The Rise and Fall of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

Recently, Dr Steinbock has responded to several journalistic questions regarding the impeachment issue of U.S. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Here are some of the questions.

by Dan Steinbock | Nov 12, 2026 

In November 2024, then-President-elect Trump named Hegseth as his nominee for his secretary of defense. In a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing right before Trump’s second inauguration, Hegseth faced allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and excessive drinking. Yet, he was confirmed by the Senate that month, but only with the vice president, JD Vance, casting a tie-breaking vote.

Recently, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) introduced articles of impeachment alleging that the defense secretary “abused” his powers and “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders.”

On November 10, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 211 to 204 to block an impeachment push against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, effectively killing the resolution for now.

11 absent Democrats undermined Hegseth’s impeachment

Is this the end of the story?

No, the current Republican-controlled House sidelined the measure, but Democrats are set to take control of both chambers of Congress in January. Incoming Democratic leadership has signaled that Pentagon operations and Hegseth’s actions will face intense congressional investigations. So, impeachment or oversight efforts could be revisited next year.

Then again, if this not the end of the story, it should be the beginning of internal reflection in the Democratic Party.

What do you mean?

Rep. Thomas Massie was the sole Republican to vote against the referral, while several members—including 11 Democrats – missed the vote. Why did they miss it?

Every single one of the 203 Democrats who made it to the floor voted against the Republican motion to block the impeachment. Yet, several of the absent lawmakers blamed severe traffic (Reps. Melanie Stansbury, Jonathan Jackson, and Brittany Pettersen).

Since the final vote was tight (211-204), these absences effectively cost the party a push to advance the impeachment. They had a chance to protest an unconstitutional war, which has cost too many innocent lives, including those of fellow-Americans. So, bad traffic sounds like a lame excuse.

Interestingly, the absent Democrats included Nancy Pelosi, who was flying back to San Francisco to attend an annual Veterans Day event and accept an award. Presumably, it was more important to her than protesting the unconstitutional war and its victims. With the exception of progressive-leaning Jonathan Jackson, the list of the absent 11 largely comprised of mainstream, establishment Democrats, reliant on corporate and establishment PACs.

Perhaps bad traffic wasn’t the only motivation. 

“Unwarranted, unconstitutional and illegal Iran war”

What do you think about Hegseth’s management style?

DS: Defense Secretary Hegseth’s term is likely to be seen as one of the most disastrous ones in the Pentagon’s history. The lack of personal integrity and even basic executive experience compounds an aggressive, ideologically overdriven campaign that has triggered a chilling effect, tanked military approval ratings and alienated America’s allies, partners and adversaries alike.

What kind of role did Hegseth play in Trump’s launching his war on Iran alongside Israelis?
DS: Hegseth made an unwarranted, unconstitutional and illegal war against Iran even worse, driving regular televised briefings to aggressively market the conflict to the public as a campaign of “maximum lethality” to disable Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. With his apocalyptic Christian-Zionist beliefs, he should have had absolutely no role in the Pentagon.

How successful has Hegseth been in his conduct against Iranians?

DS: While Hegseth claims “historic devastation” against Iranian capabilities, independent analysts view the grinding, nine-month conflict as a strategic disaster that has failed to control the Strait of Hormuz, depleted American munitions, and wreaked global economic havoc.

“Sympathy for war crimes and war criminals”

You have argued that Hegseth’s activities include war crimes. Why?

DS: Because he has contributed to or authorized actions amounting to war crimes center on several key military operations, institutional decisions, and formal accusations from lawmakers and military veterans.

First, Hegseth has a dark track record of past support and lobbying for service members accused or convicted of war crimes in past foreign conflicts whom he previously championed and lobbied to receive pardons. It is pattern of disregard for military justice and the moral authority of the laws of armed conflict.

Also, early in his tenure, Hegseth dismissed senior military lawyers (Judge Advocate General / JAG officers) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and reassigned hundreds of JAGs away from advising commanders on the laws of war to other duties. Sidelining or purging military legal advisors removes vital institutional checks designed to prevent war crimes and ensure battlefield compliance with international law. It set the stage for international crimes.

“Extrajudicial killings and waging war outside constitutional bounds”

These questionable activities also feature the war against Iran?

DS: Yes, during the U.S. military campaign in Iran, Hegseth was accused by members of Congress, like Representative Thomas Massie and Representative Seth Moulton, pushing an aggressive strategy that ignored laws and norms designed to minimize civilian casualties, including a deadly strike on an Iranian school.

