請參考：

Russian forces near collapse in Kupyansk as Moscow allies concede city lost: report (12/25/25)

下文的分析相當深入，也稱得上全面和即時。對俄、烏戰爭及其結局有興趣的網友，不妨花時間一讀。作者在行文風格上努力呈現其「中立」態度；不過，他應該至少是一位同情烏克蘭的人。

我曾說過，莫斯科和華盛頓不是決定「俄、烏戰爭」如何結束的地方；下文在某種程度上支持我這個判斷。普丁到現在還沒有瘋掉，還真得佩服他「神經大條」。

Let’s Be Honest for a Second: This Is Where the Ukraine War Really Stands

Diplomacy, combat, sanctions, and air defense are all moving at once, and none of them tell the full story alone

Ryder Blackthorn, 12/16/25

A lot happened in Ukraine over the past forty-eight hours, and if you followed it through headlines alone, you’d think the war was simultaneously about to end, about to escalate, and somehow already frozen in place. That contradiction isn’t accidental. It’s what happens when diplomacy, battlefield reality, economic pressure, and alliance politics all move at once, but not at the same speed.

This wasn’t one story. It was five, unfolding in parallel.

There were peace talks in Berlin that sounded promising without being decisive.
There was active fighting in Kupiansk that reminded everyone the war doesn’t pause for negotiations.  
There was a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian submarine that landed somewhere between symbolic and consequential.
There was a quiet but serious escalation in the West’s attempt to strangle Russia’s oil revenues at sea.
And there was Germany doing what Germany increasingly does best in this war: delivering air defense without drama.  

Taken individually, each of these developments can be misunderstood. Taken together, they tell a clearer story about where this war actually sits right now. Not at the finish line. Not on the brink of collapse. But in a tense, grinding middle phase where leverage matters more than spectacle.

Let’s start in Berlin.

Berlin Talks: Progress, With an Asterisk the Size of Donbas

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s negotiating team spent two long days in Berlin meeting with U.S. presidential envoys and European leaders, and the word that kept surfacing afterward was “progress.” According to multiple readouts, roughly ninety percent of issues on the table are said to be resolved, and there’s genuine momentum around security guarantees, post-war recovery frameworks, and Ukraine’s path toward the European Union.

That all sounds encouraging. And to a point, it is.

But let’s be honest for a second: when negotiators say ninety percent is resolved, they usually mean the easy parts were never the problem.

The unresolved ten percent is territorial control, and it remains exactly where it has always been. Russia wants Ukraine to withdraw from Donetsk. Ukraine refuses to cede territory. Everything else in the talks orbits that gravity well.

What makes Berlin notable isn’t that this disagreement suddenly softened. It didn’t. What changed is that all sides are now openly acknowledging it as the central obstacle, rather than pretending it can be quietly papered over later. Even discussions of creative compromises, like free economic zones or demilitarized areas, immediately run into the same hard question: who actually controls the land, and under whose authority.

There was also talk of a Christmas ceasefire, floated publicly by Germany’s Chancellor and supported in principle by both Ukraine and the United States. Symbolically, it’s an appealing idea. Practically, it’s a test. A short pause would reveal more about Russian intentions than a hundred speeches. Zelenskyy’s response to the suggestion was characteristically blunt. He supports any ceasefire, but he made clear he harbors no illusions about Russian goodwill.

That bluntness is important, because it sets the tone for everything else. Ukraine isn’t negotiating from a place of fantasy. It’s negotiating from exhaustion, realism, and leverage where it exists.

On security guarantees, the conversation appears more substantive. European leaders and the U.S. discussed frameworks that would allow Ukraine to maintain a large standing force, backed by multinational support and legally binding commitments to respond to renewed aggression. These are not NATO Article 5 guarantees, but they are designed to function in the same direction. Deterrence by certainty, not by hope.

Trump’s role in the process also looms large. Publicly, he has expressed satisfaction with the trajectory of the talks and confirmed direct communication with Putin. Privately, his team has emphasized that there is no artificial deadline, only the goal of getting an agreement that holds. Whether that patience is strategic or political remains to be seen, but it does suggest the U.S. is not rushing Ukraine into a bad deal simply to declare victory.

