Day: May 24, 2026

Новости Туркменистана и мира на Turkmenportal.

A closer look at the structure of this trade turnover reveals an inherent asymmetry that requires strategic adjustment. Currently, the lion’s share of bilateral trade is heavily weighted toward Azerbaijani exports, creating a trade imbalance that leaves room for a more sustainable, bilateral flow of goods. To transition from a transactional relationship into a resilient economic partnership, both Baku and Dushanbe must prioritize the diversification of supplies and actively expand the structure of mutual trade.

Russia’s demands for a unilateral surrender of the entire Donetsk region are just another example of how the Kremlin is concealing its inability on the battlefield while trying to move one step closer to the goal of subjugating Ukraine. Mykola Bielieskov, 20 May 2026

War does not pause for summits.

In the Pacific, beginning with the Trump summit and concluding with Putin’s, Xi has been basking in what the CCP portrays as China’s emergence as a global stabilising influence.

But in Ukraine, the front-line grinds through its 1,551st day. The war on the ground remains a ferocious attritional conflict punctuated by large-scale deep strike operations and diplomatic performances that have produced prisoner exchanges but no real move towards peace. Russia has continued demanding its maximalist objectives for the war while executing its long-range strike campaign against Ukrainian cities, including the use of an Oreshnik IRBM against Kyiv last night.

In the Middle East, the U.S.-Iran ceasefire has held, with some violations, since April. As Bloomberg reported on 23 May 2026, Iran has signalled progress on ensuring fighting ends on all fronts, with remaining points of contention to be resolved at a later stage. And, in the past few hours, both the Americans and Iranians have signalled that a resolution might be very close. Whether this leads to a durable agreement matters for the economies of the world dependent on Middle East oil, natural gas, urea and helium. But it also has major impacts on the strategic resources that Washington can allocate to Ukraine and the Pacific theatre.

Welcome to this week’s Big Five!

Ukraine

The Front Line. The picture on the front line this week is one of sustained, high-intensity combat in which Ukraine has achieved notable local advances while the broader positional map remains contested. According to the Russia Matters War Report Card of 20 May 2026, Russian forces registered a net loss of 69 square miles of Ukrainian territory over the four weeks from 21 April to 19 May. In the single week from 12 to 19 May, Russia lost a net 29 square miles, a significant reversal that analysts attribute partly to Ukrainian interdiction of Russian logistics across southern Ukraine and partly to Ukrainian counterattack operations in the north.

In northern Kharkiv Oblast, Ukrainian forces have achieved meaningful advances. The ISW assessment of 19 May 2026 reported that Ukrainian forces had recently advanced in northern Kharkiv Oblast as well as in the Kupyansk and Hulyaipole directions. These are not spectacular breakthroughs, but they represent Ukrainian forces seizing and holding local initiative in a sector where Russia’s subordinate main effort is to push Ukrainian forces back from the international border with Belgorod Oblast and threaten Kharkiv City from the east.

This was followed up by Ukrainian forces reportedly executing a mechanised counterattack in the Borova direction and advancing up to five kilometres into the Russian defences. According to the latest report from the Institute for the Study of War, Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked forward positions of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army, while Russian forces were regrouping. The Russian’s exaggerated claims of success from military leaders like Gerasimov are providing opportunities for Ukrainian forces to exploit weak points in Russia’s defensive line.

Notwithstanding these Ukrainian gains, the operational tempo of the Russians remains very high. Ukrainian General Staff reporting for 21 May 2026 recorded 233 combat engagements in a single day, alongside 98 Russian airstrikes dropping 325 guided aerial bombs, the deployment of 8,902 Shahed kamikaze drones, and over 3,000 attacks on populated areas and military positions. Earlier in the week the figure reached 9,645 drones in a single 24-hour period. Russia launched more than 8,000 drones in April alone, the highest monthly total on record, according to Russia Matters.

Rubio and the Diplomatic Stasis. The diplomatic picture this week was defined by a rare moment of candour from Washington. Speaking on 22 May 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged publicly that peace negotiations on Ukraine had stalled and produced no results. Ukrainska Pravda, reporting from Kyiv on 22 May 2026, quoted Rubio directly: ‘We’re not interested in endless meetings that lead to nothing.’ He acknowledged the process has so far failed to deliver progress, but said Washington remained prepared to play a mediating role if talks could be made productive. ‘If we see an opportunity to pull together talks that are productive, not counterproductive, and that have the chance to be fruitful, we’re prepared to play that role,’ Rubio said, adding pointedly that ‘there are no such talks occurring at this time.’