Conducting strikes with high civilian death tolls without strict adherence to proportionality and distinction under the Geneva Conventions breaches the laws of armed conflict. This is why Massie introduced articles of impeachment charging Hegseth with extrajudicial killings and waging war outside constitutional bounds.

Then, there are the reports, including investigations published by the Washington Post, alleging that during military operations targeting suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, a follow-on strike was ordered against survivors who were clinging to wreckage and no longer posed a threat.

Intentionally killing incapacitated or surviving combatants/non-combatants violates Customary International Humanitarian Law (specifically ICRC Rule 46 prohibiting the denial of “no quarter”) and constitutes extrajudicial murder or war crimes.

“Effort to politicize the military”

What do you think about his purge in the US military? Does it have a merit or it has been a bad idea from the very beginning?
DS: Hegseth’s military purge has no merit and it has been flawed from the beginning. He has forced out over two dozen decorated four-star commanders under the guise of removing “woke” leaders, in a disastrous attempt to turn the military into an at-will political playground while gutting combat readiness during active hostilities.

How does the military brass see his actions from the purge inside and his war on Iran outside?

DS:  For months, Pentagon insiders have reported a toxic climate of “fear and paranoia.” Current and retired leaders warn that replacing irreplaceable warfighters with political “yes-men” has severely damaged strategic cohesion and compromised basic national security.

When ideology replaces military experience, unwarranted body bags follow.

“Wrong man, wrong place, wrong time”

Can Hegseth survive the US mid-term as the war on Iran sees no letup in the short-term?

DS: Following massive Republican midterm losses blamed largely on the deeply unpopular war, Hegseth faces imminent House articles of impeachment and behind-the-facade questioning from President Trump regarding his standing, leaving his political future in severe jeopardy.

Hegseth was precisely the wrong man in the wrong place in the wrong time.

This is an updated version of the original published by the Informed Comment (US) on November 11, 2026.

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized visionary of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net 

Democratic Wave or Imperial Rebrand?: Time Will Tell

by M. Reza Behnam | Nov 12, 2026 | 

As a citizen and scholar, whose research, advocacy and moral framework have been dedicated to seeking justice and peace for the people of Palestine, Iran, Yemen and across West Asia, I find little cause for celebration in the recent Democratic Party midterm victories.

Political reveling makes sense if you trust the winning party offers a significant departure from the horrors of the status quo.

Applauding the Democratic Party means ignoring the ashes of Gaza, the massacre at Minab in southern Iran, and the violent legacy of 80 years of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy in the region.

When analyzing the unified bipartisan consensus that has governed U.S. policy in West Asia for decades, the apparent divide is exposed as mere illusion.  For those committed to international law, human rights and decolonization, a Democratic victory does not guarantee political reformation.  It is more likely to represent adaptation—a cosmetic shift in the stewardship of American empire.

Historical evidence demands a rejection of the conventional false binary political narrative that has framed U.S. elections:  the dichotomy between a unilateralist, militaristic Republican Party in opposition to a diplomacy oriented, human rights focused Democratic Party.  With regard to West Asia, both parties operate within a doctrine of institutional hegemony, military interventionism and colonial dominance.

While Republicans pursue aggression through overt unilateralism and unfiltered bellicose rhetoric, Democrats have executed similar policies behind a veneer of rules-based internationalism and institutional diplomacy.  The end result remains the same for the people in Gaza, Tehran, Beirut or San’a – structural violence, economic strangulation and military destruction.

The catastrophic legacy overshadowing Democratic leadership, past and present, makes it difficult for me to foresee, in the party’s electoral success, any departure from a foreign policy dictated by entrenched institutional systems.

The Biden-Harris administration did not simply miscalculate diplomacy; it actively embraced and underwrote what international legal bodies, human rights organizations and scholars worldwide have characterized as genocide in Gaza.

Most Democrats in Congress fast-tracked the shipment of munitions to Israel to carry out its devastating war on Gaza, rather than opposing it.

It is important to remember that it was Democratic leaders and representatives who stayed silent when:

• President Joe Biden signed off on billions of dollars in unconditional military aid, transferring heavy weapons, artillery shells and precision-guided bombs to the Israeli regime that killed countless Palestinians and decimated civilian infrastructure across the Gaza Strip.
• Democratic leaders repeatedly deployed the veto at the UN Security Council, neutralizing international legal mechanisms designed to enforce ceasefires and hold war criminals accountable.
• The administration and party establishment sought to vilify and suppress student activists, scholars and dissenting citizens who demanded an end to American complicity in the destruction of Palestinian life.

