We’re soon going to discuss the headline thesis, advanced by Douglas Macgregor in a new discussion on Daniel Davis’ Deep Dive channel, that threats in Central Asia will press Russia to move much faster than it might have otherwise to wrap up the Ukraine conflict. While this view is certainly plausible, and bears monitoring, let’s consider some context:
Russia has been picking up the pace all spring/early summer and already ratcheted it tempo up another gear or two with its close-to-daily massive drone and missile strikes across Ukraine, with Kiev regularly getting pounded much harder than before. Note the increased air barrage took place almost immediately after Trump’s recent chat with Putin, after which Trump complained vociferously about Putin’s refusal to budge an iota on his existing demands. That call took place shortly after press reports of pauses of shipments of key weapons categories to Ukraine, such as Patriot and Hellfire missiles. Note that Trump reversed that in the last 24 hours after a talk with Zelensky. But given dwindling and badly-taxed stocks due to the 12 day war with Iran, and the perceived need to restore Israel’s defenses, it is hard to think any additional deliveries will be much higher than a token level.
The sharp increase in Russian missile/drone barrages right after the Trump-Putin discussion was not a result of that talk since targeting does not happen quite that quickly. But if Trump felt embarrassed, so much the better.
To get more of a sense of where things stand, please see another video from Daniel Davis below. Even though it is from a couple of days ago, it highlights some telling changes in how Russia is prosecuting the war.
While Russia is still hewing to its attritional approach, now described as “lava flow,” of pressing along the entire line of contact, note that Russia is now often bypassing cities to seek to substantially encircle them and/or cut their supply lines further west. I am not a military person, but this says to me that Russia feels it has enough control of the battle space that it can leave what amounts to local flanks open, confident that Ukraine can’t mount much of an attack on them. To put it another way, earlier in the war, you’d here commentators like Dima of Military Summary point to a Russian operation as sometimes intended to shorten the front line. Now Russia appears indifferent to extended front lines (due to lots of local incursions into Ukraine territory) as putting even more stress on depleted Ukraine forces.
Indeed, in a bit of cheek, Lavrov has added to the list, saying that a peace deal with Ukraine must include the return of the Russian frozen assets (something beyond Kiev’s ability to deliver), no Ukraine in the EU, and Ukraine re-committing to its 1991 deal with Russia, which included a commitment to neutrality and no nukes.
However, despite Davis’ excitement that per his headline, the eastern front could collapse, Mark Sleboda, who has been by far the most accurate English language YouTube commentator on the trajectory of the war, saying it could be another year or even two before the conflict is wound up. In his latest post, Simplicius quoted Le Figaro in estimating the Ukraine forces at under 400,000 versus about 650,000 in theater for Russia. Something presumably in the 350,000 to 400,000 range is a bigger number than I expected given Pentagon reports as of year-end that Ukraine would be out of troops in six months.
Also bear in mind that Russia has taken only one of the four oblasts it deems to be part of Russia. Yes, Russia is happy to have Ukraine keep bringing men and material to contact lines that are not far from Russia. But at a minimum, Russia has to occupy and clear these oblasts at some point. “Clearing” becomes important to reduce later terrorism.
John Helmer argues in a post over the weekend that the US admission it was having trouble continuing to supply Ukraine (even if it has tried to walk that back) is confirmation that the US support is close to a tipping point, which will then lead the General Staff to recommend greatly increases the intensity of the attack.1 Keep in mind that Helmer has good contacts at the General Staff; among other things, they enabled him to do a great deal of exclusive reporting on the Russian electricity war against Ukraine. Helmer has also described General Staff frustration, that they believe that Russia could have ended the conflict long ago by acting to greatly reduce Ukraine’s electricity generation and distribution, but they’ve been checked by the political leadership. Perhaps Putin is loath to create the resulting Gaza North (albeit of the ethnic cleansing rather than genocide type) that would result. Perhaps he hopes to limit physical destruction so as to reduce rebuilding costs. Or maybe he hopes that a slower campaign will wear out more of the public, leading more of those who can to depart and more of those who remain to accept Russia rule of some form as less bad than continuing the war.
NATO has so clearly lost its mind that it can’t possibly get any crazier than it is now. So whether Russia merely crosses the Dnieper or goes to the Polish border seems unlikely to make a practical difference in what they do:
VLADIMIR PUTIN🇷🇺:
‘They invented that Russia wants to attack NATO. Have you completely lost your minds? Dumb as this table? It’s nonsense. Utter rubbish.’
