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.
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.
