Volodymyr Zelenskyy, shown visiting a command bunker in Zaphorizia. Photo: Ukraine Presidency Office

Ukraine is now entering the danger zone. Its army is running out of men and material, and worse than that, important parts of the army are trapped by Russian forces.

This includes Pokrovsk, of course, as well as Zaphorize and a number of other areas. Meanwhile, Russia continues to pound away at Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. At some point all normal services will collapse completely.

Western intelligence, such as it is (and unfortunately it often supplies assessments that are tailored to what its bosses want to hear) is coming to the realization that in Ukraine the military handwriting is on the wall.

How long Ukraine’s army can remain a coherent organization is uncertain, but the mass desertions and high casualties are well known inside the country by Ukrainian citizens who are paying the price of the war, in one way or another.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is trying its best, using its overheated secret services, to create provocations that will expand the war to Europe and bail out Ukraine’s regime.

Two current examples illustrate the madness.

The first was a bombing of the Polish railroad connection on the Warsaw-Lublin line that transits massive amounts of war material to Ukraine. Polish leaders fingered the Russians for the evil deed, calling it an “unprecedented act of sabotage,” but now that has been reversed by none other than Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister.

Tusk in center (brown jacket)

After making a dramatic visit to the site of the railroad incident, pointing fingers at Putin and his intelligence operatives, Tusk now has partly reversed course.

It was Ukrainians who carried out the sabotage, Tusk has announced, although he insists the Ukrainians collaborated with Russian intelligence.

It remains to be seen if Tusk can prove there was collaboration.

Meanwhile the Russian FSB is reported to have broken up a plot by Ukraine to assassinate a very senior Russian official. Moskovskij Komsomolets, a Russian newspaper, says that the target was Sergey Shoighu, who was Russian defense minister from 2012 to 2024 and now is secretary (chairman) of Russia’s Security Council.

Shoighu (left) with Russian President Vladimir Putin

Added to the mix was an alleged attack on Hungary’s largest oil refinery at Százhalombatta, which processes Russian oil delivered by the Druzhba pipeline. The pipeline itself was targeted by Ukraine earlier.

Perhaps related have been frequent reports of unidentified drones flying near sensitive military installations, armaments factories and military bases in different European countries. The Europeans have routinely, without hard evidence, blamed the drones on Russia. If the latest Polish “discovery” is any indicator, the drones could be a provocation by Ukraine.

The idea behind all this is straightforward. Ukraine is in bad shape with very poor survival chances. What Ukraine needs, if it can get it, is a NATO military intervention to save it from a military disaster.

Despite all the brave talk from NATO personnel and Europe’s pro-Ukraine leaders, the lack of preparedness for war by NATO is clear. NATO does not have adequate stockpiles of weapons, has few combat troops and lacks enough drones and other critical gear, to field an expeditionary force in Ukraine.

If Ukraine’s forces are nearly spent, and Russia has around 700,000 soldiers along a very long front, how can NATO with only a handful of brigades, commit to war? It is true that NATO does have good warplanes, but Russia has in-depth air defenses that NATO’s jets would face.

Beyond that, NATO forces are not trained to operate in the new warfighting environment where massive use of drones, glide bombs and precision missiles forms the leading edge of battle.

(For the record there are rumors that France will supply French Air Force pilots to Ukraine, although they will not wear French uniforms. This is an old trick that the Russians used in the Korean war, and against in Egypt in 1970. Zelensky and Macron signed a letter of intent for Ukraine to buy more than 100 Rafale fighter jets, although who will foot the bill is not clear.)

What really is behind the sabotage and where the danger zone is are factors that relate to what the US might or might not do, faced with the imminent collapse of Ukraine. Will Trump send US forces to war in Ukraine?

Sending US forces into actual combat in Ukraine would definitely trigger war in Europe and beyond. Would it work?

US land forces are not much better off than their NATO counterparts. The US would need to figure out how to support American troops in Ukraine, especially if supply lines, now protected by borders, would be exposed to Russian attacks and significant disruption. The history of expeditionary forces in Europe is not a recommdation going forward. The British Expeditionary Forces were routed by the Germans two times, in World War I and World War II.

The big danger in the danger zone is that the Ukraine mess will have mutated into something far worse and much more disruptive and lethal. Until now, Russia and the US have engaged in proxy conflicts but not direct confrontation. Both are nuclear powers, and each has unprecedented destructive capabilities.

In World War I military and civilian deaths came to 37 million. In World War II the number rose to 70 to 85 million.

There is no real chance for negotiations to settle the conflict. Trump ran into a brick wall after the Alaska summit, when Zelensky and most of the Europeans refused any territorial deal that Trump might have entertained for Ukraine. Thus Trump’s promises to Putin became instantly undeliverable.

President Trump will be under heavy pressure from his NATO partners to come to the rescue of Ukraine. It would be a fatal mistake for him to lift a finger.

Stephen Bryen is a former US deputy under secretary of defense. This article, originally published on his substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.

