2026-01-08 22:28:56
Just one month ago, Sergey Karnaukhov, who hosts the program Karnaukhov’s Labyrinth on the Solovyov Live channel, confidently boasted that the Kremlin fortified its Venezuelan Comrade, President Nicolás Maduro.
Using words he later came to regret, he said: “Maduro made the right decision: he started to rely on Russia . . . If it wasn’t for Russia, Venezuela would be on fire right now.”
Karnaukhov predicted that if there was any attempt by the United States to act against Venezuela, it would be able to sink all the American ships, using an array of Russian weapons. He added, “How did we do it? At some point in time, movies will be made about it, books will be written about it.”
In January, after an audacious US raid on Venezuela that ended with Maduro’s capture, Karnaukhov’s humility was restored. He meekly surmised: “If Russia stands in America’s way, it will crush us too.”
Head of RT Margarita Simonyan expressed jealousy about US capabilities, apparently referring to Russia’s multiple failed attempts to kidnap or assassinate the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in contrast to Maduro’s rapid extraction to the United States.
Appearing on a radio show, In More Detail, political scientist Alexander Kazakov advised the Russians to lean into the principles of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Do not weep; do not wax indignant.” Host Marat Bulatov chimed in and urged fellow Russian citizens to stop demanding a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to America’s recent actions. He said, “Don’t look for our president, since many are asking right now, ‘Where is the president of Russia? What happened?’.”
Bulatov correctly anticipated that Putin wouldn’t rush to say anything. Instead, in his televised remarks during the Orthodox Christmas celebrations, the Russian president inferred that his country’s invasion of a neighboring country is not merely a “special operation,” but a crusade directed by God. This reaffirmed that recurring statements by government-directed state media about a “holy war” are a state-approved propaganda narrative.
The events of the new year have sobered Russia’s regime mouthpieces. In December, the decorated state TV host Vladimir Solovyov was thrilled with the outcome of the meeting between US President Donald Trump and President Zelenskyy. He predicted that Ukraine would be sidelined and the US would ally with Russia against Europe.
Instead, the United States, with support from the British armed forces, seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic on January 7. The Marinera is described as part of a shadow fleet carrying oil for Venezuela, Russia, and Iran to circumvent US sanctions.
The state media outlet TASS reported demands from Russia’s Foreign Ministry directed at the United States: “Taking into account reports that there are Russian nationals among the crew, we demand the American side ensure proper and humane treatment of them, strictly observe their rights and interests, and put no obstacles for their soonest return to the Motherland.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the crew might be subject to prosecution in the US.
During his show on January 7, Karnaukhov noted: “The reaction in Russia to the arrest of our ship is very boisterous, especially among the experts. They are starting to demand harsh measures from the government. People say that everything starts with small things. If we respond solely with notes of protest, gesticulating with our hands and drawing our red lines that faded long ago, Americans will understand that everything is permissible.”
During his show Gasparyan on January 8, host Armen Gasparyan reported “mighty discontent” among his viewers over Venezuela and the ship seizure. They had been writing to the show in significant numbers to express their upset, and to complain that “Donald Trump failed to meet their expectations,” he said.
He said viewers were angry because some state propagandists (who he referred to as “certain fools”) had convinced them that the US-UK relationship was broken, something contradicted by the joint military operation to seize Marinera. According to Gasparyan, Russians believed “deteriorating relations between Buckingham Palace [sic] and Trump” were so severe that “this alliance was dead.”
Russia’s influential and extreme “Z-bloggers” were so disturbed by the latest turn of events that some asked whether the American president should be “allowed to physically live out the remainder of his term.”
In a post on Twitter/X, the ultra-nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin remarked: “The so-called [Ukraine] peace deal was impossible from the very beginning. It was a pure waste of time. Russia is now morally prepared for a radical, full-fledged war with the West”.
Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-01-07 23:02:29
The screen went black just as my Zoom call to Kyiv was about to begin.
