EDITORIAL: The West Must Remain the Center of the World: Lesson from Kyiv's Night

EDITORIAL: The West Must Remain the Center of the World: Lesson from Kyiv's Night

Introduction: In Kyiv's sky, at 9 p.m., the fundamental question

June 25, 2026, evening: the sirens that ask an existential question

On June 25, 2026, shortly before 9 p.m., ballistic missile alert sirens wailed across the sky of Kyiv. Russian Iskander-M missiles were streaking toward the Ukrainian capital. Fragments struck a warehouse in the Darnytskyi district, triggering a fire. Two people were wounded. An hour later, another alert — another wave. In Kremenchuk, in Poltava oblast, more explosions. And to the west, as far as Rivne, alerts activated in regions that seemed, only a few years ago, safely beyond the reach of the threat.

That night, while Ukrainians descended into shelters, while firefighters battled the flames in Darnytskyi, while Patriot missile crews activated their systems to intercept Russian ballistics — that night, one question crossed Kyiv's sky: Will the West still be there tomorrow? The day after? In ten years? This is not a rhetorical question. It is the most urgent question of our time.

Two wounded in Darnytskyi, but a deeper wound

Two wounded. One warehouse in flames. The toll of June 25, 2026 in Kyiv is relatively modest compared to the war's deadliest strikes — such as the attack on June 15, 2026, less than two weeks earlier, which killed five people in Kyiv and left the Kyiv-Petchersk Lavra in flames. But every ballistic strike on Kyiv inflicts a wound that goes far beyond material damage: it tests Ukrainian resilience, the robustness of the air defense systems fueled by PURL, and the West's determination to maintain its commitment.

That evening in Kyiv, the West was present in the form of PAC-3 missiles purchased through the PURL mechanism, Patriot systems delivered by Germany and the United States, and technicians trained at NATO centers. These concrete presences made it possible to intercept some of the ballistics. But the deeper wound — the doubt about the sustainability of that engagement — cannot be treated by interceptor missiles. It calls for a political, moral, ideological response. That is the subject of this editorial.

What "the center of the world" truly means

Not a geographical center, but a center of values

When I say the West must remain the center of the world, I am not talking about geography. I am not talking about ethnic or cultural domination. I am not claiming that everything the West has done throughout its history deserves to be defended — there are dark pages we must honestly acknowledge. What I am talking about is a system of values — representative democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression, protection of individual rights, international law — that the West, imperfectly but genuinely, embodies and defends.

This system of values is not a Western monopoly — democracies like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, and Botswana embody it in their own way. But the institutional core of this system — military alliances, economic institutions, international courts, norms of conduct between states — was built, maintained, and defended primarily by America and Europe since 1945. It is this order that is now being challenged, and it is the defense of this order that I advocate.

The challengers of the Western order: who they are, what they want

The challengers of the Western order are multiple and different, but they share one essential characteristic: they are authoritarian regimes that see the liberal international order as an obstacle to their internal power and regional ambitions. Putin's Russia rejects the idea that Ukraine has the right to exist as a sovereign state freely choosing its geopolitical orientation. Xi's China rejects the idea that Taiwan — a functioning democracy of 23 million people — can exist outside Beijing's control. The ayatollahs' Iran rejects the idea of a Middle East where neighboring states coexist without being under Iranian influence.

These regimes do not want to modify the Western order — they want to destroy it, or at minimum free themselves from it entirely. A world in which Russia reconquers Ukraine, China absorbs Taiwan, and Iran dominates the Middle East would be a radically different world — one in which billions of people would live under forms of authoritarianism that the West had, until now, managed to contain. This prospect is not hypothetical — it is explicitly declared in Putin's speeches, in Xi's published strategies, and in Khamenei's rhetoric.

Kyiv's night as a test of Western determination

The PAC-3 missiles: Western solidarity made concrete

Every PAC-3 missile that intercepts an Iskander over Kyiv is a physical demonstration of Western solidarity. Behind that missile: Raytheon engineers in Tucson, German taxpayers who funded its purchase through PURL, Ukrainian technicians trained at NATO bases, diplomats who negotiated the transfers, governments that maintained their commitments despite domestic pressure. This chain of solidarity is real. It saves lives every night.