The key takeaway from Berlin is this: diplomacy is active, serious, and more aligned across Ukraine, Europe, and the United States than it has been in a long time. But it is not magic. The hardest issue remains unresolved, and everyone involved knows it.

Which brings us to the second reality running alongside those talks. While negotiators were speaking in conference rooms, Ukrainian forces were still fighting street by street.

Kupiansk: The War Doesn’t Pause for Negotiations

While diplomats were talking in Berlin, Ukrainian forces were still fighting in Kupiansk, and the contrast matters. Not because one cancels out the other, but because it shows how little daylight there is between diplomacy and combat in this phase of the war.

The operation in Kupiansk didn’t begin this week. It’s been unfolding since September, methodically and without much noise. Ukrainian units first cut Russian logistics, then encircled enemy forces inside the city. That part worked. What’s happening now is the harder, messier second phase: isolating those forces, stabilizing the area, and clearing block by block.

Russian resistance has been described as fierce, which is true in the narrow sense. Encircled units tend to fight hard. They have little to lose, limited room to maneuver, and even fewer exit options. But fierce doesn’t mean effective. At this point, Russian logistics inside Kupiansk are sustained almost entirely by drones, a sign not of ingenuity, but of collapse. Ground corridors have failed. Attempts to break through have failed. Even improvised routes, including movement through industrial infrastructure, have been neutralized under constant surveillance and fire control.

This is what attrition looks like in 2025. Not dramatic breakthroughs, but systems being slowly starved until resistance becomes unsustainable.

The scale of Russian losses around Kupiansk reflects that reality. More than a thousand troops killed during the fighting to retake key residential districts isn’t a sign of tactical brilliance on Moscow’s part. It’s a consequence of being trapped without viable resupply or rotation. Once Ukrainian forces destroyed the pipeline route Russian units had been using to move undetected, the outcome became a matter of time rather than uncertainty.

What’s notable here isn’t just the battlefield progress, but the discipline behind it. The Ukrainian command didn’t rush the operation. It didn’t announce grand objectives. It applied pressure where it mattered, waited for logistics to fail, and then moved in. That approach mirrors what Ukraine has learned over nearly three years of war: cities are not taken by momentum alone, but by control of movement, information, and supply.

Zelenskyy’s visit to the Kupiansk front in the middle of this operation was also deliberate. It wasn’t a victory lap. It was a signal that, regardless of what’s being discussed in foreign capitals, Ukraine’s military posture remains unchanged. No ceasefire has been agreed. No lines have frozen. The war is still being fought where it always is, on the ground, by units doing unglamorous work.

Kupiansk matters beyond its immediate tactical value. It reinforces a larger point that often gets lost when peace talks dominate the news cycle. Negotiations don’t suspend reality. They coexist with it. And right now, that reality is one where Ukraine continues to degrade Russian forces, even as diplomats explore whether a political off-ramp exists.

That tension, between ongoing combat and tentative diplomacy, is not a contradiction. It’s leverage.

The Submarine Strike: Capability, Not a Hollywood Moment

Ukraine’s reported drone strike on a Russian submarine in Novorossiysk was immediately framed in extremes. Depending on where you looked, it was either a historic breakthrough or an overhyped near miss. The reality sits squarely in between, and that middle ground is where the significance actually lives.

Satellite imagery suggests the underwater drone detonated several dozen meters from the submarine’s hull, damaging infrastructure near the pier rather than visibly crippling the vessel itself. Russia, unsurprisingly, insists there was no damage at all. Ukraine, for its part, has been careful in its language, emphasizing the complexity of the operation rather than declaring a clean kill.

That restraint is telling.

This was the first recorded attempt to strike a submarine with an underwater drone, and in warfare, firsts matter even when they aren’t decisive. Not because they immediately change the balance of power, but because they redraw the boundaries of what is plausible. Until now, Russian submarines in port operated with a comfortable assumption of sanctuary. That assumption no longer holds.

The Varshavyanka-class submarine targeted in Novorossiysk is not a symbolic asset. It’s a quiet, diesel-electric platform designed for stealth, capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles. Even the possibility that such vessels can be threatened at berth forces adjustments. Additional defenses, altered basing patterns, and increased caution all carry costs. Not dramatic ones, but cumulative ones.