From my desk in Maryland, I could hear voices from inside Ukraine’s National War Museum, but there were no images. The building’s electricity had been cut. Less than a minute later, a dim picture appeared, and psychologist Iryna Uzhakova was barely visible, lit by a butane camping lantern. Deputy Director Dmytro Hainetdinov, in a darker wing of the museum, joined with only audio.
Encounters like this have become routine in Ukraine. Power cuts, air raid alerts, and unstable connections — all courtesy of Russia — are now part of daily life. What made this moment different was its location, inside a national institution charged with preserving evidence and healing the damage from a war that is still underway.
The National War Museum is an institution unlike any other. Its work offers a rare example of scalable, low-resource psychological intervention embedded in a national institution rather than delivered episodically by outsiders. What makes the model even more distinctive is that this mental health work is occurring alongside real-time recording of war crimes.
Before our call, I had visited the museum in person. I saw how it sends multidisciplinary teams, including historians, archivists, photographers, videographers, psychologists, and local field specialists, to liberated areas, often within hours of the guns going quiet. Speed is essential.
“After a few days, the evidence is gone, cleared, buried, burned, or blown away,” Hainetdinov explained during my visit.
Museum teams have now worked in more than 35 regions. They document bombed homes, destroyed villages, and religious sites reduced to shells. Hainetdinov described a 19th-century wooden church burned down to its frame, with only blackened crosses remaining.
“The Russians claim they are protecting religion; in reality, they target churches,” he said. “We have records of 1,000 that have been destroyed or damaged.”
The Museum also collects testimony from individual survivors. Visitors can see the stories of families hiding for weeks in basements and read accounts of hunger, thirst, fear, and cold. Exhibits include elderly residents who refused to abandon ruined homes and civilians who escaped through minefields.
These accounts are not just treated as memoir. They are gathered as evidence, material likely to be important for future investigations into war crimes.
But the obstacles are vast. At one point during our call, Hainetdinov paused. “I wanted to show you photographs,” he said. “But the outage cut off access to my files.”
What distinguishes the National War Museum is not only that it documents a war in progress, but that it houses psychologists who offer tailored support to civilians, veterans, minors, and people released from captivity.
Since July, the Museum’s psychological service has worked with more than 700 people, Uzhakova said. These included children, wounded soldiers and their families, former prisoners freed from Russia, veterans, and civilians from frontline and near-frontline areas.
This is not a temporary pilot or a parallel program run by an outside organization, but a standing function of a national institution operating under wartime constraints. The psychological services are modest in scale, low-tech, and resource-constrained, yet continuous. For policymakers concerned with resilience, institutional capacity, and postwar recovery, that distinction is significant.
One typical program is a five-session workshop for children aged eight to 13 in which each child produces a short animated video.
At first, the drawings are strikingly consistent: tanks, drones, explosions, and shattered buildings predominate as war dominates the imagery.
By the final session, the tone almost always shifts. Bicycles, family pets, and clear skies appear. In one animation shared by Uzhakova, a small paper rabbit climbs into a boat and drifts across a crayon-blue sea.
It’s not that the war has disappeared from the children’s awareness, but what has returned is their capacity to imagine moments of safety and continuity. “That change,” Uzhakova said, “is healing.”
Just before the call ended, when her laptop battery failed, she held one last drawing up to the screen. The paper rabbit appeared again, this time beneath a bright yellow sun.
For policymakers focused on war crimes documentation, reconstruction, and institutional resilience, the museum offers a concrete case study. It shows that trauma care need not wait for peace, nor depend entirely on outsiders.
Embedding basic psychological support in national institutions during conflict may reduce long-term social costs, strengthen civilian trust, and improve recovery outcomes.
As Ukraine plans its reconstruction, and as other countries study how to prepare for prolonged conflict, the lesson is clear: Preserving evidence and preserving people are not competing priorities. Addressing psychological harm during war is not only a humanitarian imperative, but it is also a strategic investment in postwar stability.
