Russia and Democratic Europe

DN Opinion

The Russian siege and Europe's response

Victor Ângelo
International Security Advisor. Former UN Under-Secretary-General

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Published on: 25 Sep 2026, Diário de Notícias, Lisboa, Portugal
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The recent Duma elections were well staged. They confirmed the internal control exercised by the regime, the decision to continue the illegal war against Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin's structural policy against Europe, which has gradually evolved from occasional provocations to a strategy of persistent and calculated pressure.

Moscow operates on several complementary fronts: sabotage, cyberattacks, electronic signal jamming, the instrumentalization of migrants, propaganda, military intimidation, and support for extremist and pro-Russian political forces. The purpose is not to immediately destroy Western capabilities—not for lack of will, but through strategic calculation. In reality, it is about testing and exposing the political frailties of democratic Europe, with actions surgically below the threshold of NATO's Article 5. The authorship of these actions is systematically denied, exploiting the inherent slowness of democracies in gathering evidence and making decisions. Putin is an expert at transforming political doubt into an instrument of equivocation and at fostering fractures among allied nations.

This pressure materializes on coordinated fronts that many insist on treating as isolated incidents. From Kaliningrad and other unidentified locations, satellite navigation disruptions are already a recurrent issue, affecting aviation and maritime navigation across a vast swath between Poland and Scandinavia. In terms of sabotage, the damage to submarine telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea since 2024 is now compounded by the threat in the Arctic, where a Russian military unit has reportedly studied ways to disable the region's cables. On the land borders, the migratory instrument orchestrated via Belarus has adapted: in response to the physical barriers erected in Poland, the pressure has shifted towards Lithuania and Latvia through new tactics.

Often treated in isolation by certain political sectors and parts of public opinion, the war of aggression against Ukraine is not a parallel conflict: it is the most brutal manifestation of this very same strategy. There are those who still fail to grasp this connection, viewing support for Kyiv as a mere gesture of solidarity or an obligation that is difficult to justify—a tragic misreading. While on the rest of the continent Moscow operates in the grey zone to avoid collective retaliation, in Ukraine it resorts to direct military force to achieve the same end: to subjugate democracies and unilaterally redraw European security. Support for Ukraine must therefore be unequivocally integrated into the broader framework of defending democratic Europe. Ukraine is our first trench.

Europe's vulnerability, however, is predominantly political and internal. The Kremlin finds Trojan horses within the very heart of the European system: certain extremist parties and movements. Whether through submission, ideological convergence, or financing, or through anti-Americanism or xenophobic repudiation of European integration, these forces ultimately serve Moscow's objectives. By normalizing the Russian narrative, attacking NATO, hindering aid to Kyiv, and sowing scepticism towards European institutions, these extremes amplify the hybrid war.

The European response is dangerously asymmetrical. On the eastern and Nordic flank, the response to the threat is already State doctrine: Finland has integrated hybrid analysis into its comprehensive defence, Estonia is investing in digital resilience, and Warsaw and Vilnius are preparing for escalation scenarios. In Western and Southern Europe, the awakening has been delayed. Although there are shifts in perception and policy in Berlin, Paris, London, Rome, and even Brussels, the response remains too slow, bureaucratic, and fragmented.

This delay reveals a certain incomprehension of the autocratic vision of the regime led by Vladimir Putin. The risk encompasses all of Europe outside the Russian orbit, from the Ukrainian front and the Baltic region to the North Atlantic. Anyone in Lisbon or other European capitals who deems Russia to be distant and their country safe from hybrid attacks demonstrates an embarrassingly naive attitude. In a multidimensional war, traditional geography is no longer a shield. To underestimate this reach is to directly imperil Portuguese critical infrastructure—most notably the Atlantic submarine cables, ports, airports, and energy networks. It is to forget that these connections, if sabotaged, will affect not only our country but a significant part of the West.