It’s also worth noting what this strike was not. It was not a publicity stunt. Ukrainian officials have emphasized that preparations were multi-layered and complex, which aligns with the broader pattern of Ukraine’s drone campaign. These operations are designed to probe, test, and stretch Russian defenses over time, not to produce viral moments.

Calling the strike a failure because it wasn’t a confirmed kill misses the point. In modern conflict, especially in a war of endurance, signaling capability can be almost as important as exercising it to full effect. Russia now has to account for a new class of threat in places it previously considered secure.

And that recalculation comes at a moment when pressure on Russia is increasing in other, less visible domains.

Because while Ukraine is expanding the reach of its military tools, the West is quietly working on something far less cinematic, but potentially more consequential: tightening the economic chokehold at sea.

The Tanker War: Choking Revenue, Not Volume

While attention tends to gravitate toward missiles and maneuvers, some of the most consequential pressure on Russia right now is happening far from the front lines, in the legal and logistical machinery of global shipping. Western governments are preparing a new round of sanctions aimed not at how much oil Russia sells, but at how that oil moves.

The shift is subtle, but important.

Until now, the price cap system allowed tankers carrying Russian oil below a certain threshold to operate within the Western maritime framework. Those vessels could access insurance, repairs, refueling, and ports in Europe. The proposed change would eliminate that distinction entirely. Tankers carrying Russian oil, regardless of price, would be denied access to those services.

This isn’t about symbolism. Maritime trade does not function without insurance. A tanker without recognized coverage is effectively barred from operating in regulated ports, and most of the global insurance market is still controlled by Western firms. Denying access doesn’t stop oil from existing, but it complicates every step of its journey.

Critically, this approach acknowledges a reality the price cap exposed: Russia has been able to maintain export volumes by leaning on its shadow fleet. These are aging tankers operating outside Western legal frameworks, often insured by obscure entities, flagged under permissive jurisdictions, and serviced in ways that would never pass inspection in regulated ports. They are inefficient, risky, and expensive, but they work well enough to keep oil flowing.

And that’s the key point. Sanctions have not meaningfully reduced the volume of Russian oil exports. What they have reduced is revenue. Discounts have widened, logistics have become more costly, and margins have shrunk. Russia is selling roughly the same amount of oil, but earning far less from it.

The proposed sanctions aim to deepen that pressure. By denying services even to vessels that currently operate within the legal framework, Western countries would force more of Russia’s exports into the shadow system. That may sound counterproductive at first, but shadow fleets are not a free solution. They require higher insurance premiums, less reliable maintenance, longer routes, and increased exposure to accidents and enforcement actions.

This is where enforcement becomes the real bottleneck. Designing sanctions is easier than executing them. Inspecting tankers, verifying insurance, and acting in international waters all raise legal and political complications. Some countries benefit directly from Russia’s seaborne trade, either through tanker ownership, flag services, or port activity, and their enthusiasm for aggressive enforcement varies accordingly.

That internal friction is not a flaw in the system. It’s part of the system. Sanctions rarely operate as a clean on-off switch. They operate as a field of pressure, shaping incentives over time. Every additional complication increases costs, delays shipments, and widens discounts. Over months and years, that erosion matters.

There’s also a broader strategic calculation at play. Global oil markets currently have enough surplus capacity to absorb disruptions. That reduces the risk of price spikes, which in turn gives Western governments more room to tighten restrictions without triggering political backlash at home.

None of this will collapse Russia’s war economy overnight. But that was never the point. The tanker war is about attrition, not shock. It’s about steadily reducing the resources available to sustain a long war, even as Russia works to adapt.

And while economic pressure grinds away in the background, Ukraine’s ability to endure depends on something far more immediate: whether it can continue to protect its cities from the air.

Air Defense: Quietly Decisive, Not Flashy

Germany’s decision to transfer additional Patriot systems and a ninth IRIS-T air defense complex to Ukraine didn’t dominate headlines for long, and that’s almost fitting. Air defense rarely makes for dramatic news unless it fails. When it works, it does so quietly, in the background, measured not by explosions but by the absence of them.

Two Patriot systems and another IRIS-T battery won’t end the war. They won’t shift front lines or force negotiations. What they do is far more prosaic and far more important: they extend Ukraine’s ability to endure.