Mitzi Perdue is a journalist reporting from and about Ukraine. She is the co-founder of Mental Help Global, a philanthropy that uses artificial intelligence to provide immediate, free, 24/7 mental health support in Ukraine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-01-07 01:06:17
In the early hours of January 3, more than 150 US aircraft entered Venezuelan airspace, disabled regime air defenses, and extracted President Nicolás Maduro from his heavily guarded compound in Caracas. It was an audacious operation with an unmistakable message: American military power remains unmatched, and President Trump will exercise it as he chooses.
For European leaders, the Venezuela raid raises urgent questions about what comes next in their own neighborhood.
The newly minted “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, announced at the time of the new National Security Strategy (NSS) in December, is more than mere words. It states the US will “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
So if Trump views the Western Hemisphere as America’s exclusive sphere of influence where foreign “incursions” justify military action, does he similarly recognize Central and Eastern Europe or Ukraine as a Russian sphere where Moscow’s security concerns take precedence?
Russia took no meaningful action after the Maduro raid. The muted response — Putin has not spoken on the issue — is in contrast to the 2019 presidential crisis, when Moscow deployed military specialists, special forces, and cybersecurity personnel to maintain Maduro. That may simply be a revelation of Russian impotence (see also the December 2024 collapse of the Assad regime in Syria) as its energies are sapped by a grinding war of imperial aggrandizement in Ukraine, but it is also possible that the Kremlin anticipates a quid pro quo from the US. That may become clearer as the Ukraine peace negotiations continue.
A concomitant question is equally important. Trump’s history of lurid statements has led some Europeans to conclude that he shouldn’t be taken seriously. The President’s opponents like to say that Trump always chickens out (the so-called TACO approach to tariffs). It is now clear, if it wasn’t already, that discounting US rhetoric is a path to disaster. Administration threats to Maduro were earnestly meant and were followed through.
This lesson at least may have been learned, thus the battery of responses from the first Nordic leaders, and then on January 6 from the biggest European nations, in support of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland. Denmark stated that any US military move would mark the end of the NATO alliance.
Any such intervention, military or otherwise, would clearly cause mayhem in the eight-decade-old North Atlantic alliance. But there are other concerns that would flow from an implicit US acceptance of spheres of influence.
The US NSS says the country will now focus on regions “central to our core interests” while expecting allies to “assume primary responsibility for their regions.” It was already plain that the US is less engaged in European security than previously — it has shifted from a funder of Ukraine to an arms supplier in the past 12 months.
But how extensive is this shift? Can Ukraine rely on a steady supply of US equipment, or might it be shut off, either because Washington has been angered by Kyiv (as in March) or because the administration feels US stockpiles are too low?
More broadly, can the US be expected to aid Europe if Russia steps up its shadow war campaign?
That Europeans feel so exposed is, of course, largely their own fault. While some, including Germany and Poland, have rapidly, if belatedly, begun to raise defense spending, others like the UK and France are lagging. Spain makes no effort at all to raise security spending, and even boasts of its refusal to join NATO’s hard defense target of 3.5% of GDP.
The continent is very visibly in distress over its security. And there is some reason for this. Russia is openly hostile and expansionist, Ukraine is struggling, and Europe is under-armed and under-prepared. In addition, the NSS states that the US will cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” It criticizes European governments for holding “unrealistic expectations for the war” while “perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.”
It is wise (and there are still many wise heads in Europe) to question to what extent US policy is really driven by the NSS, and whether it predicts future action. The Trump administration, much like its predecessors, is very much driven by events; many senior figures have differing priorities on key security issues.
But what Europe cannot do is pretend that the US is the same old country, likely to follow the same old policies.
It will not. The consequences of that shift have been plain for many months, but are dramatically underlined by events in Venezuela.
If Europe wants to shape events, it needs hard power and new forms of cooperation. Want to aid Ukraine? Fine, get on with it. Want to hold onto Greenland and answer US concerns about the High North? Get on with it. This is not the time to vacillate.
Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst and writer whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security.
William Dixon is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, specializing in cyber and international security issues.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-01-06 22:59:46
Ever since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has compensated for its disadvantage in traditional firepower through innovation. Unmanned systems, particularly first-person view (FPV) drones, helped its forces blunt Russian offensives and impose heavy costs on attacking units. Over time, this approach hardened into what was described as a drone wall, a layered defense that has turned many Russian assaults into fields full of bodies.