A party that has, without conditions, armed, funded and morally shielded and enabled conduct that violates the baseline of human dignity cannot legitimately claim the mantle of progressivism, peace and democracy.

This critique is not limited to Palestine; it encompasses the wider region, particularly concerning U.S. policy toward Iran.  The conventional narrative that the Democrats represent a reasoned diplomatic alternative to Republican hawkish saber-rattling is contradicted by historical record:

• Sanctions as collective punishment: Democratic administrations have consistently maintained and expanded comprehensive economic sanction regimes against Iran. These policies have devastated the Iranian middle class, restricted access to life-saving medicines and crippled civic infrastructure.
• Entrenched militarism: Rather than dismantling the structure of confrontation, Democratic leadership has fortified heavily armed military bases surrounding Iran, reinforcing a regional security framework that has prioritized the sale of weapons over real security cooperation.
• Complicity in regional escalation: The Democrats’ policy of granting unchecked latitude to Israel and its regional Arab allies, ultimately laid the groundwork for Tel Aviv’s unprovoked war on Iran and escalating instability throughout the area.

The civic obligation of scholarship, rooted in peace and justice, is to accurately identify oppressive systems and structures, independent of the ruling political party.

 True political renewal cannot be found in an election that merely offers a reshuffling of the empire’s stewards.  Simply changing the political party in power is meaningless without confronting and dismantling the systemic framework and forces behind U.S. foreign policy, which directly exacerbate domestic inequality. Justice cannot be built on electoral wins that leave the destructive apparatus of the military-industrial-security framework undisturbed.

Blue Wave victors campaigned on a promise to break from the past; to fashion a bold new era of accountability, structural reform and progressive ideals.  Yet, beyond the speeches and good intentions, they must contend with an embedded military, security and economic establishment built specifically to resist change, neutralize political challenges and assimilate reformists into its power structure.

The new “wave” of Democrats have received a mandate from the voters to drown out the party’s old guard managers of empire and to move away from its traditional  foreign policy of global hegemony, endless wars and support for dictatorial regimes.  The electorate has instead authorized them to honor international laws and treaties, while developing a new diplomatic path in West Asia.

When the Democratic Party ends its complicity with Israel in the brutal colonization and subjugation of Palestinians, terminates its 48-year aggressive  stance toward Iran and adopts a policy that respects the sovereignty and humanity of all people across West Asia, I will rejoice. Until then, I continue to worry that the “blue wave” will simply fade into the hidebound bloody “red” one.

As the euphoric dust settles over the midterms, a central question remains.  Are we witnessing a true victory for democratic renewal or simply the seamless rebranding of an empire under new management?  Time will tell.

© 2026, M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D.

Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia. His “Cultural Foundations of Iranian Politics,” published by University of Utah Press, and still in print, was recognized by Choice as Outstanding Academic Book for 1987–1988.

Will Republicans Learn Their Lesson From the ‘Disastrous’ Midterms?

by Ron Paul | Nov 10, 2026 | 

Politicians break campaign promises with hardly any hesitation and usually they get away with it. Americans have come to put up with broken promises for so long, they hardly even seem to notice. Last week, however, voters noticed. They showed the Republican party just how angry they were over President Trump’s decision to attack Iran and how angry they were with Congress for abandoning its Constitutional authority over matters of war and peace.

The results were dramatic. Voters even turned Texas blue, as Democrats took firm control of both the House and Senate.

As President Trump’s promise of a quick war and a quick victory rapidly faded, the costs of the unnecessary and illegal attack thousands of miles away soon began to hit Americans hard. The predictable closure of the Hormuz Strait sent fuel costs through the roof, fanning the fires of inflation which hit everything transported by road, rail, or air.

For months the polls were clear: Americans’ top three concerns were high fuel prices, inflation, and the Iran war. All were related yet Republicans ignored voter concerns. Last Tuesday, voters had the final say.

The peace candidate usually wins, and President Trump promised repeatedly on the campaign trail that not only would he not start wars, but he would end existing conflicts. But we’ve heard it all before. George W. Bush was elected promising a “more humble” foreign policy. After eight years of Bush’s Middle East wars, Obama was elected as the “new” peace candidate. However soon the “Saddam must go” of the Bush era became “Assad must go” and “Gaddafi must go” in the Obama era. Trump was elected after Biden took us to the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine. He promised that this time he would be the real peace candidate. We got war on Iran instead – a war that we did not win and cannot win.

Has the Republican party gotten the message? Have they learned the lesson voters can deliver when they finally have had enough of being lied to?