‘It would be rubbish if it wasn’t a plan just to trick their own population by saying ‘Help! Russia is going to attack… https://t.co/OyM7xivlZa pic.twitter.com/oNKFmvwE6y
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) July 7, 2025
Details from Helmer’s account:
A Moscow source in a position to know explains: “The Russian calculus recognizes the tipping point [for US arms supplies to the Ukraine]. Until then the General Staff will grind away methodically, slowly. Then when the Western supplies run low, we will hit fast and hard. If you total the June attacks, the picture emerges clearly that Putin has chosen the Oreshnik option – without firing it yet — over compromising on Trump’s terms. The outskirts of Kiev are burning like never before.”
An aside: one way Ukraine might crack is if Zelensky and his circle abandon Kiev. Recall he is a physical coward; he was apparently afraid for his personal safety when Russian forced got close to Kiev in 2022 and calmed down only when he got assurances that the Russians weren’t out to kill him. We featured this tweet in Links today; it may be disinfo, but the fact that Kiev has been taking serious and sustained strikes for the first time in the conflict can’t be good for Zelensky’s peace of mind.
Back to Helmer:
The first announcement came from the Pentagon on July 1. “The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.” The sources were authorized to identify Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, “after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles”. “The Pentagon had been dividing munitions into categories of criticality since February, over concerns that the DOD was using too many air defense munitions in Yemen…Plans were in place to redirect key munitions, including artillery shells, tank shells, and air defense systems, back to the U.S. homeland or to Israel.”..
The Colby-[Deputy Defense Secretary Stephe] Feinberg idea was….to persuade Trump the Israel war should take priority over the Ukraine war; and that if that choice was made public, the Jewish lobby would prevail over the Ukraine lobby in supporting the president. Trump was also persuaded to acknowledge publicly there is a domestic shortfall of weapons, and in private get Putin to accept the ceasefire Trump had been promoting since their first telephone call on February 12.
Trump dutifully announced at the NATO summit on June 25: “we’re going to see if we can make some [arms] available, they’re very hard to get”…
Putin has acknowledged publicly there has been no movement from Washington or Kiev towards the Russian end-of-war terms. “These [Russian, US-Ukrainian] are two absolutely opposing memorandums,” he told the press, “but that is precisely why talks are set up and held – to find ways to bring positions closer. The fact that they were diametrically opposed does not seem surprising to me, either. I would not like to go into details, as I believe it would be counterproductive – even harmful – to get ahead of the talks.”
From Ushakov’s read-out of the July 3 call, it is clear Trump and Putin were unable to agree on a date for a new round of Istanbul negotiations. “The two presidents will naturally continue communicating and will have another conversation soon,” Ushakov reported. This is Russian for don’t call me, I’ll call you.
The General Staff then launched its largest air attack on Kiev since the war began, continuing the operation from the night of July 4 through the night of July 5. The majority of the weapons used were Russian and Iranian drones. According to Boris Rozhin, the leading military blogger in Moscow, “it is not entirely clear how the supply of missiles for the Patriot air defence system — if the United States will allow them — will save Ukraine from the growing flow of Gerans [and Gerberas ]. Shooting down the Geran heroes with Patriot missiles is absolutely pointless from an economic point of view.” July 4 Min 22:54…
The Moscow consensus now is to escalate westwards from the front on the ground, and by air attack on Kiev, and wait for Trump. “Either Trump agrees on fresh direct shipments, or he will pretend that indirect shipments are a compromise, or he will abandon Zelensky to his fate. So we talk peace and keep moving on all fronts, keep hitting everything military. It is fast reaching the point where even if there was no Israel sector, Iran sector, Yemen sector, the US cannot save Ukraine. The US and Europe certainly can’t defeat Russia. That’s the calculus.”
In other words, while Helmer anticipates a difference in degree in how Russia prosecutes the war, he does not yet see a difference in kind.
Contrast this with the latest view from Douglas Macgregor. One big caveat is in order; Macgregor, like many US military men, cannot wrap his mind around the Russian attritional approach and keeps position that at some point they will revert to a great big arrow attack. Nevertheless, he focuses on the issue that Conor and others have taken up in the last couple of week: Turkiye-Azerbaijan big time troublemaking. Macgregor sees this as a prelude to an invasion of Iran to bite off a piece:2
Starting a bit after 6:00, by Macgregor:
President Putin and his his leadership were understandably very focused on Ukraine. And being so focused on Ukraine, I think they took their eye off the ball in the Caucasus. They weren’t watching carefully what Mr. Aliyev, the president of Azerban, was up to. I don’t think they really worried about it because Aliyev’s father who was a KGB major general, a member of the pilot bureau and was viewed as absolutely loyal uh to both the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia suggested there was nothing to worry about in Azerbaijan.
