risked becoming “an LGBTQ capital or a venue for the Transgender Olympics.”

More broadly, the Kremlin has attempted to position the war as an effort to stand up to Western “neo-colonialism.” Ignoring centuries of Russian colonialism in Ukraine (and elsewhere), Putin has attempted to sell the war as a means of beating back Western colonial efforts. As he said when announcing the supposed annexations of multiple Ukrainian provinces in late 2022, “The West is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder . . . Hence their aggression towards independent states, towards traditional values and original cultures[.]”

Analysis

It’s difficult to take seriously Russia’s claims that it is waging a war in Ukraine for traditional values, or that it has some kind of spiritual mission to beat back the encroachment of LGBTQ rights. After all, Russia is a country in which the rate of regular church attendance is in the single digits, while the country’s abortion rate remains higher than that of many other European nations. Moreover, the country routinely persecutes Christian denominations, even in Russia itself. The country is hardly a bastion of traditional values, despite Putin’s claims otherwise.

However, the claim that Russia is supposedly leading an anti-colonial war is perhaps the most farcical. Russia was a constituent part of the broader, ghastly story of European colonization, stealing lands and brutalizing populations from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to North Asia and Central Asia—and even joining Great Britain, France, and Spain in colonizing North America. Claiming it was spreading “civilization” and “Christianity” to “heathen” groups of “savages,” Russia’s colonialist claims were indistinguishable from those in European empires elsewhere. In other words, Moscow was as much a European colonizer as London, Lisbon, Brussels, or Paris.

This was true not just in Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Sakha, or Finland, but also in Ukraine, where Moscow—during tsarist, Soviet, and now Putin eras—routinely engaged in colonial behavior, from ethnic cleansing to cultural genocide to mass murder, all while claiming non-Russian lands as its own. The war in Ukraine is indeed colonial, but with Russia once more in the role of colonizer.

This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

Details

Arguably the broadest narrative propounded by Russian authorities is that the war in Ukraine is not about the status of certain Ukrainian provinces, or Ukrainian security arrangements, or even the size and status of NATO in Europe. It is instead about restoring Russia’s role as a supposed great power on par with a small number of other states that make up an exclusive club of nations dominating geopolitics. These nations include the United States, China, and potentially India, with Russia also seen as a natural member.

The Kremlin claims Russia’s rightful status as a great power has been dismissed by the West—and especially by the United States, which has preferred to oversee a unipolar world—but no more. In invading Ukraine, Russia has announced its permanent status as one of the supposed civilization-states in a new multipolar world. This is not to say that Russia is aspiring to global dominance, per se. Rather, Russia is aspiring to—and has already achieved—a role as one of the key geopolitical players internationally, regionally dominant and globally relevant. Ukraine remains firmly within Russia’s supposed sphere of influence and, as such, Russia should have the right to do whatever it wants within Ukraine with no outside interference.

This obsession with great-power status has long pervaded Putin’s rhetoric, infusing and inflaming Russia’s revanchism. In October 2022, when he announced Russia’s supposed annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, Putin claimed that Russia is “a great millennial power” and a “country-civilization” that will follow its own path. In March 2023, Putin signed a strategic blueprint outlining Russia’s “historically unique mission” as a “unique state-civilization.” As Uppsala University’s Igor Torbakov wrote, it was the first time that Russian leadership had “officially stated that Russia is a sui generis civilization.”

Much of this narrative has manifested in specific calls for a “new Yalta,” in which leaders in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington effectively carve up the world, Ukraine included. In such a scenario, Russia would be the modern equivalent of the United Kingdom: an empire that might not be quite as powerful or wealthy as the other two nations, but that nonetheless deserves a place at such a summit. “Putin has never hidden that his dream is a new Yalta . . . [to] establish a new world order,” writes journalist Mikhail Zygar. Russia’s Ukraine war—and its supposedly imminent victory—is merely the opening salvo in a far broader global reordering. As the much-maligned RIA Novosti article mentioned above claimed, the invasion of Ukraine meant that a “new world is being born before our eyes”—a world that Russia will help steer.

Analysis

This pretension to greatness hardly began with Putin. Years before Russia’s expanded invasion, the Kremlin and Russian intellectuals were long obsessed with “the pursuit of derzhavnost,” which scholar Seva Gunitsky translates as “both being a great power and being recognized as such by others.” Not only does this mean acting as a regional hegemon, but it also means being entitled to “an unquestioned sphere of influence.” This rhetoric—of Moscow’s “special mission” and its “historic destiny” as a “great power”—stretches back centuries and was evident in the Kremlin’s tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

It is perhaps ironic, then, that little has done more to expose the hollowness of Putin’s claims than his invasion of Ukraine. Rather than restore Russia’s great-power status, the war has led not just to the degradation of the Russian economy and outright military disaster in Ukraine but to Russia’s weakening influence in the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and, of course, Europe more broadly. It has likewise forced Russia to rely on North Korea to shore up national security, and to lean on China to shore up Russia’s teetering economy.

The war has only accelerated Russian decline and undone, perhaps for good, the potential restoration of Russian greatness. Moscow might still maintain its status on things like the United Nations’ Security Council and might still be the only post-Soviet state with nuclear weapons. But the idea that Russia is, or will soon become, a great power is increasingly laughable—and a testament to what a disaster Putin’s rule has been for Russia.

Conclusion

Wars can often contain multiple narratives. The US invasion of Iraq, for example, was originally pegged to removing Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program before it shifted to fostering “democracy” for Iraqis. The US Civil War was originally launched to restore the sovereignty of the federal government before it shifted to eliminating slavery within the United States entirely. A war with multiple narratives does not necessarily portend either success or failure.

Rare are those wars, however, that push as many competing narratives as Russia has peddled in Ukraine. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of another war that has seen so many different justifications from the invading party. And it’s difficult to identify another war that has seen such a massive difference in scale of what those narratives are proposing, from simple territorial shifts to the entire reordering of the state of global affairs.

But as we’ve seen above, this is precisely what Russia has attempted with its invasion of Ukraine. From protecting pockets of Russians in the Donbas to ushering in an entirely new geopolitical era, from restoring a supposed Slavic unity to eliminating liberal values, the Kremlin’s justifications for its war have been breathtaking in their breadth.

They have also been a confused, muddled mess and a testament to just what a fiasco Russia’s entire war has been for Moscow. Instead of a clear-cut series of goals and aims, Russia’s leadership has flailed for excuses for its invasion, tossing idea after idea into the ether to see what might succeed. Such narrative confusion has stemmed, in large part, from Russia’s overall failures in Ukraine, forcing the Kremlin to reach for more and more justifications as the war drags on. At the same time, the confusion has played a significant role in Russia’s overall strategic failures in Ukraine and elsewhere; without a clear set of strategic goals, there’s little reason to think that tactical or battlefield successes would follow. Of course, much of this is also predicated on the Kremlin’s historical myopia as it pertains to Ukrainian history and Ukrainian nationhood; rather than a constituent part of some kind of Greater Russia, Ukraine is a distinct polity with a unique, separate history—a reality that hundreds of thousands of Russians have now died to learn. While Russia might continue to occupy sections of Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin has all but assured that a heavily armed Kyiv remains Russia’s greatest geopolitical foe for decades to come, if not longer.

For those looking forward, all this narrative confusion highlights one thing: there’s little reason to think Putin will be satisfied with simple recognition of Russian sovereignty over places such as Donetsk or Kherson. As Russian authorities have claimed, this war is about far more than the status of certain sections of eastern Ukraine, or even about Ukrainian membership in NATO. The Kremlin has far broader, and far more destabilizing, goals than simply dominating Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, or even necessarily toppling Kyiv. Ukraine is but a stepping stone to Putin’s far more sweeping goals of rolling back US and allied interests, reaffirming Russian dominance over all of its neighbors (China and North Korea excepted), and creating a world in which the rights of smaller nations are subject to the whims of a handful of great powers. Given Putin’s ongoing obstinacy about winding down the war and finding a so-called “off-ramp,” it is clear that, for him, this war is about far more than simply the territorial status of parts of eastern or southern Ukraine.

It is, indeed, a reflection of the Kremlin’s obsession with derzhavnost—an obsession of which Ukrainians have done everything they can to disabuse Russia. And it reflects the fact that what can end this war is not the status of places like Crimea or Donetsk oblasts, but a full and outright defeat of Russia. Anything less would simply tempt the Kremlin to try again—with another effort to upend the global order and another war to try making Russia great again.

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About the authors

Casey Michel is an author and journalist who writes extensively on international corruption, kleptocracy, national security, and Russia policy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets. His 2021 book, American Kleptocracy, was named by the Economist as one of the “best books to read to understand financial crime,” and his 2024 book Foreign Agents was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the “biggest foreign-policy book releases of 2024.” His next book, United States of Oligarchy, will be released in summer 2026.

He is based in New York, and is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work.

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Dispatch from Riyadh: Why Syria is central to the Middle East’s future

Frederick Kempe — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:30:00 +0000

RIYADH—It has been one year since Bashar al-Assad’s fall, and Syrians are celebrating the end to his and his father’s brutal dictatorships, which had spanned more than half a century. On December 8, crowds filled Umayyad Square to cheer the anniversary and listen to Assad’s improbable successor, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a forty-three-year-old former al-Qaeda fighter and rebel commander.

In Washington, the House of Representatives marked the moment by voting through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes the repeal of sanctions on Syria under the 2019 Caesar Act. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Thursday, potentially unlocking billions of dollars of investments—much of it from Saudi Arabia—that could contribute significantly to Syria’s economic revival. That follows al-Sharaa’s historic visit to the White House in November as the first Syrian leader ever in the Oval Office, where Trump promised support.

But this past Saturday, a member of Syrian security forces—an individual set to be fired for suspected links to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—killed two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter in an ambush. It was an unsettling reminder that dangers for al-Sharaa and his international supporters lurk underneath all of Syria’s progress.

Still, few Americans are paying much attention to those events, with so much else dominating the news, including the possibility that a Venezuelan dictator might soon fall in their own hemisphere. In Saudi Arabia, however, officials are embracing al-Sharaa’s rise—and shrugging off his terrorist past—as nothing less than a historic opportunity to ensure that Syria doesn’t again fall prey to the Iranian adventurism and regional chaos that has long stymied progress in the Middle East.

During my recent visit to Riyadh, a Saudi official, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, compared the US lifting of Syrian sanctions to “giving a suffocating person an oxygen mask.” “We need to give Syrians a trickle of hope, and speed is of the essence,” the official explained, given the urgent need to head off any new feelings of despair and discord in the country. And the need is urgent. Damascus, for instance, gets only around three hours of electricity each day, and there is not enough housing for the many displaced and returning Syrians. More than a million Syrian children are without schools, and millions more Syrians need health care in a country where many hospitals have been destroyed by targeted bombings.

Why the Saudis are invested

For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Syria until recently had been a missing piece in a larger regional design. What Riyadh wants is to construct an integrated Arab economic and security space that stretches from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. Central to this goal is a secure and prosperous Syria that denies Iranian and extremist influence.

Syria, which was once the cradle of Arab culture and civilization, has in recent decades contributed to Middle East instability, including by providing Iran a platform and a corridor for its proxy wars in Lebanon, Israel, and Yemen. So, it’s understandable why Riyadh is now interested in helping ensure a secure, moderate, modernizing, and Saudi-anchored “new Syria” that replaces the sanctioned, fragmented, failed state that Syria had become.

Riyadh already has announced more than six billion dollars in Syrian investments this year, from housing and health care to energy and infrastructure. Gulf money has helped clear Syria’s arrears to the World Bank, paving the way for International Monetary Fund and World Bank teams to return to the country for the first time in more than a decade.

The Saudi official told me that embracing Syria also has an emotional dimension for Saudis. Many of their country’s most prominent families have their roots and take their names from Syria, which has provided so much of Arab literature, poetry, and the arts. Even al-Sharaa himself was born in Riyadh in 1982 into a middle-class Sunni Syrian family, his father an oil engineer and his mother a geography teacher.

Al-Sharaa’s life story tracks the region’s upheavals. His family returned to Damascus when he was seven years old, and there his neighbors remember him as a polite young man who worked in his father’s grocery store. Al-Sharaa has said that the second Palestinian intifada against Israel, which began in 2000, radicalized him, and he then traveled to Baghdad in 2003 to join the al-Qaeda terrorist group after the US invasion of Iraq. US forces captured him and imprisoned him between 2006 and 2011. Al-Sharaa’s release coincided with the Syrian revolution against Assad, during which al-Sharaa created the al-Qaeda-backed Al-Nusra Front in 2012, using the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani.

The US State Department listed him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in May 2013, and al-Julani thereafter remade himself as the nationalist rebel commander of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the city of Idlib. In November 2024, his forces caught the world and Syria’s government by surprise, racing through Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and finally Damascus, forcing Assad to flee to Russia.

Western governments that had long treated al-Sharaa as a terrorist have come to embrace him in the past year as Syria’s best hope. He is the beneficiary of Turkish sponsorship, American optimism, and Saudi ambition. “We’ve all decided to give him the benefit of the doubt because there really is no other alternative,” the Saudi official told me.

Why the Israelis are worried

Israel sees the situation differently, putting it at odds with Washington. Trump views al-Sharaa as a potential partner in containing what’s left of Iranian influence, combating new terrorist threats, and reintegrating Syria into the world after more than a decade of civil war. Israel worries about the dangers of a premature normalization with al-Sharaa, a former jihadist commander who is now in charge of a fragile, heavily armed state on its northern border. As evidence for this concern, Israeli officials point to recent video of Syrian soldiers chanting that Gaza is a “rallying cry” and vowing “from your blood, rivers will flow.”

Israeli jets and missiles have struck post-Assad Syria over the past year more than six hundred times, targeting remnants of Iranian forces, Hezbollah infrastructure, and what Israelis see as new threats emerging under al-Sharaa’s rule. Israeli troops have also moved deeper into a demilitarized buffer zone along the Golan Heights, citing Israel’s national security needs. Saudi Arabia isn’t waiting for the United States and Israel to resolve their differences. Riyadh sees this as a now-or-never moment for a country at the center of its regional aspirations. Bin Salman appears to have convinced Trump that Syria risks sliding back into extremism, instability, and insurgency unless the Arab world, Turkey, and the United States move quickly to help the young Syrian leader stabilize the country.

What to make of al-Sharaa

For Syria itself, the stakes are of a historic nature. At the Doha Forum earlier this month, al-Sharaa told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about his goal of building a “sustainable, safe, and secure future for the Syrian people.” He spoke about reaching out to Alawite, Druze, and other minority communities, noting that all parts of Syrian society were victims of the Assad regime, and all were part of the revolution that ousted it. Al-Sharaa also emphasized the importance of establishing the rule of law in Syria, which he said is “the way to guarantee everybody’s rights and the rights of all minorities.” Finally, he promised a four-year transition, a new constitution, and elections.

Al-Sharaa is saying all the right things. Given that he has transformed himself so often and so thoroughly already, it would be understandable to treat his words with skepticism. At the same time, al-Sharaa’s adaptability could serve him in rising to this historic moment and, most urgently, in implementing a domestic agenda that fulfills the new Syria he describes. Success would not only transform his country. Many Saudis believe that a Syria in line with this vision would contribute to Lebanon’s rebirth and to a more secure and prosperous Jordan, as well.

Yet one year after Assad’s fall, the existential challenges facing the new government are many. Much of Syria still lies in ruins, more than 70 percent of Syrians still need humanitarian aid, and outbreaks of sectarian violence persist. Intent on playing spoiler to al-Sharaa’s vision for Syria are various militant and terrorist groups, including ISIS, which has plotted to assassinate the Syrian president.

From Saudi Arabia, the stakes could not be clearer. Syria can either become the first success story of a new Middle East economic and security order, or it could be the setting for its next failure.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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What’s in the new US defense bill for Ukraine?

Doug Klain — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:31:45 +0000

On December 17, the Senate voted to send the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to US President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. The bill includes provisions to authorize new military assistance for Ukraine, provide stronger oversight of the Trump administration’s arms sales and intelligence support for Kyiv, and support for efforts to return abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.

In a sharp decrease from the past level of military assistance for Ukraine, the NDAA includes $400 million in funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) for new arms intended for Ukraine for 2026 and 2027. To put this into context, the April 2024 Ukraine supplemental aid bill included nearly $14 billion in USAI funding.

Even so, the bill is a significant step given that Washington has ended almost all direct assistance to Ukraine. The Trump administration still holds billions in authority for USAI but hasn’t made use of the program, instead opting to sell arms to Ukraine via European allies.

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In June, the Department of Defense redirected 20,000 anti-drone air defense interceptors specially made for Ukraine under USAI to Israel and US forces in the Middle East. Congress is now using the NDAA to make it more difficult for the Pentagon to repeat this, while also requiring that any arms redirected into US stocks are ultimately replaced for Ukraine.

Though Congress doesn’t expect the White House to make use of USAI in the near future, the NDAA modifies the program so that these funds will now remain available until 2029. As the Trump administration looks for ways to both revitalize the US defense industrial base and provide Ukraine with credible security arrangements, USAI could make a return as a useful way to bolster Ukraine’s defenses.

During 2025, the Trump administration has sought to pressure Ukraine with the prospect of withholding US intelligence support. The NDAA creates strict new reporting requirements to discourage any such moves. As recently as November, the White House said that unless Kyiv agreed to a new US proposal to end the war, it would stop sending weapons and providing the intelligence Ukraine uses in its defense, including to detect Russian air raids.

The new legislation requires the US Secretary of Defense to submit reports to Congress within 48 hours of any decision to “pause, terminate, or otherwise restrict or materially downgrade intelligence support, including information, intelligence, and imagery collection,” to Ukraine. This does not concretely prevent the administration from ending intelligence support, but it is a clear signal from Congress that any action to do so would be met with sharp political backlash.

The NDAA also creates significant new reporting requirements related to the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), the primary mechanism for arms sales to Ukraine. In order to increase the transparency of the PURL system, Congress will use its oversight power to mandate quarterly reports.

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The NDAA includes the Abducted Ukrainian Children Recovery and Accountability Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to support efforts to locate, return, and rehabilitate Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The mass abduction of Ukrainian children has united Republicans and Democrats in Washington. In early December, Congress held a hearing with Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States and experts working to rescue and rehabilitate abducted children.

The bill authorizes the State Department and Department of Justice to assist Ukraine in locating and returning Ukrainian children as well as prisoners of war and civilian detainees, and to support the rehabilitation of returned children and seek accountability for the Russians who abducted them. It also authorizes the Secretary of State to provide support to Ukraine’s government and civil society groups in providing rehabilitation services for victims.

As it stands, unless Congress exercises its foreign policy powers, efforts to end Russia’s invasion will be stymied by limited US assistance to Ukraine. However, there are some signs that Congress is taking critical steps forward. Recently, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) reportedly worked with Democrats to advance a discharge petition to force a vote on Russia sanctions and potential new military assistance to Ukraine. If passed, new Russia sanctions could deliver a much-needed shot in the arm to the Trump administration’s peace efforts.

While it includes measures that will be welcomed by Kyiv, the NDAA’s Ukraine provisions are largely about mitigating potential harm from the Trump administration. In order to provide significant new material assistance to Ukraine, Congress will need to advance other legislation that it has so far kept on ice while awaiting approval from the White House.

Doug Klain is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the deputy director for policy and strategy at Razom for Ukraine, a nonprofit humanitarian aid and advocacy organization.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The issue of potential wartime elections in Ukraine has been raised on numerous occasions since spring 2024 when Zelenskyy’s presidential term officially ended, with Russia frequently referencing the absence of elections in Ukraine as part of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian authorities. These Kremlin claims of illegitimacy are inaccurate. The Ukrainian Constitution specifically forbids elections while martial law is in place, which has been the case in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

This constitutional barrier to wartime elections is not a mere legal loophole or a convenient excuse. It is a foundational safeguard designed to ensure the continuity of governance during times of national crisis. Of course, it is possible to argue that the relevant legislation could be revised. But any attempt to change the Ukrainian Constitution would risk a constitutional crisis in the middle of a major war. It would divert the attention of Ukraine’s parliament, the country’s judicial system, and the public away from the war effort, with obvious potential for political infighting and domestic instability.

The constitutional arguments against a wartime election are convincing, but the main reason why Ukraine cannot go to the polls while the Russian invasion continues is because any such vote would fall far short of recognized democratic standards in terms of freedom, fairness, and representation. A truly democratic election requires a level playing field, security for participants, and the ability for all eligible citizens to cast their ballots. None of these conditions can be met in today’s Ukraine.

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Security problems alone should be enough to rule out the idea of a wartime ballot. With Russia bombing civilian targets across Ukraine on a daily basis, candidates would be unable to stage any public campaign gatherings in safety. Likewise, polling stations would become high-value targets for Russian drones and missiles, creating unacceptable risks for thousands of election workers and millions of voters.

The logistical challenges of a wartime vote would be similarly overwhelming. Millions of Ukrainians are currently located abroad as refugees in the European Union and elsewhere. Millions more are internally displaced inside Ukraine. This creates huge issues for voter registries, which would need to be completely revised and updated. Furthermore, the voices of Ukrainian citizens living under Russian occupation would be silenced entirely, disenfranchising a large portion of the overall electorate and further undermining the credibility of any vote.

