I have been following NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine for several years, and so what is happening now is not a surprise to me. Indeed, it is something that I have been expecting for some time.
First, let’s review what it is that is happening: Russia is bombarding Kiev (Kyiv) on a daily and nightly basis. This is new. Before, Russia’s drones and missiles would arrive in waves, with intermittent periods lasting days or weeks. Now it’s minutes.
Russia is targeting energy infrastructure in a way that they have avoided doing before. They are attacking with an aim to essentially make Kiev uninhabitable this winter, as Ukraine will no longer have the ability to generate and distribute power to its people.
Russia is also destroying Ukraine’s logistics infrastructure: warehouses have been destroyed. The Ukrainian government has said that they have lost 90% of their food logistics.
The battlefields are also looking much more dire for Ukraine. Russia is finally advancing, and the last of the wide belt of so-called “fortress cities” in Donetsk, Slovyansk and Kramotorsk, look set to fall in the coming weeks. After those two cities fall, there is virtually nothing left to stand between the Russians and the Dnieper River, the gateway to Kiev.
This looming disaster was described by pro-Ukraine foreign policy and security analyst Jimmy Rushton, a British journalist for the Kyiv Independent based in Kiev, who explained the danger in September 2025:
“Ukraine has the Donbas line, a network of fortifications stretching across Donetsk…If Ukraine were to abandon these, it would fall back to almost nothing…The ground behind is flat and open, without prepared defenses…”
Indeed, analysts seem to agree that giving up the Donbas defences would amount to “military suicide” for Ukraine.
Nonetheless, after years of “grinding” advances, often described as “glacial” by the Western media, Russia is — slowly but surely — about to claim its prize.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… To Western analysts, it was almost as if Putin didn’t even want to conquer Ukraine.
Well, the shocking truth is that he didn’t. Putin NEVER wanted to “conquer Ukraine”. He only wanted the West to take him seriously when he said “nyet” to Ukraine joining NATO, insisting that Ukraine must stay true to its 1991 Constitution and always remain neutral.
The West’s complete failure to understand what Von Clausewitz called the “nature” of the conflict has rendered them blind to what is actually going on, and will leave them shattered and shocked when this conflict reaches its inevitable conclusion.
“Brotherly peoples”
The reason the Russians have been taking the easy approach to Ukraine lies in the peculiarly Russian concept of literal kinship between slavic nations.
This concept was explained in July 2021, when Vladimir Putin published an essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. In it, he explained how Russians and Ukrainians — as well as Belorussians — were “brotherly peoples” — a triune of nations, all stemming from the same root in Kievan Rus.
To Putin, the trinity of the three nations was one based partly or even mostly on a shared religious faith, namely the Russian Orthodox Church:
“Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory…were bound together by one language, economic ties…and — after the baptism of Rus — the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today.”
Putin also laments the fact that this “affinity” between Russia and Ukraine has been undermined:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Millions of Russians live in Eastern Ukraine
………. in Ukraine, which accounted for nearly HALF of that dispossessed Russian population (12 million). In fact, 83% of the pre-2014 population of Donbas — including most of the Eastern and Southern Oblasts — were ethnic Russians or spoke Russian. Overall, almost half of Ukrainians spoke Russian. It is also well-known, for example, that Volodymyr Zelensky was a native Russian speaker, who did not learn Ukrainian until he was elected President.
………………………………………………….., it should be noted that fully one third (1 in 3) of all Russians have relatives in Ukraine. Moreover, prior to the 2014 coup that saw a change in Ukraine’s government, 74% of Russians had a favourable attitude towards Ukraine — it seems that Putin was not the only one who saw them as “brotherly people”.
In fact, of the Russians living in Eastern Ukraine— where the fighting is taking place — 75% or more speak Russian, with high percentages using Russian as their “unique mother tongue”.
