The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft, and the Russians see no point in indulging them any further.
Omaha Beach, shortly after D-Day, June 1944 (Photograph from US Coast Guard Collection)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Sometimes wars have occasions that can be read — immediately, soon or in time — as turning points, clarifying moments. D–Day, June 6, 1944, is an obvious case: The Allies and the Red Army were in Berlin less than a year later.
The Tet Offensive, which began 58 years ago next week (Can you believe it?), is another: All the victory-is-near illusions the American command had cultivated for years collapsed. There were many more casualties at the altar of imperial delusion, but the war in Southeast Asia was on the way to over.
On Jan. 8 Russia attacked Lviv, the city in western Ukraine, with an Oreshnik missile. To me this looks very like a clarifying event in the Ukraine war — Moscow’s announcement that it has decided to begin the beginning of the end.
The Oreshnik is a new-generation weapon that already wears a little of the mystique of Ares, the Greek god of war. It travels at hypersonic speeds and is undetectable by air-defense systems. It is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although the missile that hit Lviv wasn’t armed with one.
Center of Dnipro city after Russian bombing with conventional weapons, March 2025. (Wikimedia, CCA 3.0 Unported License)
This was not Russia’s first use of the Oreshnik in Ukraine. Its first was in November 2024, when the target was a munitions factory in Dnipro, not far from the front lines. That blew minds as well as production lines.
But the missile that hit Lviv seemed to have more to say to the regime in Kiev and its Western backers, notably all those supercilious Europeans. Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural capital, has been a safe haven these past four years of conflict. Not to be missed, it lies roughly 45 miles from the border with Poland.
Russia’s declared intent in launching its second Oreshnik was to respond to the Dec. 29 drone attack the Ukrainians, with the usual assistance of the Americans and Brits, launched on President Vladimir Putin’s secondary residence in Valdai, northwest of Moscow.
Parenthetically, Kiev and the C.I.A., two famous truth-tellers, deny any such attack took place, but let us not waste any time with this silliness. The Russians have reportedly presented Western officials with evidence of the event.
Would Putin raise it in a telephone exchange with President Trump were it, as corporate media now have it, just another disinformation operation?
These things said, the Oreshnik hit in Lviv merits a broader reading, in my view.
Here is an account of the Oreshnik as it descended through the winter clouds above Lviv. It is written by Mike Mihajlovic, who publishes, edits and writes frequently for Black Mountain Analysis, a Substack newsletter I have found worth looking at on previous occasions.
This passage is based on Mihajlovic’s apparently diligent study of digital evidence and eyewitness accounts. Good enough we know what happens when these things arrive, as there may be more of them in the skies above Ukraine as the war begins its fifth year:
“As the hypersonic penetrators broke through the cloud layers, each was enveloped in a luminous plasma sheath, producing brief but violent flashes that momentarily illuminated the surrounding atmosphere. These flashes were not explosions in the conventional sense, but visual signatures of extreme velocity, friction, and compression as the warheads tore through dense air at hypersonic speed.
Observers on the ground reported an unsettling soundscape that followed the visual phenomenon. Rather than a single detonation, there were sharp, cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain, as if the ground itself were fracturing under stress….
What made the event particularly striking was the setting. The impacts occurred against the backdrop of an idyllic winter landscape: fields and forests blanketed in snow, small settlements dimly lit, and a horizon that, moments earlier, conveyed calm and stillness.
Against this muted palette, the light generated by the strike stood out with almost surreal intensity. Reflections danced across the snow, briefly turning the ground into a mirror that amplified the event’s brightness. Witnesses described the glow as unnatural, a cold, shimmering illumination that lingered just long enough to be noticed and remembered.”
Perfect as a description of a nation entertaining its own set of illusions and delusions as, with the unconscionable encouragement of the Three Musketeers — the British, French and German leadership — it prolongs a war it lost long ago. Let’s call it shock therapy for the complacent.