That kill zone has expanded steadily and now stretches roughly 15-20km (9-12 miles) from the frontline. It has proved an effective defensive mechanism. But it is also increasingly clear that it is not decisive, especially as warnings grow that Ukrainian units lack enough drones.
Throughout 2025, Russia adapted and learned from its mistakes, narrowing Ukraine’s early drone advantage by accepting heavy infantry losses and relocating critical assets deeper behind the frontline. Artillery, air defense, and command and control nodes have been moved beyond the range of most short-range strike systems and provided with dense electronic warfare protection.
The message from Moscow’s commanders is clear: Infantry can be quickly replaced, but high-value systems cannot.
Ukraine faces growing constraints in responding to this shift. Manpower shortages limit the ability of its forces to follow up drone attacks by clearing and holding ground, and Russian infiltration tactics have become more effective, allowing small units to slip behind Ukrainian lines and disrupt its drone and mortar teams.
Weather further complicates matters, degrading drone operations and creating windows for Russian artillery to operate with reduced risk.
Ukrainian equipment losses began exceeding Russian losses in 2025, according to the defense analysis website Oryx, reversing a trend that had held since the full-scale invasion. A Ukrainian officer told Radio Liberty that this reflects Russia’s growing focus on striking Ukrainian logistics and vehicles deep behind the frontline, while Ukrainian forces continue to prioritize destroying Russian assets at the line of contact.
Ukrainian logistics hubs and rear infrastructure have come under increasing pressure from Russian mid-range drone strikes and glide bombs, which flatten treelines where drone operators are based, as well as entire buildings in urban areas. Russia dropped more than 3,500 glide bombs in November alone.
Russian attacks strain supply chains, disrupt rotations, and impose heavy physical and psychological costs on the defenders. “Naturally, not only are lines of communication wrecked; the very idea of a secure rear is fading,” said General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former Commander-in-Chief.
And Ukraine has struggled to respond in kind.
A former Ukrainian officer noted in June that significant gaps remain in Ukraine’s ability to target force concentrations and key logistical hubs behind the frontline. Drones, even larger ones, are insufficient on their own due to limits in warhead size and speed.
“Russia adapted to HIMARS [truck-mounted rocket launchers] by moving its assets farther back,” said General Ben Hodges, former commander of US Army Europe. “Ukraine must be able to reach wherever the enemy relocates.”
That capability is currently lacking. Ukraine has the F-16 aircraft to replicate these tactics, but has insufficient Western-supplied bombs to arm them. According to Bryan Pickens, a former US Army Green Beret who has fought alongside Ukrainian special forces, this absence is among Ukraine’s most serious operational weaknesses.
“Most of what matters now sits in the 30-100km range,” Pickens said. “Russia pushes expendable infantry forward while holding its most valuable systems deep and protected by electronic warfare. Ukraine does not have scalable systems that can reliably strike there.”
In December, Russia’s elite Rubicon drone formation released footage showing drone strikes on high-value targets at claimed ranges of roughly 60km to more than 200km beyond the front line. The videos show strikes deep inside Ukraine’s rear, including in Mykolaiv and Poltava regions, using drones such as the Molniya-2, a fixed-wing kamikaze drone equipped with a Starlink terminal.
Electronic Warfare (EW) has become decisive, Pickens added. In contested sectors, satellite and radio links often fail, and many Western-supplied loitering munitions have proved ineffective. Systems designed for permissive environments struggle to function under sustained jamming, he said.
For Pickens, Ukraine will only overcome these limitations in the middle-strike zone with increased autonomous targeting.
Ukraine is attempting to compensate. According to defense analyst Olena Kryzhanivska, Kyiv has increasingly focused on developing mid-range strike drones to offset shortages in conventional systems.
“As with other Ukrainian unmanned innovations, these efforts are driven by necessity,” she said. “Drone interceptors are used where air defense missiles are lacking, and small and medium-range drones are used where artillery systems and ammunition are insufficient.”