This vulnerability is currently exacerbated by the uncertainty surrounding the American commitment. The political distance between Europe and the US continues to widen. They are two perspectives seemingly in the process of divorce. The announced review of the US posture in Europe, involving troop reductions and greater conventional responsibility for allies, has its justifications and will ultimately strengthen European autonomy, but it requires a realistic timetable. The Kremlin is well aware of Western deterrence's reliance on the credibility of its guarantor, and it exploits any hesitation to intensify the pressure.

Russia takes advantage of our difficulty in operating within this intermediate zone between peace and war. It no longer limits itself to testing our degree of tolerance; the signals it sends us should be a cause for concern. It will most likely not act against our part of Europe in the same way it has in Ukraine since 2014, with the occupation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas, and since 2022, with the full-scale invasion. Putin recognizes that an attack on a NATO member could trigger the collective response provisioned in Article 5 and that clandestine actions, including false-flag operations, complicate the unequivocal attribution of responsibility. His political leadership prefers clandestine actions, typical of secret services, agencies in which Putin places a higher degree of trust than in the armed forces. The time has thus come for democratic Europe to abandon its old naivety, grow up, and take its rightful place at the table of international relations: Diplomacy and Defence.

The BRICS New Delhi Summit

 A Dysfunctional Coalition in the Shadow of Beijing: The BRICS+

Victor Ângelo

International Security Advisor. Former UN Under-Secretary-General

Published: 11 Sept 2026, 02:34

The BRICS+ Summit, taking place in New Delhi on the 12th and 13th of September, will essentially be yet another spectacle of geopolitical illusions. The grouping, which began as a platform of financial convenience initiated by Vladimir Putin (with its inaugural summit in 2009), has been successively instrumentalised. Initially, it served Russia as a means to project power and circumvent its isolation; today, it is additionally the principal vehicle for China's hegemonic ambition in the so-called Global South.

Moscow originally viewed the BRICS as a further instrument to force the narrative of a multipolar world in which Russia would maintain the status of an indispensable superpower. Particularly following the escalation of tensions in Eastern Europe, the bloc was envisaged as a diplomatic shield and a financial alternative capable of neutralising Western sanctions. However, harsh economic reality and prolonged isolation have dictated new rules: the Russia of today, increasingly reliant on the export of hydrocarbons at discounted prices to Asia and the importation of critical technology, has been reduced to the status of a subaltern partner to Beijing's colossal economic machine.

It is China that now wields the baton and sets the strategic compass of the grouping. Xi Jinping has grasped that, to challenge the Euro-Atlantic order consolidated since 1945, Chinese economic and military might was insufficient; it was imperative to constitute and lead a coalition that would serve as a counterbalance to the Western bloc.

The 2024 expansion, with the entry of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, along with the integration of Indonesia in 2025, aimed to serve this ambition. Nevertheless, formidable obstacles remain. From the outset, the desire to promote the yuan as a reserve currency, replacing the US dollar, is hindered by a structural contradiction: Beijing refuses to relinquish its stringent capital controls. So long as these controls remain in place, the yuan will struggle to become a credible global reserve currency.

The bloc's discourse regarding the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, however, rests upon criticisms that ought not to be dismissed. For decades, the IMF and the World Bank have been legitimate targets of contestation: the quota review, ratified only in 2016, left China and India under-represented relative to their share of global GDP. The United States preserves a de facto veto over structural decisions, and Europe maintains a monopoly over the leadership of the IMF, reflecting an overarching governance still tethered to the geopolitics of 1944.

Although this Western inertia presents the BRICS+ with a genuine and unifying rallying cry, there is an abyssal difference between reforming multilateral institutions and constructing parallel architectures. China has unequivocally opted for the latter course. The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) did not merely emerge to rectify systemic deficiencies for the sake of global equity. They were also conceived to allow Beijing to finance strategic projects, more or less aligned with the Belt and Road Initiative. These are political projects, not merely developmental ones. By failing to incorporate robust requirements for transparency, debt sustainability, and good governance, they frequently serve to establish a supremacy built upon fragile foundations.