The Kyiv Post reported on 22 May 2026 that Rubio’s public position was that the war would not end through outright military victory by either side, and that a negotiated settlement remained the only viable path. Rubio stated that “this war will not end with a military victory by one side or the other …We hope that will change, because that war can only end with a negotiated settlement.” He added that Ukraine was “getting more support than ever” through ongoing security assistance programmes.

At a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, Rubio delivered a set of messages that both reassured and unsettled European allies. Rubio ended the talks with a blunt message to European allies: Washington’s military footprint on the continent will shrink over time, but the US insists its commitment to NATO’s collective defence remains intact.

Rubio pushed NATO members towards a 5 percent of GDP defence spending target, though he subsequently softened this in press remarks to a commitment to be “on a path of getting up to 5 percent at some point.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed that Ukrainian President Zelensky has been invited to attend NATO’s July summit in Ankara, underscoring continued political support for Kyiv. Rubio also acknowledged Washington’s concern over Russian drones being redirected into NATO airspace: “It’s a concerning thing, because you always worry that something like that can spark into something bigger.”

Interdiction (Middle Strike) Operations. Ukraine has been prosecuting a systematic and increasingly effective interdiction campaign against Russian logistics across southern Ukraine and along the land bridge connecting Russia to Crimea. This campaign, operating in the 50-to-150-kilometre range, is arguably the most consequential military development of recent months. Described as Middle Strike operations or Mid-Range Strike, these constitute what military doctrine defines as interdiction: military actions designed to delay, disrupt, or destroy enemy military forces, supplies and command systems behind or en route to an area of tactical engagement before they can be applied against friendly forces.

In a detailed analysis published on 17 May 2026, Stefan Korshak argued on his Substack that Ukraine has effectively found a way to cut Crimea off from the Russian mainland through drone-based interdiction of supply routes rather than the ground offensive Western analysts had anticipated.

The campaign appears to be executing operations along three lines of effort.

Line of Effort 1 appears to be Ukraine disrupting Russia’s Trans-Tavrian rail link, a new line running from Taganrog through Mariupol to Melitopol intended to provide an overland rail connection independent of the Kerch Bridge. Ukrainian special forces and the GUR began ambushing Russian fuel trains with drones from around May 2025, blocking the single-track line and destroying repair trains sent to clear it. By late 2025, Russia could only run infrequent armoured freight trains on an existing route closer to Ukrainian lines. The rail link remains out of action.

The second Line of Effort appears to be the highway from Melitopol to Mariupol, as well as other connectors to this route. From mid-2025, Ukrainian drones began patrolling the Melitopol-Mariupol highway, hunting Russian military trucks. This capability expansion reflects both the scaling up of Ukrainian drone operations in the immediate rear and the introduction of new medium-range strike systems: the Bulava, RAM-2X, and Blyskavka drones for strike and the Shark for persistent reconnaissance. Russian military bloggers have been openly complaining about the truck-hunting operations on the Melitopol-Mariupol route.

A third Line of Effort is maritime strike aimed at isolating Crimea from the east. At sea, Ukrainian forces struck two Russian patrol boats protecting the Kerch Bridge on approximately 30 April 2026, and a subsequent sea drone strike on 4 May 2026 destroyed an FSB patrol boat and its crew. These strikes degrade not just Russian naval combat capability but the security infrastructure protecting Russia’s most important Crimean logistical asset.

Ukraine’s Deep Strike. Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure reached new levels of intensity and geographic reach this week. On 21 May 2026, President Zelensky announced that Ukrainian drones had struck the Syzran oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region, more than 800 kilometres inside Russian territory. Russia’s Astra news outlet confirmed the strike on the Rosneft-operated facility.

Earlier in May, Ukrainian drones struck the Ukhta refinery in Russia’s Komi Republic, 1,750 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, in what reporting described as one of Ukraine’s longest-range attacks of the war. The Atlantic Council assessed that this sustained campaign has limited Russia’s ability to benefit economically from global energy markets and contributed to Ukraine’s most significant battlefield gains since 2024. Russia’s growth forecast for 2026 has been slashed to 0.4 percent from 1.3 percent as the war economy reels under the combined impact of Ukrainian strikes and Western sanctions.

Stefan Korshak’s 9 May 2026 Substack documented the first combined use of Flamingo cruise missiles alongside AN-196 Liutyi long-range strike drones in a single complex attack, targeting the VNIIR-PROGRESS military electronics plant in Cheboksary. The attack illustrated Ukraine’s expanding repertoire of multi-vector strike packages, combining heavier standoff weapons with smaller pilot-guided precision systems to achieve layered effects against hardened industrial targets deep inside Russia.