If Zelenskyy chooses to proceed with a wartime election, the potential for domestic political destabilization would be huge. An election held under wartime conditions would inevitably be a flawed process, with millions unable to vote and security restrictions placing limits on meaningful campaigning opportunities. Regardless of the outcome, Russia would seize on these flaws in order to declare the results illegitimate, sow internal discord, and undermine the credibility of the Ukrainian government in the eyes of the international community. The resulting instability could prove a far greater threat to Ukraine’s survival than any perceived democratic deficit.

According to his country’s constitution, Zelenskyy is the legally elected leader of Ukraine and will remain so until conditions in the country allow for the relaxation of martial law restrictions and the organization of genuinely free and fair elections. This will only become possible once a comprehensive and verifiable ceasefire is in place. Until the bombs stop falling, the Ukrainian government’s priority must remain the defense of the nation.

Ukrainians are fighting to defend their democracy against Russian authoritarianism, but they are also in no rush to hold a wartime vote. Instead, opinion polls consistently demonstrate that most Ukrainians oppose the idea of any elections while active hostilities continue. When the right moment arrives, Ukrainians will be the first to demand their democratic rights and will insist on new elections. However, they understand that the right moment has not yet arrived.

Yuriy Boyechko is CEO of Hope For Ukraine.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Gissou Nia: Demands for justice—and protests driven by the thirsty

Karim Mezran: North Africa is a rising priority for US policy

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: Key questions remain for Palestinians

Victoria J. Taylor: Iraq must maintain unprecedented stability

Daniel B. Shapiro: A political transition in Iran approaches

Nathanael Swanson: Will the Israel-Iran cease-fire hold?

Jonathan Panikoff: A duality of possible trajectories

Three trends shaping the economic landscape

Three major macro trends will shape the Middle East and North Africa in 2026, each carrying profound implications for the region’s economic trajectory.

1. The pressure of lower energy prices
As energy revenues soften, governments across the region will be forced to make more disciplined, risk-adjusted investment decisions. The era of abundant fiscal cushions is shifting toward one that requires sharper prioritization, operational efficiency, and a clearer sense of expected returns. This will test policymakers’ ability to allocate capital effectively and to reduce long-standing subsidies and support for entrenched constituencies. These choices become even more consequential as a growing cohort of young people demand economic opportunity, purpose, and social mobility.

2. Rising debt and the cost of ambition
Fiscal tightening will coincide with an accelerating need for investment. Across the Gulf, governments are committing billions to data centers, artificial intelligence ecosystems, new power generation, and other foundational infrastructure. These projects will increasingly be financed through borrowing, especially as the current account deficit grows. The result will be higher debt levels and rising debt-servicing costs. Countries that clearly articulate their economic value proposition and demonstrate credible reform will have a competitive advantage in the capital markets. Those that do not may face steeper financing costs and slower momentum in their diversification strategies.

3. Vision 2030 ten year anniversary: A regional bellwether
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has already reshaped the kingdom’s economic and social landscape through diversification, investment in future industries, and the creation of a more open and optimistic society. The plan’s tenth anniversary in 2026 marks a critical milestone, not only for the kingdom but for the region. The next decade will be defined not by the wealth beneath the ground, but by the wealth of human talent above it. How effectively the kingdom transitions from resource-driven growth to human capital-driven growth will influence the MENA region’s competitiveness for a generation.

Khalid Azim is the director of the MENA Futures Lab at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

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Demands for justice—and protests driven by the thirsty

In 2026, expect to see more widespread protest movements for change across the Middle East and North Africa fueled by climate change and authoritarian mismanagement. Analysis of global protest movements in 2025 focused heavily on the young age of the protesters. While youth demographics have gained relevance as new communication tools have emerged over the last decades (in 2011, it was Twitter organizing the youth in the “Arab Spring”; in 2025, it’s the gaming app Discord organizing Morocco’s “Gen Z” protests), the evergreen undercurrent is frustration with corruption and elites. Resources have become scarcer due to global warming and authoritarian mismanagement, and the globe has become increasingly and overtly transactional as it shuns diplomacy in favor of kinetic means and “might is right” politics. The Middle East and North Africa are profoundly impacted by both these negative trends. With water running out in Tehran and water instability around the Nile Basin and the Tigris and Euphrates River, expect the next wave of regional protests to be driven not just by the youth, but by the thirsty.

Regional victim and survivor-centric demands for justice will also continue to grow in 2026 in countries that are emerging from conflict, experiencing government transitions, or where restive populations wish to usher in a change of rule. There is no clearer example than in Syria, where Assad’s exit one year ago opened the space for a new Syria and where a previously exiled network of Syrian lawyers, researchers, and advocates now work on transitional justice processes from inside their own country. In Iran, where the population is publicly demanding regime change, victims of protest violence, executions, and custodial deaths have organized powerful advocacy groups to demand that international processes deliver justice where domestic courts are unable and unwilling to do the job. And across the region, while many governments have been complicit in the violence in Gaza, the Arab street stands at odds with those governments and instead has demanded—alongside much of the world—that the perpetrators of the violence in Gaza be held to account.

Gissou Nia is the director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.

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By Kate Springs, Celeste Kmiotek

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North Africa is a rising priority for US policy

North Africa is poised to move closer to the center of US regional policy for 2026. The past year of quiet US engagement, including the work of US President Donald Trump’s Senior Advisor Massad Boulos, is beginning to reduce tensions and open political space. Algeria and Morocco are edging towards some degree of a detente, creating space for practical steps on the Western Sahara file.

Additionally, Libya may see modest but meaningful progress. Headway on an agreement between the divided governments on a unified development funding mechanism may reduce parallel spending and put less pressure on the dinar, as well as release the funds for long-awaited reconstruction and modernization projects. The decision to include Libyan units from both east and west in AFRICOM’s Flintlock 2026 special operations forces exercise suggests an incremental movement on military unification in Libya, an area where US diplomacy with key partners has grown more active.

Egypt will remain an integral partner as Washington tries to deal with situations in Gaza, states located on the Red Sea, and Sudan. At the same time, renewed attention to commercial diplomacy signals a shift toward advancing US business interests across North Africa.

Taken together, these dynamics make the region harder to overlook and suggest that 2026 may be the year North Africa becomes a sustained policy priority in Washington.

Karim Mezran is the director of the North Africa Initiative and resident senior fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

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By Frank Talbot and Karim Mezran

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Key questions remain for Palestinians

This was a tectonic year of realignments for the Palestinian people, as well as their heavily divided and largely powerless leadership. Next year is likely to be equally important and trend-setting—and four major threads have emerged that could shape its trajectory.

For Palestinians and what’s next for Gaza, the top four trends to look for in 2026 are the following:

The Trump administration’s commitment to the Palestinian issue and its willingness to engage the Palestinian Authority, which remains subject to US sanctions and restrictions. Will elements of a comprehensive peace deal between Palestinians and Israelis, like the one that Trump proposed during his first term, return?
What becomes of the Gaza cease-fire that the United States and international players are hoping to cement into a lasting peace deal that transforms the coastal enclave? The year 2026 is either going to be one in which Hamas is disarmed and fundamentally changed—or it will be one in which the Palestinian terror group continues to dominate Gaza’s affairs and prevent substantive change to revitalize the decimated Strip after two years of devastating warfare.
The prospect of Saudi-Israeli normalization—which could unlock immense potential for the kingdom, the Palestinians, Israel’s regional integration, and a regional anti-Iran coalition—is enormous. The year 2026 will set the tone for whether Saudi Arabia proceeds with integration based on its often-stated requirement for Palestinian statehood, or if this ends up in further stalemate and stagnation.
The fourth critically significant trend to watch is the impact the Gaza war and Israel will have on influencing voters in the upcoming midterm elections. As with the Trump election, this issue increasingly played a role in rallying US voters to the ballot box, including the high-profile race to elect New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani. The year 2026 will reveal whether this trend persists or if it is a fad that passes once the Gaza war comes to a more permanent end.

Ultimately, 2026 will either mark the end of the Gaza war and the initiation of reconstruction and hope in the Strip—or it will perpetuate a state of stagnation and stalemate, risking a return to fighting, devastation, and more tragic deaths.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is the director of Realign For Palestine at the Atlantic Council.

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A little-discussed point in Trump’s Gaza plan could be an opportunity to build interfaith understanding

By Peter Mandaville

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Iraq must maintain unprecedented stability

Amid continued regional turmoil, Iraq ended 2025 in a period of relative stability and security, avoiding being drawn into the Twelve Day War between Israel, Iran, and the United States—and holding successful parliamentary elections. The challenge for Iraqi political leaders in 2026 will not only be to maintain this unprecedented stability, but also to navigate Trump administration pressure to rein in Iran-aligned militias and avoid being pulled into the broader US maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Iraq is also likely to continue its efforts to appeal to the Trump administration through investment, pitching new energy deals to US companies, but it is not yet clear whether these efforts will be successful.

With Iranian influence in the region at an all-time low, Iraqi leaders have an opportunity to forge a more independent foreign policy that prioritizes continued partnership with the United States and differentiates Iraqi from Iranian interests. Core to this effort will be progress toward Iraq’s regional integration and strengthened political and economic ties to the Gulf and other regional partners such as Jordan and Egypt. In the face of Iraqi efforts to challenge the militias and strengthen partnerships with the United States and the Gulf, 2026 may bring attempts by Iran and Iran-aligned militias to act as spoilers who obstruct Iraq’s progress and imperil Iraq’s stability. Iraq’s next prime minister has an opportunity to transform the country.

The next year will be critical in determining whether the Iraqi government can seize the opportunity and whether the United States and other regional partners will support it in doing so.

Victoria J. Taylor is the director of the Iraq Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program.

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A political transition in Iran approaches

Political transitions are hard to predict, but there is no doubt Iran is approaching one. With a frail, unpopular, eighty-six-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei nearing his actuarial and conceivably political limits, 2026 could be the year.

Any transition has the potential to unleash dramatic changes in Iran, across the region, and in relations with the United States. The potential positive implications of new Iranian leadership and a change of approach are massive: relief from brutal suppression for the Iranian people, new possibilities in nuclear diplomacy and toward normalization with the United States, broadened detente with Iran’s Arab neighbors, and an end to the arming of violent terrorist proxies across the region that have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars of Iranian resources—driven by an ideological crusade to destroy Israel—while the Iranian people endure manmade water and electricity shortages. The beneficial effects would be felt from Iran to Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen and beyond.

None of this is preordained or automatic. A transition could cement a new generation of the Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership, bring to power an even more hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or devolve into chaos and civil war with massively destabilizing effects. What Washington should engage in through 2026 is transition planning—not in order to cause a regime change, which must be left to the Iranian people, but to be prepared to provide support for the Iranian people, resources and expertise, potential sanctions relief, and coordination with international partners to assist in steering a transition when it comes toward one of the better possible outcomes. The United States has moved smartly in 2025 to support a stable Syrian transition, and while the jury is still out on long-term stability there, there has been significant progress. An even more consequential transition awaits in Iran. Washington must not be caught flat-footed.

Daniel B. Shapiro is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

Will the Israel-Iran cease-fire hold?

Following the Twelve Day War in June, Iran retains large quantities of highly enriched uranium and advanced centrifuges, without oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency. At the same time, while Iran’s missile program and support for nonstate proxies were diminished, Iran is rebuilding its capabilities and still threatens US, Israeli, and regional security.

After initially declaring Iran’s nuclear program obliterated, Trump has also repeatedly called for resumed negotiations and a new nuclear deal with Tehran. Although still nominally implementing the US “maximum pressure” campaign, Trump also made a high-profile gesture by inviting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to the Gaza Peace Summit in October.

For its part, Iran appears to remain in a largely reactionary posture. It is attempting to rebuild its missile and defense capabilities but is not currently enriching uranium or advancing its nuclear program (that we know of). Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Iran is open to talks at the United Nations, but also foolishly rejected the Cairo invitation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded by reminding the world of the Iranian missile threat and increasingly targeting Iranian proxies. There is no written cease-fire in place, and continued peace is partially reliant on Trump holding Netanyahu back. As Israeli elections approach, will Trump’s “complete and total ceasefire” hold? Will Iran do something that gives the Israeli’s an excuse or opportunity to re-engage Iran militarily? Or will Iran give negotiations another chance? Either way, 2026 should make for a pivotal year for Iran.

Nathanael Swanson is a resident senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

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Nov 17, 2025

As elections loom, can Netanyahu balance Trump, Mohammed bin Salman, and his political future?

By Daniel B. Shapiro

The Israeli prime minister’s preferred path to survive a treacherous election will be to show Israeli voters that he is advancing their country’s regional integration and staying within the US president’s embrace.

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A duality of possible trajectories

2026 is a year of potential opportunity—and potential peril—for the Middle East.

Gulf states are determined to advance their political, economic, and security autonomy. Syria and Lebanon could either emerge as models of forward movement from instability or revert to sectarian strife and conflict. Pockets of normalcy could continue to advance in Iraq as exists today in parts of Baghdad and other cities, or it could descend back into political stasis and conflict. Israel could find itself more secure in the region by continuing to undertake kinetic strikes, or it could choose the path of less violence by completing meaningful security and cease-fire agreements with its neighbors. Choose the wrong option, however, and Israel could find itself more vulnerable to threats on its borders, not less. Palestinians could find space to grieve and begin to rebuild after two years of devastation—or face continued violence from West Bank settlers and a renewed war in Gaza, as well as some intra-Palestinian conflict. Jordan and Egypt will continue to muddle through their economic challenges and associated domestic social and political pressures, or this will be the year that they face collapse, and the world will look back and say the warning signs were there, we just missed them.

Most of the region has an opportunity at this moment in which it can seize and advance its desire for greater autonomy, global influence, and further integration. The Middle East can envision a calmer, more prosperous region driven by technological opportunity across sectors, including by leveraging artificial intelligence and US-exported advanced chips, while taking advantage of the economic integration pathways that are being developed, such as IMEC.

But the duality of possible trajectories laid out above reflects that in the Middle East, more often than not, positive opportunities are interrupted by internal or exogenous factors that regional capitals have to manage in a manner they did not expect. How the region grapples with the enduring and emerging risks of 2026 will determine whether it can prosper as a whole or whether only some will thrive while many continue to struggle. But if those regional countries that are advancing economically, politically, socially, and in their security only look inwards and do not seek to stabilize their neighbors facing social and physical insecurity, they will risk the latter impeding their development, as well. And then 2026 will once again be a year of missed regional opportunities instead of progress.

Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

The post What will 2026 bring for the Middle East and North Africa? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russia’s insistence on a defenseless Ukraine betrays Putin’s true intentions

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 08:21:08 +0000

As American, Ukrainian, and European officials continue to debate potential peace plans among themselves, there remains very little to indicate that Russia is genuinely interested in ending the war. On the contrary, many of the Kremlin’s key demands during negotiations appear tailored to facilitate a continuation of the invasion on more favorable terms.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial claims alone should be enough to set off alarm bells. He insists that in order to secure a ceasefire, Ukraine must first hand over the remaining 10 percent of the Donbas region that his troops have failed to seize since the invasion first began eleven years ago.

As the ruler of what is by far the largest country in the world, Putin has no pressing need for the approximately 6600 square kilometers of Donbas territory still under Ukrainian control. Nor does the region contain any particularly important natural resources or historic sites that could justify its present position at the very heart of the peace process.

Putin’s true motivation is not difficult to discern. The unoccupied portion of the Donbas that he now so openly covets may seem relatively inconspicuous on the map, but it plays host to some of Ukraine’s strongest fortifications. Developed over the past decade, this fortress belt represents a formidable obstacle to Moscow’s invasion.

Analysts estimate that it could take years for Russia to occupy the area by force, and would likely cost the Kremlin hundreds of thousands of additional casualties. Beyond the fortress belt, the way would be open for further sweeping Russian advances into central Ukraine and toward Kyiv itself. This vital role in Ukraine’s overall defense explains why Putin is prepared to reduce his demands elsewhere but remains so eager for Kyiv to hand over this particular territory without a fight.

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Among Moscow’s many demands, the biggest red flag of all is the Kremlin’s determination to demilitarize Ukraine and deprive the country of international allies. Ever since the first round of peace talks during the initial months of the war, Putin has consistently sought to impose restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military and the categories of weapons the country can possess. While recent drafts envision a Ukrainian army of 600,000 troops, the fact that Russia remains so keen on limiting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself is an unambiguous signal of Putin’s bad intentions.

Likewise, the Kremlin’s bitter opposition to continued international support for Ukraine betrays the reality behind Moscow’s current peace posturing. This extends far beyond Russia’s well-documented objections to Ukrainian membership of NATO. Putin’s negotiators also seek to block future arms supplies to Kyiv and have completely ruled out the possibility of even a symbolic Western troop presence in postwar Ukraine, while demonstrating a deep reluctance to accept anything resembling credible security guarantees.

Attempts to defend Russian objections on security grounds are unconvincing. Putin has debunked his own claims of a NATO security threat to Russia by reacting with obvious indifference to neighboring Finland’s NATO accession in 2022, just months after using the issue as a convenient pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. According to this bizarre Kremlin logic, Ukraine’s slim hopes of joining NATO in the distant future were sufficient grounds to unleash the largest European war since World War II, but Finland’s almost immediate membership of the alliance was “no problem” for Moscow, despite the fact that both countries share long land borders with Russia.

Putin’s refusal to countenance purely defensive commitments from Kyiv’s allies that are clearly designed to safeguard Ukrainian sovereignty is even harder to justify. If the Russian ruler intended to coexist with an independent Ukraine, he would surely recognize the need for international involvement in efforts to reestablish stability in the region. Instead, he has adopted the opposite approach. While Ukraine appeals for security guarantees, Putin seeks to guarantee Ukraine’s insecurity.

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The insincerity of Russia’s current approach to the US-led peace process should come as no surprise. After all, while Putin may be willing to consider a pause in hostilities if it comes on Kremlin-friendly terms, he simply cannot risk a peace deal that secures the continued existence of an independent Ukrainian state. Any settlement based on the present front lines of the war would leave around 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue along the path toward greater European integration. That is exactly what Putin is fighting to prevent.

The Kremlin dictator has always viewed his war against Ukraine in the broadest of historical contexts as a crusade to reverse the verdict of 1991 and return Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower. Like many of his contemporaries, Putin remains embittered by the Soviet collapse and determined to avenge what he perceives as modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace. This has fuelled his obsession with independent Ukraine, which he has come to regard as the ultimate symbol of the historical injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Putin’s increasingly rabid opposition to Ukrainian independence reflects his Cold War experience as a KGB officer in East Germany, where he witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Empire firsthand. This traumatic experience has helped to convince him that the Ukrainian state-building project now poses an existential threat to Russia itself. If Ukraine is able to consolidate its statehood and emerge as a recognizably European democracy, Putin fears this could serve as a catalyst for the next phase in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Over the past two decades, Putin’s determination to undermine Ukrainian statehood has come to dominate his entire reign and has led directly to a new Cold War. From the 2004 Orange Revolution to the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of 2022, Ukraine has been at the epicenter of each new milestone in the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West.

Time after time, Putin has demonstrated his readiness to sacrifice all other Russian national interests in his quest to subjugate Ukraine and force the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He has reversed decades of integration into Western economies, placed Russian society on a wartime footing, and sent hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers to their deaths. It is deeply delusional to think that he is now suddenly ready to abandon all of this and accept the reality of Ukrainian independence in exchange for the marginal gains of a compromise peace.

Putin’s own position during peace talks betrays his complete lack of interest in ending the war. His territorial demands would rob Ukraine of crucial fortifications and set the stage for further Russian advances, while his calls for restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces and Kyiv’s ability to maintain military ties with the West would leave postwar Ukraine disarmed and defenseless. In isolation, any of these demands would look deeply suspect. Taken together, they represent overwhelming evidence of Putin’s intention to continue the invasion.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

‘Young people have a unique energy’

Jaffer began by recounting her story. As a young reporter at the Cape Times during South Africa’s apartheid regime, she was only twenty-two when in 1980 she was detained after reporting on a police shooting. Held in prison without trial, she was physically assaulted, psychologically tortured, and threatened with sexual violence. After two months of pretrial detention, she was released and charged with possession of a banned book.

Instead of retreating, Jaffer leaned deeper into the work of resistance, leaving her job at the Cape Times to become an anti-apartheid activist and unionist. In 1986, after editing community and trade union papers, she was detained again—this time, while she was several months pregnant. She was released shortly before her baby’s birth, only to be rearrested nine weeks later and jailed again with her infant. Held in solitary confinement and denied medical care, she nearly lost her child.

Holding up the cover of her memoir, Our Generation, Jaffer shared a photo from the book with Paryani, pointing to an image of her as a young mother with her infant daughter. The fight against apartheid, Jaffer said, was not just about individual acts of bravery but also about the collective defiance of women—young and old, mothers and daughters—that contributed to the system’s fall. “Looking back now, despite the pain,” Jaffer said, “I am proud to have been part of something that resulted in the freedom of all South Africans. It was worth it.”

Since then, Jaffer has written three books, and she now has her own website and runs a program where she mentors young journalists and gives them the opportunity to write on a multimedia website. Jaffer played a key role in South Africa’s first democratic elections as part of the Independent Media Commission.

Jaffer reflected on the power of youth, which she said carried with it fearlessness, the sense of justice, and the belief in change. “Young people have a unique energy,” she said.

Paryani, a twenty-seven-year-old activist from Kabul, has become one of the most visible faces of Afghanistan’s protest movement. Following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Paryani, alongside her sisters, took to the streets of Kabul to protest the regime’s decrees banning girls from attending school and imposing repressive dress codes on women. Together, they chanted “naan, kaar, azad”—bread, work, freedom—a slogan that has since become a powerful symbol for the resistance of Afghan women, both inside the country and in exile.

