The night seven American B-2 Spirits flew halfway around the planet and, under the code name Midnight Hammer, blasted Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan instantly dominated U.S. news sites and TV studios. Next to the infrared footage of bunker-busters, the strikes on Kyiv all but disappeared from the feed — and that is exactly what the Kremlin wants. The brighter a new global drama burns, the easier it is to divert attention from its own impunity and, not least, its economic misery amid the roar of “Shaheds” over the Dnipro.
Returning from the Minsk Economic Forum, Putin proudly declared that “Russia will cut defense spending over the next three years,” insisting the war has already “put the economy on its feet.” Yet while he juggled the numbers, the Finance Ministry quietly raised the projected 2025 budget deficit from 0.5% to 1.7% of GDP, and the Central Bank admitted annual inflation running at 21% with the key rate likewise at 21%. Even last year’s official 4.3% GDP growth has brought a price surge and a shortfall of 2.6 million workers: mobilized men are not returning to the shop floors, and demobilized soldiers sit idle, drawing token regional stipends. The promise to “trim defense” is anything but a peace strategy.
Debt is turning into a noose. An internal memorandum records a 1.5-trillion-ruble drop in corporate lending in just the first two months of the year and defaults at 13 of the 78 largest companies — twice last year’s tally. Russia’s major banks warn the sector could buckle by mid-2026 without government injections. Credit grows costlier, borrowers slash payrolls, and officials prefer silence, training the cameras on the next Pyrrhic “victory” in the steppes near Kupyansk. Deferred wages at the start of the year totaled barely 370 million rubles; by late May they had reached 1.66 billion, more than a billion of that in construction. This sector, fueled mainly by state contracts, is now gasping for working capital at punitive rates. The National Welfare Fund, once nimbly patching budget holes, has been cut to a third of its former size. A sudden spike in Brent prices after the U.S. strike on Iran brought windfall rubles, but oil does not rise forever—and military invoices certainly do.
And here enters China with its precise and ruthless policy. While Russian propagandists film stories about a “strong shoulder of friendship,” Beijing skims the cream: in June, Chinese imports of Iranian oil jumped to a record 1.8 million barrels a day, edging out even Russia’s Urals, already selling at nearly a $20 discount. At the same time, Chinese steel and rolled products shipped to Russia climbed 16%, while domestic Russian metal prices fell 11%—a classic colonial pattern in which the center unloads surpluses and the periphery suffocates its own industry. The Kremlin dreams of a “Gazprom-2” based on rare-earths, but without Chinese technology the concentrates will have to be hauled to Guangzhou, and the profit will once again settle behind the Great Wall—and they like that not one bit.
Putin, publicly boasting about the “record-breaking” Arctic LNG-2gas project, did not count on the fact that although the first tanker after eight months of idleness docked under a foreign flag via a Dubai shell company, two-thirds of the fleet now sits deadweight in the Barents Sea—traders fear secondary sanctions and China is cutting imports for lack of demand. Satellites are picking up flares of gas being burned off: storage sites are full, buyers are absent, and loans for completing the next production line were halted back in the spring.
While Moscow keeps funneling budgets into defense, Europe is steadily widening the definition of security. The European Parliament has affirmed Finland’s right to keep its border with Russia sealed, citing hybrid threats—a precedent now sitting in every Baltic capital’s top drawer. Meanwhile, in Berlin, Friedrich Merz’s government has drafted amendments that would block any attempt to revive Nord Stream even if political winds shift. The message to business is clear: the gas romance of the past is over for good. Warsaw is simultaneously drilling its reservists, Lithuania is modeling corridor scenarios, and northern EU members are receiving targeted funds to reinforce the eastern flank. In Brussels they no longer call it “fortification” but “adaptation to a wartime reality.”
Against this backdrop, the rockets over Ukraine are not a show of strength but a scream of economic weakness, staged for the domestic audience and for the Chinese creditor. The Kremlin fires off drones in desperation so that their explosions drown out the grinding of an ever-emptier treasury, while Beijing calmly scoops up Iranian oil, Russian metal, and the cut-price assets Moscow is selling to patch its budget.
The President of the United States clearly understands what is unfolding. Little wonder, then, that his close friend Senator Lindsey Graham, fresh off a round of golf with Donald Trump, has publicly declared it is “time to push through” a bill imposing a 500-percent tariff on anyone buying Russian energy. The package already has more than eighty co-sponsors in the Senate and could become the most powerful blow to Kremlin revenues in two years. Trump discreetly reserves “the right to decide how exactly to implement the sanctions,” but White House backing sharply raises the odds of passage once Congress returns from its short Independence Day recess.
Let us also note the counter-rhythms: the isolationist wing in the House of Representatives refuses to raise a hand for the FY-2026 defense budget if it once again contains USAI lines for Ukraine. The Appropriations Committee torpedoed even a modest $300 million amendment for Kyiv because Republicans—foremost the Freedom Caucus—threatened to sink the entire bill. Democrats warn that without this money things will get truly dire, yet in Washington and most state capitals a new trend is taking hold: the phrase “America First” is being voiced ever more loudly.
What neither Moscow nor America’s anti-Ukrainian voices counted on is the strength of the Ukrainian diaspora. From the moment Speaker Mike Johnson declared that “Ukraine has no place in the stopgap,” the phone lines in his district offices and those of Republican senators have not stopped ringing: in just five days more than 46,000 calls and 120,000 e-mails poured in, bearing ZIP codes from coast to coast. Every message sent means a few more seconds of life for Ukraine’s air-defense crews—which is why Kremlin TV now wildly inflates talk of “American fatigue,” trying to portray public pressure as marginal.
Despite the visual chaos and cognitive disarray in the world, Russia’s outlook boils down to three trajectories. If the budget deficit is patched with the printing press and fresh waves of mobilization, the country will slide into prolonged agony: missiles—turned into a routine narcotic—will struggle to drown out the grumbling of ordinary Russians whose pockets are growing thinner. If the Kremlin finally bows to Shanghai, outright Chinese tutelage will arrive: a barter of oil for Shahed-2 drones and microchips will give Beijing a strategic lever while granting Russia the honorary title of “senior vassal” devoid of advanced technologies of its own. But if Congress passes the Graham-McCaul package and narrows SWIFT windows, a systemic banking crisis could erupt as early as early-2026.
In every scenario one constant remains: without sustained American attention, the Ukrainian sky grows ever darker. So what can a Ukrainian in the United States do right now? First, call and write your members of Congress before the final vote on the FY-2026 budget—every call keeps $8.8 billion in USAI funding alive. Second, support your communities and keep donating tirelessly to Ukraine’s victory. And finally, break through compassion fatigue on social media by sharing genuine, powerful stories of the heroic people who are now setting a moral example for the entire world.
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