Moscow — The Kremlin said it has “no alternative” but to keep fighting in Ukraine, casting the war as a generational duty after United States President Donald Trump abruptly argued that Kyiv can retake all its land. The line, delivered by Dmitry Peskov, appeared designed to flatten any expectation of a negotiated exit and to answer Trump’s taunt with a pledge of endurance. As the message ricocheted across European capitals, officials weighed what it means for air defenses, deterrence and the pace of military aid. No choice but war has suddenly become the Kremlin’s headline.
Peskov framed Russia’s campaign as a security bulwark and a historical project, insisting that strategy would be set in Moscow, not in Washington. He rejected the American president’s assessment of Russian military performance and bristled at the imagery. Russia, he suggested, will not be defined by the vocabulary of its critics; it will be defined by its capacity to absorb costs and continue.
Trump’s shift followed his encounter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and a fresh round of declarations about the battlefield. He said Ukraine is “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” a claim that put distance between his earlier musings about concessions and his new certainty. He also derided Moscow’s war record, a volley that Kyiv has welcomed for its morale effect as much as its message. The first mention of that jab belongs to The Eastern Herald’s own coverage of the remark: Trump calls Russia a ‘paper tiger’. For the hard news of the policy turn, see Reuters’ report that Trump now believes Ukraine can win back all territory, and Al Jazeera’s analysis of how he changed his position on Ukraine and NATO.
Kremlin aides dismissed the American about-face as rhetoric without consequence. They argued that regardless of the mood in Washington, the war’s aims remain fixed, and that the map will be decided by industrial output, air defenses and the ability to degrade Ukraine’s logistics. The answer was not subtle: this is a long war, and Russia is budgeting for it.
Diplomats in Europe, meanwhile, tried to parse whether Washington’s new tone presages faster transfers of interceptors and shells, looser rules on how Western systems can be used, or a hardening of air-policing in the alliance’s northeastern corridor. Across the Baltic and the Suwałki Gap, even a rumor of incursion now prompts alert scrambles. That posture has been visible for weeks—our recent daybook on the conflict captured exactly that mood with NATO jets scramble—and it is echoing again as governments recalibrate.
The pattern is familiar: a Russian jet strays or a drone swarms a border, allied radar lights up, and the phones ring in Brussels. NATO condemned a recent Estonian airspace violation and warned Moscow that its commitment to Article 5 is “ironclad.” Polish forces, for their part, have been blunt; this month Warsaw shot down drones after airspace was violated, an escalation that mirrors our earlier reporting on a Poland shoots down Russian drones episode and a mid-September drone scare over Poland. Add in the refinery explosions and smoke plumes that have crept into the Baltic news cycle—see oil fires, Baltic air scares—and it is clear why air policing has become the quiet center of gravity for the Russia Ukraine war.
Electronic warfare has pushed the anxiety further. Spain’s defense minister flew into the Baltic air picture and reported a GPS disturbance near Kaliningrad, a region where GNSS spoofing has become persistent. The European Union’s aviation regulator has warned crews and carriers to plan for jamming and spoofing; the EASA safety bulletin on GNSS interference remains required reading in operations rooms. Along the same corridor, our earlier brief on NATO scrambles over Poland foreshadowed exactly this mix of airspace violations and refinery anxiety. Understanding deterrence in this context also means understanding doctrine; readers who need a primer on the alliance’s thresholds can refer to our explainer on NATO’s Articles 4 and 5.
Turkey has now put steel on that policy by dispatching an early-warning aircraft to the front line of the air picture. Ankara deployed an AWACS to Lithuania under NATO measures, a visible piece of reassurance that also shortens commanders’ decision time. Lithuania, meanwhile, authorized its army to shoot down drones breaching its airspace—rules of engagement meant to reduce ambiguity, and the chance of a deadly misread.
Far from the Baltic, Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign has pushed deep into Russia’s energy heartland. Regional officials in Bashkortostan said an overnight strike lit fires at the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat petrochemical complex, a target that has come under repeated attack as Kyiv hunts for leverage on the Russian economy. Reuters noted that drones again hit Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat; our own day-by-day chronicle captured the pattern with refineries burn in Russia, where outages and emergency crews became the imagery of the week.