Her defiance carried a heavy price. In January 2022, a video of Paryani went viral on social media in which armed men pound on her door while she pleads shakily, “Come back in the morning. My underage sisters are with me, come tomorrow. I cannot talk to you now.” Her plea went unanswered; Tamana and her sisters were taken. No one knew where they were, and the Taliban denied detaining them.

Like many women in Afghanistan, Tamana and her sisters were forcibly disappeared—snatched from their homes in the middle of the night, sometimes with their children, sometimes with their husbands and entire families. In prison, she was separated from her sisters, beaten, psychologically tortured, and threatened with sexual violence. Under intense international pressure, they were released in February 2022 but were silenced with threats and had their passports confiscated.

After several attempts to leave the country, in October 2022 Paryani and her family managed to flee to Germany, where exile brought safety but not peace. In exile, she has continued to fight for global awareness of the gender apartheid imposed by the Taliban. In 2023, she staged a hunger strike in Cologne to draw attention to the plight of women in Afghanistan, which ended with her hospitalization. Her struggles have left her with a lingering sense of abandonment: “I tried everything to draw the world’s attention to the struggle of women in Afghanistan,” she said. “And the world turned a blind eye.”

The trauma she endured in Afghanistan continues to surface, she said, even more acutely now that she is no longer in survival mode. She added that she frequently wakes from nightmares filled with the cries of those she heard being executed in the prison in Kabul after dawn prayers.

Passing the torch

As Paryani spoke, her voice broke. “Will I live to see the liberation of my country?” she asked.

Jaffer responded by telling Paryani that healing is not a luxury, but a necessity. “You have been in the belly of the beast,” she said. “You have endured what many fear the most. The scariest and cruelest part is behind you. Now you must take care of yourself—not just for your own survival, but so you can continue to lead this movement.”

Jaffer told Paryani that one of the biggest mistakes she had made when she was younger was trying to carry on without seeking help. The trauma, left unaddressed, eventually caught up with her. “It paralyzed me,” she said. “Had I known then what I know now, I would have begun healing much earlier.”

The struggle for liberation, Jaffer insisted, is not a sprint. It is a long, painful journey, said Jaffer, and it demands not only courage and sacrifice, but also reflection, self-care, self-love, and resilience. And most importantly, she added, it requires community.

“Tamana,” Jaffer said, “don’t let what they did to you silence you. Share your story. Ask for help. Simplify the message so others can join. Personalize your struggle. Your pain is real, but it’s also powerful. It can move hearts and minds. And this pain will carry you towards what you are burning for—liberation.”

Paryani, who had arrived at this meeting with her notebook and pen, eager to absorb every tip and tactic to end gender apartheid, now wept uncontrollably. Not out of sorrow, but because she was confronting a difficult realization: dismantling gender apartheid takes time. While it demands sustained activism and a burning passion, it equally requires the continuous inner work of healing—the labor that builds not only resistance, but the resilience that is necessary to sustain it.

Farhat Ariana Azami is a social worker and advocate for the rights of women and girls, as well as refugees. She serves as president of the Afghanistan Solidarity Group, an Austria-based association that provides homeschooling for girls and develops sustainable livelihood projects for women in Afghanistan.

This article is part of the Inside the Taliban’s Gender Apartheid series, a joint project of the Civic Engagement Project and the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

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Russian drones and blackouts test the resilience of Ukraine’s second city

Maria Avdeeva — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:47:20 +0000

Situated just thirty kilometers from the Russian border, Ukraine’s former capital Kharkiv has been a front line city ever since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. With Putin’s army now advancing to the east and the bombardment of civilian targets intensifying, Kharkiv residents are facing what may become the most difficult winter of the entire war.

In October alone, Russia bombed Kharkiv more than eighty times. Many of these attacks involved different categories of drones, reflecting the changing nature of the war. Russia now relies mostly on a mix of first-person view (FVP) drones, loitering munitions, Shahed drones, and guided aerial bombs. These weapons systems are all far cheaper and faster to produce than missiles, making it easier for the Kremlin to maintain the intensity of the bombardment and destabilize the life of the city.

The recent appearance of FVP drones within the city limits has created an additional layer of unease for the approximately 1.3 million people currently living in Kharkiv. Technical modifications introduced in 2025 have increased the range of Russian FVP drones, enabling them to reach Kharkiv and nearby settlements previously regarded as relatively safe. This has dramatically altered the threat environment, pointing to a continued escalation in Russia’s use of drones against urban populations.

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As the bombardment of Kharkiv intensifies, events taking place one hundred kilometers to the east are reshaping the city’s broader security outlook. In recent months, advancing Russian troops have attempted to reoccupy Kupiansk. This strategically important city came under Russian occupation during the initial phase of the full-scale invasion before being liberated during Ukraine’s successful September 2022 counteroffensive. Renewed Russian gains in this direction would further strain Ukraine’s defenses and expand the aerial threat looming over Kharkiv.

As the front line creeps closer to Kharkiv, the main threat remains air strikes. Russian attacks focus on civilian targets including energy infrastructure, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, and shopping malls. The overall intention is clear: Russia aims to degrade municipal infrastructure, disrupt essential services, and make the city unlivable for its inhabitants.

One of the most shocking attacks in recent months took place on October 22, when Russia carried out a targeted drone strike on a Kharkiv kindergarten. On that occasion, images of firefighters carrying young children from the burning building made global headlines. However, the vast majority of attacks targeting the Kharkiv population do not attract the attention of international audiences.

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Alongside drones, Kharkiv residents must also now contend with extended periods of darkness. In early November, a major Russian bombardment caused the city’s energy supply system to collapse, leaving entire districts without electricity, heating, and light. Local residents have had to adapt to the realities of life without power while navigating the city in the winter gloom. For the Kharkiv population, this has meant returning to familiar blackout routines developed during earlier Russian winter bombing campaigns.

Despite these pressures, Kharkiv continues to function and maintain an air of normality. Everyday life in the city is in many ways defined by a culture of resilience that is both practical and disciplined, reflecting years of adaptation under fire.

Utilities crews repair power lines within hours of each new Russian attack. Municipal workers immediately clear away debris from air strikes and make sure the city remains tidy, even in the most extreme of circumstances. Teachers hold classes in specially constructed underground schools or metro stations. Doctors treat patients behind boarded up windows. Each individual demonstration of resilience is a direct rejection of Russia’s efforts to depopulate Kharkiv.

In order to maintain this remarkable resilience, Kharkiv requires continued international support. Most of all, this means additional air defenses. Supporting Kharkiv is not just a matter of humanitarian assistance. It is a strategic investment in European security.

Today, Kharkiv serves as a vital bastion in eastern Ukraine. The city’s endurance makes it possible to reinforce Ukrainian front line units, bolster the country’s defenses, offer a safe haven to the region’s civilian population, and prevent the war from spreading further west. A secure Kharkiv means a stronger Ukraine and a safer Europe, but this will only be possible with help from the international community.

Maria Avdeeva is a Ukrainian security analyst. The views in this article are her own and are expressed in a personal capacity.

Western policy must include Iran’s neglected peripheries

Rob Macaire — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:59:29 +0000

Who nowadays remembers the “1384 Intifada,” the wave of unrest in the Arab areas of Iran in 2005? Few outside the country, certainly. Yet twenty years later, individuals arrested for involvement in the demonstrations are still languishing in jail with no furlough, excluded from the government pardons that are eventually granted to most other political prisoners.

Accounts of human rights abuses in Iran are so frequent and so well-documented that it’s easy to gloss over how much worse things are for the country’s minority populations. They face both official discrimination and day-to-day prejudice. Moreover, after June’s Twelve Day War between Israel and Iran, the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran found that Kurds, Balochis, Arabs, and other minorities faced disproportionate arrests, penalties, and executions inside the Islamic Republic. This follows a predictable pattern: Whenever the regime feels under threat internally or externally, it tightens the screws on minorities. This intensifies resentment felt in those communities, thus creating a vicious circle. The regime’s paranoia about threats to national security from these groups risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As Western policymakers and analysts try to discern possible futures for Iran—be it after the leadership of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or potentially post-Islamic Republic—they should pay attention to the peripheries of the country. Most analysts point out that a regime overthrow or a revolutionary uprising remain unlikely scenarios. The regime is powerful, despite its unpopularity—and the state is more deeply established than in most Middle Eastern countries. Nevertheless, instability cannot be ruled out, and it is worth considering scenarios for Iran’s minority regions should the highly centralized security state become distracted by a power struggle or an external conflict.

Iran’s minority communities

The experiences and aspirations of Iran’s minorities are not all the same. How far people identify as Iranian and how much as another nationality varies widely, making population statistics imprecise. Broadly, ethnic Persians are believed to be between 50 and 60 percent, Azerbaijanis between 16 and 20 percent, Kurds 10 percent, Baloch and Arabs 2 percent each, and there are also small populations of Turkmen, as well as others. Minorities can be counted in many different ways.

Of these groups, Kurdish national identity in the northwest of Iran has a long history, including in the modern era with the short-lived Republic of Mahabad in 1946 and the violent suppression of Kurdish autonomy after the revolution in 1979. Meanwhile, Arabs in Khuzestan are keenly aware of how little they benefit from the province’s oil wealth and that government mismanagement has left their water resources depleted. The Baluchi population, which is largely concentrated on the border with Pakistan, suffers socioeconomic deficits, as well as structural exclusion (as both an ethnic and religious minority). Hundreds of thousands of them have no official documents, which excludes them from school and the workplace, as well as political life. And the largest linguistic minority, the Azeri-speakers, have a complicated relationship with the majority Persian population. Under the Islamic Republic, this previously well-integrated community has developed an increasingly separate identity—energized by the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 and its successive bouts of conflict with Armenia. When fans of the Tractor Tabriz football team riot, as they regularly do, they chant not only the phrase “death to the dictator,” but also jibes against ethnic Persians. Yet Azerbaijanis are not excluded from the inner circles of power in Iran—President Masoud Pezeshkian is one, and even Khamenei hails from that community, although he does not identify as such.

The response to the Twelve Day War

The Islamic Republic’s internal messaging in the wake of the Twelve Day War was somewhat confused. On the one hand, the regime singled out minorities for repression and allegations of espionage. On the other, it sought to portray a nation united and defiant under attack. In the rather heavy-handed propaganda after the war, this has even extended to drawing on pre-Islamic Persian national myths.

Ironically, the prevalence of this very Persian nationalist iconography risks looking mono-ethnic and further alienating minority populations. Yet senses of identity are hard to pigeonhole in Iran as elsewhere: Anyone who has talked to people from these areas knows that it’s possible to be, for example, Kurdish, Arab, or Azeri, resentful not to have schooling in your mother tongue, and mistrustful of the centralized Islamic Republic, and yet still identify proudly as an Iranian.

In recognition of these tensions, Pezeshkian and his government have stressed inclusiveness in Tehran’s nationalist messages since the Twelve Day War. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Pezeshkian said, “even if we had made no achievements in this war, the fact that it united the nation in defense of territorial integrity was the greatest achievement for us.” And interestingly, the government has also announced plans for a decentralization of powers to provincial governors.

That latter initiative is significant: Anything that looks like federalism has been stamped out by the Islamic Republic (right from the early days when it was on the agenda of some of the groups who joined the revolution). The constitution is firmly unitary, so even figures like former President Mohammad Khatami, who mused about the virtues of federalism during his term, concluded it was not possible. And sure enough, even Pezeshkian’s timid moves towards allowing governors more powers to implement policy locally have been condemned as “federalist” by hardline critics. Yet, these moves are evidence of a nervousness at the center about the risks of unrest and the need to appease minorities.

There isn’t much true separatism or irredentism in Iran’s minorities, although their ethnic identities are cross-border. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, for example, contains a spectrum of views about what self-determination looks like, but its mainstream aspiration has shifted over the years from independence to some form of autonomy within the framework of the Iranian state. Cultural and linguistic rights are particularly important for all of these minorities.

The local development agenda is also relevant here. For example, the staggering mismanagement of Iran’s water usage over the years has recently led to acute problems across the country. While this has long been a problem in underdeveloped provinces, only now is water scarcity impinging on the capital. For local Iranian Azerbaijanis, for example, the drying up of Lake Urmia and its environs is blamed on national policies and is thus intertwined with their political grievances towards Tehran. It would be natural for populations that already feel marginalized by the center to believe that they could do a better job if they managed their own affairs.

The Islamic Republic did, in fact, make progress in its early decades in leveling up regional inequalities by investing in rural education and development, but more recently, centralization, corruption, the domination of the economy by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and sanctions have overwhelmed any sense in the peripheries that Tehran has their interests at heart. That is the context in which Pezeshkian’s initiative to devolve powers to governors makes sense.

Growing distrust of the regime’s competence

The greater risk for the regime may be the general collapse of belief in the regime’s competence and political will to do more than look after its own survival. That is true across the country. But in areas with strong local identities and long-standing grievances, it likely would not take much for charismatic local leaders to emerge and challenge the center—not necessarily on an overtly ethnic or cultural platform, but on one of good governance.

A number of things would need to apply for that to happen. If the central government remains united and the IRGC and Basij militia stay loyal to whichever regime is in place, these centrifugal tendencies will have little scope to grow. Genuine steps towards decentralization could take the heat out of local resentments. A rapprochement with the West and a degree of sanctions relief could bring a new lease of life for regime legitimacy. But analysts and Western policymakers should not assume any of these.

And if the regime’s central authority does indeed falter and bonds holding the unitary state together are loosened, the situation could snowball rapidly. All these groups have, or have had, armed factions willing to take on the regime in one way or another. On the one hand, Iran might be set off on a pathway to a new, federal settlement that allows greater civil and cultural rights to all its people. But perhaps more likely, a forceful reaction from the center could lead to prolonged conflicts and more radicalization on both sides. In that case, it is easy to imagine support coming from over Iran’s borders to support specific resistance groups, whether from governments or nonstate actors.

Few would want to see such a situation. Regional governments would rapidly feel the effects of instability in Iran and may well prefer a unitary, if threatening, Islamic Republic to a failed state on their doorstep. Europe could face a refugee flood dwarfing the earlier waves from Syria during its decade-long war. The emergence of ungoverned space in Iran would invite the emergence of radicalization and terrorism, and the history of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan suggests this would lead to transnational threats. Nevertheless, for those in the diaspora whose ideological commitment is to the end of the Islamic Republic regime at all costs, or for some in Israel who might see a failed state as a satisfactory outcome, this scenario may not be unwelcome.

All of which suggests that now is the time for Western and regional policymakers to form a clear-eyed view of what such a fragmentation would mean, and how they should engage with Iran’s minorities—both now and through any regime transition.

Rob Macaire is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project advisory committee and a former British ambassador to Iran.

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Ukraine’s wartime experience provides blueprint for infrastructure protection

Oleksandr Bakalinskyi, Maggie McDonough — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:36:56 +0000

When cyberattacks and missile strikes converge on the same targets, infrastructure resilience becomes more than a technical mandate; it becomes a matter of national survival. For Ukraine, this is not a hypothetical future scenario. On the contrary, it has been daily reality for more than a decade.

Since 2014, Ukraine’s power grid, banking system, telecommunications networks, and digital infrastructure have faced sustained and increasingly sophisticated attacks. Yet these systems continue to function, adapt, and evolve, offering the world one of the most comprehensive case studies for how national infrastructure can endure under unrelenting cyber-kinetic pressure.

Ukraine’s experience reveals clearly that defending critical infrastructure is no longer simply a matter of cybersecurity. It requires a fundamentally different approach grounded in cyber-physical resilience, decentralization, system redundancy, institutional autonomy, and the capacity to sustain essential services, even when networks fail.

Industrial control systems were not designed for modern cyber warfare. The systems that operate electrical substations, power distribution logistics, and grid balancing typically prioritize availability and uptime rather than cyber defense. Russia exploited this structural vulnerability in 2015 and 2016, when Ukraine became the first country in history to suffer a nationwide power outage triggered by a cyberattack.

The same attacks that exposed digital fragility also revealed Ukraine’s greatest source of strength: Analog resilience. Even as digital control systems were compromised, engineers were able to manually isolate impacted grid segments, reroute power, and restore transmission through mechanical overrides and localized network segmentation.

The lessons are clear. While digital modernization delivers efficiency, full digital dependency creates systemic brittleness. Meanwhile, resilience can be enhanced through layered systems that incorporate manual fallbacks, localized control, and the ability to physically outmaneuver a digital attack. And while the ability to manually connect electricity to an electrical substation was not by design, the lack of digitalization at the time of the attacks proved to be an advantage in terms of service restoration speed.

The global takeaway from Ukraine’s grid defense is not a rejection of modernization; it is a rejection of exclusively digital modernization. True resilience requires hybrid architectures in which digital innovation is paired with analog redundancy, segmented control, and last resort options when networks are taken down.

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If the Ukrainian power grid demonstrated the value of technical redundancy, Ukraine’s banking sector has shown the value of institutional autonomy. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has emerged since the onset of Russian aggression as one of the most effective national actors in defending and sustaining critical infrastructure under attack. This has not only been due to advanced cybersecurity measures, but also thanks to operational freedom to act in line with the pace of the threat environment. The NBU has rapidly introduced mandatory security protocols, created a dedicated incident response unit, synchronized directly with law enforcement, and deployed real-time regulatory updates to address emerging vulnerabilities.

This capacity for decisiveness has helped ensure continuity in one of the country’s most essential sectors. Even under sustained digital attack, Ukrainians could still access their bank accounts, make electronic payments, and rely on national financial infrastructure without systemic interruption.

The most innovative aspect of this resilience came in the form of the Power Banking Initiative, a nationwide network of bank branches retrofitted for operational continuity during extended outages. Equipped with alternative energy sources, satellite communications, secure cash storage, and offline transaction capacities, these branches ensured uninterrupted access to currency, transfers, and basic banking services during power blackouts and infrastructure disruptions.

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Ukraine’s experience confirms that the boundary between cyberattacks and conventional warfare is often blurred. In many cases, the two elements are sequenced, synchronized, and structurally interdependent. Cyber operations can blind infrastructure sensors, disrupt communications, compromise operational decision-making, and erode trust in essential systems, often in direct coordination with physical strikes.

Resilience does not depend on preventing breaches, but on the ability to sustain essential services when breaches succeed. This requires a hybrid framework that integrates digital security, infrastructure continuity planning, and decentralized operational responses.

Alignment with EU and NATO standards will accelerate interoperability with allied infrastructure defense systems and enable long-term investment security. Compliance must move beyond voluntary adoption to formal certification, standardized auditing, and enforceable resilience benchmarks for infrastructure operators.

Ukraine’s national bank has shown the importance of sector-specific response units. This model should expand to the energy, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and regional government systems. In order to be effective, response units require independent monitoring authority, 24/7 threat detection, digital forensics, and integration into NATO and EU cyber fusion hubs.

Infrastructure resilience also demands institutionalized public-private intelligence sharing. A legally protected, mandatory, real-time intelligence exchange will shorten detection timelines and prevent cascading failures. Critical infrastructure owners must integrate into national security information-sharing with liability protections, rapid alert systems, and reciprocal intelligence flows.

Looking ahead, a national resilience investment fund should pool Ukrainian government resources, EU support, World Bank guarantees, EBRD/EIB financing, and private capital to enable infrastructure segmentation, micro-grid deployment, backup power systems, secure cloud environments, and hardened data centers. However, none of these technical investments will succeed without sufficient human capital. Ukraine should aim to develop a minimum of 10,000 new security specialists through university partnerships, military-civilian pipelines, veteran reskilling programs, and national cyber reserves.

Today, Ukraine possesses infrastructure resilience tested continuously under real cyber-kinetic attack. This unique experience should form the basis of international efforts to enhance critical infrastructure resilience. Ukraine can lead an international training center, host multinational resilience exercises, publish attack anatomy case files, and shape new NATO and EU doctrine. This would allow Kyiv to position itself not only as a defender, but as an architect of resilient infrastructure strategy.

His suffering, he says, would be worth reliving “so long as it means I get to rebuild this country.”

Scenes of rubble in Ghouta, Syria from the author’s visit in September 2025. Photo credit: Tara Kangarlou

One year since Assad’s fall and amid the steepest US development aid cuts in decades, Syria—a country that for over a decade was regarded as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the modern century—stands to have the most potential to showcase how local ownership, civil society, and a grassroots focus can accelerate reconstruction.

As is the case in many other parts of the region that have endured years of conflict, invasion, and destruction, Syria’s real infrastructure today is not physical, but human—the one thing that cannot be replaced, bypassed, or shortchanged by aid or the deficit of it. Syrian civil society must be a central architect to Syria’s rebuilding—not an afterthought to anyone’s investment. Today, the future of development rests not in big donor money or foreign aid but in a country’s most valuable asset: its people.

A 2017 State Department evaluation of Syrian civil society projects highlighted “local buy-in and ownership are key to project success in the short and long-term.” The evaluation recommended that there should be “consistent opportunities” for civil society organizations and grassroots communities to “provide input” to the project at hand from the get-go regarding community needs, training topics, and feedback throughout the project’s life cycle. For a country with a pre-war economy of roughly $60 billion, and whose physical reconstruction alone the World Bank now estimates at around $216 billion, Syria represents not just a humanitarian obligation, but a momentous opportunity to reimagine how investment, local ownership, and rebuilding can go hand in hand—setting an example for the rest of the Middle East and North Africa region, where tragically other conflicts linger in Gaza, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan.