The enlargement of the BRICS has exponentially increased its demographic weight, yet it has fatally diluted its cohesion. By housing democracies and autocracies under the same roof, alongside economies highly integrated into global markets and regimes asphyxiated by sanctions, the group has become chronically dysfunctional.

An organisation that attempts to harmonise the interests of Iran and the United Arab Emirates, or that harbours the border, technological, and military rivalry between India and China, is condemned to tactical paralysis. The NDB itself illustrates this fragility: with subscribed capital insufficient for the colossal needs of the Global South, the bank found itself compelled to suspend its operations in Russia, faced with the threat of American secondary sanctions.

In this landscape of precarious balances, Narendra Modi, the summit's host, will focus on immediate pragmatism, ensuring that India is not dragged into an anti-Western crusade. Modi will restrict the agenda to the realm of the possible: fostering intra-bloc trade (which continues to be eclipsed by these countries' exchanges with the G7); developing interoperable cross-border payment systems outside the SWIFT network; cooperating in the digital and Artificial Intelligence sectors; and promoting bilateral trade in local currencies (yuan, rupees, reais, roubles), albeit always with the underlying concern of averting the replacement of a dependence on the dollar with a new submission to the yuan.

India and Brazil draw the principal dividing line within the bloc here: both advocate for a reform of multilateral systems, but neither supports the radicalisation of the BRICS+. For India, the grouping is merely one of several options for its strategic autonomy. Modi plays simultaneously with Washington, Canberra, and Tokyo within the framework of the QUAD, well aware that the true threat to Indian sovereignty and territorial integrity emanates from across the Himalayan borders and from the naval hegemony of its neighbouring Asian superpower, rather than from Washington.

The final image that the New Delhi Summit will endeavour to project will be one of unity and cooperation. However, the true metric of global geopolitical priorities will reveal itself the following week, during the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Xi Jinping, who at the BRICS will mount his customary ideological defence of inclusive multilateralism, does not plan to travel to the United Nations headquarters to participate in the General Assembly. Instead, on the 24th, a stone's throw from New York, he has scheduled a bilateral meeting at the White House with Donald Trump. The choice exposes the chasm between Chinese rhetoric and its practical interests: political narratives may marshal followers, but the grand decisions concerning the world order continue to be negotiated, above all else, in the bilateral arena of the superpowers.

Vladimir Putin and today's Russia

 https://victorangelo1.substack.com/p/putins-grip-on-power-where-it-stands

A review of Vladimir Putin's absolute control of power.

Singapore could be the right place for a mediation between Russia and Ukraine

 The Russian war against Ukraine requires mediation beyond the Euro‑Atlantic framework

Victor Ângelo

Volodymyr Zelensky’s long open letter to Vladimir Putin on 4 June was not a conventional diplomatic initiative. It was another move in a hybrid war with no end in sight. By publicly calling for a ceasefire at the precise moment when Russia’s economic elite and figures from the Global South were meeting in St Petersburg, the Ukrainian president’s primary aim was not to persuade the Kremlin — and it was revealing that he published the letter before delivering it to its addressee, a gesture openly criticised by Putin’s inner circle. Zelensky sought to exploit visible tensions within the Russian system and to remind the international community that Kyiv continues to take the initiative while Moscow remains mired in a devastating war of attrition.

As a political gesture, Zelensky scored points. He again showed that Putin is more concerned with protecting his image and person than with the fate of his people. But wars on this scale do not end because an aggressor suddenly rediscovers the virtues of moderation. They end when military pressure, economic hardship and political isolation reduce the benefits of escalation and compel serious negotiation. The question is not whether Zelensky’s letter was timely. The question is how to turn pressure and stalemate into a mediation process that is not merely a delaying tactic.

In theory, that mediatory role belongs to the United Nations, which in practice has little or no capacity to alter the political calculations of a permanent member of the Security Council.