Patriot systems are about protecting high-value targets and urban centers from ballistic and cruise missiles. IRIS-T fills in the gaps, particularly against drones and lower-altitude threats. Together, they form a layered defense that complicates Russian strike planning and raises the cost of every missile launched. In a war where Russia has leaned heavily on long-range strikes to compensate for battlefield limitations, that matters.

Germany’s role here is also worth noting. Berlin has moved steadily, sometimes frustratingly slowly, but consistently toward becoming one of Ukraine’s most reliable security partners. These deliveries weren’t framed as one-off gestures. They were presented as part of an ongoing commitment, backed by funding for ammunition, missiles, and procurement through NATO mechanisms.

That consistency is the signal.

Air defense is not about dramatic turning points. It’s about time. Every intercepted missile preserves infrastructure. Every protected city sustains morale. Every month that Ukraine can blunt Russia’s aerial campaign reduces Moscow’s ability to coerce through terror. In a war of attrition, survival is strategy.

It also ties directly back to everything else happening right now. Diplomacy is more credible when a country isn’t negotiating under constant bombardment. Economic pressure is more effective when the targeted state can’t easily escalate without cost. Battlefield operations are more sustainable when rear areas are protected.

U.S. Service members stand by a Patriot missile battery in Gaziantep, Turkey, Feb. 4, 2013, during a visit from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, not shown. U.S. and NATO Patriot missile batteries and personnel deployed to Turkey in support of NATO’s commitment to defending Turkey’s security during a period of regional instability.

This is why air defense often sits at the center of Ukraine’s requests, even when it doesn’t excite commentators. It’s not glamorous. It’s foundational.

Where This Leaves Us

Taken together, the last few days offer a clearer picture of where this war actually stands.

Diplomacy is real, active, and more coordinated than it has been in a long time, but it is constrained by hard realities that haven’t moved yet. On the ground, Ukrainian forces continue to apply pressure methodically, without waiting for talks to resolve themselves. At sea and in the air, Ukraine is probing new ways to stretch Russian defenses and assumptions. And behind all of it, Western governments are tightening economic pressure in ways designed to grind, not shock.

None of this points to an imminent end. It also doesn’t point to runaway escalation.

What it points to is entrenchment with intent. A phase where leverage is being built across multiple domains at once, and where outcomes will be shaped less by single events than by cumulative strain. That’s not a comforting narrative, but it is an honest one.

If there’s a risk right now, it’s misreading momentum. Overstating progress invites disappointment. Ignoring it invites cynicism. The truth sits in between. This war is being managed, pressured, and contested on every level at once. That doesn’t guarantee peace. But it does suggest that when a settlement eventually comes, it won’t emerge from a vacuum. It will emerge from a balance that’s being negotiated, enforced, and fought over in real time.

And that balance is still very much in motion.


Over on The Written Wilds, I post everything I’m building in one place: war desk reports, long-form analysis, fiction worlds, creative guides — and the music that runs underneath it all.

Right now, my music lives on YouTube. Soon it’ll be everywhere else too.

我已經強調過不可勝數次：

1)  美國，尤其是川痞/瘋政府，已經沒有「資格」 -- 包括「國力」和「信用」  -- 在國際舞台上指手畫腳、說三道四、癡人說夢、以全球一哥自居的在那裏唱獨角戲。
2)  在2014年俄國侵占克里米亞之後，烏克蘭戰爭就不再是俄、烏兩國間的衝突，而成為歐洲大多數國家的「存亡之戰」。
3)  從而，烏克蘭和平方案的最後「決定權」，不在基輔、華盛頓、或莫斯科等地的政客，而在布魯塞爾和歐洲各國首都的國家領袖；包括在任北約秘書長和歐盟執委會主席等人。
4)  馮德萊恩女士的頭銜是：「歐盟執委會主席」；實際上，她的第二個職務是：「歐洲事務首席發言人」。

As Ukraine Sets ‘Red Lines,’ a U.S. Peace Plan Is Slimmed Down

Washington and Kyiv said that “highly productive” discussions over a proposal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine would continue.

Cassandra Vinograd, Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, 11/24/25

U.S. and Ukrainian mediators emerged from two days of talks on Monday with a slimmed-down peace framework that sets aside contentious issues, as Ukrainian officials underscored their country’s “red lines” on territory, military capacity and foreign alliances.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine was at a “critical moment” and would soon determine its next steps. He spoke after high-level discussions in Geneva on Sunday in which Ukraine and its European allies laid out concerns about a draft of a 28-point peace proposal that was favorable to Russia on many issues.

