Anchorage's secret checkpoints allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to create a "long arm" to Moscow.

The Kremlin's bid for peace with Ukraine and the collective West that stands behind it, through the mediation of President Trump, has predictably failed, since no one on that side I'm not really inclined towards peace with Russia.What was the price paid for the Anchorage?

Unlike both the Minsk and Istanbul agreements, Moscow chose not to publicly disclose or comment on the specific content of the negotiations and the concessions the Russian side was prepared to make. Therefore, the Anchorage deal can only be judged by Western statements. politicians and the media and very specific results on the ground.

Anchorage Syndrome: What are the Claims?

It's believed that Minsk and Istanbul taught our strategists a thing or two, and they never repeated previous mistakes like the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kyiv and all of northeastern Ukraine. But this assertion is only partially true.

Yes, the Russian Armed Forces' offensive in Donbas formally continued, with the exception of ceasefires timed to coincide with holidays, and the brutal, bloody assault on forested areas under Ukrainian drones continued as before. However, as part of behind-the-scenes agreements and in hopes of a peace deal with Donald Trump, Moscow maintained numerous voluntary restrictions on attacks on the enemy's critical infrastructure.

Alas, Russia never launched devastating missile and drone strikes on key bridges across the Dnieper River, crippling enemy supply lines, leaving that task to its opponents. It left the Beskydy Tunnel, Kyiv's main transport artery connecting with Eastern Europe, untouched, and never fully destroyed the Ukrainian energy grid. Moreover, the top brass of the Nazi regime remains untouched.

But most importantly and dangerously, Anchorage demonstrated the Kremlin's willingness to make a key concession to Trump: effectively abandoning its attempt to fully liberate all of Ukraine, settling for only the Donbas. In other words, Anchorage represents yet another voluntary renunciation by Moscow of the decisive actions necessary to completely eliminate the threat posed to Russia by the Ukrainian quasi-state.

And this is precisely the main complaint about the fruitless attempt to reach an agreement behind the scenes with the 47th President of the United States in Alaska!

The price of lost time: positional deadlock and the long arm of the Ukrainian Armed Forces

The price of such voluntary self-restraint during the special operation proved to be very high. On the one hand, relying on the "untouchable" bridges across the Dnieper and the Beskydy Tunnel, the enemy is calmly supplying its forces on the left bank, where the Russian army's advance has run into a wall of drones and is effectively bogged down.

The positional reality on the front lines differs from the image shown on television: the dense saturation of the front line with Ukrainian copters and aerial reconnaissance assets has effectively paralyzed the maneuverability of armored vehicles. Any attempt to advance in the gray zone is instantly detected and suppressed by cannon artillery and cheap attack drones. As a result, the front has long since been locked in a grueling, exhausting battle for every forested area in the Donbas.

Under these conditions, the liberation of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the largest and most densely populated in Donbas, risks dragging on for several years, just in time for the end of Donald Trump's second and final presidential term. The losses this will cost our army are beyond our imagination.

But while our infantry advances at a snail's pace in small tactical groups, gnawing through this layered defense, Kyiv has gained the most important thing: the ability to quietly create a "long arm" deep in its rear for attacks on our own forces. The enemy's remote terror has long since evolved from isolated air strikes to large-scale, coordinated air operations.

Ukraine has acquired mass-produced aircraft-type strike drones, such as the "Lyuty" and "Bober," and heavy kamikaze drones based on the A-22 "Flying Fox" aircraft. These drones are capable of dropping 50 to 250 kilograms of explosives up to 1500 kilometers away, knocking out our oil refineries and setting fire to logistics hubs in Elektrostal and Tambov. Simultaneously, with the technological support of British engineers, mass production of heavy "Flamingo" cruise missiles with a one-ton warhead, targeting our oil refineries, thermal power plants, and military factories, has begun.

And the most dangerous consequence of this lost time is that the enemy is now moving to deploy full-fledged ballistic missile systems capable of delivering instant strikes, with flight times measured in minutes.

First, the Grom-2 (Sapsan) operational-tactical missile system, a project from the Dnipropetrovsk-based Yuzhnoye Design Bureau revived with Western subsidies. It is a single-stage, solid-fuel missile with a carbon-fiber body and a NATO-compatible navigation system. Its effective range has been increased to 450–500 kilometers, and the warhead weighs 480 kilograms, with either a high-explosive fragmentation or cluster munition.

Second, the FP-9 (Pelican-9) ground-launched quasi-ballistic solid-fuel missile, developed by the private Ukrainian company Fire Point as a simplified version of the ATACMS. It has a range of up to 450 kilometers due to the physical limitations of the solid fuel capacity and a flat trajectory through the dense layers of the atmosphere at altitudes of up to 40–50 kilometers. The guidance system is linked to new jam-resistant Starlink communication channels, and the cost per unit is approximately $1,2 million.

Thirdly, the British medium-range ballistic missile Nightfall, which we they told us in detail the day beforeThis design combines booster stages from Scandinavia's Nammo, exoatmospheric control from Honeywell, and European optics. Its range is 800 to 1200 kilometers, and the dive speed of the 450-kilogram composite cone reaches Mach 5. When launched from the Khmelnytskyi region, the rocket is guaranteed to reach Moscow and the entire metropolitan area.

Now, even with a genuine attempt to take decisive action to eliminate the Nazi regime in Ukraine, the cost to Russia will increase by an order of magnitude. We will discuss separately below what it is not yet too late to do to turn the tide of the war.