Well, that’s turned out to be wrong. The Azeris have formed a very close relationship with Israel and that relationship also includes greater Turkey. In other words, Mr. Erdogan, but primarily Israel and Erdogan and the United States all share a similar interest right now in Azerban. That is to destabilize and harm Iran in any way possible.
Well, what’s the worst thing that could happen to Iran? Well, the worst thing that could happen to Iran is for the Iranian country, the nation itself, to break up. And we know for a very long time that Iran has had various pockets of nationalities, though well integrated and part of the Iranian national state and society, they nevertheless still exist. And and that includes the Azeri Turk population in northwestern Iran. There is now a a definite deliberate conscious what use whatever terms you want planned to invade northern Iran by Azerban in the hopes of raising a rebellion in northwestern Iran centered around Tamre which is the center of the Turk population in northwestern Iran. There are lots of Azeris in Iran who are currently interested in this. So the threat to Iran is very real.
That’s one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that Azerbaijn was already offering or providing a platform for use by the Mossad, MI6 and CIA against Iran. We’re not sure how much was used. In other words, did they launch drones? Probably, but they certainly moved agents from Azerbaijn into Iran, which were then able to set up and and cause havoc inside Iran during the 12-day war. So th this is part of the problem.
And then you have to look further to the west at Syria. Understand that Syria is basically part of greater Turkey. Everything that happens in in Syria happens because Mr. Erdogan wants it to or doesn’t want it to. Golani is not an independent agent. He is a figurehead. And Erdogan for the moment wants to get along with the Jewish state. However, there are limitations to his cooperation… Golani is just a figurehead in Syria that we, the Israelis, MI6, in other words, US CIA and Erdogan installed.
So Erdogan was always interested in dislodging Assad, but for reasons that were different from the Israelis. The Israelis are now in southern Iran and they intend to stay there. So they say this is a permanent point of friction with Turkey. Uh the Turks would like to see the Russians leave, but they don’t want a confrontation with the Russians, but they would like to control what today we call northern Lebanon as well as this enclave of Syria that touches the Mediterranean.
So the Turks have certain goals uh in the region. The Israelis have their own greater Israel goals. Azerbaijan wants to create greater Azerbajan as part of a greater Turk enclave or confederation if you will with the hope of eventually exercising some degree of hegemony over the region. Then you have Iran to the south of Azerbaijan that is preparing for another round in the war. They I think they expect the war to restart probably in in September. it will take that long for radars, missiles, munitions, and other things to find their way to Israel. So, they’re preparing for the next round of war. And at the same time, they’re looking at this probable invasion from Azerbaijn, which they probably expect to coincide with an Israeli resumption of the war against them.
Now, if you’re sitting in Moscow and you realize all of these things have happened, it’s unraveling to some extent Moscow’s southern security area. In other words, Azerban was seen as a component of Russian security strategy, as a as a friend, as someone that would be a force for stability. Azerban has turned out to be the opposite. So, the Russians are going, I think, to accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine.
Helmer foresees Russia increasing the tempo in Ukraine strictly due to considerations in that theater. Macgregor argues that the unexpected threat in the Caucasus will pressure Russia to greatly accelerate its timetable. It may not be easy to see who has made the better call, but again keep in mind that Helmer was early to describe that Russia could drop the electricity war hammer on Ukraine. Use of that tool, which Russia has held off deploying in full, might indicate that Macgregor is correct.
In the meantime, the pacing of the war has implications for whether Russia can win the peace (or at least keep disruption to a very low level). We’ll turn to that in a later post.
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1 It seems hard to fathom. but apparently Trump really did believe that if he paused some weapons supplies to Ukraine, Putin would agree to a ceasefire. How long has Russia been in “What about ‘no’ don’t you understand” mode? Among Putin’s terms for a ceasefire were an end to all weapons deliveries and provision of intel, plus independent ceasefire monitors.
2 I would greatly discount the discussion early on by Davis and Macgregor about Putin’s remarks about the People’s Front. They are not Russia experts and I don’t even see them as regular readers of Putin’s speeches and interviews. Right from the very outset of the SMO, there was a large, grass roots effort to support the troops, and my impression is that it’s been pulled together under this umbrella. Putin is a pothole President and makes a point of paying attention to initiatives and ideas in the boonies. As an example, in one of his monster Q&As where he was taking questions from the public (his team having screened requests sent in en masse to address as many as possible), he talked with a woman from Siberia who asked for community movie viewing rooms. He was initially resistant to the idea but was eventually persuaded by her.
