This week we talk about Russia, Ukraine, and the Warsaw Pact.
We also discuss Patriot interceptors, Hungary, and Article 5.
Recommended Book: The Alternative by Nick Romeo
Transcript
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, was founded in the wake of WWII, in 1949, in order to affirm unity between non-Soviet European nations, Atlantic nations like Greenland and Iceland, and the US and Canada, over in North America.
The main purpose of this unity was to establish a sort of firewall around the western perimeter of the Soviet Union, which at the time was the only global superpower other than the US, because much of the world, but especially Europe, was struggling to recover from the destruction wrought during the second world war, and the Soviets had made pretty clear that they intended to take over everything: they’d already gobbled up most of their neighbors, creating an increasingly expansive buffer zone of Soviet states around their central, Russian territory, and most of the conflicts still playing out, or threatening to play out, globally at this point were either overt or slightly concealed proxy fights between the capitalist democratic forces of the West and the authoritarian, Stalinist forces of the Eastern Soviet bloc.
NATO was thus a wall of nations that said, hey, if you attack any of us, that will mean you’re attacking all of us. And that ‘all of us’ included the United States, which was the only individual force capable of standing up to the Soviets at this point, due to its massive conventional military force, and the threat posed by its huge, and still growing, nuclear weapons arsenal.
The Soviet counter to NATO was called the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955, and these rival alliances carved up Europe during the latter half of the 20th century, until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
As military alliances go, NATO has been fairly successful—Article 5, the portion of the agreement that triggers if a NATO member is attacked, calling the other members to come to their aid, was only activated once, following the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001; that led to NATO involvement in the US’s attacks on Afghanistan in subsequent years, though NATO forces also periodically got involved in other regional conflicts, like the Kosovo War in 1999, and the Libyan Civil War in 2011, in both cases working with the UN to protect civilians from the actions of violent leaders or assailants. But beyond that, no one, including the Soviets, messed with NATO.
NATO has since accepted sixteen new member states, and that expansion is one of the supposed rationales for Russian President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. During Putin’s first presidency, Russia and NATO had been on pretty solid, even cooperative terms, which had some questioning the point of the treaty, since it was originally formed to counter Russian aggression. In Putin’s second presidency, though, things took an antagonistic turn, and when Russia illegally invaded and annexed a part of Ukraine, called Crimea, back in 2014, NATO ceased all cooperation with Russia.
When Russian forces launched a full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO suddenly seemed more important than ever, as a reinvigorated Russia, with the stated purpose of, in Putin’s words, reclaiming portions of Europe that were previously part of the extended Soviet Union, parts of the Warsaw Pact, that posed a serious threat to just about everyone, especially European nations that border Russia and Russian allies, like Belarus.
What I’d like to talk about today is the 2026 meeting of NATO leaders, and the general state of affairs on the ground in Ukraine, as of mid-2026.
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Leaders of NATO member nations typically meet for a summit each year, though the schedule varies a bit, depending on the needs of the moment, and whether there are any NATO-relevant crises that might nudge things forward or cause them to be delayed.
The 2026 NATO summit was held in Turkey’s capitol city, Ankara, on July 7 and 8. It was the second such summit hosted by Turkey, and the 36th NATO summit, overall.
This meeting was notable for several reasons, many of them directly related to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but also the US’s continued ambivalence, at times bordering on active antagonism, toward the treaty, under the Trump administration.
Over the course of the past 4 years, Russia has continued to make threats toward the rest of Europe, implying or suggesting that it might have to act militarily against its NATO-member neighbors. During the same period, the US has criticized European NATO member states for not carrying their own weight, most of these nations not spending enough of their GDP on their military and defense infrastructure, in accordance with their treaty obligations, and most more or less relying on the US’s military (and nuclear) umbrella to threaten would-be attackers.
This has long been the NATO state of affairs, but under the Trump administration, the US made it a point of contention. And though it’s been a relatively slow process—it’s not easy for a government to pivot toward that scale of remilitarization—these nations have agreed to a 5% of GDP target for defense and defense-related spending by 2035, and in the last year alone, European and Canadian defense spending has increase by 20%; not all of which is immediately convertible into useful, front-line assets and soldiers, but it does represent a significant change to the status quo, which could eventually, in less than a decade, result in a European front-line that’s more European and less NATO, for the first time since that immediate post-WWII period.
This meeting also featured a reaffirmation of Article 5, which has always been there and in effect, but some analysis has questioned whether NATO allies, including the US, would actually step up if Russia were to attack the Baltics, for instance. This is a seemingly small move that serves to underline that stance of, if you attack one of us, you’ve attacked all of us, at a moment in which Russia seems to be toying with the idea of picking off pieces of the alliance, to see if they can get away with it, like they did with Crimea back in 2014.
There were also announcements related to a fresh $50 billion in defense industry deals, NATO members investing heavily in US-made arms and new assets from elsewhere across the bloc, and a lot of that money is going to drone-war infrastructure and militarized AI models that they hope will prepare NATO for current and next-generation conflicts. Another $217 billion in additional financing commitments from banks across the bloc have also been announced.