Neocons are seeing the voter rebuke of Trump as an opportunity to return the Republican party to the Bush era. Yes, prices and inflation are a problem, they argue, but that has nothing to do with the Iran war.

Nobody is buying that.

Vice President Vance laid out clearly why Republicans lost in the midterms: the war, inflation, rejection of America first, and our unhealthy relationship with Israel. Bush-era neocons like Marc Thiessen were furious, accusing Vance of being “disloyal” to the President.

Does Vance really mean what he said, or is it just another example of politicians promising what they think voters want to hear?

It seems a Republican Party that drummed out Thomas Massie over his opposition to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” who warned about the dangers of putting foreign countries before our own, and who demanded an end to all foreign aid is not a Republican Party that Americans are interested in.

The pain will continue until the Party finally rids itself of the neocons and warmongers and returns to its roots as exemplified in the past by the late Sen. Robert Taft and in the present by Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, Tucker Carlson, and many others who genuinely care about peace and liberty.

How the US Brought War to Ukraine

by David Swanson | Nov 13, 2026 | 

Reprinted from World BEYOND War: 

If there is still someone out there who has persisted until now in the idea that Ukrainian history began in 2022, and that wiser members of the U.S. establishment didn’t warn against, and more conniving members strategize for, each U.S. step toward war from the NATO enlargement of the 1990s through the U.S.-backed coup of 2014, the U.S.-backed war that began in 2014, Obama’s military training and base building, Trump’s weapons shipments, Biden’s hostility toward diplomacy, the fantastic horror fables of Russiagate, the reduction of Germany and France to mindless puppets treating the Minsk agreements as a trick, and the U.S. blocking of negotiation or peace just before and just after the Russian invasion — and if such a someone has reached a point of open-mindedness to information, there’s a new book that might really help.

And it sure is badly needed in this moment of Democratic candidates rising on public opposition to wars, even while promising to escalate the war in Ukraine the moment they’re able to.

But the value of this new book to me lies in how it takes the story of the Ukraine War back, not just to the 1990s but to the 1940s. In Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine, Stephen Kinzer gives us deeper understanding of roots and motivations, establishing beyond any possible dispute that the U.S. government began a project of using Ukraine to weaken Russia and pursued it across generations, through changes in individual actors, through failure after failure, and through U.S. presidents who themselves may have lacked a decent understanding of the project they were continuing — so that, as open hostility toward the Soviet Union became supposed friendliness toward Russia, the public face of obliviousness regarding Russia’s inscrutable opposition to the unchanging project of bringing Ukraine into NATO may in fact have involved some actual obliviousness.

Kinzer opens his book claiming to be presenting just the facts, ma’am, and to in no sense be denying the role that Ukrainians have played in their own history. He takes no position on Russia’s criminal and murderous actions, but simply includes them as part of the story. Nonetheless, it is a story of a major project aimed at influencing Ukraine and Russia from Washington, Langley, and Manhattan — sometimes secretly, for example by parachuting would-be revolutionaries into Ukraine to meet their deaths, and sometimes openly, for example celebrating U.S. efforts to interfere in a Russian election to ensure that a drunken buffoon remain in charge of Russia. Even the interference in Ukraine during the eight years leading up to 2022 was generally a point of pride to be openly bragged about right up until it wasn’t. Not just U.S. officials like Victoria Nuland but private foundations such as George Soros’ couldn’t help crowing about how much they’d spent and how responsible they were for overthrowing and manipulating the government of Ukraine. Even now, Nuland goes on camera and openly admits to the U.S. blocking of a peace agreement just weeks after the Russian invasion, and NATO’s top officials can’t stop themselves from pointing out that the insistence on NATO membership was the cause of the war. But the rest of us aren’t supposed to repeat these things.

In Ukraine we have polls now showing large majority support for compromising and ending the war, whereas for a couple of years we we badgered with our supposed responsibility to risk nuclear apocalypse because Ukrainians wanted it. The story of U.S. government behavior from the 1940s on, during which the desires of Ukrainians mattered to U.S. policy makers exactly never, makes clear what an odd and fleeting pretense it was to claim that keeping Ukraine at war was a sacred duty to the people of Ukraine who were insisting upon it.

When World War II ended and the U.S. government was able to jump right back to treating the Soviet Union as its primary enemy, some in the incipient U.S. spy-sabotage-assassination complex that would become the CIA saw Ukraine as the most powerful tool available to threaten Russia, just as Russia saw Ukraine as the pathway for a threatening invasion. Frank Wisner was an early driving force. He would witness a murderous Soviet takeover in Romania. Other key individuals over the decades would themselves or their families have histories of resentment toward Russia. Stalin had starved millions. Soviets had abused and humiliated on a large scale. People like Frank Wisner, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, “Masha” Yovanovitch, Evelyn Farkas, Alexander Vindman, Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and many more seem to have taken their Russophobia very personally, while others like Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden had more general policies of preferring brute force to words.