The alternatives display equally evident limits. Geneva, one of the locations proposed by Zelensky, has its neutrality challenged by Moscow because of Switzerland’s alignment with EU positions. Gulf states are preoccupied with the crises now besetting the Middle East. Turkey — whose mediation capacities were demonstrated in the Istanbul process of March 2022, when negotiations came closest to a result before collapsing — is a NATO member, a geopolitical space the conflict has already outgrown. India has strategic weight but lacks impartiality. New Delhi has consistently shown greater interest in preserving strategic ambiguity than in applying real pressure on Moscow, not least because it has significantly increased imports of Russian oil and purchases of military equipment and components for the development of its civil nuclear energy sector.

A credible host must satisfy four criteria simultaneously. First, political acceptability: it must be accepted, above all, by Moscow and Kyiv, and have political credibility in Washington and Beijing.

Second, legal latitude: the decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) cannot be ignored. The host country must provide a clear legal basis to receive senior Russian representatives without undermining the accountability framework the ICC defends.

Third, technical competence: extraordinarily complex issues are at stake — sanctions, frozen assets, security guarantees, reconstruction financing, energy corridors. Peace processes do not fail for want of rhetoric; they fail because guarantees are vague and violations go unsanctioned.

Fourth, structural discretion: public negotiations are fruitless. A host that cannot protect the confidentiality of working sessions will render the process impossible before it begins.

In light of these criteria, I look to Singapore and judge that it deserves more attention than it has received — but the argument requires precision, not mere faith. The country possesses a rare set of institutional conditions that make it a plausible — if not obvious — candidate to coordinate an international mediation.

Indeed, in terms of political acceptability, Singapore simultaneously maintains a strategic partnership with the United States and counts China as its largest trading partner, with decades of functional relations that include discreet channels of communication between Beijing and Western actors. This dual interdependence reveals a substantial capacity to act as a credible interlocutor.

Regarding the ICC, Singapore is not a State party to the Rome Statute. It could also suspend its own sanctions on Russia as an incentive to participate, without compromising the broader architecture of Western sanctions. And it could negotiate with Moscow to be removed from the Kremlin’s list of “hostile countries”. A process of this kind would require concessions that may at first seem unimaginable, but perhaps are not. Curiously, Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong, will visit the Russian city of Kazan next week as part of a Russia–ASEAN summit and will meet Vladimir Putin.

Singapore is one of the world’s major financial and international arbitration centres, with institutional capacity to deal with the most complex aspects of any peace process. Its record also shows it can manage confidentiality, logistics and security for high‑risk events — with exemplary diplomatic professionalism.

Just as Paris, Oslo or Doha became venues for diplomatic processes that transcended their geographic scale, the effectiveness of mediation often depends more on the conditions a host can offer than on its military or geopolitical weight. Singapore would remove the process from the fraught Euro‑Atlantic frame and rewrite it within a genuinely multilateral context.

Intellectual honesty requires recognising the limits. No country can force Russia to negotiate. Mediation will only begin when the Kremlin concludes that prolonging the aggression has become politically and economically unsustainable, and a military disaster. That moment may not be near. But it will come, and it is important to have a prepared and competent diplomatic architecture to initiate mediation.

Singapore would still have to accept the role. Washington, Beijing and other capitals should discuss the option and discreetly sound out the country’s political willingness, as well as the receptivity of Moscow and Kyiv. This mediation, when it occurs, must be handled with great circumspection and originality.