One year on from the start of life in a post-Assad Syria, the country faces a historic moment to set a regional example anchored in the most durable, valuable, and scalable asset of any nation, which remains its civil society.

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Dec 7, 2025

One year after Assad’s fall, here’s what’s needed to advance justice for Syrians

By Elise Baker and Ahmad Helmi

The second year of a post-Assad Syria requires structural reform, victim-centered leadership, and international reinforcement.

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Rebuilding in Syria

In just the first few months since Syria’s emergence on the international stage, the country signed more than $14 billion worth of major investment agreements with regional and international companies—including investments from European donors, Gulf states (such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar), multilateral banks, and private companies that have moved into the country’s reconstruction sector. This includes the $5.8 billion in grants and loans pledged at the 2025 Brussels conference to the expansion of economic engagement with Turkey, the hundreds of millions of dollars in new Gulf-backed port and industrial-zone deals that are still a fraction of the roughly $216 billion the World Bank estimates full rebuilding will require.

Saudi Arabia, whose de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman is a key backer of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government, signed forty-seven investment agreements and memorandums of understanding at the July 2025 Saudi-Syrian Investment Forum. Most of these investments are focused on rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure across various sectors, including transportation and construction—especially residential—as well as energy, maritime, and industry.

However, what’s indispensable to any form of sufficient, scalable, and sustainable development is that these public and private actors treat local Syrian councils, civic organizations, educators, and technicians as co-designers, facilitators, and contract partners.

Civil society as Syria’s greatest asset

These sectors provide a unique opportunity for engaging local actors in Syria. This includes the civil society organizations and community leaders that played a prominent role in maintaining basic services and key development projects amidst the horrors of the country’s civil war.

The White Helmets represent a key example. The humanitarian grassroots organization was formed in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside, saving civilian lives under perpetual airstrikes and shelling by the Assad regime and clearing the rubble and debris afterward, all at a time when no international aid could reach them. Their role grew into successfully repairing roads, reconnecting water networks in rebel-held districts, and providing key services to Syrians, including health and training to local community members.

Author Tara Kangarlou with the White Helmets on a recent visit to Syria. Credit: Tara Kangarlou

It therefore came as no surprise that their founder, Raed Saleh, was appointed to Syria’s new cabinet as minister of emergencies and disaster management when the new government came to power. Today, he is bringing his decade-plus experience and community networks to the entire country.

In the northern Idlib province, previously ruled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the Islamist militant group that ultimately broke with Assad’s rule—various civil society organizations such as Kesh Malek, the Mazaya Women’s Organization, and the Violet Organization for Relief and Development provided educational and literacy support, women’s empowerment initiatives, teacher trainings, vocational training, and civic-leadership programs designed to prepare the next generation of Syrians to rebuild their country.

In Duma, a suburb of Damascus that endured years of siege (including the deadly April 2018 chemical attacks claimed to be executed by the Assad regime), people such as Ameen Badran, an activist and local community council member, started arranging garbage pickups and today continue to engage in reconstruction efforts even after al-Sharaa’s government appointed a mayor.

Similarly, in Zabaadni, after the fall of Assad, English teacher Alaa Zain Al Den told one of the authors that “the trauma on us was so much that we don’t even know what to do with this newly found freedom and joy.”

“However,” he added, “what we do know is that we want to rebuild, we want to start our work—the work that was taken from us.”

Today, Syria’s education system lies in ruins, with over half of the five million school-age children currently out of school and around seven to eight thousand schools damaged or destroyed across the country. This educational breakdown underlines why rebuilding must rely on local knowledge and community-rooted institutions that only Syrians, with firsthand awareness of what their neighborhoods truly need, can design. This is one sector that incoming investments should focus on as it helps to develop a new generation of Syrians for a revived economy.

Alaa and many hundreds of educators alike remained in Syria through the war. Expelled from his government teaching post in 2017 after refusing conscription into Assad’s army, Alaa spent years in limbo, unable to find stable work as the economy collapsed. The cost of that decision was immense. For years, he lived in hiding, while his brother was arrested during the war. Alaa’s family found out recently that his brother was killed in prison. Despite the scars, he and other teachers now hope for a chance to return to their classrooms and rebuild a broken educational system.

“Reconstruction in Syria will be meaningless if it is not built on the lived experience of Syrians themselves. Our communities know exactly what was destroyed—and what it takes to rebuild in a way that lasts,” said Anas, another educator who works in the same school as Alaa in Zabadani.

Private sector-led workforce development

These are just a few examples of some of the individuals, grassroots organizations, and local initiatives that have the experience, local knowledge, and networks to work with the private sector—both Syrian and international—to effectively contribute to this essential rebuilding process.

Where there is a skills gap, especially in technology-heavy sectors, companies investing in Syria must commit to training and up-skilling Syrians, not just as future employees, but as future managers, executives, and leaders. This requires a workforce-development formula that moves beyond traditional international-aid models and instead places private enterprises at the center of project design, implementation, and assessment, allowing their sector-specific needs to shape training pipelines and employment pathways.

A successful example of this approach is Jordan’s Luminus Technical University College (LTUC)—a private-sector–funded institution that reimagined vocational and technical education by linking all its programs directly to labor-market demand and employer input. Today, LTUC offers fifty accredited programs across twelve specializations, including information technology, engineering, creative media, construction, and health and safety—all fields that mirror the urgent reconstruction needs identified for Syria in assessments by the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme that emphasize shortages in skilled engineers, technicians, digital-economy workers, and construction professionals.

Local ownership of reconstruction initiatives brings with it core elements that may sound frivolous for international heavy hitters but are proven to be key ingredients of long-lasting success. Chief among these foundational pillars are local integrity and purpose, in addition to deep knowledge of a complex and multidimensional sociocultural context.

Hisham Tinawi—a once successful shopkeeper in Zabadani whose home was destroyed under heavy artillery and airstrikes—explains how “local communities possess the precise knowledge of the destruction and how to build viable solutions.”

He added that “those who remained inside the country possess accumulated field experience that no external party can replace; excluding them from the reconstruction process means excluding the truth from the picture.” Syrians see themselves not as bystanders to a new future that they paid for with their blood and tears, but as core partners in rebuilding.

“Effective reconstruction cannot be conceived without linking it to the voice of Syrians on the ground; we are not just beneficiaries but key partners with a clear vision of the future we want,” Tinawi told the author.

Today, investors—regional and global—must heed Tinawi’s advice and invest in education and workforce development training, as a start. Syria’s civil society remains its biggest asset and has proven ready and effective at rebuilding a Syria they so deeply deserve.

Merissa Khurma is the founder and chief executive officer of AMENA Strategies, an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute, and a nonresident fellow at the Baker Institute. She formerly headed the Middle East program at the Wilson Center.

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How the United States can harness its sports diplomacy moment, as the FIFA World Cup nears

Katherine Golden — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:09:41 +0000

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Beyond the game: The new frontiers of sports diplomacy

Ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw, the Africa Center and the Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative host a series of conversations on what major sporting events mean for development, diplomacy, and national security and resilience.

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The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will play out across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, will be “an overload, a true plethora of opportunities,” said the White House’s Andrew Giuliani on Thursday, “not just for American citizens that are traveling within the country, but also international visitors that are coming in to enjoy the World Cup.”

Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026, spoke at an Atlantic Council event on the importance of sports diplomacy on the eve of Friday’s World Cup draw.

“If we are able to nail this one,” Giuliani said, “I think this is going to be one of these recurring things where it’s not just going to be a decade of major sports, but a century of major sports moving forward here in the United States.”

Giuliani estimated the economic output of the upcoming tournament at thirty billion dollars. US Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) also pointed to the windfall the World Cup will bring, as well as the broader impact of the United States as a World Cup host.

“When we talk about sports diplomacy,” Kamlager-Dove explained, “we’re really talking about a way to open the door to new opportunities,” particularly economic opportunities around tourism, job growth, and infrastructure.

“Sport is a great equalizer in an incredibly unequal world,” she added. “And so we have got to engage with as many folks as possible and lean into the power of sports diplomacy.”

Below are more highlights from the event, during which foreign diplomats, US officials, and figures from the world of soccer gathered at our studios to talk about the power of sports diplomacy and the opportunities sporting events bring to local communities.

How the White House plans to “nail” the tournament

White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026 Executive Director Andrew Giuliani delivers remarks during a fireside chat on December 4, 2025 at the Atlantic Councilin Washington DC. Photo via Lenin Nolly/Sipa USA.

Giuliani explained that his task force’s discussions focus closely on “safety” and “security,” from protecting people in stadiums to ensuring air travelers arrive safely. He said to expect an announcement in the coming weeks on the administration’s security approach.
He also talked about the United States’ new FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System, which expedites visa applications for ticket holders. “I think this is a perfect example of balancing the safety and security that we want,” he argued, “not just for these games, but also for the country and for international tourists and visitors coming in, while also making sure that we are welcoming and opening a front door.”
That welcome, he argued, is important. “This is a great opportunity,” he said, “to show off to the world American exceptionalism, our first 250 years, the true greatness of the United States of America, and the hope and promise of the next 250 years.”
Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber added that, with the World Cup, “the entire world is going to see that the world’s game actually lives here in our country,” as demonstrated by the growth of women’s soccer and the high interest among the country’s youth.

The world’s equalizer

Kamlager-Dove, who introduced the bipartisan American Decades of Sports Act to create a US sports diplomacy strategy, explained that sports offer a doorway for connection with other people. On the other side, “we can then engage on other important issues like clean water, like solid infrastructure, like feeding starving children,” she said.
FIFA’s Victor Montagliani—who leads the Confederation of North, Central America and the Caribbean Association Football—added that “football is one of the most reliable, neutral spaces,” so “nations that may disagree politically still meet on the pitch. Cultures that may clash still follow the same rules.”
“Football is not just entertainment, it’s not just business, and it’s not just competition,” Montagliani said. “It really is . . . the most diplomatic platform that this globe has.”
Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, agreed, adding that soccer is “about human engagement.”
“There are wars all around the world, but this is the pitch where people can come and forget all of that and say, ‘I’m your equal,’” she explained.

A global unifier

Giuliani noted of the 2026 World Cup participants: “You have three countries that might have different politics, different beliefs, different ideas, but they all banded together.” Montagliani similarly argued that “through a football-first philosophy,” the type of collaboration that seemed “laughable” became “entirely achievable.”
“The beauty about North America,” Montagliani argued, is that attendees from around the world have “a piece” in the region: “They may have a relative, they may have a friend, somebody that’s come here and immigrated here,” he explained. “Football is a sport of immigrants, no different than the countries that were built by immigrants.”
Moroccan Ambassador to the United States Youssef Amrani highlighted how the 2030 World Cup will see, for the first time, two countries on different continents (Morocco and Spain) co-hosting. “It is a strong message,” he said, adding that the cooperation “is important for as far as security, migration issues, [and] economic development.”
But soccer also “unites the people inside the same country,” Amrani argued. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas echoed that message, explaining how his city snagged a spot as a World Cup host thanks to collaboration between “political figures from across the political aisle”—and Lucas said such collaboration is continuing to prepare the city for the global sporting event.
With the World Cup preparations, “we have seen commonalities and relationships that don’t exist regularly in American politics,” Lucas said, “and I think foundationally it shows the power of the World Cup, and it shows the power of sports.”

A propeller for economies

The legacy of this World Cup, Garber argued, “will be all the great things that’ll happen in the community,” including the expansion of job opportunities.
Al-Saud explained how the opportunity to host the World Cup in 2034 has required her country to invest more in Saudi soccer teams, programs, and infrastructure—and, ultimately, in young people. “This industry is an industry that uplifts people everywhere it goes,” she argued.
Amrani agreed, saying that the soccer industry in Morocco has unleashed “opportunity for jobs, for investment, for infrastructure,” such as more modern trains and solar panels. He also highlighted the sport’s role in fostering “social inclusion.”
Montagliani pointed out that women’s soccer is growing “at a record pace,” which has created additional pathways for sports diplomacy.
Al-Saud noted that regulatory shifts and investments have played a role in accelerating women’s soccer in Saudi Arabia, but she argued that the most powerful force has been an “understanding as a nation that a young woman’s right to compete is equal to a young man’s right to compete.”
She appealed to the private sector for more investments in women’s soccer: “Help us catch up,” she said. “The young ladies deserve it. They have the skill, they have the talent, they are just seeking the opportunity.”

Katherine Golden is an associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

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Ukraine’s warning to the West: A bad peace will lead to a bigger war

Myroslava Gongadze — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 22:04:35 +0000

Almost every night last week, I woke up in Kyiv to the piercing sound of air raid sirens. Like countless other Ukrainians, I scrambled out of bed, grabbed a few essentials, and headed down to the bomb shelter.

Not everyone follows this routine. Some people, tired of the nightly bombardments, choose to sleep through air raid alarms, even if that means risking potential death. Many others, including the elderly and those with physical impediments, are unable to make their way downstairs every time the sirens sound. Each new Russian attack is a reminder of how precarious life has become in wartime Ukraine.

While civilians struggle to maintain a sense of normality, the reality on the front lines could hardly be more dramatic. Ukrainian troops are overstretched and desperately short of reinforcements, ammunition, and equipment. Inch by inch, the Russian army continues to grind forward, testing each vulnerability and exploiting every weakness.

Despite these incredible challenges, the Ukrainian military continues to adapt and innovate as it seeks to hold the line with new tools and evolving strategies. The will to resist remains unbroken, but the toll this struggle exacts on soldiers, their families, and the entire Ukrainian nation often feels unbearable.

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As Ukrainians fight for national survival on the battlefield, another struggle is also playing out against domestic corruption. Ukraine’s efforts to move toward a more accountable and democratic system of government are a key cause of Moscow’s escalating aggression, with Putin viewing Ukrainian democracy as an existential threat to Russian authoritarianism. Ukrainians understand that battling corruption is just as vital in this war as resisting Russia on the battlefield.

Ukrainian society has been attempting to combat corruption for decades. Exactly twenty-five years ago, the Kuchmagate scandal rocked Ukraine. This implicated then-president Leonid Kuchma in the murder of my husband Georgiy Gongadze, a prominent investigative journalist and the founder of the Ukrainska Pravda news site. On that occasion, the pathway to the truth began with a lone whistleblower from the presidential security team, who took huge risks to expose what he saw as grave misconduct.

A quarter of a century later, there are strong indications that Ukraine is making progress in the fight against corruption. In late November, one of Ukraine’s most powerful men, presidential administration head Andriy Yermak, resigned following a search of his home by the country’s anti-corruption authorities amid a rapidly unfolding scandal involving figures close to the very highest levels of power.

Once again, Ukrainska Pravda journalists were instrumental in breaking the story, but the differences between then and now are also striking. Back when my husband was murdered, there were no institutional checks in place and no raids on the homes of senior officials. Today, Ukraine has built institutions capable of pushing back and producing results.

Clearly, the ghosts of corruption still haunt Ukraine’s corridors of power, but impunity is giving way to accountability. This is exactly the transformation that many Ukrainians are fighting for, and one of the main reasons why Ukraine scares Putin so much.

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After nearly four years of full-scale war, most Ukrainians want peace, but they also realize that peace will only be possible if accompanied by justice and security. For a generation, Ukrainians have fought for these goals. They know that simply stopping the shooting will not bring real peace, and are committed to ending the war in a way that will last.

From Kyiv to Lviv, I hear the same message from people who desperately want the war to be over but understand that a rushed peace could have disastrous consequences. “We have sheltered too long in the dark to accept a peace that isn’t just,” one woman commented. “Our sons and daughters are not only fighting to defend our land, but for the justice that must come after,” a taxi driver told me.

The world needs to understand that Russia’s invasion is already reshaping global security. Putin is not just seizing Ukrainian territory; he is trying to erase Ukraine as a nation and erode the entire international order. If the world lets this happen, a much larger war will no longer be a distant risk. It will become inevitable.

There is now a clear danger that Western leaders will support a hurried and unfair peace deal. This would send a dangerous message that aggression pays. Autocrats around the world would draw the obvious conclusion that they can change borders by force. This would undermine the foundational principles of international relations established in the post-World War II era. Europe cannot afford to set such a precedent.

With the Russian invasion entering a critical phase and Moscow’s hybrid war spreading across Europe, the time to act is now. Ukraine’s defense is Europe’s defense. The West must increase support and stop Putin before he goes even further. It is delusional to think that sacrificing Ukraine will satisfy Russia. Instead, a bad peace will only lead to a bigger war. The price of hesitation will be far higher than the cost of action.

Myroslava Gongadze is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a senior fellow at Friends of Europe.

Evolution of freedom

Ghana’s signature achievement since the mid-1990s is the consolidation of civic and political freedoms and a competitive political order in which citizens, journalists, and civic organizations routinely hold leaders to account. The durability of this achievement is not a result of elite benevolence or political will but the product of a dense, independent civil society and a remarkably resilient independent media ecosystem. When governments test the boundaries of civic space, the response is often swift and organized; this social infrastructure is the primary reason Ghana’s civic and political freedoms have remained consistently strong for more than two decades. This context is reflected in the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Indexes’ political subindex for Ghana, which sits well above the economic and legal subindices. In recent years, it sits in the low-to-mid 70s out of a maximum score of 100, a pattern that aligns with lived realities. In the most recent Afrobarometer survey, conducted in 2024, an overwhelming majority of Ghanaians (85 percent) reported that they did not fear political violence or intimidation during the last national elections, a strong testament to the electoral freedoms that Ghanaians enjoy. Moreover, a majority (52 percent) expressed trust in civil society organizations, ahead of religious leaders (who are trusted by 49 percent). Only the military (trusted by 65 percent) ranks ahead of civil society organizations in Ghana.¹

The historical roots of this civic vigilance matter. From the anti-colonial mobilization led by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-independence president, and mass professional and student associations to later generations of advocacy groups and think tanks, Ghanaians have long treated resistance to state overreach as a civic obligation.

As formal unions of lawyers, teachers, students, and medical professionals gave way to contemporary civil society and independent media organizations and research networks—among them, the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, the Ghana Integrity Initiative, the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, and many others, including subnational advocacy groups—the core impulse has remained the same: to protect and defend civic space, demand procedural fairness, and insist that those in power remain answerable to the public. This explains why the social reaction to efforts to undermine political freedoms is often met with resistance and why Ghana’s political openings have not been easily reversed.

Ghanaians have long treated resistance to state overreach as a civic obligation.

Electoral integrity is a useful illustration of how these social checks operate. While the courts can usually be swayed by partisan crosscurrents when individual political actors are charged with corruption or other acts of impropriety, the dynamic is often different with election disputes. The vigilance of civil society and independent media organizations in monitoring and independently collating election results at the polling-station level often helps to provide credible evidence when electoral disputes arise. The volume and quality of that evidence strengthen adjudication, making it harder for judicial bias to gain traction and increasing the credibility of outcomes, even in contentious contests.² This distinction is important: While the administration of justice in ordinary (nonpolitical) cases is broadly reliable, the politicization of corruption cases can distort judicial behavior; election cases, by contrast, have benefitted from robust, external scrutiny that fortifies the work of the courts.

This juxtaposition points to the core challenge in Ghana’s performance on legal freedom: The judiciary’s structural vulnerability to executive influence, particularly through appointments to the High Court and Supreme Court. Observers can—and do—sort judges into partisan “buckets,” a perception that inevitably erodes confidence in the system’s neutrality. Survey data clearly show a deterioration of citizens’ trust in the judicial system in the last fifteen years, falling by 20 percentage points since 2011.³ Yet outside of high-stakes political cases, the courts tend to function competently and deliver justice with regularity.

Recent movement in the legal subindex has been mildly positive, driven in part by improvements in informality and, to a lesser degree, by steadier security conditions after the turbulence of the early 2000s. On informality, the government’s digitalization initiatives, including the introduction of national (and tax) identification (the Ghana Card) and a digital address system, have helped to identify and increasingly formalize informal businesses. Other initiatives, such as the institution of fee-free secondary education, opened opportunities for young Ghanaians to further their education instead of entering the informal economy. The National Youth Employment Program, although relatively less successful, helped to draw young entrepreneurs into more formalized activities. Finally, a surge of capital investments into construction, alongside an expansion in mining activities, has created demand for artisans, contractors, and allied tradespeople who transact in more formal ways than the street-level microenterprise typical in developing economies. The result is a measurable reduction in the prevalence of informality, a trend visible within the relevant component of the legal subindex.

The gradual strengthening of security owes more to internal stability than to a benign regional environment. Ghana’s northern border with Burkina Faso and proximity to Nigeria’s insurgency-affected areas create constant risks, and yet Ghana has avoided the cascade of instability that has afflicted parts of the Sahel. That relative steadiness, together with the normal functioning of everyday justice for nonpolitical cases, helps explain why legal freedom is trending slightly upward despite persistent concerns about executive sway over judicial appointments and decisions.

Ghana has avoided the cascade of instability that has afflicted parts of the Sahel.

Corruption control within the justice sector is another area to watch. Across administrations, chief justices have consistently placed anti-corruption at the center of their institutional reform agendas, and recent executive appeals to rebuild public trust in the courts suggest continued political salience. However, these public commitments have not always translated into tangible reforms or outcomes. Public perception of judicial corruption remains high: According to the 2024 Afrobarometer survey, more than 40 percent of Ghanaians believe that “most or all judges and magistrates” are corrupt.⁴ The growing trend of presidents appointing loyalists to the Supreme Court has only reinforced these perceptions, contributing to Ghana’s relatively weak performance on the legal subindex. The ongoing constitutional review presents an opportunity to reform judicial appointments and promotions, tighten avenues for corruption, and strengthen judicial independence.