The U.S. erased the Nazi history of hundreds of Ukrainians in order to illegally bring them — including the usual quota of Soviet spies — to the United States. Hundreds more were put to work in Germany. Mass murderers of Jews and Poles were protected from both Nuremberg and Soviet justice in order to engage in the Cold War game of spying and counter-spying, propagandizing, infiltrating, and fantasizing about overthrows. For years, Ukrainians were sacrificed to the dream by being sent into Ukraine to the waiting arms of the well-informed Soviets. Fighting for Ukraine to the last Ukrainian is not a new idea.

I was surprised to learn from Kinzer that up through 1992, in a residential apartment building in New York City, immediately nextdoor to the one I lived in around 1990-1991, the CIA had maintained the headquarters of its Ukrainian nationalist propaganda production for 40 years beginning in 1952. This was a publishing house called Prolog at 875 West End Avenue led by Stepan Bandera’s buddy Mykola Lebed (whom the CIA was actively keeping out of reports on unprosecuted Nazis as late as 1991). The apartment building ought to be on hidden history tours of the Columbia University area. Kinzer credits its pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, and books with having kept anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism alive for decades. Radio stations were added, broadcasting from Germany and Greece. Unsuccessful but major efforts were made to recruit Ukrainian athletes at each Olympics, in hopes of putting a non-Nazi face on the campaign.

When the Soviet Union was dismantled and U.S. policy generally rolled on as if nothing had changed, those who saw global domination as the driving force in U.S. policy found this unremarkable. Those who had believed that the U.S. military existed because of the evil Soviets, and NATO existed because of the now-nonexistent Warsaw Pact, were bewildered. Historians generally struggle to blame everything before 1990 on the Soviets and everything after on Russia. Kinzer points out the inconvenient facts, the U.S. approach perhaps best encapsulated in a comment President Bill Clinton made about Boris Yeltsin:

“We keep telling Ol’ Boris, Okay now, here’s what you’ve got to do next. Here’s some more shit for your face.”

Yet even Yeltsin drew the line at Ukraine joining NATO. And despite, or because of, that clear and critical Russian demand from virtually every Russian official for decades, the U.S. altered course not at all. NATO even went to war in Yugoslavia, declared its right to launch wars at will, and suggested that Ukraine might be on the list. Brzezinski had it at the top of his list. Dubya tore up the ABM treaty. NATO declared it would add Ukraine. The U.S. took its secretive activities out of the CIA and made them public through the NED, dumping more money over the 30 years since Ukrainian independence from the Soviets into Ukraine than anywhere else, and funded an “Orange Revolution” that actually used what U.S. media would soon begin accusing the U.S. public of: hired protesters. Despite the majority of Ukrainians opposing joining NATO, despite Ukraine’s neutrality serving it well, and despite the future pretense of wanting to follow the will of the Ukrainian people, the U.S. just kept hammering away at the supposed need to get Ukraine into NATO. But as long as countries like Germany and France were still maintaining their own foreign policies not wholly subservient to Washington, NATO could only threaten to add Ukraine (and Georgia) at some future date.

Eventually, in 2013, the U.S. added television channels to its repertoire. U.S. taxpayers and George Soros paid to tell Ukrainians to assemble in the Maidan along with EU nations’ ambassadors, Victoria Nuland, John McCain, Nazi paramilitaries, and half a million other people — and paid to supply them with food and camping supplies. With a Nuland phone call recording publicly advertising U.S. support for the coup, with Senator Chris Murphy and Soros’s organization publicly taking credit, a new Ukrainian government began restricting the use of the Russian language and threatening the NATO takeover of the Russian military base in Crimea.

The rest, as they say, is so-called “history.”

Major investment and forces put to work on both propaganda and structural momentum-building for the better part of a century may seem unstoppable. But not only does the non-U.S.-government world have a say in events, but there always remains available the option of changing course, or what we might call the five-word option. Just as Kamala Harris would now be president if she has said the five words “No more weapons to Israel,” a great many Ukrainians and Russians would still be alive if Joe Biden had said the five words “Ukraine will not join NATO.”