In a further development, Ukraine in the past 24 hours executed another strike against Russian naval assets in the Russian port of Novorossiysk Naval Base, Krasnodar Krai. According to the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Force, targets struck include a Project 1239 hover-borne missile carrier, the frigate “Admiral Essen”, an “Osa” SAM system, command posts, bases, a logistics hub, and other facilities.

Ukraine Assessment

Four patterns define the current situation in the war in Ukraine.

First, the front line has stabilised in Ukraine’s favour, with Ukrainian forces achieving local advances in northern Kharkiv. The Kharkiv advances are particularly significant because they challenge Russia’s declared subordinate main effort to threaten Kharkiv City from the east and push Ukrainian forces back from the Belgorod border.

Second, Ukraine’s systematic interdiction of Russian logistics in the south is achieving more than is publicly acknowledged. The combination of a disabled Trans-Tavrian rail link and active drone patrols on the Mariupol highway is squeezing Russian supply capacity to Crimea and southern front forces in ways that will compound over time. Civil transport along this route has been banned by the Russians.

Third, the deep strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure is achieving dual effect: economic attrition of Russia’s war financing capacity and psychological pressure on a Russian population discovering that no territory is truly safe from Ukrainian reach.

Fourth, the peace process has now been publicly assessed by the US Secretary of State as not functioning. Rubio’s description of the talks as producing nothing and his explicit statement that there are currently no active negotiations is significant. It removes the diplomatic ambiguity that has allowed Moscow to present itself as a willing partner while still attacking Ukraine on the ground and from the air. The question now is whether these Rubio comments translate into further diplomatic initiatives, specifically the sanctions against Russia that both Rubio and Zelensky have repeatedly referred to, but the Trump administration has consistently deferred.

The Pacific

The Xi-Putin Summit. Four days after President Trump left Beijing, Vladimir Putin arrived. This was hardly a coincidence. Russia’s president visited China on 19 to 20 May 2026 for a two-day summit with President Xi Jinping, visiting his key foreign partner. As CNBC reported on 21 May 2026, Putin left Beijing with declarations of enduring friendship, a stack of bilateral agreements, but without the energy pipeline breakthrough Moscow had flagged would be “discussed in great detail.” The Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a critical piece of Russia’s strategy to reorient gas exports towards Asia following the collapse of European markets in the past four years, remains unresolved.

The Xi-Putin summit produced around 40 deals including education, trade, technology, intellectual property, energy, media, automobiles and civilian nuclear cooperation, according to the South China Morning Post’s summit coverage. Energy remained a central theme of talks, with commitments to stable Russian oil and gas supplies to China.

With respect to the war in Ukraine, China urged de-escalation and negotiations; Russia praised China’s “objective and unbiased” position. Both leaders framed their partnership as a stabilising global force and emphasised coordination through the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. Chinese state media reported Xi telling Putin: “The tide of unilateral hegemony is running rampant”. This is a theme that Xi employs to characterise the U.S.-led international order as the adversary against which the China-Russia partnership defines itself.

The military dimension of the summit deserves attention. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported on 21 May 2026 that both leaders agreed to deepen military trust and cooperation, including expanding joint exercises, air patrols and maritime patrols. Reuters reported on 19 May that European intelligence agencies have documented that China trained 200 Russian military personnel in Chinese military facilities beginning in July 2025, with Chinese military officers providing expertise in drones, electronic warfare, armoured infantry and other subjects.

Some Russian personnel who received training were instructors intending to disseminate Chinese tactics throughout Russian drone units; others had been deployed to occupied Ukrainian territories. This confirms that China is not just providing dual-use economic goods that sustain Russia’s war economy but is actively contributing to Russian battlefield capabilities.

The Xi-Putin summit, coming immediately after the Xi-Trump summit, crystallises the central strategic dynamic of the contemporary environment: China is managing two distinct but related relationships simultaneously, and doing so with some skill. With Washington, Xi pursued strategic stability and economic de-escalation. With Moscow, Xi deepened a partnership that NATO has characterised as China being a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The two postures are, from Beijing’s perspective, complementary. China benefits from Russia continuing the war in Ukraine because it depletes Western military resources, occupies Washington’s strategic attention and demonstrates the limits of U.S. power.

Taiwan Arms Sales. Taiwan’s security environment this week was dominated by a single question: whether the United States can still be relied upon to deliver promised arms. The answer from Washington has been ambiguous in a way that has alarmed Taipei.