Ghana’s strong performance on elections, civil liberties, and political rights within the political subindex is tempered by weaker scores on legislative constraints on the executive, highlighting concerns about the effectiveness of institutional checks in practice. However, civil society remains uncompromising in defending democratic norms, including contesting attempts to erode these checks. The resulting equilibrium is not perfect—nor is it immutable—but it has proven remarkably resilient over the past generation.

Economic freedoms have followed their own trajectory, with a notable increase from the mid-2000s into the first half of the 2010s, a period that coincided with the broader “Africa Rising” narrative. This period was characterized by strong improvements in governance and economic growth, rising incomes, and a growing middle class. Consolidation of Ghana’s return to constitutional democracy commenced in the year 2000 with the transfer of power from the ruling party to an opposition party, which further boosted optimism in the country’s political and economic outlook. The new political leadership signaled a clear focus on improving the economy, and market openness and property-rights enforcement seemed to find firmer footing. Former President John Kufuor is remembered in this context for emphasizing macroeconomic health and business-climate improvements that many citizens experienced in their daily lives. The results of committed political leadership and effective economic management are reflected in the economic subindex and the other components such as investment freedom and property rights, starting in the mid-2000s.

The subsequent downturn around 2015 is worth noting. Rising debt-service pressures, coupled with a large budget deficit and high inflation culminated in Ghana going in for an IMF program; a similar pattern occurred around 2023-24 as reflected in the downward trend of the economic subindex. These patterns signal the fragility of gains when fiscal anchors are not backed by disciplined fiscal decisions—such as politically motivated increases in public spending during election years and subsidies on utilities and petroleum products, among others—and when investment freedom and property-rights expectations face credibility questions. These observations underscore that Ghana’s enviable political freedoms do not automatically translate into disciplined fiscal management or sustained economic openness. The freedom metrics capture this: The political subindex remains high, while the economic and legal dimensions fluctuate with policy choices that either reinforce or erode market institutions and democratic norms.

Trade freedom tells a more erratic story. Ghana’s trade policy framework has generally been open by regional standards, but the component’s volatility reflects the broader health of the economy and investors’ read on the policy environment. In periods of economic stress, policy consistency suffers, and openness on paper does not translate into confidence in practice. The trends in the data thus track not only tariff schedules and non-tariff measures but also the credibility of macroeconomic management, which is often punctuated in election years.

The trajectory of women’s economic freedom stands out as a major structural improvement. Around 2004, there was a steep rise in the economic subindex driven in part by a cluster of women’s empowerment policies of the Kufuor administration: free maternal health services, including postnatal care services that reduced a key barrier to women’s labor-market participation, and explicit efforts to expand women’s access to finance and enterprise support. Those initiatives may have helped to boost women’s economic autonomy and anchor a higher plateau that persisted in the years that followed. The component’s level has stagnated since about 2008 and hence leaves some room for improvement—but the rapid change around 2004 is unmistakable. Recent Afrobarometer survey data for Ghana show strong popular support for women to have equal rights to work as men. However, more than a quarter of Ghanaians (26 percent) identify employers’ preference for hiring men as the top barrier to women’s advancement, ahead of childcare (17 percent) and skills gaps (16 percent).⁵

Where do remaining constraints lie? First, land ownership: In Ghana, community and family lands are predominantly controlled by male heads; women’s ownership and collateralization of land remain very limited. Given the economic value of land, women remain at a significant disadvantage that dampens entrepreneurship, constrains access to credit, and restricts intergenerational wealth transfer for women. Second, intrahousehold decision-making: In many households, women’s ability to take paid work outside the home remains mediated by male authority. These social and legal frictions are the kinds of de facto constraints that keep the Women’s Economic Freedom component below its potential despite the formal policy gains that started in the mid-2000s.

Evolution of prosperity

Ghana’s prosperity trajectory since the mid-2000s mirrors, in broad outline, the “Africa Rising” era: a period of macroeconomic optimism, improved governance, favorable terms of trade, and political stability across much of the continent. Between 2005 and the mid-2010s, the Prosperity Index registered a strong and upward trend, reflecting the robust growth in incomes and steady improvements in social indicators, even as inequality widened in the classic early-development pattern. Ghana rode this wave and, for several years, significantly outpaced the sub-Saharan Africa average.

The story of the income component is familiar but still striking in its local particulars. A large discovery of offshore oil in the late 2000s added a new driver to a commodity basket already weighted toward gold and cocoa. In the mid-2000s, when global commodity prices were favorable, Ghana’s growth accelerated sharply; in 2011, Ghana recorded a double-digit real GDP growth rate (about 11 percent), up from about 8 percent the year prior. Oil windfalls amplified these gains, though they also heightened exposure to volatility and raised questions about how resource-linked revenues were managed.⁶ The income component of the Prosperity Index captures this rise and the subsequent plateau, which has persisted over the last decade. Reversals are visible too, mainly coinciding with the two IMF interventions mentioned earlier, driven in large part by fiscal indiscipline during election years.

The inequality component of the Prosperity Index shows a rapid deterioration, especially from the year 2000. But the composition of Ghana’s inequality is complex. It is not simply a rural-urban story; it is also generational. Large cohorts of better-educated youth, especially those under thirty-five, struggle to find formal employment at scale, while older cohorts, who are relatively less educated, hold on to existing jobs.⁷ The consequence is an age-skewed labor market that expands inequality even as education levels rise. On the rural side, extensive reliance on small-holder agriculture—more than 40 percent of the population is engaged in subsistence farming—keeps cash incomes low. Climate variability has compounded these pressures, with shifts in rainfall and temperature patterns outpacing the seed and crop research needed to adapt. The Index’s inequality line captures the macro pattern, and the underlying micro-mechanisms are the youth (un)employment crunch and the persistent productivity trap of smallholder agriculture.

Environment and health are relative bright spots. The national push to switch households from charcoal and wood to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking—especially the 2013 rural LGP promotion program—may have helped to reduce indoor air pollution and, with it, the number of respiratory and related illnesses. Additionally, the government’s 2021 Green Ghana initiative to plant five million trees nationwide to combat desertification signaled a strong commitment to environmental issues in the country.⁸ The behavioral transition and practical action on desertification probably account for the Prosperity Index’s environment component alongside CO₂ and other measures. On the health side, Ghana’s COVID-19 response benefitted from institutional memory and capacity developed during earlier West African epidemics. Ebola never crossed into Ghana, thanks in part to the region’s experience dealing with health epidemics. When COVID-19 broke out, pandemic protocols were quickly activated and enforced, which resulted in comparatively low infection rates and deaths and a health system that proved more resilient than many expected.

Education presents a more mixed picture. Policy volatility in the secondary cycle—oscillating between three- and four-year models—created confusion and capacity mismatches just as youth cohorts ballooned. Free, compulsory basic education expanded access, but in many districts infrastructure and staffing could not keep pace, producing “shift systems” and, in some cases, causing students to drop out before completing upper-secondary education. Because the Prosperity Index’s education component bundles mean years of schooling with expected attainment, the friction from policy oscillation and demographic pressure is visible at a level that remains middling despite long-run improvements.

Finally, informality also intersects with prosperity through the labor market. The government’s digitalization programs—the introduction of the Ghana Card, which links to individual tax identification numbers, as well as the digital address system—have expanded formalization of the national economy. Moreover, governments’ special initiatives to increase youth employment and a boon in the construction and mining sectors have pulled workers into the formal sector. These interventions should, in principle, raise tax revenues and improve public service availability and access over time. The hard question is durability: Formalization built on cyclical or enclave sectors may not last if investment slows or governance costs mount. The Prosperity Index cannot answer that question by itself, but its pattern—modest gains in prosperity with uneven distributional effects and vulnerability to macro slippage—point to areas where reforms might matter most.

The path forward

The economic, social, and political outlook of Ghana’s next decade will depend largely on the steadiness with which it improves core institutions and transforms its civic strength into predictable, broad-based gains. Moreover, aligning reforms to citizens’ stated priorities—jobs, public services, and integrity—can increase traction.⁹ The political foundations are relatively strong; the next important step is ensuring that the transparency and accountability mechanisms that guard the conduct of elections also insulate the justice system from partisan distortion in high-stakes cases. Judicial appointments will remain politically salient, but the deeper imperative is to tighten the system’s incentives so that corruption cases are decided on evidence rather than allegiance. Civil society and media can help—by maintaining the evidentiary standard that has worked in election disputes—but ultimately the judiciary must build a reputation for political impartiality that is strong enough to withstand executive pressure. The ongoing constitutional review offers a chance to implement a judicial reform agenda that delivers on this objective.

Economic management is the second pillar. The political business cycles are familiar by now: A new government comes to power and starts out with prudent fiscal management that boosts confidence and attracts investment, often resulting in an increase in the economic subindex. Then comes election time and fiscal indiscipline—such as excessive borrowing and indiscriminate public spending with weak fiscal oversight—erode confidence and investment freedom, triggering adjustment and decline. Breaking this cycle requires more than fiscal rules on paper; it requires political commitment to enforce them consistently and minimize politically motivated borrowing and spending. The 2015 and 2024 IMF programs are markers of what happens when that discipline falters. In the coming years, the goal should be to make investment freedom boring—i.e., stable, predictable, and insulated from the electoral business cycle.

On economic freedom, two structural agendas stand out. The first is women’s economic freedom. The 2004 leap tied to women-centered policies shows how targeted policy can permanently raise the ceiling of economic progress. The unfinished business is in property rights, especially land ownership. In areas where family land remains the norm and titles are controlled by male heads, women’s ability to own, mortgage, and leverage land is curtailed. Reform here is politically delicate, embedded in social norms and local authority structures, but the economic payoff could be enormous: more women-owned firms, better access to credit, and fairer intergenerational asset accumulation. The women’s freedom component of the Index offers a clear benchmark; moving from the mid-seventies to the high eighties would require not just programs but enforceable property rights.

The second is youth (un)employment. Inequality in Ghana increasingly wears a generational face;a cohort of better-educated young people cannot find formal, stable jobs in sufficient numbers. Policy tools here must focus on easing business entry, expansion in labor-absorbing sectors, and modernizing agricultural value chains so that rural youth are not confined to subsistence farming. Climate-smart research and extension services, reliable input markets, and storage and transport infrastructure can help farmers move up the value ladder—and should be paired with vocational pathways aligned to construction, light manufacturing, and services. Such an agenda could help to address the twin problems of rural low productivity and urban underemployment.

Strengthened legal freedom and rule of law can support both agendas if reforms focus on clarity of the law and the quality of bureaucracy. Where statutes are clear, predictable, and enforced uniformly, the transaction costs that push firms into informality will fall; where frontline administration is competent and corruption risks are contained, formalization becomes a benefit rather than a burden. Ghana’s recent sector-led formalization has demonstrated that workers and firms will choose formal channels when the opportunity set changes. The task now is to make those choices systemic: digital one-stop services for business registration and tax collection; credible and quick adjudication for commercial disputes; and incentives for small firms to formalize without fear of retroactive penalties.

Regional (in)security will remain a concerning external variable. Instability in parts of the Sahel and the enduring threat of violent extremism in neighboring regions create risks that Ghana has to grapple with. The country’s success to date reflects internal discipline and professional security services, but the calculus can change quickly as alliances and external funding priorities shift. Ghana’s democratic resilience—anchored in a vigilant civil society and robust private media—makes it better placed than many to navigate these shocks without sacrificing core freedoms. The imperative is to ensure that security responses remain proportionate and bounded by law, so that security gains are not purchased at the cost of civil and political liberties that have been the bedrock of Ghana’s democratic success story.

Geoeconomic partnerships will also shape the opportunity set for Ghana. Specifically, infrastructure that lowers freight costs—an inland port located up north with rail connectivity, for instance—has immediate appeal, and Ghana would do well by investing in this area. Engagements with Chinese state and private investors are often judged domestically on whether they deliver such tangible benefits; they are not, by themselves, read as threats to democratic credentials. The test for the next decade is to structure these partnerships transparently, align them with national priorities, and avoid governance concessions that have complicated infrastructure deals elsewhere. If done well, they can help stabilize economic policy by supporting trade freedom in practice, not just on paper, and by attracting private investment that widens formal employment.

The prosperity side of the ledger will hinge on two slow-moving but decisive social investments. The first is education system reliability. When secondary school terms oscillate, cohort planning collapses; when seating capacity lags enrollment, “shift systems” lead to lost learning and early exits. The policy objective must prioritize stability: a curriculum and cycle length that survives political alternation, infrastructure that grows with cohorts, and targeted support to keep marginal students—especially rural girls—through upper secondary. If achieved, educational attainment will move steadily upward, with compounding effects on income and inequality.

The second is health and environment. Ghana’s clean cooking fuel and afforestation initiatives demonstrate how coordinated public messaging and practical access can drive large-scale shifts in household behavior—which often yield immediate and tangible benefits. Extending this logic—through cleaner fuels, safer urban air, adaptive health systems, and expanded green coverage—can enhance environmental quality, improve health outcomes, and free up resources otherwise consumed by preventable disease burdens.

Finally, the country’s political economy will continue to be shaped by how it manages its natural resource wealth. When mineral and oil revenues supplant tax collection, citizens have fewer reasons to monitor spending, governments face fewer incentives to be transparent, public resource leakages rise, and the discipline that keeps debt manageable erodes. A forward-looking reform would therefore tackle the credible fiscal rules that bind during booms, transparent revenue management that makes it costly to divert funds, and a tax system that is simple enough to comply with and fair enough to legitimize. The expanded government digitalization programs offer sound foundations to make this possible. If Ghana can lock in these basics while preserving the civic and media freedoms that have distinguished it for three decades, legal and economic institutions will catch up and converge with political freedom, and prosperity gains will follow.

Ghana’s comparative advantage is … the lived practice of accountability that precedes and outlasts any single administration.

Civil society and media have proven that they can guard the franchise; the task before us is to extend that guardianship to the legal system’s most politically sensitive corners and to the fiscal choices that unlock prosperity and avoid the familiar cycle of fiscal indiscipline, crisis, and repair. If managed well, the evidence should be visible where it matters most: a steadier investment freedom line, a women’s economic freedom score that rises again rather than plateaus, an inequality curve that bends as youth employment expands, and a legal freedom profile that reflects not just order in the streets but fairness in the courtroom. That is the trajectory Ghana can reasonably aim for in the decade ahead, and it is within reach.

about the author

Joseph Asunka is the CEO of Afrobarometer, a pan-African survey research organization that conducts public attitude surveys on governance and social issues across the continent. His research interests are in governance, democracy, and political economy of development. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles.

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1 Center for Democratic Development, Afrobarometer Round 10 Survey in Ghana, 2024, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Ghana-summary-of-results-Afrobarometer-R10-22april25.pdf (see pages 30, 32, and 33 of the summary of results tables).

2 For causal evidence that domestic observers in Ghana’s 2012 elections reduced fraud and violence at monitored stations and altered parties’ manipulation strategies, see Joseph Asunka et al., “Electoral Fraud or Violence: The Effect of Observers on Party Manipulation Strategies,” British Journal of Political Science 49, no. 1 (2019): 129–51.

3 See the Afrobarometer report on public trust in institutions here: https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/AD891-PAP20-Africans-trust-in-key-institutions-and-leaders-is-weakening-Afrobarometer-31oct24.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

4 Center for Democratic Development, “Ghanaians Decry Widespread Corruption, Afrobarometer Survey Shows,” news release, February 14, 2025, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/R10-News-release-Ghanaians-decry-widespread-corruption-Afrobarometer-14feb25.pdf.

5 Ghana Round 10 Summary of Results, April 22, 2025, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Ghana-summary-of-results-Afrobarometer-R10-22april25.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

6 According to an Afrobarometer survey in 2022, 85 percent of Ghanaians support tighter regulations of natural resource extraction. See Center for Democratic Development, “Ghanaians Call for Tighter Regulation of Natural Resource Extraction,” news release, November 8, 2022, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/R9-News-release-Ghanaians-call-for-tighter-regulation-of-natural-resource-extraction-Afrobarometer-bh-7november22.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

7 Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye Sanny, Shannon van Wyk-Khosa, and Joseph Asunka, “Africa’s Youth: More Educated, Less Employed, Still Unheard in Policy and Development,” Afrobarometer, November 15, 2023, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/AD734-PAP3-Africas-youth-More-educated-less-employed-still-unheard-Afrobarometer-13nov23.pdf.

8 Elorm Ntumy, “Green Ghana Day: A Chance to Turn the Tide on Deforestation,” UN Capital Development Fund, 2021, https://www.uncdf.org/article/6857/green-ghana-day.

9 See Joseph Asunka and E. Gyimah-Boadi, “People-Centered Development: Why the Policy Priorities and Lived Experiences of African Citizens Should Matter for National Development Policy,” Foresight Africa 2025–2030, May 13, 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/people-centered-development-why-the-policy-priorities-and-lived-experiences-of-african-citizens-should-matter-for-national-development-policy/.

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A stronger, safer, and more prosperous hemisphere: The case for investing in democracy in the Americas

Antonio Garrastazu and Henrique Arevalo Poincot — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Bottom lines up front

Democratic backsliding, transnational organized crime, and authoritarian influence are driving insecurity and migration across Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the same time, weak rule of law and entrenched kleptocratic networks are stifling economic growth and enabling criminal organizations.
To push back, the US must shift to a broader investment-driven foreign policy that mobilizes public-private partnerships and supports democratic actors.

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This issue brief is part of the Freedom and Prosperity Center’s “The future of democracy assistance” series, which analyzes the many complex challenges to democracy around the world and highlights actionable policies that promote democratic governance.

Introduction

After decades of democratic and economic progress, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is now losing ground. Between 1995 and 2016, the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Indexes recorded steady gains—a more than eight-point rise in prosperity and a more than three-point rise in freedom—that lifted millions out of poverty, deepened the region’s integration into the global economy, and strengthened democratic institutions. Over the past decade, however, this momentum has stalled, and in many countries reversed. Across the region, insecurity has surged, authoritarianism has deepened, and corruption has stifled development, with consequences that reach far beyond its borders.

This reversal is fueling two interconnected crises reshaping the Western Hemisphere: migration and insecurity. Over the past decade, migration—both within the region and toward the United States—has surged. Authoritarian rule in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, along with the collapse of Haiti, has driven mass exoduses, while gang violence spurs migration from Central America and hundreds of thousands more have left other countries in search of safety and economic opportunity. Transit states such as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Panama face mounting strain on public services, while the United States confronts unprecedented pressure at its southern border.

Regional security is also deteriorating as gangs and transnational criminal networks expand their operations. Mexican cartels dominate the production and trafficking of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and other illicit drugs across Latin America and into the United States. The effects of their trade have been devastating, with tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually, particularly in the United States and Canada. Other groups, such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, extend beyond narcotics, driving homicides, corruption, and violent competition over trafficking routes across the region.

Beneath these crises lies a deeper erosion of governance and democracy—one that the United States should support its allies in confronting. Weak rule of law and systemic corruption stifle economic growth and enable criminal networks to thrive. Authoritarian regimes in the region fuel migration, crime, and cross-border instability, while external powers—most notably China—exploit governance gaps through opaque infrastructure projects and debt diplomacy, deepening authoritarian influence. Together, these forces erode state capacity, destabilize the region, and pose a direct challenge to US security and economic prosperity.

Stable, transparent governance in LAC reduces migration pressures, disrupts criminal networks, and creates economic opportunities that benefit both US and Latin American citizens. As the United States reassesses its foreign assistance strategy, democracy assistance can be enacted as a strategic investment to make the hemisphere—including the United States—stronger, safer, and more prosperous. We identify three core issues that pose the greatest challenges but promise the greatest rewards if addressed, and provide recommendations to streamline assistance, expand its scope, and engage business and local actors as funders and partners.

Ultimately, democracy assistance in the region remains one of the most cost-effective investments to advance shared security and prosperity.

Regional challenges to democracy and governance

LAC is confronting a convergence of three interlinked challenges that erode governance, destabilize societies, and undermine US security and economic interests. Each reinforces the others and fuels the migration and crime that strain the region. The United States should therefore prioritize addressing these challenges through targeted foreign assistance and investment.

Transnational organized crime and insecurity

Transnational organized crime (TOC) has evolved into one of the most destabilizing forces in LAC. Once localized, criminal groups have grown into sophisticated, multinational networks that traffic drugs, weapons, and people across borders while infiltrating political systems. These networks now operate across nearly every corner of the region, both benefiting from and contributing to weak rule of law and institutional resilience.

Gangs and TOC actors are among the main drivers of insecurity in the region. Although the region comprises less than 10 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for roughly one-third of global homicides. Central America maintains high levels of insecurity, while countries such as Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru have experienced sharp increases in violent crime as cartels and gangs battle for control of trafficking routes, urban neighborhoods, and illicit economies. The costs are profound: Latin American Public Opinion Project data show that intentions to emigrate are significantly higher among individuals exposed to crime, while nearly one-third of private sector firms in Latin America cite crime as a major obstacle to doing business, with direct losses averaging 7 percent of sales. Insecurity is not only displacing communities but also undermining prosperity and eroding trust in governments.

The drug trade remains one of the most profitable and damaging arms of TOC. Mexican cartels—particularly the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel—are the hemisphere’s principal suppliers of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. Their operations extend beyond Mexico and the United States, reaching deep into Colombia, Ecuador, Central America, and increasingly Canada. In 2024, US Customs and Border Protection seized over 27,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border—up from 14,700 pounds in 2022. The human toll is staggering: Fentanyl overdoses now kill more than seventy thousand people annually in the United States.