But this chain is fragile. It depends on governments that can change course with every election. It depends on institutional mechanisms like PURL that can be dismantled if political will erodes. It depends on a Western public sufficiently informed and mobilized to maintain pressure on its elected representatives. And it depends on a coherent narrative about why Ukraine deserves to be defended — not just out of abstract generosity, but out of a real strategic interest and an uncompromising moral principle.

The June 25 strike in context: a calculated escalation

The June 25, 2026 strike on Kyiv was not random. It fits a pattern of escalation that Moscow deliberately maintains: keeping pressure on Kyiv to exhaust Ukrainian interceptor missiles, testing Western reactions, and sending the signal that Russia can strike the Ukrainian capital at will. Less than two weeks before, on June 15, 2026, a far deadlier strike had killed five people in Kyiv and damaged the Kyiv-Petchersk Lavra — a millennial Orthodox monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Striking Ukrainian religious and cultural heritage is also striking national identity — telling Ukrainians that their culture, their history, their collective life do not deserve to exist. This is a dimension of the war that statistics do not capture but that weighs heavily on the population's determination to resist. And it is an additional reason why the West cannot look upon these strikes as mere military events — they are attacks on civilization as such.

The legacy of 1945: why the liberal international order deserves to be defended

The pre-1945 world and its horrors

To understand the value of the international order built after 1945, we must remember what the world was like before. A world where great powers freely attacked one another, where borders could be redrawn by force, where national minorities could be expelled or exterminated without any international mechanism to stop it. That world produced two world wars and 100 million deaths in the twentieth century alone.

The order built after 1945 — with the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, international humanitarian law, the International Criminal Court — is not perfect. It has been violated many times, including by Western democracies. But it has produced 80 years without direct war between great powers. It contributed to decolonization, the spread of democracy, and the spectacular reduction of global poverty. This imperfect record is incomparably superior to any alternative proposed by the authoritarian regimes contesting it.

Ukraine as the test of this legacy

The war in Ukraine is the most serious test of this legacy since the end of the Cold War. If Russia manages to seize by force a territory of 50,000 km² from a sovereign country and keep it, the message is clear: Article 2(4) of the UN Charter — the prohibition on the use of force to settle territorial disputes — is no longer an effective rule. It becomes nothing more than wishful thinking.

This precedent would have immediate global consequences. Beijing would observe that forcibly taking Taiwan produces a manageable level of international resistance. Countries with territorial claims on smaller neighbors would draw their own conclusions. The international order does not collapse all at once — it erodes, precedent by precedent, until it exists only on paper. Defending Ukraine is therefore not merely an act of humanitarian solidarity — it is a defense of the legal and political architecture of the world we all inhabit.

Trump, the necessary evil, and the conditions of his usefulness

Why America remains indispensable

I maintain my position on Trump: he is a necessary evil for the West. His brutal and unpredictable approach to international politics is uncomfortable, sometimes outright dangerous. But facing the Russia-China-Iran triumvirate, an imperfectly led America under Trump is incomparably preferable to an absent America or an America retreating into isolationism that would cede the field to the adversaries of the liberal order.

The evidence is in the facts: despite all its ambivalences, the Trump administration maintained the PURL mechanism, which provides 90 percent of Ukrainian air defense missiles. It maintained sanctions against Russia, even if their enforcement is sometimes patchy. It did not abandon American commitments to NATO, even if it conditioned some of them on increased financial contributions from allies. These imperfect actions are better than total inaction.

The conditions under which Trump is useful

But Trump's usefulness has conditions. He is useful when European pressure is sufficient to keep him within the boundaries of necessary engagement. He is useful when his most capable advisors manage to steer him toward strategically coherent decisions. He is useful when his "deals" rhetoric produces real concessions from adversaries rather than real capitulations from allies.

He becomes dangerous when his indulgence toward Putin — visible in some of his statements — translates into concrete policies of reduced support for Ukraine. He becomes dangerous when his obsession with reducing the American military presence in Europe sends Moscow signals of opportunity. He becomes dangerous when his ambiguity on Taiwan encourages Beijing to test the limits of the American response. Keeping Trump in the camp of defending the Western order, while compensating for his excesses, is the most delicate task of current European diplomacy.

Europe must wake up: from dependence to strategic autonomy

Dependence as existential vulnerability

The most important lesson of these four years of war in Ukraine for Europe may be the hardest to admit: Europe has been dangerously dependent on America for its own security, and that dependence was a risky bet that could have proved fatal. When Trump signaled, upon his return to power in 2025, that American contributions to European defense might become conditional, the entire European security architecture built since 1945 suddenly seemed far less solid than it had been.