Ukraine War: Drone And Missile Warfare Dominating Combat Operations – Analysis


A Ukrainian soldier prepares to launch a drone. Photo Credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry


November 13, 2026

Hudson Institute

By Can Kasapoğlu

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian drone forces struck nearly 18,000 Russian targets in early November, including the Morozov Plant producing explosives and rocket propellants, while Russia launched thousands of Shahed-type drones with an estimated 84 percent Ukrainian interception rate.

Ukraine has disrupted operations at nine of Russia’s 35 major refineries since late October, affecting up to 30 percent of nominal refining capacity and an estimated 200,000 metric tons per day of actual processing.

Ground fighting remained static at medium intensity around Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, as both sides continue long-range energy and drone campaigns amid emerging jet-powered systems such as Russia’s Geran-5.

1. Battlefield Assessment

Last week, Russia and Ukraine sustained an intense operational tempo in the skies. Missile and drone warfare and air raids drove the conflict, as Ukrainian drone forces demonstrated the ability to strike more than 2,600 Russian targets in one day. According to Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Ukrainian drone units hit nearly 18,000 Russian targets in the first week of November, including some 5,500 Russian military personnel.

Most notably, Ukrainian forces struck the Morozov Plant near St. Petersburg on November 9, reportedly damaging three production workshops. The plant, operated by Russia’s state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, specializes in explosives and solid rocket propellants. The facility has also supported the Topol-M strategic missile program. Additionally, the Morozov compound reportedly supplies propellant for the 9M723 ballistic missile that Russia uses in its Iskander-M missile system. The attacks highlighted Kyiv’s efforts to disrupt Russia’s missile production at its industrial source.


Russian drone salvos also continued to strike Ukraine. Occupation forces launched at least 6,100 Shahed-type one-way attack drones, originally developed in Iran and subsequently adapted for Russian production, against Ukraine in October 2026. Ukrainian air defenses reportedly intercepted or suppressed around 5,200 of these drones, achieving an interception rate of 84 percent but failing to intercept nearly 1,000 drones.

Russia’s median attack involved roughly 150 drones. However, some official figures indicated that Ukraine intercepted more than 7,100 loitering munitions. Based on this interception rate, Russia may have launched as many as 8,500 drones in October.

Russia’s salvos reached particular intensity on the night of November 9–10, when Russian forces launched an Iskander-M ballistic missile and 162 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against Ukraine. These UAVs included nearly 100 jet-powered Shahed-type drones, conventional Shaheds, Gerbera drones, and Parodiya decoys. The attacks originated from multiple launch sites across Russia and occupied Crimea.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Ukrainian air defenses intercepted or electronically suppressed 135 of Russia’s drones, including 70 jet-powered variants. Ukraine recorded Russian strikes at 19 locations, while debris from intercepted drones fell at nine additional sites. The unusually high proportion of jet-powered drones, which accounted for nearly 60 percent of Russia’s total attack package, highlights Russia’s growing reliance on faster unmanned strike systems to challenge Ukrainian air defenses.


Kyiv continued efforts to mitigate Russia’s robotic-warfare threat. The Ukrainian military targeted drone control stations and several launch positions used to stage UAV salvos. Mushrooming drone warfare hubs operated by Rubicon, Russia’s specialized drone-warfare unit, remained high-priority targets for Kyiv.

Visuals from the battlefield also showed that the 412th Nemesis Brigade of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces struck a Russian drone-launch site at Donetsk Airport in occupied Donetsk. The 412th Nemesis has long targeted high-value assets in the Russian rear. The combat formation’s kill list includes 170mm-class Koksan North Korean heavy artillery pieces and Russian surface-to-air missile systems.

Sources identified the weapon Ukraine used in its attack on the Donetsk robotic-warfare nest as an FP-2 strike drone, produced by the Ukrainian drone and missile manufacturer FirePoint. The FP-2 is a critical mid-range strike asset. It boasts a preparation time of less than 20 minutes, which makes it a blitz-style attack weapon. Moreover, the FP-2 can be launched from truck-mounted launchers, boosting its battlefield flexibility.

Apart from developments in the drone and missile segments of the conflict, land warfare remained static, with no changes in battlefield geometry or to the conflict’s principal flashpoints. The operational tempo on the ground remained at medium intensity, with 180 to 200 tactical engagements each day. Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka again bore the brunt of the fighting.

2. Ukraine Targets Russian Refineries

Ukraine intensified its long-range drone campaign against Russia’s oil infrastructure following the collapse of arrangements designed to halt attacks on energy facilities. Since late October, Ukrainian strikes have disrupted operations at nine of Russia’s 35 major refineries, including key installations in central Russia and the Volga region. These strikes have extended to targets as far as 1,100 miles from Ukraine.