To the south, the Black Sea has remained a corridor of risk. In Novorossiysk, authorities said a drone strike killed two people, exposing how refinery and port districts have become both an economic pressure point and a battlefield. The incident, which brought fresh sirens to one of Russia’s key maritime hubs, was described in Reuters’ dispatch on a drone attack that killed two.
War has now become Moscow’s operating system, and the budget is the instruction set. The Finance Ministry proposed raising value-added tax to 22 percent starting in 2026, explicitly to finance what officials call defense and security needs. If enacted, that move would shift more of the burden to consumers and small firms while formalizing the idea of a years-long war economy. Reuters reported the filing as the ministry proposed lifting VAT to 22%. The economic undercurrent has shaped our recent coverage as well; readers can track the relationship between battlefield events and price shocks via NATO alarm, refinery hits.
Debt and prices sit at the center of the next phase. Servicing the public debt is expected to climb as a share of spending in 2026, pinching room for civilian programs, just as inflation proves stubborn and growth cools. Reuters chronicled how debt-servicing costs will jump, while a separate budget-desk analysis suggested growth could slip toward the 1 percent band amid capacity constraints and expensive credit. The mechanics are wonky, but they filter into daily life quickly: fuel prices, spare parts, and the cost of fixing what drones keep breaking. For the macro picture, read Reuters on the government racing to make ends meet as the budget deadline looms.
Economists outside Russia say the militarization of the budget is crowding out investment and productivity, masking stagnation with procurement and forced conversion. The evidence is granular: refinery outages that ripple into household prices, labor shortages that stretch factories, and a credit cycle increasingly dominated by state priorities. Inside the Kremlin, the answer tends to be the same—tighten belts and expand production—and officials argue the fiscal base is sturdier than critics admit.
Trump, meanwhile, has personalized the debate in a way that leaders often avoid. To needle a nuclear power as a “paper tiger” is to force a reply, and Moscow obliged with talk of bears, resolve and a war that will be remembered by “many generations.” Whether that exchange was performance or policy matters less than what happens next: does the White House convert its language into procurement schedules and export approvals, and do allies align their air policing and rules of engagement accordingly?
Kyiv will judge the moment by arrivals, not adjectives. Air defense resupplies, battlefield munitions, glide kits, and the industrial tempo behind them will tell if Trump’s shift is more than a post-UNGA flourish. NATO planners have their own checklists: tighter airspace rules along the northeastern flank; faster handshakes between national air defense networks; and clearer thresholds for engaging drones that play cat-and-mouse along borders.
European leaders are also managing the politics of risk. Some have welcomed Washington’s sharper language as a morale boost after months of attrition. Others warn that overpromising without the arsenals to sustain a campaign could invite miscalculation. A few have floated the idea that if incidents continue to stack up—violations, spoofing, close passes—governments may seek Article 4 consultations to formalize the conversation without triggering the mutual-defense clause.
On the ground, the war’s ledger is written in glass and concrete. Apartment blocks by the front are taped and retaped against shatter; schools try to hold lessons between alerts; families memorize shelter routes. In Russia’s border regions and industrial towns, the new normal includes the thud of interceptions at dawn, the smell of burned fuel at refineries, and the hiss of valves in plants that were never meant to be battlefields. Local news reads like a maintenance log.
Public opinion is difficult to measure under censorship, but the official story is unambiguous: this is a defensive war against a hostile West that aims to carve up Russia’s future. That story now meets a counter-story from Washington that Ukraine can win outright—and a broader European fear that Russia is probing the alliance’s seams. Al Jazeera framed the question bluntly: is Russia testing NATO with aerial incursions or stumbling into escalation by accident?
Three tests will decide the next chapter. First, whether the United States backs its new posture with deliveries that matter at the front. Second, whether the Kremlin’s tax-and-mobilization model can finance a longer war without cracking household budgets. Third, whether NATO can manage the air picture—violations, jamming, drones—without stumbling into a larger fight. The answers will be measured in interceptions logged by controllers, in refinery outages counted by regional governors, and in the persistence of a political line that now runs from Truth Social to the trenches.
