“U.S. pressure on Ukraine is encouraging Putin to keep fighting and refrain from making compromises necessary for an enduring peace….The way to end this war is not to rescue Putin from a failing campaign, but to help Ukraine make it fail faster.”
wapo.st/4rS0tF6
“Moscow has consistently chosen to limit its assistance. The US should take the opportunity to counter the Kremlin’s information offensive reminding Putin’s partners: With Russia on your side, you’re on thin ice.”
www.kyivpost.com/opinion/71175
"The Trump administration gave shifting rationales for its decision to attack Iran, even as U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports said they saw no sign the country had posed an imminent threat to the United States." wapo.st/4aM6zB1
An interesting look at the Trump administration’s road to war with Iran. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/u...
"This poses an existential threat to the Iranian regime, and they will throw everything at America & Israel. They will be seeking to survive as a regime. If they do, it will be a victory for them. It would also be a problem for the Trump administration." mickryan.substack.com/p/decapitati...
It has been hectic tracking events in the skies & on the ground in #Iran as well as Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel and other nations in the Middle East. In this article, I look at the implications of the new war for #Ukraine, and the Pacific theatre. mickryan.substack.com/p/the-new-ir...
“Wars are full of uncertainty. There is never certainty in war about victory or the direction that a conflict will take. The new war against Iran is no different.” mickryan.substack.com/p/iran-and-u....
I just finished this. A terrific book.
This week, J.D. Vance stated "the idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight — there is no chance that will happen." But short wars, regardless of the intentions of those who order them, can easily become long wars. mickryan.substack.com/p/iran-and-u...
As peace talks continue and the U.S. pushes for compromise, one proposal keeps returning: Ukraine should withdraw from the remainder of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk Oblast.
The Kyiv Independent’s Francis Farrell explains why the Battle of Donbas remains at the center of the peace process.
There’s a lot of things that need to be said today. But there’s one main one:
Thank you Ukraine.
We see you.
We know what you’ve done for us.
We know what we owe you.
We know you will win and take your place as a central defender of the free world.
“The key will be directly influencing Xi’s calculus. Military deterrence, exercises & the revelation of new capabilities, will be of little use if China’s military leadership is either too confident to be intimidated, or too intimidated by Xi to deliver bad news.”
warontherocks.com/2026/02/the-...
“The reality is that the war in Ukraine has long ceased to be just Ukrainian history. It has become the laboratory of the future. And, like any laboratory, it doesn't ask if we are ready for the experiment.” Zaluzhnyi on 4 years of war.
www.pravda.com.ua/eng/columns/...
"We must look past the drones, algorithms and other technological artefacts for the essential lesson from this war...Ukraine has shown us what humans, as flawed as we are, can achieve in their finest hour. This is the essential lesson from 1461 days of war." www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...
“We’re not the Ukrainians. We don’t need to be exactly like them, but these kinds of insights are valuable for military organisations that want to fight 21st-century wars, not lose by fighting 20th-century wars.” My discussion in The @australian about learning from #Ukraine.
archive.is/VeLHj
"This is a war where a free people determined that they would not permit the forces of dark authoritarianism to overwhelm their history, their culture, their freedoms and their future prosperity." mickryan.substack.com/p/four-years...
make that Pauline Shanks Kaurin, @queenofthinair.bsky.social 🙂
Russia is building their own, helped by Iranian and Chinese engineers.
"As we approach the fourth anniversary of Russia commencing its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, only one possible conclusion is possible: the Ukraine War will continue through spring 2026 and very likely beyond that." Read my full update here: mickryan.substack.com/p/four-years...
“The main thing we took away from all of this was that we need to work with worst-case scenarios much more than we did before.” A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them.
www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
"Eventually shock wears off, responses are developed & counterpunches delivered. This will be the case with the Starlink shutdown. Ukraine will have limited time to exploit the opportunities of the degraded C2 environment now endured by Russian ground forces."
mickryan.substack.com/p/starlink-s...
"Discussions focused on practical issues and the mechanics of possible solutions." A limited update on the latest peace talks in Geneva. kyivindependent.com/ukraine-russ...
"At some point, Putin will have to reckon with the failure of his strategic bombing campaign against Ukraine’s cities and the slow-rolling military failure that is Russia’s bloody ground campaign." An update of the big #Ukraine & Pacific issues this week. mickryan.substack.com/p/are-you-re...
“Personnel purges coexist with, and may even facilitate, accelerating PLA capability development. In today’s China, multiple things are true at once. Fixating on “tree” removal risks missing flourishing “forest” growth.”
fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/research/blo...
"Russia’s approach to AI-enabled command and control reflects a decisive shift away from abstract, large-scale modernization concepts and toward solving concrete battlefield problems." An excellent new report from Kateryna Bondar at @CSIS on AI and Russian C2. www.csis.org/analysis/how...
“The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown that perhaps the most transformative aspect of modern conflict has not been drones or AI, but the power of new, technology-supported learning and adaptation systems.”
www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...
“AI is going to keep changing, and fast. The models that exist today will be obsolete in a year…The people who come out of this well won't be the ones who mastered one tool. They'll be the ones who got comfortable with the pace of change itself.” shumer.dev/something-bi...
"Leaders who thrive in the Age of AI will be those who can exploit their unique human skills coupled with the agile use of algorithmic augmentation. They will use AI to enhance their thinking, not displace it." Dr Frank Hoffman, on AI and critical thinking. mickryan.substack.com/p/ai-and-cri...
NEW: Ukraine has begun planning presidential elections alongside a referendum on any peace deal with Russia, after the Trump administration pressed Kyiv to hold both votes by May 15 or risk losing proposed US security guarantees
w/ @henryjfoy.ft.com @maxseddon.bsky.social
www.ft.com/content/50d3...