(Published in Portuguese in Diário de Notícias on 12/06/2026)

The Bear Meets the Big Brother, the Dragon: Putin and Xi Jinping

 

An Alliance Between Unequal Powers: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin

Victor Ângelo

Op-ed published in Diário de Notícias on 22/05/2026

 

When Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin meet—as happened once again this week—we witness a highly choreographed geopolitical display, rich in symbolism. They speak of a multipolar world and toast to a ‘new era’ and a ‘no limits’ partnership—the celebrated expression coined during their February 2022 meeting, just days before the launch of Russia’s inadmissible war of aggression against Ukraine. The messages they seek to send to the rest of the planet, particularly to Europe, are highly explicit, and they were repeated this week. First, that China and Russia are bound by an unbreakable alliance, indispensable for constructing the new world order they deem necessary. Second, they intend for this order to differ from the one established in recent decades by the Western world, especially since the era of the Reagan-Thatcher tandem and the period following the end of the Cold War. We are clearly facing a Sino-Russian project to reorder international relations in their own fashion.

 

It is, however, a flawed partnership, an unequal relationship—from an economic perspective, for instance. China is undisputedly the centre of gravity and the primary axis of its neighbour’s economy. It now accounts for between 40% and 45% of Russian imports. This is an overwhelming dependency. Conversely, barely more than 4% of China’s foreign trade is conducted with Russia, according to Bloomberg data. This is an insignificant percentage when compared to the volume of trade between China and other economies, be they the US, the EU, or ASEAN. Furthermore, the Chinese currency, the yuan, is the predominant tender in Moscow’s financial market. The yuan has virtually replaced the majority of transactions previously executed in US dollars, with the remainder settled in roubles.

 

Political inequality compounds this economic disparity. This is the most significant dimension of the asymmetry between the two countries. A tacit hierarchy exists that places the Chinese president at the top. One might say that Xi envisions, proposes, and makes things happen. Putin follows when he can, provided he sees that it does not jeopardise his domestic political image, where he still dictates the law.

 

Xi Jinping intends to be the architect of the new international structure, built with calmness, firmness, and time. He plays without unnecessary haste. He is entirely convinced that, before long, his country will be a rival on an equal footing with the US, and that global challenges will place China at the heart of multilateral responses.

 

Vladimir Putin, for his part, mistook pompous parades for military capability. He ended up bogged down in an intensely draining war, which he made the blunder of initiating with utter disregard for international law and with armed forces that recall the highly doubtful legend of Potemkin villages. Putin continues to believe he is a strategic giant, when in reality Ukraine is laying bare his feet of clay. Putin is likewise a stain on Xi Jinping’s international reputation. Xi finds himself forced to defend him in various political arenas, even though he knows this entails reputational costs for his regime, which wishes to be seen as the champion of peace and multilateral cooperation.

 

Xi’s strategic objectives are essentially twofold. On the one hand, to ensure Chinese dominance in the region defined by the Pacific and Indian Oceans. On the other, to gain the lead regarding the technologies that are shaping the twenty-first century. Achieving this requires time, and it requires China’s main rival powers to remain distracted by other matters.

 

This is where Putin’s political blunders prove to be of immeasurable value to China. Though it is seldom considered, the endless war in Ukraine keeps a significant portion of the strategic capabilities, military resources, and diplomatic attention of China’s main rivals far removed from potential criticism and measures against Chinese domestic and foreign policy. Every crisis meeting at NATO headquarters or in EU capitals represents a tactical distraction for Washington and creates rifts between Europe and the US. All of this allows President Xi to continue the process of economically and politically subordinating Russia, while modernising the People’s Liberation Army and shielding China’s economy against potential Western sanctions. Putin is thus an excellent political distraction.

 

Xi’s greatest anxiety regarding Russia concerns the martial philosophy that continues to prevail in the Kremlin. When Moscow hinted that it might use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it was Beijing—and not just Washington—that also silently but firmly drew a red line before Putin’s intentions. Xi needs a prolonged and draining conflict that bleeds the West, but he cannot afford to permit or promote an apocalyptic escalation that would destroy the global order upon which China’s rise depends.