The Hill reported that Acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao told a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing that Washington was withholding a 14 billion US dollar arms package to ensure it had sufficient munitions for the Iran war. As he stated, “right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury…foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary.”

The Taipei Times reported on 23 May 2026 that Taiwan’s Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo said Taiwan had not received any information about possible adjustments to the planned sale, which reportedly includes PAC-3 MSE interceptors and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems. Cao’s remarks appeared to contradict Trump’s own comments that he was still deliberating on the package, describing it as a “very good negotiating chip for us” in ongoing trade talks with China.

Congress responded immediately. The Taipei Times reported on 24 May 2026 that a bipartisan group of U.S. senatorsintroduced a resolution reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act and the US obligation to provide arms of a defensive nature to Taiwan. The resolution (which you can read in full here) was introduced by Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, with Senators Chris Coons and Susan Collins as co-sponsors.

Senator Shaheen stated that “America’s support for Taiwan is non-negotiable…the president’s failure has real costs for Americans by inviting aggression from the PRC that could cost countless lives and trigger an enormous global economic downturn.” Tillis described Taiwan as one of the US’s strongest democratic partners in the Indo-Pacific, playing a critical role in promoting regional stability.

This is becoming a test case for the robustness of the U.S. security commitment to Taiwan in an environment of competing strategic demands. Taiwan has not, it should be noted, received any official communication about the arms sale delay.

This is occurring at a critical time. The combination of a U.S. administration using Taiwan’s defensive capabilities as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China, a U.S. Navy pause on weapon deliveries citing Iran war munitions requirements, and Beijing’s continued coercive pressure on Taipei creates the conditions for miscalculation. The bipartisan Senate resolution reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act is a meaningful signal, but congressional resolutions do not deliver PAC-3 interceptors or drones.

China’s Rare Earth Weapon. China’s January 2026 imposition of export controls on dual-use items to Japan represents a strategically important economic coercion move, and its effects continue to ripple through Japan’s defence industrial base. The controls, announced by China’s Ministry of Commerce in Announcement No. 1 of 2026, prohibit the export of all dual-use items to Japanese military end-users or for uses that could contribute to enhancing Japan’s military capabilities. The trigger was remarks by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggesting that a Chinese military attack on Taiwan could constitute a threat to Japan’s survival.

The strategic significance extends well beyond Japan. As a CSIS analysis has noted, a number of countries that have shown support for Taiwan, including the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and members of the European Union, remain particularly reliant on China for rare earths. China’s willingness to weaponise access to these materials introduces a powerful constraint on the strategic calculus of democratic governments: the threat of export restrictions directly undermines their own industrial bases, energy security and economic growth in ways that could force governments to reassess how far and how visibly they are prepared to intervene in a Taiwan contingency. Mineral dependence has become a deterrent lever that shapes political behaviour well before any military conflict occurs.

PLA Cognitive Warfare and South China Sea Friction. The ISW-AEI China and Taiwan Update of 22 May 2026documented PRC AIS spoofing as an expanding form of cognitive warfare, and that this is now being directed against Taiwan and the Philippines. Chinese vessels broadcasting fake ship signals from Manila and New Taipei City are causing ship-tracking systems to detect phantom vessels, inflating the apparent number of PRC boats in disputed waters and wasting decision-making resources. Reuters has reported that China has also been experimenting with aerial drones broadcasting fake aircraft signals in the South China Sea. These represent a systematic Chinese effort to overwhelm and disorient the situational awareness of democratic nations in the western Pacific without breaching the threshold of kinetic attacks.

Confrontations at Second Thomas Shoal continued this week. IBTimes Singapore reported on 18 May 2026 that Chinese coast guard and maritime militia ships challenged Philippine vessels attempting to deliver supplies to troops aboard the grounded BRP Sierra Madre. The PLA Southern Theatre Command deployed H-6 bombers armed with anti-ship missiles near Scarborough Shoal during the Balikatan 2026 exercises. Beijing’s pattern of coupling allied military cooperation with intensified PLA nearby activity is a deliberate choice designed to signal that cooperation with the United States carries a cost for countries in the region.

Connecting the Theatres

The back-to-back summits in Beijing tell a strategic story. Trump arrived seeking economic de-escalation and a deal on Iran; he left with a ‘constructive relationship of strategic stability’ and no resolution on Taiwan’s arms sale. Putin arrived seeking energy pipeline commitment and military endorsement; he left with 40 limited agreements and a ‘basic understanding’ on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline that fell short of the breakthrough Moscow wanted. Xi received both leaders without committing to the full range of demands that his visitors wanted.