Fortunately, Europe has begun — only begun — to react. The commitment to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035 (with a minimum of 3.5 percent for strictly military spending) is a radical departure from the years of peace dividends. The PURL mechanism demonstrated that Europeans can fund collective defense in a coordinated manner. The permanent German brigade in Lithuania, the massive Nordic and Baltic investments — all of this represents a genuine strategic awakening, even if it is still insufficient.

5 percent of GDP on defense: necessary but not sufficient

The 5 percent of GDP defense target is necessary, but it will not alone create the European strategic autonomy Europe needs. It also requires a rationalization of European defense industries — too fragmented, too duplicated, too poorly integrated to produce economies of scale. It requires joint development programs for next-generation equipment — air defense systems, drones, electronic warfare — to reduce dependence on American technologies. And it requires a shared strategic culture — a common understanding of threats, priorities, and red lines — that is still sorely lacking in a Europe divided between Eastern hawks and Western advocates of good-neighbor policies.

Ukraine itself, when the war is over, will be a major strategic asset for Europe — with a battle-hardened army, an innovative defense industry, and an understanding of modern warfare that few other European countries possess. Integrating Ukraine into European structures — economic and security — is not only an act of solidarity toward a country that has suffered: it is a strategic investment in Europe's collective capacity to face future threats.

Putin's Russia: understanding without excusing

The deep causes of Russian aggression

To effectively defend the West against Putin's Russia, we must understand it without ever excusing it. Contemporary Russia is a regime that needs an external enemy to legitimize its internal concentration of power. Putin transformed Russia's nascent post-Soviet democracy into a personalized autocracy by constantly projecting external threats — NATO "encircling" Russia, the West "wanting to destroy" Russia. These narratives are not genuinely believed — they are deliberately constructed and maintained.

The real reason for the aggression against Ukraine is not the NATO threat — it is that a free and democratic Ukraine was an existential demonstration that the Russian model is not inevitable. A Slavic, Orthodox, partly Russian-speaking people could choose democracy and freedom. That demonstration was intolerable to Putin — it meant that Russians too might one day make that choice. It is to suppress that demonstration that he launched his invasion — not to protect Russia from a phantom military threat.

Why a free Ukraine is a threat to Putin — and a chance for Russia

A free Ukraine is not a threat to the Russian people — it is a chance. A flourishing democracy on Russia's doorstep could, one day, inspire enough Russians to demand the same rights. This scenario is precisely what Putin fears most — not a NATO military invasion, but democratic contagion through the Ukrainian example.

That is why defending Ukraine is not only in the interest of Ukrainians and Westerners — it is also in the long-term interest of the Russian people. A Russia freed from Putin, reconciled with its neighbors, integrated into global economic and diplomatic structures, would be a more prosperous, freer, and less dangerous country for its own citizens. This is a horizon that seems distant today — but it is not impossible if the West maintains its values and determination.

China and the Taiwan question: the next test

The Chinese challenge: different but analogous

The challenge China poses to the Western order is different from Russia's in its forms, but analogous in its fundamental ambitions. China is not a declining state nostalgically seeking to restore lost greatness — it is a rising power that wants to reshape the world order in favor of its own vision. And that vision is incompatible with democratic principles and the freedom of peoples to choose their own government.

The question of Taiwan is the most direct test of this ambition. If Beijing manages to absorb Taiwan — by force or by progressive coercion — it will demonstrate that democracies of twenty million inhabitants can be crushed by authoritarian regimes if those regimes are sufficiently determined and the West is sufficiently ambiguous in its response. The CCG patrols east of Taiwan in June 2026 are precisely this type of test — and the Western response must be equal to the challenge.

The axis of aggressors: a strategic reality

Analysts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies published in June 2026 a book titled Axis of Aggressors on Russia-North Korea cooperation. This title captures something true: it is not only Russia that the West confronts in Ukraine — it is a group of authoritarian regimes that mutually support each other in their resistance to the liberal international order. Russia receives North Korean ammunition and Iranian components. North Korea receives Russian military technologies. China diplomatically and economically supports all members of this axis.