TOC represents not only a law enforcement problem but also a profound institutional and governance challenge. These groups thrive in contexts marked by weak institutions, porous borders, and entrenched impunity. Venezuela’s institutional collapse, for example, directly enabled the rapid growth of the Tren de Aragua gang from one prison to over ten countries. Once established, criminal networks act as corrosive forces—penetrating police forces, judicial systems, militaries, local governments, and even segments of the private sector. Their influence extends into the electoral arena as well: In Mexico’s recent elections, criminal actors not only financed campaigns for local candidates but also threatened and assassinated others, further distorting political competition and undermining democratic accountability. Left unchecked, TOC erodes public trust, distorts markets, and makes effective governance nearly impossible, fueling a self-reinforcing cycle of violence, displacement, and state fragility.

Case study: Ecuador’s fight against insecurity

The once relatively stable country of Ecuador has become a battleground among Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in recent years, with authorities estimating that 70 percent of the world’s cocaine passes through its ports. As Ecuador has emerged as a vital transit country, Mexican DTOs have partnered with local crime syndicates to deepen their control in the country, buying the influence of politicians, judges, and security officials. The main actors vying for control of drug shipment routes include the Sinaloa Cartel, its rival the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and their affiliated local crime syndicates. These structures tax and protect cocaine flows moving from border regions toward export terminals, targeting trucking firms, port and warehouse staff, and local authorities.

Ecuador’s security crisis, however, is not simply a matter of state versus gangs, but of deep institutional infiltration. The landmark Metástasis investigation (2023-25) exposed how judges, prosecutors, police officers, politicians, a former head of the prison authority, and other high-ranking officials systematically protected or advanced the interests of organized crime for years. In exchange for cash, gold, luxury cars, and other benefits, officials allegedly released gang leaders, altered prison conditions, and sabotaged investigations.

Despite these challenges, Ecuador’s government—reelected in 2025 with a mandate to confront organized crime—has pledged to continue the fight. Yet its experience highlights a critical lesson: Defeating gangs and cartels cannot be achieved solely through crackdowns or arrests; it also requires rebuilding institutions.

In many countries, governments have proven unable or unwilling to meaningfully confront TOC. Others have stepped up efforts to target these groups through mano dura policies or intensified security operations that, while capable of disrupting trafficking routes, cannot by themselves dismantle transnational criminal networks. Addressing the governance gaps that allow these organizations to thrive is therefore crucial. In this context, US leadership remains essential. Given the cross-border nature of these networks, lasting, viable solutions demand a coordinated regional response. By leveraging its diplomatic influence, security partnerships, military capabilities, and development tools—including technical assistance, institutional support, and investment incentives—the United States can help foster cross-border cooperation, strengthen judicial and prosecutorial capacity, and reinforce institutions to shield them from criminal infiltration. Paired with diplomatic and intelligence support, democracy assistance can play a critical role in disrupting organized crime, safeguarding US security interests, and creating the conditions for more prosperous and resilient communities across the hemisphere.

Rule of law and economic development

Declining rule of law has become an increasingly urgent concern in LAC, as regional indicators have steadily worsened in recent years and several countries have registered some of the steepest declines worldwide. This deterioration both enables transnational organized crime and authoritarianism and imposes enormous costs on national economies. Research by the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center shows that the rule of law is the single most influential factor for long-term economic growth and societal well-being. Liberalizing markets is not enough: Legal clarity, judicial independence, and accountability are the foundations of effective governance and thriving economies. This is particularly relevant in Latin America, where corruption remains the region’s Achilles’ heel—undermining public spending, fueling fiscal deficits, and weakening financial oversight. Across the region, higher corruption levels are consistently associated with lower gross domestic product per capita and reduced foreign direct investment, costing countries and investors billions in lost growth and opportunity

A particularly distorting force in the region’s economy is the prevalence of kleptocratic networks. These are not isolated acts of graft, but coordinated, systematic efforts to capture state resources and extract rents for political and economic gain. Such networks often comprise coalitions of corrupt political elites, complicit business actors, and criminal organizations. They co-opt the judiciary and prosecutors, while silencing investigations and oversight bodies. Their actions stifle competition, discourage entrepreneurship, and produce unfair monopolies that sideline foreign investors, while draining public coffers of resources needed for development.

The scale of these operations can be staggering. In Venezuela, over the past two decades, ruling party figures and business allies have been suspected of siphoning off as much as $30 billion in public funds through transnational schemes involving front companies, illicit contracts, and offshore accounts. This systemic kleptocracy has not only enriched elites but also accelerated Venezuela’s economic collapse, fueling one of the worst migration crises in the region, including to the United States. In Peru, the Club de la Construcción scandal revealed how an informal cartel of major construction companies colluded to divide up public works contracts in exchange for bribes to officials in the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The scheme operated for more than a decade, was worth billions in inflated contracts, and sidelined honest competitors while draining infrastructure budgets.

Case study: The Dominican Republic’s success story

The Dominican Republic illustrates how strengthening the rule of law can improve governance and unlock economic opportunity. Since President Luis Abinader took office in 2020, the government has carried out anti-corruption reforms. The administration appointed an independent attorney general and empowered the public ministry to investigate and prosecute high-level corruption cases. The government has also advanced transparency and digitalization reforms to make interactions with public agencies—especially in procurement—more open, efficient, and resistant to abuse. In addition, the country has aligned with key recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force, including by passing a revamped Anti-money Laundering and Illicit Finance Law, which has constrained kleptocratic networks and organized crime.

These measures have begun to restore trust in public institutions. Procurement processes are now more transparent and competitive––with twenty thousand new suppliers registered—while new safeguards better protect against corruption. Since 2020, the Dominican Republic’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index has improved by eight points. Investor confidence has followed: Foreign direct investment reached record highs in 2024, while trade with the United States expanded sharply. US goods exports to the Dominican Republic grew to $13 billion that year, producing a $5.5 billion trade surplus for the United States.

Some of the region’s largest corruption scandals have been uncovered by investigative journalists and independent prosecutors. Yet in many cases, impunity prevails, and little progress is made toward prevention or sustained accountability. Strong judicial institutions, effective anti-corruption reforms, and governance are essential for stability and growth. Predictable, rules-based environments make countries far better partners for both domestic and US businesses—creating jobs, expanding markets, and strengthening local economies. Such efforts can also reduce migration pressures, as corruption has been shown to drive both legal and irregular migration. As with TOC, for the United States, supporting rule-of-law reforms is therefore a strategic investment in building a more prosperous, democratic, and secure hemisphere.

Countering authoritarian influence

LAC is home to several resilient democracies that remain close US allies and important trading partners. Yet the region also contains some of the world’s most entrenched dictatorships—Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—which pose direct threats to stability. Between these extremes lie eight nations that Freedom House classifies as “partly free,” many of which experienced additional democratic declines in 2025. Countering democratic backsliding and protecting the global order is not a values-based mission; it is essential to safeguarding US security, economic interests, and the long-term prosperity of the Western Hemisphere.

The region’s authoritarian regimes illustrate the stakes. Economic collapse and repression have forced 7.7 million Venezuelans, 500,000 Cubans, and tens of thousands of Nicaraguans to flee over the past decade. These governments also generate acute security risks. Nicaragua has positioned itself as a conduit for extra-regional migration, inviting travelers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to enter visa free and transit toward the US border. The Daniel Ortega regime has further been linked to targeted harassment and even assassinations of dissidents abroad, including the 2025 killing in Costa Rica of Roberto Samcam Ruiz, a retired Army major and government critic.

Similarly, the consolidation of Venezuela’s dictatorship has transformed the country into a hub for criminal organizations, including Colombian paramilitary groups and Tren de Aragua. The Nicolás Maduro regime has hosted the Wagner Group while continuing to rely on Russian military advisors, Iranian oil technicians, and Chinese surveillance systems to tighten internal control and repress dissent. Members of the regime have been linked to drug trafficking––most notably through the illicit military network Cartel de los Soles––and, in late 2024, Maduro threatened to invade neighboring Guyana.

At the same time, external authoritarian powers—especially China—are expanding their footprints, particularly in “partly free” states where institutional checks are weak. China exploits governance gaps through surveillance technology, opaque infrastructure deals, and strategic investments in critical sectors—often at the expense of US influence and market access. Over the past decade, China invested $73 billion in Latin America’s raw materials sector, including refineries and processing plants for coal, lithium, copper, natural gas, oil, and uranium. In Peru, Chinese firms paid $3 billion to acquire two major electricity suppliers, giving them what experts describe as near-monopoly control over the country’s power distribution and edging out competitors. Beijing also provides critical technology to regional authoritarian governments and at-risk democracies. In Bolivia, the government deployed Huawei’s “Safe Cities” surveillance systems, raising concerns about mass data collection, particularly during elections.

Case study: The cost of partnering with authoritarian regimes

Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador—alongside Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez—pursued closer ties with foreign authoritarian powers, betting heavily on Chinese financing and infrastructure. A centerpiece of this strategy was the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project, awarded under opaque terms to Chinese firms, primarily Sinohydro, as part of an $11 billion package of oil-backed loans and infrastructure deals.

The project soon became a symbol of the risks of such arrangements. The dam has been plagued by structural flaws, including more than seventeen thousand cracks, severe environmental damage, and corruption allegations implicating senior officials. State agencies attempted to downplay or conceal the problems, but by 2024 the facility had ceased functioning altogether. Experts estimated that repairing the damage could cost tens of millions of dollars, erasing much of the project’s intended economic benefit. Beyond its technical failures, Coca Codo Sinclair left Ecuador financially vulnerable. In 2022, the government was forced into arbitration and subsequently renegotiated more than $4 billion in debt with Beijing, further compromising its fiscal position and weakening investor confidence. The episode illustrates how opaque partnerships with authoritarian powers can undermine democratic accountability and damage economic stability.

These developments underscore the importance of countering authoritarianism in LAC as both a security and economic priority for the United States and the region. Betting on democratic renewal in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela is critical to restoring stability in the hemisphere. At the same time, it is equally important to strengthen “at-risk” democracies to prevent further backsliding. Targeted investments in political party development, anti-corruption reforms, and transparency measures can bolster resilience in these states and reduce the appeal of authoritarian alternatives. Pushing back against China’s growing economic and geopolitical influence in the hemisphere is also essential. By leveraging diplomatic and trade tools, the United States can position itself as a credible alternative to China—particularly by mobilizing investment, fostering public-private partnerships, and advancing governance reforms that strengthen transparency and accountability. Doing so is vital for freedom and security in the region and creates opportunities for business and investment.

Recommendations

Insecurity, weak rule of law, and authoritarianism represent growing threats to freedom and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere. As outlined above, TOC, entrenched corruption, and authoritarian regimes impose heavy economic costs on LAC and undermine democratic governance. At the same time, these forces drive mass migration, placing immense strain on transit and destination countries. Tackling these challenges is a strategic win-win: It can enhance US security and economic interests while advancing stability and prosperity in the region.

As the United States reassesses its foreign policy and democracy assistance strategy in LAC, it should make use of its full range of diplomatic, security, trade, and investment mechanisms—including targeted democracy assistance—to address these challenges.

Move beyond grants to expand the toolkit

The proposed shift toward an investment- and trade-driven foreign policy can go hand-in-hand with democracy assistance and reform. The United States can mobilize financial and diplomatic tools to expand investment as an alternative to Chinese influence, while incentivizing governance, transparency, and accountability reforms that strengthen the region’s resilience against the challenges outlined above.

Leverage the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide an alternative to Chinese financing and invest in projects that strengthen democratic resilience through economic modernization, digitalization, and high-quality infrastructure—particularly in areas vulnerable to authoritarian influence. As Congress prepares to revisit the DFC’s authorizing legislation, it should ensure the agency has long-term funding to deploy its range of tools—including debt financing, equity investments, and political risk insurance—across the region.
Work with Congress to pass the Americas Act to establish regional trade, investment, and people-to-people partnerships with like-minded nations, fostering long-term private sector development. Use this framework to advance transparency and institutional autonomy reforms—particularly through the proposed Americas Institute for Digital Governance and Transnational Criminal Investigative Units—to ensure partner countries strengthen anti-corruption prevention, detection, and prosecution.
Use regional forums—such as the Summit of the Americas—to advocate for governance, security, transparency, and accountability reforms to strengthen the resilience of democratic allies and counter authoritarian regimes. The United States should link political reform benchmarks to investment incentives, offering “carrots” for change through regional development commitments.

Ensure democracy assistance makes business sense

A safer and more democratic Western Hemisphere directly benefits economic development and business. The United States should position its domestic and the Latin American private sectors as active partners in strengthening democratic resilience, not just as passive beneficiaries of stability.

Revive and operationalize America Creceto incentivize and promote reform-linked investments, infrastructure projects, and job creation across the region to counter Chinese influence and advance US interests while bolstering political will through the DFC. Participation should be tied to clear benchmarks on transparency, labor rights, and legal predictability.
Forge public-private partnerships that co-finance civic education, anti-corruption initiatives, and local development projects, particularly in high-risk areas vulnerable to TOC recruitment and migration.
Mobilize Latin America’s business elites—among the greatest beneficiaries of economic and democratic collaboration with the United States—to push for and co-fund democracy and governance programs in their home countries. Leading companies, philanthropic foundations, and chambers of commerce should be engaged as active partners in advancing reforms.
Strengthen and engage with regional initiatives like the Alliance for Development in Democracy—championed by Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador—that integrate the private sector into democratic reform and good governance agendas.

Deploy whole-of-government tools

While the State Department plays a central role in US democracy assistance, the scale and interconnected nature of the region’s challenges—spanning security, rule of law, and authoritarian influence—demand a coordinated, whole-of-government approach.

Leverage the Pentagon’s Defense Institution Building program to strengthen law enforcement reform, bolster rule-of-law resilience, and build institutional capacity to counter transnational crime and human trafficking.
Provide technical assistance and legal expertise through the Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to help countries develop national frameworks that protect transparency, law enforcement, and sovereignty in investment decisions.
Double down on rule-of-law reforms and projects, particularly those targeting organized crime and corruption. Support vetted law enforcement units, independent anti-corruption actors, and judicial reform initiatives through US, private sector, and multilateral funding channels, including the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Open Government Partnership.
Protect the key pillars of democratic institutions from co-optation by TOC, kleptocratic, or authoritarian actors. This must include courts, election management bodies, political parties, and critical government agencies such as those overseeing infrastructure, development, procurement, and public prosecution. Emphasis should be placed on institutional independence, combating and preventing corruption, and ensuring sustainable financing to strengthen resilience.
Apply targeted sanctions, Global Magnitsky measures, and trade conditionality to dismantle kleptocratic networks, prosecute corrupt actors, and reward credible reformers.
Advocate for and support the implementation of global security and anti-corruption standards—including recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force and its LAC branch, GAFILAT (Grupo de Acción Financiera de Latinoamérica), on money laundering, organized crime, and illicit finance—to disrupt TOC and kleptocratic funding networks while fostering safer and more competitive business environments.

Scale the power of local networks

Regional local actors—both within and outside of government—are often the most credible and resilient defenders of democratic governance. The United States should deepen its engagement with these networks while identifying and empowering new partners.

Partner with trusted community institutions—including religious organizations, civic leaders, businesses, and grassroots groups—on programs that prevent gang recruitment, reduce crime, and promote integrity in high-risk areas.
Strengthen governance mechanisms to build sustainable local capacity to counter corruption and transnational organized crime.
Expand the partner ecosystem to include diaspora networks and local community groups, leveraging their resources, expertise, and transnational connections to reinforce democratic resilience.

Push back on regional and external authoritarian influence

Bipartisan US support for organized opposition in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has been a cornerstone of regional democracy policy and should be sustained and expanded. At the same time, Washington should back democratic movements and reformers across the hemisphere where authoritarian influence is taking hold.

Sustain support for dissidents and democratic movements in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to prepare the ground for eventual political transitions.
Invest in independent media.
Support the next generation of democratic leaders through fellowships, trainings, and political party development, prioritizing authoritarian and high-risk states.
Collaborate with electoral commissions, legislatures, and political parties with an emphasis on internal democracy, campaign transparency, and long-term institutionalization.
Assist governments in auditing and renegotiating opaque infrastructure or digital agreements—particularly those with authoritarian powers—that undermine sovereignty, transparency, and public accountability.

The recommendations offered here provide a roadmap to confront the region’s most pressing security and prosperity threats by pairing diplomacy, trade, and investment tools with targeted democracy support. By leveraging the United States’ entrepreneurial capacity and its ability to mobilize multinational and public-private partnerships, reforms can be made more attractive, sustainable, and impactful. This is not charity—it is a strategic investment that advances both US and LAC interests.

At relatively low cost, democracy assistance strengthens governance and open markets in ways that directly serve US security and economic priorities. It helps dismantle transnational criminal organizations, kleptocratic networks, and corruption, while countering the growing influence of authoritarian regimes inside and outside the region. These efforts reduce the flow of illicit drugs and irregular migration, create more reliable markets for businesses, and build stronger partnerships with governments that share democratic values. The outcome is clear: a stronger, safer, and more prosperous hemisphere.

about the authors

Antonio Garrastazu serves as the senior director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Republican Institute (IRI). Prior to this role, he led IRI’s Center for Global Impact and from 2011 to 2018 was resident country director for Central America, Haiti, and Mexico. Garrastazu has worked in academe, the private sector, and government, serving in the Florida Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development under Governor Jeb Bush. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida, and a master’s and PhD in international studies from the University of Miami.

Henrique Arevalo Poincot is a visiting fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. A strategy and communications specialist with expertise spanning Europe and Latin America, Arevalo Poincot is pursuing his master’s degree in democracy and governance at Georgetown University.

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Returning Ukraine’s abducted children should be central to any peace plan

Kristina Hook — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:30:17 +0000

This week, the US Senate is holding a landmark Congressional hearing on Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children. Most will understandably frame the issue as a grave human rights crisis, but it is also much more. Rescuing Ukraine’s abducted children can help pave the way for peace, while allowing Russia’s crimes to go unpunished would set a disastrous precedent for global security.

Russia’s systematic removal, indoctrination, and militarization of Ukrainian children goes to the heart of the broader security dilemma that must be resolved before the war in Ukraine can end. Any credible conversation about peace negotiations or security guarantees for Ukraine must begin with a demonstration that the United States and its allies can meaningfully influence Russian behavior. Ensuring the safe return of these children is a concrete way to do that.

The scale of the crime is staggering. Ukrainian authorities have verified 19,456 children taken to Russian or Russian-occupied territories, while independent experts estimate the actual number of victims may exceed 35,000.

What is indisputable is that Russia’s mass deportations are now among the best-documented crimes of modern warfare. Among numerous other investigations, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified at least 210 facilities inside Russia or Russian-occupied territory where deported Ukrainian children have been sent for “re-education,” forced assimilation, and in many places, military-style training.

The evidence is overwhelming and includes coerced relocations, illegal adoptions and naturalization under Russian citizenship, ideological indoctrination aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity, and numerous violations of international law. This is not incidental collateral damage. It is a deliberate state policy of population transfer and Ukrainian national identity destruction; a Russian program that mirrors the legal definitions of numerous atrocity crimes, including genocide.

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So far, it has only been possible to rescue a small fraction of abducted children. As of November 2025, 1,859 children have returned to Ukraine, while international experts estimate that 90 percent of the burden of rescue currently falls to Ukrainians themselves.

Moscow’s refusal to facilitate repatriation and its ongoing efforts to conceal identities and locations underscores the impossibility of any stable post-war order without addressing this crime. Humanitarian language alone obscures a critical truth: The forced transfer of children is not a peripheral human rights issue; it is a central obstacle to any credible security settlement in Europe.

For months, United States and European officials have been exploring frameworks for eventual peace talks with Russia and long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. But these conversations often treat Russian atrocities, including child deportations, as adjacent to the real business of hard security. This is a mistake.

Russia’s abduction of children is a window into its strategic intent. The Kremlin campaign to kidnap young Ukrainians and turn them into Russians reveals that Moscow’s war is not merely about territory but about imperial restoration. If Vladimir Putin only sought to adjust borders, the millions spent on relocating, indoctrinating, and militarizing thousands of Ukrainian children would make little sense.

Putin’s ominous intent becomes clearer when viewed alongside Russia’s broader atrocities. The Russian ruler clearly seeks to diminish the demographic future of an entire neighboring nation, while preparing the next generation for future Russian military aggression.

The issue of abducted Ukrainian children is especially relevant for Ukrainians as they debate painful political compromises, territorial concessions, and security guarantees premised on Western assurances. If world leaders cannot secure the return of the most vulnerable victims of Russia’s aggression, how could Ukrainians trust that those same leaders can prevent Russia from reigniting the war or committing new atrocities?

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Western policymakers insist that any post-war settlement must include credible enforcement mechanisms. But credibility is not defined by rhetoric; it is a matter of capability and political will. Right now, both are in question.

If the United States, with its immense military, diplomatic, and economic power, cannot compel Russia to return thousands of abducted Ukrainian children, it becomes harder to argue that Washington can deter further aggression or prevent violations of a future peace agreement. Ukrainians understand this reality well.