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56 Comments

  2. Zelensky’s Maidan regime is falling apart. Rats are fleeing the sinking ship. The little Western stain in Kiev is collapsing. Copium is loud from the NAFO trolls.

    Russia won. NATO lost.

  3. Another win for China 🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Look at Europe, verge of bankruptcy thanks to Ukraine 🤣🤣🤣

    Thanks to free Chinese AI models, AI bubble is going to burst 🤣🤣🤣

  4. Russians have activated Stephen Bryen… looks like things are going wrong, so disinformation is needed. 🫠

      1. No ,,Totalitarism-based order” I just ” live right next to all that drama and I don’t need to get information from a guy accused of collaborating with foreign espionage. Reading that and other articles, it looks like he still doesn’t despise foreign money.

        By the way, how can you teach objectivity when most of your comments are full of insults about Americans and Europeans?😅

        1. Europe and the US are clownshows. You waged war against Russia thinking you would win? That was cute. Clowns

          1. Wow, there are elves and dragons in your alternative reality, too? 🧐

            Europe has 46 countries, but OK, let’s take a shortcut and just consider the EU. It’s interesting how you could declare war without having a common army or any military jurisdiction. But most of all, I can’t find any border that was crossed by the so-called ‘Europe’. Do you have alternative maps in your alternative reality?

            I also haven’t heard about any war won by Russia. I heard something about a three-day special operation…😛

            But don’t be sad you still have insults in the internet.🫣

  5. “Ukraine” — its very name means “edge” or “borderland”. It is a hodge-podge of pieces of Austria-Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Russia proper. It should be divided up accordingly. Kiev and its immediate oblasts can survive as a neutral state and we can put this nightmare to bed.

      1. The American wannabe hates ‘his’ country of residence even after being provided a subsidized nursing home bed and a pre-owned wheelchair.

        1. I can/would fit in with Sepo’s, being white and speaking English.
          While you will always be an outsider, a banana (small)

          2. Ah back in the day those LBFM’s…. they preferred us outsiders. Seems like nothing has changed and you don’t have a gf.

          3. By the way my senile capon, there are many places in the increasingly multicultural ‘West’ where your self described phenotype would actually not fit in. This tells us that in spite of your delusional boasting, you have been impotent and consigned to a wheelchair for a long long time.

    1. Been there and 1 thing is for sure, 10yrs of war by Putin have made it into a unified country.
      I doubt you have visited Europe (scary tall people)

        1. So far from the truth, Small Banana. While you can’t get a gf. They all prefer larger, more virile, foreigners

  10. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most of us around the world do not care about “Ukraine”. It looks like dumb white Europeans, the British bastards and the European Fascists, have staked their entire futures on Nazism in Kiev. They declared war om Russia using “Ukraine” as the lever, and lost. That’s too bad. They should stop attempting to offload their folly onto the rest of us, because this disaster is 100% the work of Western governments. Notice how nobody in the West even talks about peace or negotiating with Russia. How about these Euro idiots man up and talk with Russians instead, and take their security interests seriously…..that is the solution

      1. I don’t think anyone cares about most foreign countries. Unless of course you are an overseas Chinese who has an inferiority complex in the locker room, and hope that an important China will make you feel ‘bigger’

    2. I will let you in on a not so secret insight EBD. Putin committed unwonted aggression against Ukraine as surely as Hitler did against Poland on an equally flimsy pretext. You need urgent attention by a team of psychologists to help you straighten out your twisted thinking.

    4. Wow thanks for that insightful secret, Pacman.
      What about Burak, did someone tell you the secret of where this winged horse is buried? Or how old was Aisha when Mo slipped her his sausage?
      Maybe why Pacman-istan is a failed state?
      Do you have these insights too ?

  11. Why is this Russian stooge taken seriously on this website? He has no importance or credentials of any significance at all.

    1. Europe has no relevance in the 21st century. Ukraine, like Gaza, Yemen, and Afghanistan, is where Western imperial projects go to die, not showcase any greatness.

    2. If you look back, Bryen was a cheerleader for NATOkraine when this all kicked off. He is hardly a Russophile.

  12. The United States benefits from late coming. The appropriate strategy is to allow the Europeans to exhaust themselves, load them with debt, then enter the fray to collect.

        1. The 85 year old social reject likes to rant from ‘his’ wheelchair. Ooops! Some fluid just spilled out from what’s left of your ghosted pinkie.

    2. Looking forward to US intervention 🤣🤣🤣🤣

      China will supply the US with components and rare earths 🤣🤣🤣🤣 no problem at all. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

      1. And China will be blockaded. No problem at all !
        China started this REE nonsense with Japan in 2015. Do you think the US won’t have undeclared stockpiles ?

          1. You do watch some interesting movies. I guess it’s the only emotional contact you have – with Mrs Hand and her 5 daughters

          2. You don’t need to watch movies because you are a movie: a hilarious comedy called ‘The senile capon and the multiple dark, large, thrusting sausages’.