Against this axis, the West must maintain and strengthen its own alliances — not only military but political, economic, and technological. NATO, the G7, the Indo-Pacific partnerships with Japan, Australia, and South Korea — these structures are the foundations on which the response to the axis of aggressors must be built. The Ankara summit on July 7-8, 2026 is an opportunity to demonstrate that this broader West is capable of mobilizing at the necessary level.

Kyiv's night and us: a question of the mirror

What would we see if we were in Kyiv that night?

I want to return to the night of June 25, 2026. Imagine yourself in an apartment in Darnytskyi at 9 p.m. The sirens sound. You know that ballistic missiles are incoming — missiles capable of destroying an entire building. You descend into the shelter with your children. Outside, the Patriot systems activate — funded in part by Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, and Germans who collectively decided that your life is worth defending. One missile is intercepted. Another gets through — its debris ignites a fire a few streets away.

This scenario is not a metaphor — it is a daily reality for millions of Ukrainians for more than four years. They live in a permanent uncertainty that few Westerners can truly imagine. And they continue — working, educating their children, resisting, asking the West for reinforcements. Their determination is a mirror in which we should look: are we equal to what they show us?

What Kyiv's night tells us about who we are

The way the West responds to Kyiv's nights says something essential about who we are — not who we claim to be, but who we truly are. If we maintain our commitment with constancy and generosity, we demonstrate that our values are not drawing-room rhetoric but principles for which we are prepared to pay a real price. If we hedge, if we seek compromises that sacrifice Ukrainian sovereignty for short-term comfort, we reveal that our values stop where our immediate interest begins.

This is not an accusation — it is a question. Every democracy, every government, every citizen can ask it honestly. The West's collective response to this war will be one of the most significant markers of our era. It will tell future generations what we chose when the order our parents built after 1945 was put to the test.

Reconstruction: after the war, an even deeper commitment

Ukraine's reconstruction as a civilizational project

Defending Ukraine also means committing to rebuild it. The World Bank estimated at the end of 2025 that reconstruction would require more than $500 billion over several decades. That is a colossal investment — but also a historic opportunity. Rebuilding Ukraine to European standards, integrating its industries into European value chains, developing its technological and defensive capabilities: all of this would transform Ukraine into a major actor in European security and economics.

This long-term vision is inseparable from short-term defense. We cannot defend Ukraine without intending to rebuild it. We cannot ask it to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives for its freedom without committing to guarantee it a worthy peace after victory. The West, if it wants to remain the center of the world — a center of values, not domination — must assume this long-term responsibility.

The lesson of Kyiv's night for the future

The night of June 25, 2026 in Kyiv will be forgotten by most of us within a few weeks. There will be other nights, other strikes, other tallies. But what this night represents — the determination of a people to defend its freedom, supported by the imperfect but real solidarity of the West — is something we must keep present in our collective consciousness.

The West must remain the center of the world — not because we are superior to others, but because the values we carry — freedom, democracy, rule of law, human dignity — are universal and worth defending wherever they are threatened. Kyiv's night is our night too. And if we stop hearing it as such, we will have lost something essential — well before Putin prevails.

The NATO Ankara summit: the rendez-vous of determination

What the summit must produce

The NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8, 2026 is the next moment when words must turn into action. This summit must produce substantial financial commitments through PURL for the missiles Ukraine needs. It must lay concrete milestones toward the 5 percent of GDP defense target — with timelines, verification mechanisms, and consequences for laggards. It must send a clear message to Moscow that Western determination is intact and intensifying, and to Beijing that provocations in the Taiwan Strait will not go unnoticed.

It must also — and this may be the hardest — engage in an honest conversation about long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. What a potential ceasefire will mean for Ukrainian security. What NATO is prepared to promise — and deliver. These conversations are uncomfortable because they require making concrete commitments that bind future governments. But they are indispensable if any eventual peace is to be lasting.

NATO in 20 years: projection of a present choice

In 20 years, NATO will be either a militarily stronger, more coherent alliance capable of deterring and defending its members and partners against high-intensity threats — or an institutional shell whose credibility will have been definitively eroded by decades of conditional engagement and insufficient contributions. The choice between these two trajectories is being made now, in defense budget decisions, in PURL commitments, in firm and consistent political declarations in the face of Russian and Chinese provocations.