Such improvisation has been a strength throughout the war. But it has its limits, not least because Russia is continuing to raise production of glide bombs and has invested heavily in mid-range strike drones with the backing of China.
Ukraine lacks sufficient stationary EW coverage to protect rear areas 30-40km deep. Meanwhile, air defense missiles are too scarce and costly to counter large numbers of increasingly EW-resistant medium-range Russian drones, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported, citing Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronic warfare specialist.
A Ukrainian drone pilot told the New York Times that Russian forces are deploying fixed-wing Molniya drones alongside waves of mini kamikaze drones carrying explosives — and Ukraine has nothing comparable that it can mass produce.
With an operational range of up to 60km and speeds of up to 120kph (75mph), the Molniya 2 is cheap and can reach into the middle-strike zone. On roads in its range, the Ukrainians have built wire and net tunnels to protect logistics routes.
Ukraine’s domestic missile production will play an increasingly important role in long-range strikes in 2026. Its successful drone campaign against Russian oil refineries, for example, will need larger warheads so it can inflict greater damage. “Ukraine’s focus on developing long-range strike capabilities is exactly right, and that is where I would encourage investment,” Hodges said.
Kyiv should also focus on improving its capability to hit targets in the intermediate 60-100km range, the ISW’s George Barros wrote. Russia is already reported to be fielding fiber optic drones with ranges of up to 50km, while Kyiv is likely deploying similar systems at comparable distances.
The trajectory is clear. Russia has adapted by pulling back critical systems farther from the front, and shielding them with electronic warfare, while relying on manpower to absorb losses closer in. Ukraine is strongest at the front but increasingly constrained at depth, and, with enough time, Russia will look to close the flanks, narrow the supply routes, and squeeze the defenders.
Unless Kyiv closes its mid-range strike gap through systems that can be produced at scale and operate under sustained jamming, it risks fighting an efficient but ultimately reactive war shaped by Russian adaptation rather than Ukrainian initiative.
David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist and an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-01-06 02:55:53
Forget laissez-faire economics. In order to compete against China, Washington no longer believes that market forces alone will protect America, and the government is taking stakes in firms critical to the production of semiconductors, rare earths, lithium, and other strategic inputs.
Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling. In industries where scale and continuity are essential, such as semiconductor manufacturing or rare-earth processing, equity investments act as a stabilizing anchor. They help deter foreign takeovers. They stabilize balance sheets and crowd in private investment. They signal that the US views these companies as long-term national assets, without resorting to heavy-handed control.
The recent 2025 National Security Strategy commits the US to identifying “strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies,” backed by a dense web of public financing tools ranging from the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank to the U.S. Departments of State, War, and Energy. The strategy recasts competitiveness as a matter of coordinated state support.
Several European states have long taken similar steps. Germany acquired a 17% stake in energy giant Uniper to secure national energy resilience after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. France has repeatedly taken positions in its nuclear and aerospace sectors. Italy’s government has backed strategic acquisitions in telecommunications and critical infrastructure.
Democratic governments view minority equity stakes as legitimate instruments to safeguard critical industries. In the US, the most visible symbol is MP Materials, the owner of America’s only rare earth mine. The US Department of War became the largest shareholder and committed a $150 million loan to produce magnets. Prior to the US acquisition, Shenghe Resources, a partially state-owned Chinese firm, was a major shareholder in MP Materials and formerly its primary customer. The US has also acquired a 9.9% stake in Intel, the only major US chip manufacturer, with a warrant for additional shares.
Historically, the US took direct equity investments only in moments of acute financial crisis or wartime necessity. The last major episode was during the 2008 financial crisis. Washington stabilized collapsing banks and key firms by injecting capital into major financial institutions in exchange for preferred shares and warrants. The government also acquired controlling stakes in General Motors and a substantial share in Chrysler’s parent company to prevent their bankruptcy. These positions were explicitly temporary: once the firms implemented the structural reforms and governance changes required by the government, the public stakes were unwound and sold.