The Lviv attack seems to be part of an intensifying campaign to cripple Ukraine’s power grids, energy infrastructure and productive capacity. The Russians have been hitting such targets for years, of course, but these new operations suggest Moscow is after the endgame now.
Moscow’s Attempts to End Conflict
President Zelensky, French President Macron, UK Prime Minister Starmer and German Chancellor Merz speak on the phone with President Trump during a gathering for European officials in gathering in Tirana, Albania, on May 16, 2025. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its “special military operation,” along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion. You can go back to the spring of 2022, when was ready to sign an accord with Kiev a few months into the war — only for the Brits, with American consent, to scotch it.
Or December 2021, when it sent Washington and NATO draft treaties as a basis of negotiating a new security framework between the Russian Federation and the West. They were dismissed as “nonstarters,” a British-ism the Biden regime thought was clever.
Or the Minsk Protocols, September 2014 and February 2015, which the British and French sabotaged. Or back to the early 1990s, when Michail Gorbachev hoped to bring post–Soviet Russia into “a common European home.”
“The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its ‘special military operation,’ along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion.”
The Kremlin has proven exceptionally restrained, not to say forebearing, through all of this. And it would be a mistake now to conclude the Russians have lost their patience.
No, in my read they have simply concluded there is no point waiting around while the Western powers indulge themselves in pantomime statecraft or — maybe better put —some kind of group onanism they seem to find satisfying.
And in public, no less.
For weeks toward the end of last year we read incessantly of the intense diplomatic work Kiev, the Europeans and the Trump regime’s contingent were getting up to. The swashbuckling Musketeers cooked up a 20–point peace plan that was supposed to supersede Trump’s 28–point document.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s unconstitutional president, went from one European capital to another and then to Washington and then to Mar-a–Lago and then back to Europe, all along asserting he and his backers were “90 percent there.”
Ninety percent there on security guarantees providing for European troops to serve as peacekeepers on Ukrainian soil. Ninety percent there on a territorial settlement. And so on.
You watched all this with your jaw dropping. None of it had anything to do with fashioning an accord Moscow would find even preliminarily negotiable. The 20–point plan’s intent, indeed, was to subvert the 28–point plan, the first pieces of paper since the spring 2022 attempt that Moscow appeared to find worth its time.
Not Enough Delusion
Refugees taking shelter under a bridge in Kiev, March 5, 2022. (Mvs.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
No, the Trump plan was too realistic as a draft of a settlement accord in recognizing that Moscow was the victor in its war with Ukraine, Kiev the vanquished. There wasn’t enough delusion in it.
And now, roughly since the start of the year, more or less complete silence from Zelensky and the Musketeers — Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, a prime minister, a president and a chancellor.
There is no establishing any certain causality between the Oreshnik attack in previously safe — relatively speaking — western Ukraine, and this nothing-to-say lapse in Kiev, London, Paris and Berlin (and for that matter Washington). But the point may prove the same.
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft: This is my conclusion. And the Russians, evidently sharing it in one or another form, see no point in indulging them any further.
As to the Trumpster, it seemed to me unimaginable from the outset that the national security state in all its appendages would ever allow him to reach a comprehensive settlement with Moscow that would open into a new era in East–West relations.
So has the war turned. So do matters clarify. So does the war in Ukraine appear set to end — not with a single detonation, no, rather with sharp cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored.
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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
It is not clear whether the war in Ukraine is that relevant nowadays. The major issue is whether Trump will manage to bring the Russian Federation in the fold, as you correctly mention was the dream of Gorbie the traitor. And for that matter of Vladimir Putin himself.
Now, was ? Or still is?
The main aim of capitalistic Russia is to be admitted in the club of capitalist countries with all due honors. Let us not forget that point. The greed of the neo-con driven democrats was what was in the way. The whole system that replaced ol’ Soviet Union was geared towards this. I was in Russia at the very end of the 90’s. I remember how everyone or near was looking at the USA with a kind of submissive admiration. ??? ?????, as said the Assimil method I was studiously reading. My dream.