Kyiv's night is part of that trajectory. Every missile intercepted over the Darnytskyi district is a choice — the choice of an Alliance that decides to keep its promises. Every refusal to increase PURL contributions, every delay in delivering air defense systems, every signal of ambivalence sent to Moscow is the other choice — that of letting the Alliance hollow out from the inside. NATO will be what we make of it. And we will make of it what we choose to be.

Ukraine as a demonstration of values: what Zelensky embodies

Zelensky, symbol of democratic resistance

Volodymyr Zelensky has become, since February 24, 2022, the most powerful face of democratic resistance in the contemporary world. His decision to remain in Kyiv when everyone expected him to flee — his video message filmed from the streets of the capital under the threat of Russian tanks — changed the course of the war. He demonstrated that political will can be a real force multiplier. And that demonstration galvanized Western support that, without his presence, might have hesitated even longer.

What Zelensky embodies goes beyond his person. He represents the living demonstration that a democracy under attack can choose to defend itself rather than capitulate, that a leader can choose truth over flight, and that a people can find in its freedom a reason to resist a power incomparably greater than itself. This message extends far beyond Ukraine's borders — it is universal, and peoples around the world, from Taiwan to Estonia, have taken its measure.

Kyiv's voice in international diplomacy

Zelensky also reinvented wartime diplomacy. His speeches before the US Congress, before the European Parliament, before the Israeli Knesset — adapted to each audience with rare political intelligence — maintained pressure on Western leaders at moments when war fatigue threatened to take hold. In June 2026, his proposal of a negotiating window open until winter and his 40-day influence operation demonstrate that his diplomatic sophistication has continued to sharpen through years of war.

This Ukrainian voice in international diplomacy is precious far beyond the conflict itself. It demonstrates to peoples under authoritarian regimes that democracy is not a weakness — it is a strength. It proves to regimes banking on Western fatigue and compromise that democracies can maintain their determination. And it reminds Western allies that every decision to reduce or delay their support has concrete human consequences in the streets of Darnytskyi and Kremenchuk.

The human cost: what the numbers do not say

The civilian toll and Ukrainian resistance

Behind the strategic analyses, technological assessments, and diplomatic discussions lie human beings living this war daily. The two wounded in Darnytskyi on June 25, 2026 are two among tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians wounded since the start of the full-scale invasion. Every Russian ballistic strike on Kyiv, every missile that hits Zaporizhzhia or Kremenchuk, every drone that crashes into a residential neighborhood represents a human trauma that statistics do not fully capture.

This human cost is the primary reality of this war — before geopolitical calculations, before air defense analyses, before discussions about Flamingo drones and Pantsir systems. Families separated, children growing up in shelters, cities that have lost their cultural heritage, men and women who have been fighting far from home for more than four years. Ukraine is paying a price that few other Western nations have had to pay since 1945. That price deserves to be named every time someone speaks of "war fatigue" in the West.

Psychological resilience as a strategic factor

And yet, despite this immense human cost, Ukrainian resilience indicators remain remarkably high. Regular polls show that the majority of Ukrainians want to keep fighting rather than accept a peace that cedes territory to Russia. This collective will — forged in suffering but genuine — is a real strategic factor. A people fighting for its survival and its freedom is an incomparably more formidable adversary than an army fighting for the ambitions of a dictator.

Putin committed a fundamental analytical error in believing Ukraine would fold quickly. He had not measured the depth of Ukrainian national identity — forged precisely by centuries of resistance to Russian domination. That identity is Ukraine's most inexhaustible resource in this war. Defending it — recognizing it, supporting it, providing the tools for it to survive — is the most fundamental responsibility of the West in this conflict.

The war's legacy for global democracy: what will history remember?

The present moment in the long arc of history

In a century, historians will analyze the Russo-Ukrainian war as we analyze the First World War or the Second today — with the hindsight that allows us to see the deep dynamics that contemporaries do not always perceive clearly. That hindsight is not available to us. We live within the thickness of events, with their uncertainties, contradictions, and contingencies. But some deep trends already seem sufficiently clear to deserve naming.

This war has demonstrated that democracy can resist authoritarian aggression when it has the will and the means. It has demonstrated that international solidarity between democracies can be stronger and more durable than autocrats calculate. It has produced a military drone revolution whose implications will transform the defense of all democracies in the decades ahead. And it has brutally recalled that peace does not maintain itself — it requires a constant effort, permanent vigilance, and a willingness to pay a real cost to defend the values that underpin it.