Demonstrating US leverage over Russia is therefore not merely symbolic. It is a strategic prerequisite to any durable peace. The United States has untapped tools at its disposal. These include sanctioning individuals and institutions directly involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children, while supporting multilateral accountability efforts. It should be also possible to condition further diplomatic engagement on verifiable steps toward repatriation. Meanwhile, the United States could lead a coordinated information effort to identify children and counter Russian concealment tactics.

These measures are proportional responses to atrocity crimes recognized under international law. The forcible transfer of children is a premeditated crime designed to shatter Ukraine’s future. A successful effort to bring Ukrainian children home will demonstrate that the United States can influence Russian behavior. This is a critical condition for any effective peace initiative.

Securing the return of abducted children would also help to build the trust needed for Ukrainian society to accept Western-backed security frameworks. After many failed efforts to constrain Russian aggression, Ukrainian society needs to know that Western promises are not empty.

Ignoring the issue, or relegating it to the humanitarian margins, undermines the very negotiations that the Trump administration is seeking to advance. Ending the war requires Ukrainian faith in international guarantees.

Child abduction is among the clearest moral red lines in global conflict. Failure to uphold this red line in Ukraine will invite repetition elsewhere. If Russia can abduct tens of thousands of children with impunity during a major European war and face no real consequences, then no norms protecting children in conflict can hold anywhere.

This week’s hearing marks an opportunity for Congress, the Trump administration, and Ukraine’s other partners to clarify that returning abducted Ukrainian children is not optional, negotiable, or separate from security discussions. It is central.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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One of the most striking provisions in US President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled 28-point Ukraine peace plan was a full amnesty for all parties for their actions during the war in Ukraine and an agreement not to make any claims or consider any complaints in future. While Trump’s initial plan has already been subject to multiple revisions, the idea of a blanket amnesty has sparked alarm and outrage among Ukrainians, with critics viewing it as a move to pardon all Russians responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.

The Trump peace plan first emerged just days after a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Ternopil that killed more than thirty people including seven children. Many Ukrainians recalled this attack following the publication of Trump’s plan, noting that it served to highlight the injustice of offering an amnesty for the vast quantity of crimes committed since the start of the full-scale invasion almost four years ago.

Some have also pointed out that failure to prosecute war crimes in Ukraine could have disastrous implications for the future of global security. “It would ruin international law and create a precedent that would encourage other authoritarian leaders to think that you can invade a country, kill people and erase their identity, and you will be rewarded with new territories,” commented Ukrainian Nobel prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk.

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Addressing Russian war crimes in Ukraine is not only a matter of providing justice for victims. It is also essential in order to prevent further Kremlin aggression. While the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Tribunal continues to provoke discussion, few would argue that it provided important lessons for Germany and sent an unambiguous message that international aggression ends in defeat and accountability.

Russian society has never experienced anything comparable to Nuremberg. They was no accountability for the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968, or the invasion of Afghanistan. Since the fall of the USSR, there have been no systematic investigations into crimes committed during Russia’s Chechen wars, the 2008 invasion of Georgia, or the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

This absence of accountability has fueled a sense of impunity in the Kremlin and throughout Russian society that has been instrumental in creating the political climate for the current attack on Ukraine. Unless addressed, this historically rooted sense of Russian impunity will inevitably fuel further aggression.

Advocates of the US-led peace initiative have suggested that the priority now should be securing peace rather than seeking justice. In reality, however, the two goals are interlinked. It is delusional to think that any future treaty obligations or declarations of non-aggression from Russia’s leaders can be trusted, especially if they are not held to account for the crimes of the past four years.

It is important to recognize that many of the 28 points featured in the United States plan are realistic and could serve as the basis for a viable peace settlement. At the same time, it is also abundantly clear that the proposed amnesty for war crimes will only embolden the Kremlin. If adopted, it would encourage Russia to continue the invasion of Ukraine or escalate elsewhere in the Baltic region, the southern Caucasus, or Central Asia. That is clearly not in the interests of the United States, Europe, or the wider international community.

It is therefore vital to thoroughly investigate all war crimes committed in Ukraine and establish the facts in a manner that challenges Russia’s sense of impunity and allows for the rehabilitation of victims. The Nuremberg Tribunal did not succeed in ending wars of aggression, but it did establish a precedent of legal responsibility. If we now forego this principle of accountability entirely, progress toward a safer world will not be possible.

Ivan Horodyskyy is an associate professor of the School of Public Management at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

The authors have traveled regularly to Syria over the past year, visiting with local security officials and activists across much of Homs, Hama, Tartous, and Latakia studying the challenges and successes of local peace-building in the wake of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s fall. Civil peace committees and similar systems have consistently stood out as an important aspect of trust-building and dispute resolution. While they have proven highly effective in some areas, they are only present in a few parts of the country. At times, they face opposition from government officials. Still, they offer one important model for dealing with the country’s decades of deeply rooted social divisions and the bouts of intercommunal violence that continue to leave Syrians dead.

The role of civil peace committees

Damascus formed a National Civil Peace Committee in the aftermath of the March 6 coastal massacres, theoretically tasked with preventing violence and easing intercommunal tensions through mediation. In June, this committee made headlines when news broke that one of the Assad regime’s most notorious criminals, Fadi Saqr, had effectively joined the committee. His inclusion reflected Damascus’s choice to try and maintain calm via close engagement with former regime-affiliated security and military officers, who some members of the new government argue will help prevent their former colleagues from engaging in renewed insurgent activity.

This controversial national body, however, has nothing to do with the civil peace committees organically forming at the local level in several municipalities across Syria. These committees vary in size, function, and form, but they all seek to prevent violence and improve communication at the hyper-local level. This often involves connecting locals to the new security apparatus via trusted community figures.

It is difficult to say with certainty how many civil peace committees are active in Syria, since many do not conform to the name even when they function in a similar capacity. Most of the more structured and explicitly named committees are concentrated in the southwestern Damascus suburbs, Homs, and Syria’s coast—reflecting both the concentration of strong activist networks and complex sectarian communal dynamics.

There are, however, core commonalities among the groups. Committees are usually formed around a council of local notables. Their success is largely dependent on two factors: 1) the attitudes and acceptance of local security officials and 2) the initiative and determination of local civil society. At their core, these committees facilitate communication between the security officials and locals who are too afraid to communicate with them directly. One Christian activist in Baniyas explained the importance of this role to the authors succinctly:

“Fear is rooted in isolated violations and a rejection of government narratives . . . direct government outreach cannot fix this fear because locals don’t trust the government’s words or actions. Rather, they need civil society intermediaries.”

Due to their organic formation, each civil peace committee has its own culture and practices. In Jaramana, according to one member, the civil peace committee is very strong, includes representatives of all sects, and even has its own security force. In Alawi communities, the committees’ main roles are improving communication between locals and security officials and working with officials from Syria’s General Security Service, the country’s core internal security force, to address concerns and violations. Local officials use the committees to disseminate information, conduct peaceful disarmament campaigns, and gather complaints about misconduct of government personnel.

In other places, such as Homs and parts of Damascus, committees are equally focused on resolving intercommunal and housing, land, and property (HLP) disputes. For example, the committees in the suburbs of Daraya, Moadimiyah, and Sahnaya worked together to return civilians kidnapped and arrested during the violence there in May and to stop the attacks on the nearby Alawi suburb of al-Somoriyeh in September.

Expansion of informal intermediaries and religious bodies

More common than the formal civil peace committees are informal networks and individuals who do the same work as committees but under different names. Many of these networks are built around religious figures, as opposed to the aforementioned committees built around activists and administrative leaders of local towns. For example, in Homs, a small network of Christian priests, Sunni sheikhs, and Alawi leaders work together with the city’s mukhtars and security officials to resolve disputes and calm intercommunal tensions. While not a formal committee or council, these men are able to use their personal connections to each other and their respective communities to resolve many smaller issues.

In Homs’s Old City, the Syriac Orthodox Santa Maria Church is the main actor for settling disputes involving the neighborhood’s Christian population. The church’s leader, Father Yuhanna, has helped mediate disputes that occur between the residents and others in the city, but he also helps ease tensions when security officials conduct arrests or investigations of Christian men in the area. These religious and community leaders interact directly with the city’s security officials and the governorate’s political affairs director to discuss the implementation of laws and issues of government abuse.

In Salamiyah, the long-standing National Ismaili Council plays the same role through its various subcommittees. This council has been crucial for bridging the gap between the new government and the Ismaili population more generally, as well as the Alawi and Shia populations in Salamiyah specifically.

But in other places, the intermediary networks are much weaker and rely on only one or two individuals. This is particularly true in the coast, where Alawi communities face a double hurdle: a lack of historical civil society and extreme distrust and fear between themselves and the new government. Still, in some places, such as Tartous’s Sheikh Badr and Latakia’s Beit Yashout, there are individual men and women who do the same work as civil peace committees: improving communication between locals and security officials and resolving arrest- and security-related disputes.

For example, the mayor of Beit Yashout serves as a key communication node between the district security official and the local towns and villages. Whenever news of a large security convoy entering the area emerges, locals quickly message the mayor, who in turn calls the district security official to convey their concerns and learn what is happening. He then sends messages to a wide network of local leaders and media activists, sharing what the official told him and urging calm (the authors witnessed this first hand during a visit in September). He also regularly sits with security personnel at checkpoints to help encourage closer relations between them and the locals. In a region wracked with fear, these basic actions are critical for reducing tensions and preventing reckless actions by terrified locals and security forces.

Reconciliation committees

Both the formal civil peace committees and informal networks are new phenomena which have been met with mixed reactions by local officials. But there is a third type of dispute resolution mechanism, which has for decades been a staple of Syrian society: the reconciliation committee (majlis al-sulhi). However, these committees differ significantly from civil peace committees both in scope and the type of communities they serve.

Reconciliation committees focus almost exclusively on HLP issues for displaced people. The bulk of the dispute resolution conducted by the bodies are between those community members who were displaced and those who remained under the regime. They are most commonly found in Sunni communities in Idlib, Hama, and Homs, and they rely heavily on close family and communal ties for mediation. Nonetheless, these committees have long been embraced by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-backed Salvation Government in Idlib, setting a precedent for the new government’s acceptance of such civil peace-oriented systems. This acceptance should now be extended to the civil peace committee model.

Creating opportunities for peace

Creating lines of communication may be the most important function of these different systems. They often provide the only means of engagement with the authorities in places where many people are too afraid to approach officials on their own. These committees and networks also play a central role in resolving intercommunal and community-state disputes before they spiral into serious violence, as happened in Hamrat Amurin in September.

Much of the work of civil peace committees is initiated by motivated individuals who take it upon themselves to advance intercommunal trust-building. Many Ismaili and Christian activists who have been involved in these networks since December have stressed the same thing to the authors across multiple field trips—that local groups must assert themselves to the new government and force it to work with them. This approach has proven to work, but it is also a difficult concept for many activists, especially those from the Alawi community, to embrace when there is so much fear and distrust, and inconsistent government treatment of civil society more broadly.

Thus, most activists working in civil peace and dispute resolution issues emphasize the need for officials to genuinely engage with their work while giving them the space to operate freely. Members of multiple committees also discussed with us the need for logistical support to expand their networks, linking committees across districts to help share experiences and strategize communication and dispute resolution approaches. Such regional networks would give rural areas a more grounded view of the situation in other regions, undermining the chokehold that social media misinformation has on much of the country.

Inconsistent government limitations

Yet despite the benefits of this system, many civil peace activists across the country are still facing obstacles from the new government. While committees in places such as Qadmus, Damascus, and Salamiyah have seen many successes, the experiences of cities such as Baniyas, Masyaf, and Dreikish show how reliant this system is on a cooperative local government.

In Baniyas, a civil peace committee was formed after the extreme violence the city experienced on March 6, bringing together prominent Sunni and Alawi activists and religious leaders. Yet while it gave space for the Alawi community to voice complaints and work with local officials, their demands have been consistently ignored. The committee has been described by some former members as essentially being a mouthpiece for the local government, with no real agency of its own.

Masyaf’s short-lived committee faced a more direct challenge from its local government. In June, activists in the city gathered more than five hundred people to hold the country’s first-ever local elections for a civil council. Prior to the election, the organizers had received approval from the district director, Muhammad Taraa, to create the new body. Yet as soon as it was formed, Taraa began to oppose it. After sidelining and ignoring the new council for a month, Taraa called on the Hama Political Affairs Office to order its disbandment. Civil peace work in the district has now gone partially underground, with only a small civil peace committee now working exclusively on securing the release of ex-regime soldiers from the district’s rural villages who were captured by opposition forces during the final battles of the war.

Tartous’s Dreikish District has largely been another success story for the role of civil peace committees, but recent pressure from some local officials may undermine the positive steps that have been made. Like with the Ismailis in Qadmus, a small group of respected and educated Alawi leaders formed a committee in Dreikish the day after the regime fell. These men worked closely with Damascus’s newly appointed security official, fostering a deep bond of trust that endures today. However, the official was later transferred out of Dreikish, and his replacement was executed by local insurgents on March 6. The committee members were able to save the lives of the rest of the General Security officers that night, but the murder of the official has resulted in new pressure on the area since March. Now, two of the districts’ security officials still work closely with the committee, while a third views the body with distrust and refuses to engage with it. Committee members stress the importance of the close personal relationship they had built with their first official as well as the official killed on March 6, and the role these personal friendships and animosities play in the effectiveness of their work today.

Even when local government officials do embrace these committees and informal networks, their ability to address local grievances remains limited. These systems almost always engage with security officials—representatives of the Interior Ministry charged with overseeing the Internal Security Forces. Thus, issues such as the behavior of checkpoint personnel, detentions, and communication are more easily addressed, but these local officials have no say over the more pressing structural issues such as economic recovery, the settlement problem, political demands, and services. The inability of local security officials to address these topics limits the trust-building impacts of their engagement.

Empowering committees

Despite the potentially significant benefits of an expanded and empowered civil peace committee network in Syria, this system is largely isolated to addressing the symptoms of social discord. These committees should form one part of a broader approach to civil peace, bridging organizations and wider Syrian society with good governance practices to gradually break down the anger and loss felt between Syrian communities. One former civil defense member in Aleppo, who now works on humanitarian and civil peace issues, described the problem to the authors this way:

“Civil peace itself is not a means but an end. . . it is not possible to make people accept this idea so quickly. . . but the government is burning this by trying to make everyone accept each other in a few days. They don’t understand civil peace. . . In all of Syria, there are civilian intermediary offices working between General Security and the people. . . But these offices solve the problems only after they occur. We have to focus on dealing with the source of conflict, not just one symptom.”

Some committees and civil peace activists fear that expansion could result in backlash from the government. Licensing issues and anxiety offer state monitoring stem from the government’s unclear and discouraging policies toward civil society. Instead, Damascus should understand the benefits these committees can provide as allies for civil peace.

The Syrian government should create and enforce a clear policy for how its security and political officials engage with civil society organizations that work on civil peace and sectarian issues. This policy should encourage the creation of independent civil peace committees across districts and sub-districts experiencing sectarian tensions, particularly in the coast, Homs, and rural Hama.

Damascus should ensure that officials engage with these committees in a genuine and honest manner to maintain their trust with their own communities, without which these committees are entirely ineffectual. Lastly, Damascus should expand the type of officials and government bodies that engage with these systems to begin addressing non-security-related local issues. This would increase peoples’ trust in both these intermediaries and the local government, while also providing more senior officials with granular insights into the needs of these area.

International organizations can support this work by funding trainings and dialogue sessions that bring together committees and activists from different parts of the country to share their experiences and best practices. Countries such as Turkey and Qatar that provide training to Syria’s Ministry of Interior personnel can also support these local peace efforts by including civil engagement and communication courses when training security officials.

Despite their mixed track record, these committees have laid forth a blueprint for preventing intercommunal violence and trust-building with the new government. Now they should be expanded across more areas and empowered by Damascus to operate freely rather than hindered. Taken together, this approach will help prevent further conflict while strengthening the new government’s ties to local communities across the country.

Gregory Waters is a nonresident fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

Kayla Koontz is a PhD candidate at the Carter School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and a researcher at the Syrian Archive.

The post How Syria’s grassroots civil peace committees can help prevent intercommunal conflict appeared first on Atlantic Council.

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 13:53:15 +0000

US President Donald Trump has this week declared “tremendous progress” toward ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. This upbeat assessment comes following a sudden flurry of diplomatic activity sparked by a 28-point peace proposal that caught almost everyone by surprise, marking a new twist in Trump’s longstanding efforts to broker a peace deal.

Not everyone shares the US leader’s optimistic outlook. Skeptics note that while the United States and Ukraine have now reportedly agreed upon the broad outlines of a future settlement, there is very little to suggest that Russia is similarly interested in peace. On the contrary, the Kremlin has responded to Trump’s latest overtures by ruling out any major concessions and signaling that Moscow remains firmly focused on the maximalist goals of the invasion.

As talks between American, Ukrainian, and Russian officials continue, Russian President Vladimir Putin has underlined his true intentions by issuing a presidential decree calling for an escalation in efforts to eradicate all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control.

The decree, entitled “Russian National Policy Until 2036,” was published on November 25 and is set to come into force in January 2026, Reuters reports. It calls on the Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine to “adopt additional measures to strengthen overall Russian civic identity.” The policy document also praises the invasion of Ukraine for “creating conditions for restoring the unity of the historical territories of the Russian state.”

This bureaucratic language is an attempt to sanitize the Kremlin’s ongoing campaign to erase Ukrainian national identity. Throughout Russian-occupied regions in the south and east of the country, Moscow has instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population while systematically targeting the symbols of Ukrainian statehood, language, heritage, and culture.

Wherever Russian troops advance, local populations are subjected to large-scale arrests, with anyone deemed a potential threat to the occupation authorities likely to disappear into a vast network of camps and prisons. Victims typically include elected officials, journalists, religious leaders, activists, and military veterans. A UN investigation published in spring 2025 found that these detentions constituted a crime against humanity.

Those who remain are pressured to accept Russian citizenship or face being deprived of access to essentials such as healthcare, pensions, and banking services. In line with Kremlin legislation adopted earlier this year, property owners who refuse Russian passports can be evicted from their homes and deported. Meanwhile, schoolchildren are being taught a heavily militarized Kremlin curriculum that demonizes Ukrainians while praising Russian imperialism and glorifying the invasion of their country. Any parents who resist these policies risk losing custody of their children.

The most notorious element of Moscow’s campaign to extinguish Ukrainian identity is the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, around twenty thousand victims are believed to have been taken to Russia and subjected to ideological indoctrination designed to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose a Russian identity. In 2023, the International Criminal Court of The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over his personal involvement in these child abductions.

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Russian policies in occupied Ukraine serve as a chilling blueprint for Putin’s future actions if he is able to establish control over the entire country. Indeed, Russia is already actively seeking to depopulate large parts of Ukraine that remain beyond Moscow’s grasp. In front line areas throughout southern Ukraine, the Russian military has embarked on an unprecedented campaign of targeted drone strikes against the civilian population that has killed hundreds and been branded a “human safari.” A recent United Nations probe concluded that these attacks are war crimes with the goal of making whole towns and cities unlivable.

Likewise, during 2025 Russia has intensified the missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian population and the country’s critical infrastructure in an apparent attempt to spark fresh waves of refugees. Due in part to these attacks, Ukrainian civilian casualties rose by 27 percent during the first ten months of the year, according to the United Nations Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Putin’s posture during peace talks has raised further fundamental questions over his willingness to coexist with an independent and sovereign Ukraine. Ever since the initial round of negotiations in spring 2022, Russia has consistently demanded the comprehensive demilitarization of Ukraine. This has included calls for strict limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and the categories of weapons the country is allowed to possess, along with a ban on NATO membership or any other form of military cooperation with Western partners.

Russia’s insistence on an internationally isolated and disarmed Ukraine remains at the heart of the current negotiations. This should serve as a massive red flag for anyone who still believes that Putin is ready for peace. The Russian dictator obviously has no intention of abandoning the reconquest of Ukraine and aims to resume the invasion in more favorable circumstances once Ukraine has been stripped of allies and rendered defenseless.

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Putin’s determination to continue the invasion of Ukraine should come as no surprise. While Trump sees the current war as a geopolitical real estate deal, Putin believes he is on an historic mission to reverse the Soviet collapse and revive the Russian Empire. This explains his otherwise inexplicable obsession with ending Ukrainian independence, which Putin has come to view as the ultimate symbol of modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Putin called Ukraine “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” But his desire to extinguish Ukrainian statehood goes far beyond any toxic feelings of shared kinship. For Putin, the consolidation of a democratic, European Ukraine poses an existential threat to authoritarian Russia that could serve as a catalyst for the next stage in an imperial retreat that begin with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Haunted by the people power uprisings that brought down the USSR, he will do almost anything to prevent a repeat.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine first began with the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin’s crusade to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit has come to dominate his reign. In pursuit of this goal, he has sacrificed Russia’s relationship with the democratic world, while also doing untold damage to the country’s economic prosperity and international standing. After everything that has happened, he can hardly now accept a peace deal that leaves 80 percent of Ukraine permanently hostile to Russia and firmly embedded in the West. Putin’s propaganda machine is perhaps the most powerful in the world, but even his most skilled media managers would struggle to spin such an outcome as anything other than a disastrous Russian defeat.

Putin’s latest presidential decree demanding further efforts to create a Ukraine without Ukrainians underlines the absurdity of attempts to find any meaningful middle ground between Moscow and Kyiv. With a compromise peace out of the question, Putin’s plan is to keep fighting while hoping to outlast the West and exhaust Ukraine. He will continue to engage in negotiations with the United States as a tactic to stall further sanctions and divide his enemies, but there is virtually zero chance of Russia voluntarily accepting any deal that guarantees the continued existence of a Ukrainian state.