This has not changed today.
What has changed since Eltsin handed power to Putin is that, after the 98’s ruble’s crash and the 99 Belgrade’s bombing, the new Russian elite understood how naive they had been. You don’t get charitably invited in the elite’s club of the world. They will not admit the beggar. They will get you to clean the toilets after the party if you are lucky. And all the while they will plunder whatever you have in your lot.
So, the new capitalists plaid it the other way. They had the depth of an immensely rich territory and an equally richly educated population in no-nonsense science.
But at the end of the day, the ????? hasn’t changed: be on a par with the successful capitalist countries. Rewrite: country. The cronies can be on the floor, but reborn Russia is not going to share drinks with them. Only one chair is suitable for them. Facing the boss across the table where the Don Perignon is waiting in its ice bucket.
And Russia has something very handy to trade, now, to get its club card. About 3000 in nuclear currency. Think about it. That matches the total fortune of the red buffoon. And more importantly, it is 5 times as much that their Chinese buddy has in his wallet. Together with the boss, they could do great things. Marvelous things! Things never seen before!
Please, whoever, make it that Russia does not pay the 1 billion ticket that the would be führer of the US is asking for joining the joy ride against the United Nations and all the baddies on the surface of the planet. This would be the unmistakable signal that the war to come against ‘communist’ China is in its final stages of geopolitical preparation.
Is it possible to visualize, in actuality, the unbelievable, except in imagination?
So, by incessant cultural ‘nurturing’ ‘we’ are taught to faithfully believe what we are told we are seeing, contrary to what we know by “seeing with one’s own eyes” – witnessing something firsthand, directly, and personally, rather than relying on pictures and stories alone, or someone else’s account; rather than emphasizing belief through personal experience, often of astonishing or undeniable events.
Reportedly the Oreshik missile travels at approximately 7,600 to 8,100 miles per hour, equivalent to 2.111-2.25 miles per second.
“Is that even fathomable” – capable of being understood, comprehended, or measured by the human brain, without the application of highspeed computers applying machine learning techniques to large collections of data – otherwise known as artificial intelligence (AI) – more rapidly than the “stand-alone” (able to operate independently) human brain can accomplish?
Apparently, as is now being evidenced by gullibly following amoral other Homo sapiens; human beings in general are incapable of cooperating and collating their own individual, innate critical thinking, logically reasoning minds, in a manner akin to what in the earlier ‘daze’ of computer development/evolution, was known as parallel processing – in straightforward universal lay human political terms – coordinating potentials, and combining strategies of upwardly mobile progress.
For those “born yesterday” (as was the commenter): [Parallel processing is a computing technique where multiple processors or cores work simultaneously on different parts of the same large task, breaking it down into smaller sub-tasks for faster execution, unlike sequential processing, which handles tasks one after another.] The word multitasking had not yet become fashionable.
Without being witting enough, the ‘we’ – the 90% have been coerced to sell-out to the ‘they’ who, incontrovertibly, control all the strings of power. ‘Their’ idea of “the same large task” is surely not for the collective benefit of the entire human populace, wherein prioritizing compassion, dignity, and survival over individual self-interest/greed must be the main objective.
‘Their’ idea does not encapsulate the drive to create a better, more peaceful world, through empathy and cooperation.
(Here, for example this commenter realizes he is directly engaging with a machine, in open diplomatic dialogue, contradicting an automatic AI generated Overview).
Sadly, what the human mind is capable of, is taking-in propaganda without the blink of an eye.
So it is, in the age in which we are now living.
The Sun does NOT revolve around the Earth!
The moral of the story… the fundamental lesson or truth about life that a story illustrates; as is being witnessed firsthand is, that inhumanity has no bounds.
The sentiment that “inhumanity has no bounds” suggests that human cruelty is not limited by morality or law and that, when unchecked, it does lead to unimaginable suffering.