 

Consequently, Xi’s support for Russia has strict, albeit undeclared, limits. That is the reality, despite public assertions. China buys Russian oil and gas at a discount, in yuan, and within limits—there was no agreement on the new trans-Siberian pipeline, which deeply disappointed the delegation from Moscow. And it supplies Moscow with ‘dual-use’ goods, including military-applicable items like microchips and drone components. It does so discreetly, but in vast quantities. It denies, however, any accusation of direct lethal military aid. Why? To avoid secondary Western sanctions against its economy, which relies heavily on foreign trade. The ‘architect’ knows that a direct confrontation with the West at this juncture would derail his ambitions and imperil the authority of the Chinese Communist Party.

 

The essential thing is to understand the true nature of the relationship between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and to respond to the serious risks it poses. Note the various agreements signed during this visit—for example, in the fields of atomic energy, space, and AI. These matters do not allow for simplistic analysis. China and Russia do not represent the same type of challenge. Yet, despite the asymmetries, a dangerous strategic convergence exists between both regimes.

The Hungarian parliamentary elections and Viktor Orbán's ruses

Hungarian voters will decide this Sunday, 12 April, which political forces will be able to form a majority in the National Parliament and, consequently, who will be the country's future Prime Minister. The rest of Europe is anxiously awaiting the outcome of this election.

Viktor Orbán, who has led the government since 2010, is seeking his fifth consecutive term. Orbán, who plays on three boards simultaneously—Putin's Russia, Trump's America, and Brussels' Europe—has systematically exploited each of them to maximise his chances of re-election. He represents a contemporary form of political authoritarianism exercised within a formally democratic institutional framework. According to several analysts, this is one of the clearest examples of politics centred on the almost absolute power of the leader—an ancient phenomenon that is being reborn in the European space, in parallel with what is happening in other parts of the globe.

The ruses he has employed are varied. Electoral districts were redrawn to maximise the relative weight of rural votes, where his party, Fidesz, controls the electorate more easily. Conversely, the weight of urban votes, which traditionally favour the opposition, has been diluted. He abolished campaign spending limits, which disproportionately benefits the current governing party, Fidesz; according to the conclusions of various analysts, the party uses state resources as if they were its own money. This is, moreover, a recurring pattern of deliberate confusion between public resources and partisan or private interests. Various reports and analyses have noted that public funds, besides enriching those in power, are used as "ready cash" to muster support in rural areas.

Furthermore, the current government has made it easier for Hungarians living abroad—who traditionally support Orbán—to register to vote. He controls, directly or indirectly, about 90% of the media and manipulates social networks, all with the aim of spreading the message that the main opposition candidate, Péter Magyar, would be a puppet of Ursula von der Leyen and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Trump administration openly supports Viktor Orbán. Vice President JD Vance, a strangely ideological and profoundly retrograde politician, was in Hungary just a few days ago. He shamelessly interfered in the electoral process of an EU country. We must have the courage to say that interference of this kind is an unacceptable act.

Vance came to support a European leader who has very special ties with Vladimir Putin. The Russian president has the destruction of the EU and NATO at the top of his political agenda. He is a politician who asserts himself as our enemy and who seriously threatens our democratic space.

Orbán is a "Trojan Horse" for Putin, as recently suggested by The Washington Post. According to this prestigious American daily, there are credible reports—endorsed by multiple European sources—that the Hungarian government keeps the Kremlin informed, in real-time, of what is discussed in high-level meetings in Brussels. For example, there are credible allegations, published by major media outlets and cited by political intelligence sources, that Hungarian officials take advantage of breaks in European Council sessions to call Sergey Lavrov to obtain direct instructions from Moscow. On the other hand, it is suspected that NATO has stopped sharing certain strategic military plans with Hungary. There are fears that Orbán's government could compromise Alliance secrets regarding the defence of Ukraine.

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, considers Orbán and his clique a direct threat to the security of the EU and its member states. The opinion of Tusk, who served as President of the European Council and leads a country well-acquainted with the Kremlin's clandestine practices, cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet, as some politicians are wont to do.

