At the Breaking Point: How the U.S. Finally Turned Against Putin

Inside the quiet dealmaking, power shifts, and factional battles that turned America’s war posture from denial to direction.

Something doesn’t add up.

But when you’re dealing with the evil party, it rarely does. The Kremlin has mastered that style — finding positions where, no matter which way the tide turns, it still comes out on top. For them, chaos is strategy. For us, it’s a problem to fix. That’s the asymmetry. Democracies spend their time managing crises; autocracies manufacture them. Moscow plays the long game. We keep playing the election cycle. That imbalance has kept us fighting on the back foot for a very, very long time.

What happened in the last forty-eight hours may not yet qualify as part of that long-game structure I just spoke about, but it’s certainly disrupting it. There’s a messaging gap on our side, no doubt — but for once, the good news is that, whichever way this unfolds, the Kremlin will end up on the defensive.

Some of you might remember: around the time Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Ukraine, President Zelensky made a pointed remark. He said that Ukraine “does not discuss deep strikes with partners.”