Whoever would have guessed; without the assist of machine technology!!!
Seeing with our own eyes, reading and learning with our own critical intelligence???
And so, humanity turns to the AI technologies of the computer age to advance and better humanism???
At Davos 2026, Elon Musk stated, something to the order of: that one of his goals is to fantastically increase global abundance. “The same large task”!
Are those of ‘us’ alive, in a whole other orbit, down here on this Earth, living from day to day, pay check to paycheck, supposedly to blindly accept his notional interpretation of abundance, without critique or question, because he has a hyper trendy “short back and sides”?
Only when the ample abundance that already is, is dispersed more equitably will there be peace, rather than pieces of what’s leftover, for ‘us’.
He is flailing along with one bombing war after another so we can forget Epstein. But will we forget?
Yes! “The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its ‘special military operation,’ along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion.”
Unless and until all who fall into step and vilify Putin and Russia understand and acknowledge the facts, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic will continue the destruction of Ukraine. This is in their hands and has been for many many years. To continue to ignore and dismiss legitimate, rational, reasonable concerns expressed eloquently, diplomatically and fully by Putin and his ambassadors will only further our complicity in this horrendous destruction of Ukraine.
Yes. That’s a good description. Much nicer than just calling them wankers.
German companies have already begun negotiations with their connections in Russia to resume trade once the sanctions are lifted. Thus German business leaders plainly ignore Chancellor Merz and his bellicose provocations toward Russia.
Funding and arms for Ukraine from NATO countries have all but dried up. The pipeline of conscripts in Ukraine has likewise run short of victims.
Zelensky continues to flit from one European capital to another seeking more billions in handouts. But his veneer of propaganda has grown thin at best. The warm wet kisses and embraces he received from neocons and Democrats in the U.S. as well as the WEF puppets of Europe, Macron, Starmer, Merz, Von der Leyen no longer present the same appeal.
Kiev Mayor Klitschko has advised everyone to evacuate the capital city, as electrical power has been cut off. This can only increase the flow of Ukrainians into Europe, already weary from hosting millions of Ukrainians for the past 4 years.
Anyone paying attention has seen the wretched excess of corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs in expensive sports cars with Ukrainian license plates in Monaco and various other luxury European holiday locales. The U.S. has cut off the Ukraine grift while all of Europe is tapped out.
Von der Leyen’s insatiable greed for more billions from Europeans and her plans to steal ‘frozen’ Russian assets have petered out once the European banks understood that doing so would be an existential threat to the Euro and themselves.
Momentum for the end of the war in Ukraine keeps building.
The only question that remains is if Ukraine can negotiate any of their surrender terms with Russia or if the government will finally collapse as the economy collapses and the battle front recedes toward Kharkiv, Odessa and Kiev.
I wish you’d write an article on this. Observing from Australia – this whole bloody continent-nation is barracking for Ukraine, and looking forward to Europe’s wonderful victory over Russia. People have no idea of the realities.
I’m going to put your comment up as a post on hxxps://nuclear-news.net/ -with the title “Is the end now in sight for the war in Ukraine.?”
Thank you Christina.
The propagandists who promote the war in Ukraine are all lavishly funded by the military industrial complex.
The war munitions companies, our Congress, NGO’s and ‘think tanks’ all enjoy an elite lifestyle in exchange for driving the death and destruction of mostly innocent people.
Secularism which has been sold as a placebo for Christianity, has no conscience.
The profit motive has entirely replaced God for far too many.
If anyone wants to get to the heart of the matter.
I believe that Spengler, who wrote that when societies begin to fail, money replaces thought, would have agreed with your description of our present reality. I certainly do.
Debunking the twisted narrative offered by “BigLie news” [h.t.: Karl Sanchez] never gets old, never withers, never loses its delicious taste. Thanks once again,
These days would be less depressing if the so-called “leaders” of the collective West spent their time thinking about how to make people’s lives more enjoyable, gave war a rest, and had something to say besides lies.
