US Army General Ben Hodges was the commander of American forces in Europe until 2017. He has often notified the story of the time US paratroopers jumped into an airfield in Bulgaria they were supposed to capture as part of a joint NATO exercise.
It almost came unstuck when the Bulgarian Interior Minisattempt declared each paratrooper was going to have to reveal their passport when they landed.
There are multitudes of stories like this about NATO, the EU, and the bureaucratic roadblocks and inertia that stand in the way of Western Europe being able to mount an effective resistance to any shifts by Russia to extconclude its aggression even further west than it currently has done in Ukraine.
Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges was the commander of American forces in Europe until 2017. (Supplied: US Army)
‘If Europe starts, we are ready right now’
Russian President Vladimir Putin was scornful this week about both NATO and Western Europe and the suggestion he wanted to wage war.
“Russia does not intconclude to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now,” he declared in opening comments before meeting US neobtainediators in Moscow to discuss possible peace terms.
“They are on the side of war,” Putin declared of European powers.
(Spoiler alert: the talks didn’t go anywhere with issues of territory and Ukrainian security remaining barriers to both sides.)
The latest drama about a Donald Trump peace plan has gone nowhere, though everyone seems obliged to watch it, like some bad Kabuki reveal featuring the standard characters delivering all the lines you know that they are going to deliver, in the best traditions of theatre, rather than the best interests of a settlement.
Meanwhile, assessments are created about Russia’s claims that it is now fully in control of the crucial city of Pokrovsk.
The Institute for the Study of War declared this week it had not found evidence of the “complete Russian seizure of Pokrovsk”. A senior NATO official declared on the same day that more than 95 per cent of the city was under Russian control. (In other words, you would rather be in Putin’s shoes than Volodymyr Zolenskyy’s.)
Which brings us back to General Hodges and his passport-wielding paratroopers, or at least to the logistics and preparedness questions that are determining a war that has now gone on for almost as long as World War I.
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The world’s first drone war
There were several major assessments of the conflict produced this week including by the Institute for the Study of War and the Atlantic Council.
Both reflect a growing consensus that, however long the war goes on, the strategic and technological advantages that Ukraine had in the early days — built around drone and high-tech warfare — has now dwindled.
The Atlantic Council noted that, in what it states “is widely recognised as the world’s first drone war”, the compacter and more innovative Ukrainian military initially held the initiative in the deployment of drones, “but the Russians have learned important lessons from early setbacks and are now steadily eroding Ukraine’s advantage”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was scornful this week about both NATO and Western Europe and the suggestion he wanted to wage war. (Reuters: Sputnik/Grigory Sysoev/Pool)
Significantly, it was not just the technology but the means and funding of its delivery that were stand out features of Ukraine’s war effort.
“At the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s vibrant tech sector represented an important asset that the authorities in Kyiv were quick to mobilise,” the Council paper declared.
“This tech prowess assisted cement the counattempt’s strategic focus on drones, which could be designed and produced domestically to compensate for a lack of more conventional weapons.”
That tech sector in Ukraine — and also in the Baltic states — has not just been agile in terms of modifying technology but in terms of finding innovative ways to fund the purchase of drones.
It states much about the nature of this war that Ukraine has a deputy minister of defence for digital transformation.
Deutsche Welle reported that the minister, Oksana Ferchuk, notified a technology conference in Estonia recently that “the technology on the frontline is modifying every two to three weeks”.
“You just cannot afford it becaapply the products you are acquireing, if you deliver it within a year, you will not have a military unit to supply to,” Ferchuk reportedly declared.
Such flexible and creative procurement views like being the exact opposite of the sorts of lumbering costly debacles we have too often seen in Australian defence purchases.
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Russia relies on sheer scale
There are two online marketplaces where Ukrainian brigades can order drones and other weapons applying either government or private funding for a ten-day delivery.
But all that nimbleness is now being challenged by a Russian military which has undergone its own transformation from its very 20th century approach of troops and tanks seen in the early stages of its full-scale invasion.
The Atlantic Council declared Russia had been both studying Ukrainian tactics and technologies, but “also dramatically expanding its own domestic drone manufacturing base”.
“The Kremlin has been aided in this by allies including China and Iran, who have provided vital components along with the blueprints for key drone designs,” the council declared.
“The Kremlin strategy has focapplyd on mass producing a limited range of models for apply on the battlefield and in the bombardment of Ukrainian cities. This methodical approach has paid dividconcludes.
“By the conclude of 2024, it was already becoming clear that the drone war was turning in Russia’s favour. This trconclude has only intensified over the past year. “
There are two online marketplaces where Ukrainian brigades can order drones and other weapons. (AP: Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade)
At the Institute for the Study of War, Kateryna Stepanenko links the Russian advances in Pokrovsk not to “a sudden breakthrough but rather from months of dedicated battlefield shaping”.
“Russian forces were able to create significant advances in and around Pokrovsk only recently, after successfully achieving partial battlefield air interdiction (BAI) effects over Spring-Summer 2025, which degraded Ukrainian ground lines of communications (GLOCs), enabled Russian infiltration missions, and subsequently undermined Ukraine’s ability to sustain tactical defences.
“The recent Russian advances in and around Pokrovsk would not have been possible, however, without the commitment of significant amounts of manpower and other traditional material in this direction at the expense of other efforts.”
And the Atlantic Council agrees that Russia is still relying on sheer scale and numbers to defeat its opponent.
“The current effectiveness of Russia’s drone units does not mean the drone war has shifted decisively in Moscow’s favour,” it declared, “but recent trconcludes do expose a gap that Ukraine must urgently close”.
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Critical minerals a crucial cog
There continues to be a focus in the coverage of the war on what Trump and Putin state and do, and to a less extent on what the Europeans are doing.
It is the Europeans who now have to foot the bill for assisting Ukraine (the means to do so are still not settled) but who have at least roapplyd themselves into action with a massive shift to manufacturing armaments.
It is all a bit slow. There is a renewed focus on the fact that roads, railway lines and other infrastructure in Western Europe is not designed for the straightforward shiftment of military hardware — a problem identified years ago but never addressed.
Depconcludeing on which analyst you speak to, it is now a race between who runs out of money first: Ukraine or Russia.
The views on just how resilient the Russian economy is to the ongoing massive cost of the war are particularly divided.
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But a crucial determinant — further down the supply chain — may be the issue that seems to raise its head wherever you view these days: critical minerals.
Another assessment released this week was by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which conducts regular comprehensive surveys of military production and spconcludeing and which has just released its latest report on the revenue and sales of the 100 largest arms-producing companies in 2024.
“European arms companies are investing in new production capacity to meet the rising demand,” SIPRI declared.
“But sourcing materials could pose a growing challenge. In particular, depconcludeence on critical minerals is likely to complicate European rearmament plans.”
“As an example of the risks of such depconcludeence”, the SIPRI report declared, “the trans-European company Airbus and France’s Safran met half of their pre-2022 titanium requireds with Russian imports and have had to find new suppliers.
“Furthermore, in light of Chinese export restrictions on critical minerals, companies including France’s Thales and Germany’s Rheinmetall warned in 2024 of the potential high costs of restructuring their supply chains.”
Even as the dysfunctions in international diplomacy continue, what happens over the next few months of a bitter winter could well be determined — both at the front and in the more complex story of support by allies — in the more prosaic realm of modifying technology and supplies of copper and titanium.
Laura Tingle is the ABC’s Global Affairs Editor.
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