A true civil war
From these data points, we can conclude that what is unfolding in the Eastern Ukrainian oblasts is a de factocivil war. Like the American Civil War, it is a case where both sides speak the same language, share a common heritage, with many even sharing familial connections. In other words, it is virtually “brother against brother” (a phrase often used to describe the American Civil War)……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Russians have soured on their Ukrainian “brothers”
When the Maidan Coup happened in 2014, things started to change not just in Ukraine, but also in Russia. When the Russian public began to be bombarded by stories and videos and photos of ethnic Russians slaughtered by the Nazi battalions of Western Ukraine, they were outraged. Right wing Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Battalion, Aidar Battalion, Right Sector, and others murdered thousands of innocent citizens of the Donbas region, whose only “crimes” were that they were ethnically Russian and belonged to the Orthodox Russian Church.
But for these Nazis, those Russian speaking Ukrainians were Untermenschen (subhuman). In fact, Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister who was hand-picked by the U.S. to lead the government after the coup literally called them that in a declaration.
Nonetheless, on the eve of Putin’s incursion into Ukraine to save the beleaguered Russians in the Donbas, almost half of Russians still had a favourable view of Ukraine.
As of 2026, however, only 16% of Russians still feel that way towards their “slavic brothers”.
The Starobelsk drone strike changed everything
On 22 May, 2026, the Ukrainians — with of course help from the CIA — carried out a drone strike on the academic building and dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College of the Pedagogical University in Starobelsk, Russia, a place for young women (mostly) to study to become teachers.
The strike was carried out in 3 waves, reminiscent of the Mehab school “double tap” strike the U.S. carried out in Iran. Six young women were killed and 40 injured. The Russian public were outraged. How could a “brotherly people” do this?
The Starobelsk terror attack marked a turning point in public opinion — as well as a corresponding change in Putin’s prosecution of the conflict with Ukraine.
“The gloves are off”
Observers of the conflict in Ukraine have all noticed a marked escalation in Russian attacks over the summer. The drone and missile bombardments, which had been intermittent, are now a daily occurrence. Whereas the attacks had previously come only at night, allowing work and commerce to carry on normally during the day, the attacks are now coming around the clock.
Sensitive command and control units housing NATO advisors and Western personnel, which had mostly been spared in the early years of the conflict, are now being obliterated; bridges, railways and locomotives are also finally on the target list.Logistics centres, warehouses and even data centres are being hit.
Most critically, energy infrastructure, electric and gas systems, which Russia had attacked earlier but never completely destroyed before, is now being completely demolished, leaving cities like Kiev unable to provide heating to its citizens over the coming winter. In previous years, Russia had always allowed Ukraine to keep some of its vital energy systems during the winter — now, Russia is content to let the Ukrainians, their “fraternal people”, freeze in the dark of winter.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Four years of such ferocious attrition has resulted in the almost complete destruction of Ukraine’s ability to fight. While Kiev refuses to provide casualty figures, independent analysts estimate that Ukraine has suffered up to 3 MILLION casualties.
Military Watch Magazine, based in South Korea, explained in 2025 that Ukraine had already lost 1.7 million troops, and that the rate of losses was accelerating:
“The information indicates that 118,500 personnel were killed or went missing in 2022, 405,400 in 2023, 595,000 in 2024 and 621,000 so far in 2025, which corroborates with a growing body of evidence which has emerged over more than three years that attrition rates have increased tremendously and unsustainably.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What happens next — and when?
Informed observers of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict are now debating as to what will trigger the ultimate collapse of the Nazi regime in Kiev. Will it be the devastating air war that is destroying Kiev’s infrastructure and its ability to sustain human life? Or will it be the ultimate destruction of Ukraine’s armed forces, the death of the infamous “last Ukrainian” — the point to which Ukraine’s Western sponsors have vowed to sponsor Kiev’s fight.
Either way, the endgame in Ukraine is already upon us. The front is collapsing, the troops demoralised, under-supplied, under-fed, and under constant pressure all along the 1200-kilometre front, while thousands have been deserting or surrendering. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have simply deserted. Ukraine’s cities are under 24-hour bombardment, the country is losing its ability to generate power and even to feed its population: the shelves in the shops are empty.
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