Ukraine scored some pretty big wins at this year’s NATO summit, getting a license from the US to build Patriot interceptors, the lack of which have resulted in big gaps in the country’s defense system, and about $80 billion in military equipment, assistance, and training for Ukrainian forces was committed by the bloc. There was also a verbal commitment that NATO and its allies “stand united in our unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” Which isn’t nothing, at a moment in which the US is led by Trump, a person who has frequently sided with Putin in Ukraine-related matters.
Ukraine has also signed some bilateral drone deals with NATO member states, reaffirming that Ukraine has become one of the most in-demand experts on this subject, at a moment in which it’s becoming clearer and clearer that low-cost, high-impact drones and similar technologies are likely to dominate battlefields for the foreseeable future.
There were also some tensions, mostly sparked by Trump, over his administration’s desire to buy Greenland, which is not a notion that’s supported by anyone else in the bloc, and the lack of NATO support for the US’s war in Iran.
Overall, though, there was a decent sense of unity and progress, and Ukraine, again, not a NATO member state, but a nation that hopes to eventually join NATO, received a warm welcome and a bunch of support, which hasn’t always been the case at recent summits.
Part of that warmth is likely the consequence of Ukraine’s recent victories on and off the battlefield.
Russian continues to pummel Ukrainian cities and kill Ukrainian soldiers and civilians en masse, but Ukraine has managed to keep them from gobbling up territory on scale, and in some recents months, has actually taken territory back. They’ve also gotten very good at successfully attacking Russian infrastructure, especially energy infrastructure, like oil refineries, cargo tankers, and energy storage facilities, across the entire expanse of Russia; something few experts would have predicted that Ukraine would be capable of doing at the beginning of this conflict. This has dramatically weakened Russia’s economy, at least in the short-term.
Ukraine now has a thriving defense industry, predicated on the rapid iteration of inexpensive but disproportionately sophisticated arms, especially drones and other aerial weapons, but also autonomous speed boats and other such asymmetric systems. Russia has been frantically upgrading its systems, too, but now that Ukraine has figured out methods for bypassing or overwhelming Russian defenses, it’s been able to strike, quickly and repeatedly, high-value targets that have brought the war home to normal Russians who live far from the front lines, even in Moscow. That combined with strategies and weapons that have turned the frontlines into a meat-grinder for Russian soldiers has weighed heavily on Russian morale, at least for those with boots on the ground.
As a consequence of those energy infrastructure attacks, the Russian government has been forced to ration some types of energy product—a huge embarrassment for a country that has at times been called a gas station run by a mafia, their energy products are fundamental to who they are, and their economy—and Russians in Crimea, which was taken from Ukraine more than a decade ago, have been fleeing, as this peninsula is close to Ukraine, is part of Ukraine, just occupied by Russia right now, and has several vulnerable arteries through which people and supplies are shipped from Russia, and those arteries have been frequently attacked and are difficult to protect.
Ukraine is still persistently on the back foot, then, and still facing an enemy that has essentially every advantage, from money to manpower to foreign support to the size of its arsenal.
Against all odds, though, Ukraine continues to not just hold its ground, but to build up its military capabilities, innovate on existing models, and perform high-leverage attacks against its in every way superior invader; which is, in turn, netting it more support from outside allies that have, at times, wavered—and that’s especially true of the US under the Trump administration, but until recently the EU’s support has also been hamstrung by the recently usurped Hungarian leader, and Putin ally, Viktor Orbán. Following Orbán’s ouster, the EU was able to move forward with paused support commitments, though, and while Trump is still holding back on much of the same from the US, there’s a chance that more success by Ukraine will continue to tip the balance away from total freeze-out, to more, and more substantial, if perhaps still grudging, support.
Show Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Ankara_NATO_summit
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-occupation-update-july-9-2026/
https://acleddata.com/monitor/ukraine-conflict-monitor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_war_(2022%E2%80%93present)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/world/europe/a-license-to-make-patriot-defense-systems-may-be-a-big-boost-for-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/world/europe/ukraine-russia-patriot-air-defense.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/04/world/europe/ukraine-russia-crimea-war-strikes.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/world/europe/ukraine-patriots-trump-russia.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/world/europe/russia-nato-europe-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/world/europe/nato-trump-rutte-ankara-turkey.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/03/world/europe/putin-ukraine-donbas-battlefield-visit.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/03/world/europe/russia-gas-shortages.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/world/europe/russia-ukraine-military-battlefield.html
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-oil-trump-zelenskyy-putin-6cb5602f1cf309533ed0cf5c734e19d8
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70yd1g67z5o
https://www.france24.com/en/russia-bans-oil-exports-as-ukraine-strikes-cause-fuel-shortages
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-creates-long-range-military-071810180.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/10/ukraine-russia-crimea-fuel-oil.html
https://www.dw.com/ru/reuters-rf-perekryla-azovodonskoj-kanal-posle-atak-bpla/a-77913327
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/10/politics/senators-agreement-trump-administration-russia-sanctions
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/10/ukraine-war-briefing-kyiv-reaches-political-agreement-with-us-on-patriot-interceptor-production-licences
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/09/nato-trump-rutte-ukraine-russia-us-iran.html
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/eleven-takeaways-from-the-nato-summit-in-ankara/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/8/five-key-takeaways-from-the-nato-summit-in-ankara
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/8/nato-pledges-70-billion-euros-for-ukraine-as-trump-praises-peace-progress