According to industry sources, the affected facilities possess a combined processing capacity of approximately 300,000 metric tons, or 2.2 million barrels, per day, representing nearly 30 percent of Russia’s total refining capacity. However, this figure reflects the nominal capacity of the affected refineries rather than actual production losses. By this latter measure, Russia is estimated to have lost up to 200,000 metric tons per day of crude processing, down from the country’s late October processing rate of roughly 700,000 tons per day.

Moscow also continued to target Ukraine’s electricity grid, heating networks, and other essential energy facilities. By targeting Russia’s refining infrastructure, Kyiv seeks to undermine one of the Kremlin’s critical revenue streams, strain Russia’s domestic fuel supplies, and complicate its military logistics operations. Ukraine’s campaign also underscores the growing importance of critical energy infrastructure in the war.
3. What to Monitor

The Defense Intelligence of Ukraine revealed new details about Russia’s Geran-5 K5-K, a jet-powered drone that bridges the gap between low-cost attack UAVs and conventional cruise missiles. With a 620-mile range, a 200-pound thermobaric warhead, and cruising speeds exceeding 280 miles per hour, the platform could further strain Ukrainian air defenses. This report will closely monitor how Russia deploys this weapon against high-value targets and population centers in Ukraine.

About the author: 

Can Kasapoğlu is a nonresident senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His work at Hudson focuses on political-military affairs in the Middle East, North Africa, and former Soviet regions. He specializes in open-source defense intelligence, geopolitical assessments, international weapons market trends, as well as emerging defense technologies and related concepts of operations.

Source: This article was published by the Hudson Institute

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Green Barriers Or Fair Trade? How EU Deforestation Rules Are Reshaping Indian Agriculture – Analysis


A coffee plantation in India. Photo Credit: INeedCoffee / CoffeeHero, Wikipedia Commons


November 13, 2026

By Sarvesh JP

Key Takeaways:

From 30 December 2026 the EU Deforestation Regulation will require plot-level geolocation proof that coffee, rubber, cocoa and other goods were not grown on land deforested after 2020, a rule India views as a costly non-tariff barrier for its 86 percent smallholder farms.

Despite India’s low-risk rating and domestic digital tools such as AgriStack and commodity-board apps, the absence of mutual recognition means European importers may still re-verify data, raising compliance costs.

Without formal recognition, phased timelines and financing support, the regulation risks diverting Indian exports to less demanding markets and undermining Europe’s own supply-chain diversification goals.

Few European laws collide with Indian farm realities as squarely as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). From Dec. 30, 2026, large and medium-sized companies must prove that coffee, rubber, cocoa, wood and other covered goods sold in the European Union did not come from land deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. Every shipment must trace back to the plots where the crop grew, using geolocation data. The date follows two postponements, and the European Commission has ruled out a third.

Brussels frames the rule as a climate benchmark. New Delhi calls it a non-tariff barrier that penalizes small, fragmented farms.

Both claims have merit. India is rated low-risk under the regulation, yet its smallholders must still produce plot-level proof. Without mutual recognition of Indian traceability systems, the rule risks steering exporters toward less regulated markets. That would undercut both Europe’s supply-chain diversification strategy and global climate goals.


The Smallholder Dilemma

India’s farm economy runs on small plots. According to Reserve Bank of India figures drawn from the Agriculture Census, small holdings make up 86% of the total, and the average holding is just 1.08 hectares.

Coffee fits the pattern. Growers in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu work roughly 366,000 holdings, 99% of them under 10 hectares, according to a 2019 study using Coffee Board data. Rubber is smaller still. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry’s National Rubber Policy counts about 1.3 million growers, with an average holding of 0.57 hectare and 92% of output coming from smallholdings.

Cocoa and agroforestry products add more tiny, mixed-use plots. Wooden handicraft exporters have also raised alarms, the Observer Research Foundation noted.

Large plantations can absorb the burden. They typically hold clear land records, can hire surveyors and often sell directly to exporters. Smallholders sell through several intermediaries, so each farm must be mapped, screened against forest-cover data and tied to its buyer. Under the regulation’s text, plots of four hectares or less need one GPS point, while larger plots need a boundary polygon.


Compliance vendors warn that satellite forest maps can flag shade-grown coffee and rubber, leaving farmers to prove their trees are not forest. The EU eased some rules in December 2025, creating a simplified regime for “micro and small primary operators.” But legal scholars Ysaline Reid and Gauthier Michiels argue the relief mainly benefits EU producers, because third-country smallholders who sell through traders are unlikely to qualify.