One of the most characteristic events of Orbán and Putin's cunning way of operating involved an attempt, attributed by many to Russian secret services, to orchestrate a fake attack against a pipeline or against Orbán himself on the eve of the elections. The intention would be clear: to blame these "staged crimes" on the opposition, allegedly in the pay of Zelenskyy and foreign interests, thereby emotionally boosting the chances of victory for Orbán, the "true" defender of the fatherland.

The European parties allied with Fidesz form one of the most reactionary families in the European Parliament: the Patriots for Europe. In truth, they possess neither patriotic sentiment nor any desire to defend European values. Democracy with ethics in public life is not their concern. They do not believe in the vital importance of cohesion within the European Union and do everything to undermine it. This political family includes Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (France), VOX (Spain), Lega (Italy), and ultra-nationalist and xenophobic parties from Czechia, Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia, and even Chega from Portugal, to name but a few of the most radical. The greatest danger comes from France: if the RN were to win the 2027 presidential elections, the Patriots for Europe would be in a better position to help achieve what both the Kremlin and Donald Trump's MAGA movement so desire—to implode the European Union.

It is fundamental that the Hungarian opposition obtains a majority on Sunday. More than just an anomaly, the Orbán case exposes a persistent European fragility: the difficulty of defending democracy when its hollowed-out from within its own institutions or member states.

Machiavelli writes to Vladimir Putin about Ukraine

 To: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Kremlin, Moscow

From: Niccolò Machiavelli, Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence

Date: 21 January 2026

Subject: On the Necessity of Outcome and the Perils of Protraction

Sir,

I observe your current enterprise from the cold detachment that only history and the study of human nature can provide. You have embarked upon a course that I once described as the most dangerous for any Prince: the attempt to alter a state by force without the means to secure it swiftly.

Permit me to offer a few observations on the verità effettuale—the effective truth—of your situation.

On the Mismanagement of Cruelty

In my writings, I argued that injuries should be done all at once, so that being felt less, they offend less. 

You, sir, have committed the strategic sin of a "slow cruelty." By allowing this conflict to endure since 2022, you have not inspired the "salutary fear" that secures a conquest; instead, you have cultivated a "persistent hatred" that fuels an inexhaustible resistance. 

A Prince may be feared, but he must avoid being hated, for the hatred of a people is a fortress that no artillery can breach.

On the Danger of Auxiliaries and the Union of Rivals

You have achieved what few thought possible: you have given your enemies a reason for Virtù. By threatening the safety of the European states, you have forced them to abandon their habitual indecision. 

They are now seeking their own "arms"—as Victor Ângelo and others suggest—to no longer depend on the "auxiliary forces" of Washington. You have inadvertently acted as the architect of your rival’s unity. A wise Prince seeks to keep his neighbors divided; you have forged them into a hammer.

On Fortune and the People

You have relied heavily on the Fortuna of winter, energy, and political shifts in the West. But Fortune is a woman, and if you wish to master her, you must conquer her by force and audacity, not by waiting for her to change her mind. 

You assumed the people of the Ukraine would be "spectators" to their own subjugation. You forgot that a people who have tasted even a shadow of liberty will never rest until they regain it. Their memory of freedom is longer than your memory of empire.

The Recommendation of the Fox

Sir, the lion alone cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox alone cannot defend himself from wolves. 

You are currently trapped. If victory is not rapid and decisive, as I have always maintained, the Prince must find a way to "withdraw with dignity" or "reframe the outcome" as a triumph before the state’s treasury and the people's patience are entirely consumed.

Sun Tzu, a man of the East whom I have come to respect in this realm of shades, rightly notes that no nation benefits from prolonged war. 

If you cannot be a Lion that destroys, you must be the Fox that negotiates a peace that looks like a victory. To continue as you are is not strength; it is a lack of Cervello—of brains.

In the end, history does not judge the "justice" of your cause, but the "stability" of your result. At present, you are producing only ruin.

I remain, your cold and watchful servant,

Niccolò Machiavelli