The most significant outcome of the Xi-Putin summit for Ukraine is the confirmation that China is deepening, not constraining, its military support for Russia. The training of 200 Russian soldiers in Chinese military facilities in drone and electronic warfare techniques is not an act of a neutral mediator. It is the act of an ally managing optics while providing substantive assistance.

As for Trump’s visit, deals were made on multiple issues. But, China did not give Trump everything he wanted, particularly with regards to Iran or Ukraine. The China – America relationship will, in the words of Zongyuan Zoe Liu, henceforth be “more transactional and potentially more unstable: managed rivalry through bilateral bargaining.”

Putin will be content for now that Xi is not abandoning him – or Iran. Russia’s war economy is under strain from Ukrainian strikes and Western sanctions, but China’s continued provision of trade, technology and now military training sustains Russia’s national capacity to fight at a level that a genuinely neutral China would not permit. We need to accept the reality that despite Xi’s rhetoric on the war, China has chosen a side.

Xi is portraying himself as the beacon of stable strategic leadership in a chaotic world.

For the Pacific, the U.S.-Iran war’s demands on American munitions stocks is creating tension in the delivery of defensive arms to Taiwan, and potential constraints on the stockpiles available for Pacific deterrence and contingencies. This is the multi-theatre pressure that America’s strategic competitors have now created. It is forcing the United States to choose priorities among simultaneous crises.

A pending U.S.-Iran peace deal, which has been discussed by Trump on social media, could partially relieve this pressure. But the munitions capacity diverted to the Iran theatre will take some time to reconstitute (although new affordable missiles might be delivered rapidly, as explained in this piece), and the credibility costs of treating Taiwan’s arms as a negotiating chip with Beijing will have an impact on all of America’s Pacific security partners’ strategic calculations. The democracies of the Pacific, Japan most prominent among them, are watching American strategic deliberations and decision-making and building their own capabilities accordingly.

****************

It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included articles on the Xi-Putin summit in Beijing, China’s persistent, large-scale cyber attacks, and what the Strait of Hormuz crisis might mean for the Pacific. There is also a good round up of the war in the Black Sea since 2022, and an excellent piece on military professionalism.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. The Putin-Xi Summit

It has been a big week for summits in Beijing. In this piece published by Engelsberg Ideas, the author looks at the Xi-Putin summit through the lens of historical interactions between China and Russia. As the author notes, “increasingly it is the Russians who are once again reverting to historical type as humble petitioners at the court of a Celestial Emperor.” You can read the full article at this link.

2. China’s Massed, Persistent Cyber Attacks

The first line of this article had me: “What if the next decisive intelligence advantage isn’t a recruited insider but a nation’s ability to model entire societies from its digital exhaust?” In this piece published by War on the Rocks, the author explores China’s Salt Typhoon persistent cyber campaigns against American networks and how it indicates a new approach to large scale, exhaustive and systemic intelligence collection, analysis and exploitation by the Chinese. The full article is available at this link.

3. Hormuz and the Pacific

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/hormuz-warning-indo-pacific

4. Kid Rock and Military Professionalism

The profession of arms imposes standards of behaviour, professional conduct and stewardship, and it is a topic that I have explored over many years. In this excellent piece published by War on the Rocks, the authors examine the recent conduct of a US Army helicopter crew in flying near Kid Rocks house, the subsequent investigation and the Secretary of Defense’s overturning of an investigation into their conduct. As they note, “these events did not ”highlight” the military’s professionalism. Instead, they further short-circuited the standards upon which the military’s reputation for professionalism rests, leading Caine to acknowledge in front of Congress that safety standards and procedures for review are now open to partisan interpretation.” Democracies and partisan politicians mess with the professional ethic of military institutions at their peril. You can read the full article at this link.

5. The Battle of the Black Sea

H.I. Sutton has set the standard on reporting on various elements of maritime warfare and technological developments over many years. His website, Covert Shores, is a fabulous resource for those who wish to know more about maritime developments in the Ukraine War as well as aspects of maritime operations in the Indo-Pacific. In this article, Sutton provides a timely update on the Black Sea campaign being waged by Ukraine to deny the Russian Navy the ability to influence Ukraine’s vital exports through this important body of water, and deny the Russians freedom of manoeuvre. You can read the full piece here.

Thank you for reading The Big Five. I look forward to providing you with another update and reading recommendations next week.

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Russia struck the Ukrainian capital with a large ballistic missile attack, leaving at least one person killed.

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