What the West must retain for future challenges

The challenges the West will face after the Ukrainian war will likely be more numerous, not fewer. China is testing its coercive capabilities against Taiwan. North Korea's Kim Jong-un is accelerating his nuclear program and developing increasingly sophisticated ballistic capabilities with Russian assistance. Iran, even in a context of negotiations with the United States, is not abandoning its regional ambitions. The threat is not diminishing — it is shifting and growing more complex.

The core lesson is simple: deterrence works when it is credible, consistent, and collective. NATO at the Ankara summit on July 7-8, 2026 has the opportunity to demonstrate that this credibility is intact. The 5 percent of GDP defense commitments, the deliveries of systems to Ukraine, the reinforced military presence on the Eastern flank — all of this sends a message that the adversaries of the liberal Western order must hear clearly: the West is not in decline, it is in strategic renaissance.

Conclusion: Kyiv's night is not their night — it is ours too

The lesson that Kyiv's night teaches us

The night of June 25, 2026 in Kyiv teaches us several things. It teaches us that Putin's Russia will not stop on its own — it will stop when the costs become unacceptable, whether militarily, economically, or politically. It teaches us that defending freedom is not an acquired state — it requires constant effort, real financial commitment, and political will that resists pressures and the temptations of short-term compromise. And it teaches us that Ukraine is not fighting alone — that a coalition of democracies has decided, imperfectly but resolutely, to stand by its side.

What we decide to do with these lessons — to retain them, act on them, or forget them the moment the next crisis diverts our attention — will determine the future of the international order. That is not an exaggeration. It is the bare truth, without diplomatic ornament. The West must remain the center of the world — not out of arrogance, but out of responsibility toward the values it has built and that it alone, today, is positioned to defend on a global scale.

The conviction that guides this editorial

I end this editorial with the same conviction that opened it: the West must remain the center of the world. Not eternally dominant — the world changes, and that is good. Not without self-criticism — we have our own demons to combat. But as guardian of an international order founded on universal values rather than the law of the strongest. The night of Kyiv on June 25, 2026 was an ordinary night in an extraordinary war. And yet it crystallizes everything: Ukrainian determination, imperfect but real Western solidarity, and the immensity of what is at stake. I choose to be on Kyiv's side. Not because it is easy — because it is right.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

A stated editorial, not a neutral analysis

This editorial is deliberately partial. That is its nature: an editorial is an opinion piece that defends a position. My position is pro-Ukraine, pro-democracy, and in favor of maintaining a liberal international order. This position is argued, grounded in facts, and consistent with the values I have defended throughout my work as a columnist. I did not seek to artificially balance it with viewpoints I do not share — that would be a false neutrality worse than a stated opinion.

Readers expecting a neutral account of the June 25 Kyiv strike will find better-suited coverage in the Primary Sources listed below. This text is an argument — one I stand behind, but an argument nonetheless.

What I do not know and what I assume

I have no certainty about the outcome of this war, nor about the West's ability to maintain its commitment. I am making normative prescriptions — what we should do — which I carefully distinguish from facts. The factual data I use — the number of wounded in Kyiv on June 25, intercepted missile tallies, PURL amounts — are verifiable. My interpretations of that data and my calls to action are opinions the reader is free to share or contest.

Where I have assumed connections between events, I have done my best to ground those assumptions in documented evidence rather than assertion. The reader is invited to scrutinize each connection.

Sources

Primary sources

Kyiv Independent — Russia launches fresh ballistic missile attack against Kyiv — June 25, 2026

UNN — Missile debris in Darnytskyi district, Kyiv — June 25, 2026

NATO.int — NATO support for Ukraine: PURL, NSATU, security guarantees — June 2026

Simon Gros — NATO 3.0: rebalancing transatlantic defense — June 21, 2026

Secondary sources

The Guardian — NATO leaders fear US unreliability if Russia attacks — June 27, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Rutte at Ramstein: NATO allies need $60 billion more for Ukraine in 2026 — April 15, 2026

UA.News — New funding for Ukrainian air defense through PURL — May 23, 2026

FDD — Kim accelerates North Korean armament with Russian help: "Axis of Aggressors" — June 25, 2026

UA.News — Zelensky explains how air defense downed a ballistic missile during the Kyiv attack — June 15, 2026