This does not mean that Putin cannot be forced to end his invasion. But it does mean that current efforts to broker a negotiated settlement are doomed to fail. Putin is convinced that in order to correct the historical injustices of the past three decades and safeguard Russia’s place in the world, he must destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. It is delusional to think that a man committed to criminality on such a grand scale could be swayed by talk of sanctions relief and minor territorial concessions.

Instead, the objective should be to increase the economic and military pressure on Putin until he begins to fear a new Russian collapse in the tradition of 1917 and 1991. This will require the kind of political courage from Ukraine’s partners that has been in short supply since 2022, but it is the only way to secure a sustainable peace in Europe. Putin dreams of taking his place in Russian history alongside Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Joseph Stalin, but he most definitely does not want to share the ignominious fate of Czar Nicholas II and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Every city the Russian military bombs, every child it kidnaps, every Ukrainian life it destroys today can only be understood within the long genealogy of Russia’s imperialistic state ideology. For centuries, this violent brand of expansionism has been directed at Ukraine.

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The present full-scale invasion of Ukraine will soon pass the four-year mark, but the war did not begin in 2022. It was preceded by eight years of warfare in eastern Ukraine following Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. This has been recognized by the European Court of Human Rights, which has ruled that Russia has been conducting sustained military operations in Ukraine since at least 2014. But even this is only the most recent chapter in a far older story.

During the eras of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the authorities consistently pursued policies aimed at dismantling Ukrainian identity. Tactics included banning the Ukrainian language, repressing cultural and religious leaders, and imprisoning advocates of Ukrainian independence.

Most devastatingly, Stalin and his regime engineered an artificial famine in the 1930s that killed at least four million Ukrainians in less than two years. Today, this deliberate mass starvation of Ukrainians is known as the Holodomor (“killing by hunger”). No outlier, the Holodomor was central to a broader Soviet campaign aimed at breaking Ukrainian resistance and other assertions of political autonomy. The lawyer who coined the term “genocide,” Raphael Lemkin, identified this attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation as the “classic example” of Soviet genocide.

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What unites these episodes is not only the violence itself but the ideology behind it. Moscow’s long history of crimes in Ukraine reflects an imperial worldview that treats human beings as resources to be harnessed for the state and as obstacles to be eliminated in the pursuit of total domination.

This ideology has evolved over time, but its core logic has remained remarkably consistent. Crucially, it has never faced sustained, meaningful repudiation by the international community. Because it was never confronted, Russia’s imperial ideology has been allowed to regenerate. A clear line of impunity links Stalin’s starvation of Ukrainian society in the 1930s to today’s Kremlin rhetoric insisting Ukraine is not a real nation at all.

This continuity is not abstract; it directly shapes present-day atrocities. When a state views humans as raw material for empire, the kidnapping and forced Russification of thousands of Ukrainian children becomes an acceptable instrument of policy rather than an aberration. This logic also applies to other aspects of the current invasion including filtration camps, torture chambers, rape and sexual violence, and mass deportations, along with the systematic destruction of Ukrainian cultural and religious life throughout every area under Russian control.

Ukraine’s top prosecutor notes that the number of open war crimes investigations has reached 178,391 documented cases. Indicating deliberate Kremlin policy, the former US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice recently stated that Russian atrocities in Ukraine are “systematic” and have been identified “literally everywhere that Russia’s troops have been deployed.”

The current actions of Putin’s occupation forces in Ukraine are the same state practices that have long defined Russian imperial rule: Absorb what can be absorbed, erase what cannot, and turn the conquered into fuel for the next stage of expansion.

Russia’s genocidal intent is not limited to eliminating Ukrainian identity. Putin’s extreme ideology drives him to pursue the incorporation of Ukrainians into Russia’s war machine against the West. The danger is not only the destruction of Ukraine as a nation, but the possibility that Russia will assimilate as much of Ukraine’s territory, cutting-edge technology, and population as it can before continuing further.

Contemporary Russian rhetoric makes this explicit. Strikingly, the Putin era has witnessed the resurgence of the slogan “We can do it again.” Originally graffiti scrawled on the Reichstag by Red Army soldiers in 1945, the popularity of this phrase surged after Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea to become a menacing mantra of modern Russian nationalism that signals a society intent on conquest and domination.

The atrocities we are witnessing today in Ukraine reflect centuries of Russian impunity. Impunity not only allows perpetrators to continue; it invites them to escalate. Russia’s imperial ideology has never been confronted with the kind of accountability needed to dismantle it. As long as this ideology persists unchallenged, the threat will not stop at Ukraine’s borders.

The international community now finds itself confronted with the consequences of a genocidal worldview that has been left intact for generations. The urgent question is not only how to halt Russia’s genocidal actions against Ukrainians today, but how to ensure that the world finally repudiates the extremist ideology that made this war possible. Without that repudiation, millions of Russians will remain convinced that they can, in fact, “do it again.”

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Once the group pushed into El Fasher, reports and footage circulating across social media and television revealed widespread killings of civilians. Around 1,500 people were killed and some ninety thousand displaced, with another fifty thousand fleeing violence in the neighboring North and South Kordofan provinces, according to the Sudan Doctors Network and the United Nations.

El Fasher had long been one of the most violent fronts in the devastating conflict between Sudan’s national army and the RSF. In April, the paramilitary group had intensified its offensive on the city, shortly after being driven out of the capital, Khartoum.

The world’s most serious humanitarian crisis

For years, the genocide unfolding in Sudan barely registered on the world’s radar. The international community remained more focused on crises in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine. But the fighting and killing in Sudan never stopped.

In a country in tatters, where there is no systematic record of the dead, casualty estimates vary. Some sources suggest that the number hovers somewhere around 150,000. However, human rights organizations believe that the real toll of the civil war is likely much higher. The conflict has displaced about fourteen million people out of a population of fifty-one million. Half of them are refugees in neighboring countries. As of April 2025, twenty-five million Sudanese were facing acute famine—and according to Doctors Without Borders, over 70 percent of children under the age of five were acutely malnourished. Among those who fled El Fasher, 35 percent suffered from “severe acute malnutrition.”

With severe damage to its hospitals and water supply, Sudan now faces one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises—one that some experts say even eclipses the emergencies in Gaza and Ukraine. Still, El Fasher is not the first, but merely the latest genocidal campaign in the country.

Naming the genocide

Engaging in war crimes and crimes against humanity, RSF soldiers have carried out child abductions, mass rape, sexual slavery, and village burnings for years, mostly in Darfur in western Sudan. Even as far back as 2001, the predecessor of the RSF—a militia known as the Janjaweed—repeatedly looted homes and engaged in gang rape in the region. Between 2003 and 2008, the group killed hundreds of thousands of non-Arab civilians. The campaign displaced around three million people and was described as a “genocide” by US President Joe Biden just before leaving the White House and as a “ethnic cleansing” by international observers. Against this background, Darfur is not a newly emerging hotspot. Home to several long-persecuted non-Arab tribes—Fur, Masalit, Berti, and Zaghawa—it is, in fact, again becoming one.

The Zaghawa, who are the majority group in El Fasher, rallied to the army in late 2023 after the RSF committed massacres against the Masalit and other non-Arab communities in the city of El Geneina in West Darfur. In a report released in May 2024, Human Rights Watch documented these killings as ethnic cleansing. The report cited the testimony of a seventeen-year-old boy who described the murder of twelve children and five adults from several families: “Two members of the RSF… tore the children from their parents and, as the parents began to scream, two other members of the RSF shot and killed the parents. Then they piled the children up and shot them. They threw their bodies into the river, along with their belongings.”

African apathy—and cynical regional powers

With its paltry communiqués, a powerless African Union has, for two years, contented itself with calling for an end to the fighting or expressing its concern about the humanitarian crisis, without ever sending a single African head of state to the front lines in Khartoum or to visit the victims of the El Geneina massacre.

In a press release marking two years of conflict, Amnesty International noted that “the world has only contributed 6.6% of the funds needed to address the humanitarian catastrophe raging in the country.” Observers usually recommend enforcement of the arms embargo, increased emergency humanitarian aid, and justice for the victims. However, there is one issue on which the United Nations Security Council and the mediators remain discreetly, if not embarrassingly, silent: the armed support that the belligerents receive from regional powers.

Egypt, Iran, Turkey, China, the UAE, and even Russia and Ukraine have all turned their attention to Sudan, siding either with the SAF or the RSF. Drones, gold, military intelligence, and mercenaries are all being used to intensify the violence of the war, while the meddling regional powers deny any involvement. Motivations for their involvement include securing the Nile’s waters, controlling the eight hundred kilometers of Sudanese Red Sea coastline, and the mineral resources of eastern Sudan. Sudan has also accused Chad and Kenya of being parties to the conflict. At the London Sudan Conference on April 15, the second anniversary of the outbreak of the civil war, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Youssef reiterated these allegations.

Clearly, the complex web of geostrategic interests in the region makes any mediation difficult, with Sudan even considering taking action against the UAE before the International Court of Justice for supplying the RSF with weapons.

The people as a solution

As it stands, Sudan is trapped in a dangerous regional power play and is threatened with partition. Should the country fall apart, this would not only destabilize the African continent but also endanger the exceptional Sudanese cultural heritage.

Any solution in Sudan must run through its civil society and, ultimately, its people. They are strong in part because of—and shown by—their history. With eight borders and a geostrategic position between the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, Sudan is a crossroads of African cultures, religions, and civilizations. The country still bears a name that means “land of the Blacks,” despite the attempts to erase its African roots carried out by the Islamist regime of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir. Sudan, which rivaled ancient Egypt, eventually conquered and ruled the Egyptian throne, becoming the twenty-fifth dynasty of pharaohs. All this happened a long time ago, under Black African leadership, before Christians and Muslim Arabs expanded their influence in the country.

This history and legacy help explain the political resilience of the Sudanese people and the dynamism of Sudan’s civil society. Bashir’s ousting in 2019 would not have been possible without democratic resistance, embodied by civic organizations such as the Sudanese Professionals Association, the nonviolent Forces of Freedom and Change coalition, and the grassroots Girifna movement.

Today, as in the past, the Sudanese people—rather than an apathetic international community or meddling regional powers—could once again be the decisive force for change. Empowering civil society and grassroots organizations should therefore be the starting point for any diplomatic initiative.

Rama Yade is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

The post El Fasher is only the latest wake-up call to the genocide unfolding in Sudan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Memo to the Secretary of State: In the upcoming Honduran elections, democracy and US interests are at stake

María Fernanda Bozmoski, Isabella Palacios, Jason Marczak — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 21:17:48 +0000

TO: Secretary of State Marco Rubio
FROM: María Fernanda Bozmoski, Isabella Palacios, and Jason Marczak
SUBJECT: In the upcoming Honduras election, the US must defend democracy and its economic interests
DATE: November 24, 2025

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Bottom line up front: On November 30, 2025, Honduras will hold one-round general elections in which the candidate with the most votes wins the presidency. As things stand, neither the credibility of the process nor an undisputed result is guaranteed, and any outcome is likely to trigger a contested election—a déjà vu of 2017’s post-electoral crisis. This time, however, the election carries significant stakes for the United States: it could affect US-Honduras security cooperation, reshape geopolitical competition following Honduras’ 2023 pivot to China, and test President Xiomara Castro’s push to expand military involvement beyond constitutional limits, including subordinating the armed forces directly to the presidency rather than the electoral authority. The United States should step up its monitoring of this election because the instability it could trigger would reverberate well beyond Honduras.

Background: An x-ray of Honduras

Over six million Hondurans will head to the polls on Sunday, November 30, to elect a new president, 128 members of Congress, 298 mayors, and twenty representatives to the Central American Parliament.

These are the broader domestic and geopolitical dynamics at play:

Electoral context

The general elections follow March’s chaotic primaries, during which logistical hurdles affected an estimated 1.3 million voters in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, out of the 5.8 million eligible voters nationwide. Many citizens had to cast their ballots the following day, and in some cases up to a week later, due to delays in opening polling centers or receiving voting materials. These disruptions triggered serious clashes within electoral institutions, including the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Electoral Justice Tribunal, and between them and other public bodies such as the armed forces and the attorney general’s office¹. These disputes ultimately delayed key steps in the electoral timeline, including the adjudication of the contract for the company that would transmit preliminary results (TREP) on election day.

In the months since, operational gaps have widened. The CNE delayed contracting satellite connectivity for remote voting sites. Then, a logistics contractor withdrew in early November—just days before the vote—citing delayed contract awards and lack of guarantees for election-night performance. With only twenty-two days remaining, the CNE launched a “fast track” procurement to replace both the connectivity and logistics functions, compressing timelines that typically require months of testing and coordination.

The Organization of American States, one of sixty-eight institutions set to observe the elections, has already deployed its mission and issued statements raising concerns about on-the-ground conditions for citizens to exercise their right to vote. The European Union (EU) was also invited to participate as an observer, with approximately 120 delegates stationed across the country. In total, there are roughly five hundred international observers on the ground. Worrisome, however, is that in a span of forty-eight hours, one of the national observing institutions quickly accredited over nine thousand additional delegates—many close to the ruling party.

Altogether, logistical challenges; a shift toward an increased role of the military in the elections—including directly asking the transportation company for the location of the GPS devices that will be used on election day—; the attorney general’s harassment of electoral authorities; institutional tensions; and the “express” accreditation of local observers have undermined confidence in the vote. This has opened the door for results to be questioned, regardless of the outcome, putting Honduras’ democratic stability and key US interests at risk.

Security in Honduras

Violence and extortion remain pervasive in Honduras. The country has the highest homicide rate in Central America, with an estimated 25.3 homicides per 100,000 in 2024. To fight drug traffickers and gangs, the current administration has repeatedly declared a “state of exception” since 2022, following the model of neighboring El Salvador. The latest extension of the emergency declaration was on November 12, for an additional forty-five days. However, the impact of this measure is unclear, as homicide rates in municipalities have only slightly decreased—both in areas where the measure is in place and where it is not.

Importantly, the country is a main node of cocaine transit toward the United States, and a former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, a central figure and ultimate winner of the contested 2017 election, is now serving a forty-five-year sentence for drug trafficking in the United States.

In an important reversal, and less than a month after the inauguration of the second Donald Trump administration, Honduras renewed an extradition treaty with the United States, which was on the brink of expiration. The Castro government had threatened cancellation, framing US extradition pressure as interference and coup-plotting. The renewed treaty now extends through the end of Castro’s term, but post-election instability could again put it at risk if a power vacuum emerges in Tegucigalpa.

US military presence

The Soto Cano Air Base (previously known as Palmerola) in Honduras has been home to the US Southern Command’s Joint Task Force-Bravo since 1983 and was originally established as a strategic hub during the Cold War. Soto Cano is the main platform for US military presence in Central America and one of only two major bases in the broader region, the other being Guantánamo. The base has the capacity to rapidly deploy counter-transnational crime missions, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response—including the recent deployment of personnel and supplies to Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa. Because Soto Cano is an important regional operational hub for the US military, political stability in Honduras is key to ensuring that US missions and broader security efforts can continue without disruption.

Migration cooperation

Honduras closely cooperates with the United States on migration. As part of this effort, the Cooperation in the Examination of Protection Requests agreement was signed in Washington on March 10, 2025, and entered into force in June. It allows the United States to send certain non-Honduran migrants to Honduras to seek protection there, rather than on US soil. The arrangement builds off a 2019 asylum cooperative agreement signed under the first Trump administration, which allows the United States to send asylum seekers to Honduras. Political stability will influence Honduras’ ability to continue these agreements effectively and affect broader regional migration flows.

Trade and investment between the US and Honduras

As a founding partner of the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), Honduras is closely linked to US markets. Bilateral trade totaled almost $13 billion in 2024, with a surplus in favor of the United States of $2.4 billion in 2024. Currently, more than two hundred US companies operate in the country, and foreign direct investment from the United States totaled $1.4 billion in 2024. However, investors continue to face challenges including regulatory uncertainty, unpredictable tax enforcement, unreliable and expensive electricity, and poor infrastructure—a challenge shared across most Central American countries.

Affronts to US investment in Honduras are not new, but have risen since the early days of the Castro administration, as exemplified by a bipartisan letter from Senator Bill Hagerty and then-Senator Ben Cardin in 2022, which raised the alarm bells. Legal uncertainty has increased under the current administration, following the Supreme Court’s September 2024 ruling declaring the 2013 creation of so-called Zones for Employment and Economic Development unconstitutional, raising concerns about the future of US investment in these zones. Just a month prior, in August 2024, Honduras exited the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank institution that provides specialized arbitration facilities to settle investment disputes. This means that, after the withdrawal, any private complaint against the state of Honduras is no longer subject to the ICSID’s jurisdiction, creating a big gap for US commercial interests. Honduras is the fourth state to exit the ICSID, after Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Since April, following the announcement of the Trump administration’s tariff strategy, Honduras has been subject to the baseline 10 percent reciprocal tariff. Unlike El Salvador and Guatemala, the country has not secured an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, which could reduce tariffs if non-tariff barriers—such as restrictions on US agricultural products, intellectual property protections, and digital trade—are addressed. Honduras has not yet initiated negotiations toward such an outcome and has shown no indication that it will do so before the Castro administration leaves office.

Ties with China

In March 2023, Honduras broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Soon after, it launched foreign trade agreement negotiations with China, implementing an “early harvest” trade deal in September 2024. This switch intended to open more commercial opportunities for Honduran commodities and secure Chinese financing for strategic infrastructure projects. However, the move has not significantly benefited Honduran exporters, particularly since Honduras’ once-thriving shrimp industry is now in crisis due to smaller purchase volumes and lower prices from China. In 2024, Honduras’ trade deficit with China reached $2.52 billion dollars. The country exported only $35.9 million, while imports from China totaled $2.55 billion. As of June, the deficit already stands at $1.41 billion. While exports are expected to rise this year, they remain far from matching imports from China.

Engagement with China has grown mainly in the energy sector, including Chinese participation in the Patuca II and III hydroelectric projects, and a letter of intent signed in May between Honduras’ Ministry of Energy and China’s Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization to advance technical cooperation and support additional Chinese energy investment in Honduras. This latest agreement appears to be a reactive or preemptive response from Beijing to make up for unmet expectations vis-à-vis Honduras. Candidates in the upcoming election have raised these perceptions, with only one of the three leading contenders indicating that she would maintain the course of Honduras-China relations going forward.

Three takeaways: Why this election matters to the US

A messy election aftermath could directly affect US security interests

The chaotic primaries and the months after have exposed concerning institutional weaknesses: delays in procurement (from the technologies to transmit preliminary results and ensure wide connectivity across the country to the transport of ballots), technical inefficiencies, competing legal interpretations, and interference from other bodies, coupled with little willingness to compromise for the stability of the election process. These events, and the emerging narrative that the TREP is unreliable for technical reasons—potentially planting the seeds of manipulation—are driven by the incumbent LIBRE party and have undermined public confidence in the electoral system. Ultimately, it might even discourage Hondurans from voting on November 30. If citizens have little trust in the electoral apparatus, what mandate will the next president govern with? A post-vote power vacuum could risk the stalling of joint US-Honduras operations and extraditions—a top priority of the current US administration—and could see the emergence of narratives against the extradition treaty, which LIBRE threatened to end in August 2024.
Shared US-Honduras economic priorities rely on electoral stability

With more than two hundred US companies operating in Honduras across the apparel, food and beverage, and business process outsourcing sectors—all of which depend on consistent rules, the CAFTA-DR framework, and the assurance of arbitration against non-compliant governments—a stable Honduras is essential to protecting already vulnerable US investments. If the country were to experience civil unrest after November 30, US supply chains and investor confidence would face disruptions. Even a brief period of instability could push the country’s risk up considerably, with internal actors committed to short-to-medium-term chaos until the international attention moves on to other crises.
The influence of nefarious actors in the region

Regardless of political affiliation and views, all three candidates have reinforced the importance of the United States as a critical partner for Honduras. Both opposition candidates have explicitly pledged to revert recognition to Taipei. Extra-regional players, including China, might exploit the uncertainty to press for quick wins and expand their influence. The United States should also watch for growing Russian influence, especially after Russia announced in April that it would open a diplomatic office in Tegucigalpa to advance bilateral cooperation and allow more direct communication. Closer ties to these actors could shift from transparent, rules-based processes to opaque deal-making.

Recommendations for US policy in the lead-up to the elections

Issue pre-election statements underscoring that the United States is closely watching the upcoming election, emphasizing transparency in the tally, uninterrupted operation of the TREP, and full access for accredited observers. Reinforce messages of swift action—including sanctions and visa revocations—against those who seek to undermine the integrity of the process.
Support democracy in Honduras and lead the international community in reminding the Honduran armed forces of their constitutional role in the electoral process: to protect the vote and remain neutral—without conducting a parallel or political vote.
Track electoral logistics closely, including the scheduled 9:00 pm announcement of preliminary results on November 30, which can be monitored by the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa in coordination with international observers. The EU Electoral Mission report, expected two days after the vote, will be important for determining next steps.
Nominate a US ambassador to Honduras before the next government takes office in January.
Send a high-level US diplomatic delegation to Tegucigalpa for the inauguration, potentially including the secretary of state and secretary of war, to show that the United States is closely monitoring developments that could affect its national security interests.

María Fernanda Bozmoski is director, impact and operations and Central America lead at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council.

Isabella Palacios is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Jason Marczak is vice president and senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

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