I find prominent figures’ emotional problems defining the contours of these times tiring and their tempting fate with nuclear annihilation discouraging, particularly as their enemies are actually working to solve social and material problems and improve the conditions of life for their people.
Good analysis. Trump is powerless to agree anything – his Deep State won’t allow him much room to manoeuvre, and the 3 Musketeers are irrelevant in terms of any settlement – although, arguably, Europe should be leading the charge towards a real security agreement, rather than hindering it, since it is next door and needs to find a way to co-exist with its neighbour.
I never cease to be amazed at the restraint shown by the Russians – something they have learned over a long time as the only ‘adults in the room’ capable of holding back escalation enough to prevent all-out war.
Equally, I am amazed at the rabid Russophobia shown by virtually the whole of Europe – a ‘phobia’ with virtually no basis in reality. Sure, in Soviet times, they did some bad things, but so did the West. In recent times, Russia has become far more civilised than the ‘decadent West’.
This extreme behaviour by the European powers has had devastating consequences, helped along a bit by the US’ destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline’, yet still, they refuse to discuss the real reasons for the rapid economic collapse of the EU and impoverishment of their citizens.
Until reality returns to the West, if it ever does in sufficient quantities [& quality], nothing much will change. Both the US and Europe will continue doubling-down on their failed policies, refusing to learn from their mistakes – to the ever rising cost for their citizens.
As for Ukraine, its chance of survival are looking bleaker by the day.
yes! that we have not been able to influence those in power in the US, regardless of party is but a symptom of the underlying unsustainable flawed structure and processess. Capitalism, inequality, the pretense and claims that ‘democracy’ is a worthy form of governance that serves the common good.
Ukraine has, generally speaking – apart from brief images of Zelenskiy on the news – disappeared from view. Now it’s all Trump and Greenland (or is it really Iceland)… or other distractions – even occasionally the suffering of the people of Gaza and the West Bank – and Lebanon – or ICE agents out of Texas in Minneapolis. So thank-you for this update. And for that extraordinary photo of the Plotters – Zelenskiy PLUS the three EU leaders (MSM – MacronStarmerMerz) all leaning into or back from a phone conversation with Trump. (Did he know with whom he was speaking, I wonder?)
The bigger question is did they know who they were talking to? They couldn’t find their own backsides with a mirror.
Fuck Putin! He is a dictator and is not a blessing for anyone!
Putin is the only sane leader in this farcical war. I support Russia unreservedly. Russia is defending itself again the predatory U S. and it’s EU stooges. Change your name to Foulmouth.
You are crazy. Putin invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. Putin is a criminal and Ukraine should be able to choose if they want to be part of the EU or Russia.
There is NO Russian defence here. Putin changed the borders!
Go to Russia, so you can see how wonderfull it is to live there for the majority of the population!
Been to Russia. Marvellous place and marvellous people. Strange you are on this site given you are obviously well marinaded in the propaganda.
It is not fair to engage handicapped people…..
Well said. But how does all this fit into the New World Order globalist agenda now seemingly unleashed byMark Carney in China and Davos?
Carney, now suddenly hailed by the lying press as the Superhero of all of WEF demoralized Europe, is a fraud, a nothing, a beta-male.
The Davos gambit is finished.
Though it has laid waste to much of Europe and still flailing in the U.S.
The last gasp of a criminal syndicate.
Brilliant reporting and analysis. This is especially sharp:
“…the Western powers indulge themselves in pantomime statecraft or — maybe better put —some kind of group onanism they seem to find satisfying.”
I imagine the true end of the Ukraine war will be Trump annexing Greenland. Having isolated, discredited, drained, and softened Europe over the last decade the American Imperial Presidency can go in for the kill. Unfortunately, I doubt Europe will realize who they were really fighting until both Ukraine and Greenland are gone.
Not the Three Musketeers. The Three Stooges.