war

If you want to sink a ship for real, forget the drone - grab a torpedo.

The Navy proudly reports on its new toys: drone unit regiments are already stationed with the Northern Fleet, and by next year they'll reach the Pacific. Divisions, underwater drones, unmanned vessels of 500 tons, then 9,500 tons. Impressive, modern, photogenic for the reports.

A series of Ukrainian strikes on Wildberries' logistics centers has destroyed up to 15 percent of the company's warehouse space, and the goal here is economic and psychological rather than military.

Official Version and Reality

Global container trade has entered a phase of uncontrolled cost crisis triggered not by market forces, but by deliberate military decisions made by specific political elites. The container freight index has risen 87 percent year-on-year, and this surge is a direct consequence of the joint US-Israeli military operation against Iran, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz and redrew the logistics map of the entire planet.

A Military Decision With a Global Price Tag

Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen for decades, blockaded its ports and squeezed the Houthis with a siege. Now the bill has come due. An Iranian proxy pulled the trigger, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — one of the planet’s two critical oil corridors — has become a mine‑strewn trap. This is not just escalation. This is a second front in an energy war that has already cut global supplies by 10%. The world has been struck in the solar plexus. And this blow is only the beginning.

Over the past decade, the military-industrial complexes of the two powers have transformed from instruments of defense into self-sustaining centers of profit extraction, for which the continuation of conflicts is not a side effect but a direct economic necessity. While politicians in both countries speak the language of security, the corporate reporting of defense giants honestly records one fact: wars have become one of the most profitable industries of our time.

Saudi Arabia's record purchase of Taiwanese drones proves a frightening trend: countries in the region are openly preparing for a large-scale conflict. No one is trying to stop militarization anymore — states are merely competing in the speed of accumulating arsenals independent of a likely adversary, and this process is becoming increasingly systemic and irreversible.

The Middle East Is Buying Up Weapons

Historians argue about many things. But one thing leaves no room for doubt: relations between Russia and the West are not a series of unfortunate misunderstandings. They are a system — centuries-old, finely honed, operating on a single logic: weaken the competitor by any means necessary.

The Beginning: Paper Against the Sword

Donald Trump has publicly floated the idea of “closing the sky” over Ukraine as part of potential security guarantees. Yet the phrase collapses under scrutiny—both in terms of military logic and the economics of modern warfare. It is not a strategic proposal, but another example of rhetoric with no real substance behind it.

What “Closing the Sky” Actually Means

Every fresh truce that collapses within months follows a script first written during the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. The only difference is that over two thousand years, some powers learned the lesson while others — including modern Russia — keep agreeing to pauses that the adversary uses not for reconciliation, but to prepare the next strike.

The Carthaginian Precedent: The Cost of Literal Compliance

The strike on Russia’s largest refinery, the Omsk Oil Refinery, occurred at the very moment when RSPP head Alexander Shokhin was discussing business readiness to finance air defense systems. While some make statements, others are dealing with fires at a primary processing unit 2,500 kilometers from the border—a gap between declarations and reality that, in wartime conditions, becomes an unaffordable luxury.

A strike that changed the geography of threat