China’s model of state capitalism is different. Beijing built its industrial power through pervasive state ownership, the central direction of credit, and the use of state-owned enterprises as instruments of strategic policy — from rare-earth mining and processing to semiconductors, shipbuilding, and telecommunications.
By contrast, US government stakes in critical firms are non-controlling and do not entail operational direction. They are not designed to replace markets with state control, but to safeguard the market presence of key US firms in strategically vital sectors.
Yet, this approach is not without risks.
Once the government becomes a shareholder, the temptation to serve political rather than commercial objectives can grow. Politicians may pressure firms to preserve unprofitable domestic facilities, favor politically connected suppliers, or avoid necessary layoffs. In Europe, government ownership translated into protection for inefficient state-backed airlines and carmakers rather than support for competitive innovation. These pitfalls underscore the importance of maintaining strict limits on state involvement and ensuring that equity positions remain non-controlling or even time-bound.
Even so, this emergent model of strategic equity investment may well be a prudent way for the US to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty, while defending a broadly open, innovation-driven global economy. Washington is no longer content to regulate or subsidize — it is willing to buy security, at home and abroad.
Elly Rostoum is a Senior Resident Fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
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2026-01-06 02:25:24
In a virtuoso display of air-defense prowess unimaginable for any European member of NATO, Ukrainian forces shot down 34 out of 35 cruise missiles on December 22. It was even more notable given Ukraine’s defenders were also warding off another 638 Russian rockets and drones that same midwinter’s night.
Col. Yurii Ihnat, head of communications for the Ukrainian air force, told Ukrainian Pravda the cruise missiles were “mainly” shot down by F-16 fighters transferred by European allies.
Against all odds, the tiny Ukrainian air force hasn’t just survived its clashes with a Russian air arm 10 times its size, it has managed to modernize under fire, upgrading old ex-Soviet MiGs and Sukhois while inducting F-16s and ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000s, and integrating all the diverse airframes with some of the latest Western-made precision munitions.
But that success belies a worrying trend as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fifth year.
Ukraine’s leaders are wasting this potent force. Supersonic F-16s compatible with Sniper targeting pods, armed with GPS-guided Small Diameter Bomb glide munitions, and protected from Russian missiles by underwing electronic countermeasures shouldn’t be circling Kyiv, shooting down cruise missiles. Instead, they should be taking the fight to Russian forces along the forward edge of battle in eastern Ukraine.
It’s obvious why they aren’t. They lack enough precision bombs. And that’s a problem Ukraine and its allies should address with haste.
The 87 1980s-vintage — but heavily upgraded — F-16s that Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway have pledged to Ukraine, dozens of which have arrived since the first landed in August 2024, are Ukraine’s best battlefield interdiction assets.
More than any other Ukrainian weapon system, the nimble F-16s can strike at Russian troops (and their supporting artillery, drone teams, and logistics) at the moment that matters most: right before the troops march into battle against outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainian troops.
With rigid state control of the media, generous enlistment bonuses, and brutal coercive recruitment tactics, the Russians continue to generate more fresh manpower every month than they need to replace combat losses.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s own mobilization system is in a state of slow collapse owing to Ukraine’s much smaller population, a widespread sense that the system is unfair, and the tendency of Ukraine’s worst commanders to squander fresh troops on pointless, politically motivated counterattacks — a habit that has deeply undermined Ukrainian morale.
The upshot is that, in the most important sectors of the 1,200 km (about 800-mile) front line, the Russians have a five-to-one manpower advantage. And they’ve adapted their battlefield doctrine around this edge, parking armored vehicles in favor of costly but effective infantry infiltration.
In every one of the front-line towns and cities Ukraine lost or came close to losing in 2025 — Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, Siversk, and Huliaipole, among others — Russian success came not in the form of swift, carefully calculated mechanized assault, but through large numbers of infantry rushing forward in small groups, day after day, despite horrific losses.
Unless and until Kyiv can reform its failing mobilization system, the Ukrainian armed forces must find some way to blunt Russia’s manpower advantage, and must do so where that manpower is most vulnerable to attack. F-16s lobbing glide bombs would be just the thing.