Trade Friction and Diplomatic Pushback

New Delhi has been blunt. It treats the deforestation rule and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as unilateral measures that raise the cost of market access. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal called EU standards “irrational” trade barriers in October 2024. Last month, at the Berlin Global Dialogue, he warned that piling on regulations invites reciprocal measures and said India would trade with partners such as Singapore, which has neither CBAM nor deforestation rules.

The Global Trade Research Initiative, a New Delhi think tank, estimated that coffee, leather hides and paperboard exports worth about $1.3 billion a year would be affected. Indian planters have joined the pushback. The United Planters’ Association of Southern India has warned that traceability costs will hit fragmented coffee and rubber growers hardest and has sought government support and EU engagement.

The EU-India free trade agreement, concluded Jan. 27, did not resolve the dispute. The European Commission said the deal carries no CBAM exemption, and Argus Media reported that it also steers clear of deforestation-related concerns.


The EU-India Trade and Technology Council (TTC) met for a third time in Brussels on July 15. Its joint statement did not name the deforestation rule. It did refer to “relevant EU regulations,” pledged work on Indian access to accredited CBAM verifiers and noted talks on mutual equivalence recognition for organic products.

That organic track is instructive. It shows the two sides can recognize each other’s systems when they choose to.

India’s Digital Response vs. Brussels’ Benchmarks

India has not waited for Brussels. AgriStack, the government’s digital public infrastructure for agriculture, had issued more than 103 million Farmer IDs by Aug. 3, the government said. Its Digital Crop Survey covered more than 313 million plots in the 2025-26 rabi season. Coverage remains uneven, since states maintain the registries and outdated land records have slowed the drive in places such as Jharkhand.

Commodity boards are building on that base. The Coffee Board has added an EUDR module to its India Coffee App. Board officials say the platform spares growers private services that charge up to $35 per metric ton of exported coffee. The Rubber Board began geo-mapping plantations in Kerala in March 2025 under its Indian Sustainable Natural Rubber certification framework.

Yet none of this carries legal weight in Brussels. Responsibility sits with the first operator placing goods on the EU market, usually the European buyer, who files the due diligence statement. Indian data feeds that filing but does not replace it, so importers may end up re-verifying the same farms.

India’s low-risk rating trims risk assessment but not the duty to collect plot data. Defenders of the rule note that low-risk origins face the lightest enforcement, with authorities required to check just 1% of operators a year. Even so, light enforcement still leaves smallholders to produce the data.

Without a formal recognition mechanism, Indian registries remain inputs, not credentials. Progress at home cannot translate into easier access in Europe.

The Geopolitical Backfire: Trade Diversion

The risk is trade diversion. Europe anchors Indian coffee demand, but it is not the only buyer. Italy (18%), Germany (11%) and Belgium (7.5%) led destinations in fiscal 2024-25, followed by Russia (5.3%) and the United Arab Emirates (5.1%), according to a Press Information Bureau backgrounder.

Exports hit a record $2.13 billion in fiscal 2025-26, The Hindu BusinessLine reported. StoneX notes that Russia, the Middle East, Japan and South Korea are fast-growing markets, and domestic consumption offers another outlet. Buyers in Russia and the Gulf do not ask for EU-style plot-level proof.


Soluble coffee raises the stakes. A Commission delegated act now under scrutiny would bring it into scope from Dec. 30, 2027, and instant coffee alone accounted for $498 million of exports in April-January of fiscal 2025-26, according to trade data reported by India Shipping News.

If smallholder coffee cannot be certified as traceable, it will still find buyers, just elsewhere. Europe would then weaken the diversification its trade deal with India was meant to deliver, which the Kiel Institute casts as the second pillar of Europe’s diversification push. Forests gain little, since the regulation already rates India low-risk and the beans simply change destination.

A Policy Path Forward

The fix is practical, not radical. First, Brussels and New Delhi should formally recognize Indian national traceability systems, building on the joint task force the EU set up with Indonesia and Malaysia to support smallholder inclusion. Second, smallholder-heavy supply chains need phased timelines, with grace periods tied to registry coverage. Third, the EU should help finance the transition by funding farm mapping and producer organizations, not leaving growers to pay.

Europe wants deforestation-free supply chains and dependable partners. Mutual recognition would deliver both. Without it, the rule risks delivering neither. The TTC’s planned upgrade, due by year-end, offers a ready forum.


About Sarvesh JP
Sarvesh JP is a Project Associate at the Bay Of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organisation (BOBP-IGO) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. His work focuses on regional trade policy, environmental governance, and sustainable agricultural and marine value chains across South Asia.
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