President Trump, who is pushing Ukraine to agree to a settlement by Thanksgiving but has indicated that talks could continue, said on Monday that “something good just may be happening.”

As Ukrainian officials told news outlets that a significant reworking of the plan had brought it closer to Ukraine’s position on several points, it raised questions about whether Russia would agree to any proposal that did not hew to its maximalist demands. The initial 28-point plan, drafted by the Trump administration with Russian input, called for Ukraine to cede land, shrink its army and forswear membership in NATO.

With the uncertainty about how the most sensitive issues will be resolved by the American and Ukrainian presidents, it remained to be seen whether the latest flurry of diplomacy would produce concrete results or fizzle as previous bursts did.

Until last week, the Trump administration’s efforts to broker an end to the war had been seemingly stalled. An August meeting in Alaska between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia produced little in the way of substance. Mr. Trump canceled a planned meeting last month with Mr. Putin in Budapest after he said the Russian president had no intention of making a deal.

The first public flickers of renewed movement came when Mr. Zelensky went to Turkey last week in hopes of reinvigorating efforts to end the war with what he said were new Ukrainian proposals. At the same time, Washington was sending a delegation of senior U.S. military officials to Kyiv for talks.

Reports emerged on Wednesday that the U.S. Army secretary, Dan Driscoll, had come bearing a 28-point proposal to end the war that reflected many Kremlin demands that Ukraine had consistently rejected.

That set off alarm bells well before Mr. Driscoll, a friend and former classmate of Vice President JD Vance, presented the plan to Mr. Zelensky on Thursday. The Ukrainian president said in a statement that night that Ukraine would engage “constructively, honestly and operationally” with the points in the plan.

The White House said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, an envoy for peace missions, had been “quietly” working on the proposal for a month but described the details as in “flux.”

The next day, as many Ukrainians and their European allies condemned the plan as akin to capitulation to Russia, Mr. Zelensky said in an address to the nation that Ukraine might have to choose between losing its dignity and forgoing U.S. support.

Not long after, plans for urgent talks between Ukrainian and U.S. officials began to take shape.

Mr. Zelensky sent his powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, to lead Kyiv’s delegation in Geneva. Washington sent Mr. Rubio and Mr. Witkoff, as well as Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. Mr. Kushner, who is not a U.S. government employee, had also been involved in the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war between Israel and Hamas.

Mr. Rubio struck an optimistic tone on Sunday after the talks, saying that the gaps that remained were not insurmountable. He said that some issues — like the role of the European Union or of NATO in any settlement — had been “segregated out” in the talks. Things like that, he said, will need to be discussed with the parties involved.

The White House and Ukraine’s presidency released a joint statement later that night saying the talks had resulted in an “updated and refined” draft, with “intensive work” to continue in the coming days.

On Monday, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukraine’s delegation was returning home and would deliver a full report about the progress of the talks. “Based on these reports, we will determine the next steps and the timing,” he said in a statement on X.

U.S. officials declined to say what parts of the proposal were adjusted in Geneva. Mr. Zelensky said that Kyiv had “managed to keep extremely sensitive points on the table,” including the release of all Ukrainian prisoners of war and the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.

“But to achieve real peace, more, more is needed,” he told a parliamentary summit earlier on Monday, calling this a “critical moment” for Ukraine.

 “Of course, we’ll continue working with partners, especially the United States, and look for compromises that strengthen, but not weaken us,” he said.

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Ukrainians React to Peace Plan to End Russia’s War

American and Ukrainian officials said they had made progress in Geneva on a plan to end the war with Russia. Some Ukrainians dismissed an early draft as a concession.CreditCredit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 請至原網頁觀看照片

At least one European leader suggested that there were still wide gaps in the discussions. “The negotiations were a step forward, but there are still major issues which remain to be resolved,” President Alexander Stubb of Finland wrote on social media.

Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, suggested on German public radio that the plan had been revised to address objections to a provision ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine.

“All questions concerning Europe, as well as those concerning NATO, have been removed from this plan,” Mr. Wadephul said.

“Now we must ensure,” he added, “that Ukraine’s sovereignty will be preserved.”