Russian infantry favor urban assaults because the bomb- and artillery-blasted ruins of towns and cities offer them ample shelter from the small explosive drones Ukrainian forces possess in abundance. To work best, the drones must strike the Russians out in the open, before they reach the outermost rubble of some front-line settlement.
But the Russians have learned the hard way not to concentrate forces within 25 km or so of the porous front line, in the zone where Ukrainian drones and artillery are most dangerous. Tactical assaults often begin tens of kilometers from the front. Russian soldiers have taken to social media to complain about the long, arduous marches — in small groups and under heavy loads — that have become the standard prelude to a clash with dug-in Ukrainian soldiers.
The Ukrainian air force must strike the Russians deeper behind the front line, in the zones the Russians now consider relatively safe havens — and where Russian infantry can be attrited before they come into contact with Ukrainian infantry. Drones and artillery generally can’t reach that zone; F-16s can.
The prescription is for a standard NATO operation, the kind the alliance once planned for on the assumption that Soviet armies would bring to bear far more troops and vehicles than NATO divisions could defeat in a direct fight. It’s called battlefield air interdiction, or BAI.
Responsibility for air defense duties would be handed to ground-based defenses like the German Gepard mobile gun.
It’s clear the Ukrainians know they have an air interdiction problem. They’re visibly trying to meet the Russian BAI campaign with a BAI campaign of their own —but they’re doing it with Fire Point FP-2 one-way attack drones.
Where the older FP-1 devotes most of its 270 kg (about 600 lb) payload to fuel, extending its range to nearly 1,600 km, the FP-2 devotes most of its payload to its warhead. So the FP-1 strikes with 60 kg of explosives, but the FP-2 explodes with 100 kg. The downside is the newer drone’s limited range: just 200 km or so.
But that’s just enough range for a BAI strike. On the night of December 27, Ukrainian drones — FP-2s, most likely — struck a Russian commando base in Berdyans’ke in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. The attack killed or wounded 125 Russians, according to the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces.
F-16s are even deadlier. An F-16 can lob eight 100-kilogram Small Diameter Bomb glide munitions as far as 80 km. In other words, a single F-16 sortie is worth as many as eight FP-2s.
Assuming half of Ukraine’s F-16s are operational at any point, a brigade with 40 F-16s could drop nearly 200 glide bombs on the Russians’ heads every day. That pace of interdictory strikes would almost match the Russian rate.
It’s possible Ukrainian leaders recognize the propaganda value of the F-16s’ high success rate against cruise missiles. The jets are the shiniest symbols of the air defense effort. But even if they wanted to assign the F-16s to the much less glamorous task of bombing Russian troop concentrations, they couldn’t.
At least not yet. There aren’t enough bombs to go around.
Starting in late 2022, Russian factories quickly spun up to support the production of, so far, tens of thousands of UPMK glide bomb kits. By contrast, Ukraine continues to rely on foreign donations for its own arsenal of glide bombs.
And these donations are paltry. France pledged 50 Hammer glide bombs a month starting two years ago; it’s unclear whether that pledge has increased, though there are online videos showing their use. The Biden administration gave Ukraine potentially thousands of SDB and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) glide bombs, but it’s far from clear whether the Trump administration has continued the supply.
To arm the F-16s for the mission where they’d make the most difference, Ukraine needs bombs. Lots of them, and fast. It’s true that an effort to develop a Ukrainian glide bomb broke cover in late 2024. But if that prototype has become a production munition, there’s no evidence of it.
To match the Russians’ BAI campaign, the Ukrainians require thousands of glide bombs a month — and the political will to shift F-16s from inefficient air defense to efficient battlefield interdiction. All eyes turn to Germany, which has poured billions of euros into the Ukrainian arms industry. That financing has helped pay for thousands of Fire Point drones.
Maybe the next tranche of investment from Berlin should pay for a few tens of thousands of glide bombs.
David Axe is a journalist, author, and filmmaker in South Carolina. For 20 years he has covered war for Forbes, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, The Village Voice, Voice of America, and others. He has reported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. Right now, he is focused on covering Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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