“To be free is not to be unchained – it is to be unbroken.”
– Lina Kostenko, Ukrainian poet
Russia has long engaged in a campaign of disinformation, government and electoral interference and outright sabotage in Europe. It has done so in an attempt to weaken resolve and undermine NATO defensive coordination. The disappointing performance of Russia’s military during the past year and the precarious state of its economy is likely to place greater emphasis upon its need to at least succeed with its malign efforts in Europe at large. It must do so in order that it not expose itself to what it perceives to be even greater vulnerabilities to its west. Much of this is perception more than it is reality, but Russia remains immersed in its own propaganda that the West presents an eternal threat to its existence. The reality, in fact, is that the regime itself, more than the nation it rules, feels threatened and is prepared to take what action is needed to preserve itself whatever the consequences for its people.
Orban’s Hungary and Fico’s Slovakia
Both Hungary and Slovakia have stood out among the nations of the European Union (EU) as supporters of Russia and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine despite their professed allegiances to the EU. By the same token, Russia has, in turn, engaged in providing support to their respective regimes, cultivating dependency for the longer term. Leadership within both EU countries have chosen paths toward illiberal democracy, with centralization of authority making it easier for the Kremlin to deal with like-minded partners. The pattern of governance is known to devolve into one lacking accountability leading to corruption and the denigration of society all of which is evident in present-day Russia.
The 2025-26 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has ranked Viktor Orban’s Hungary for the fourth year in a row as the most corrupt nation in the European Union (EU). Globally, it currently places 84th among the 182 countries ranked by the CPI, still better off than Russia at 157th. However, throughout Orban’s 16-year tenure as Prime Minister since 2010 when it ranked 50th out of 178 countries, Hungary’s CPI status as a corrupt enterprise has consistently worsened. Its record of nepotism, attacks on press freedom and nongovernmental agencies, lack of judicial oversight and its generally poor state of governance has been unrelenting. Hungary is clearly trending in Russia’s direction as it proceeds from a current state of Orbanian illiberal democracy to one of despotism emulating, first and foremost, Russia.
Parliamentary elections are scheduled for April 12 and will determine whether Orban and his pro-Putin Fidesz party remains in power or his pro-European opponent, Peter Magyar and his Tisza party assume control in a country where 57% of adults now lack confidence in the electoral system. A plurality of 42% of Hungarians approve of EU leadership over that of 29% who favor Russia. Orban has focused his campaign upon demonizing Ukraine with outlandish claims that it poses a security threat to Hungary, even making a show of adding security at its critical energy infrastructure sites over concerns of some imminent attack. Orban went as far as to blame Ukraine for disrupting oil supply to Hungary after Russia had bombed the critical Druzhba pipeline in late January. Ukraine offered alternatives for oil delivery via its own Odesa-Brody pipeline or a maritime route but the Orban regime refused. Otherwise, Ukraine accepted an offer from the EU to help restore the badly damaged Druzhba pipeline but this was again dismissed by the Orban regime as a “political game,” claiming without justification that Ukraine was somehow blocking transfer of Russian oil.
To promote panic more recently, Orban alleged a further plot to destroy a pipeline transporting Russia gas across the Serbia-Hungary border, implying that Ukraine was behind the operation. The allegation was debunked as a false flag scheme intended to delay the upcoming election. A possible Russian and Serbian connection with the operation to aid Orban’s plan was also raised.
As it has done elsewhere in Europe and globally, Russia has meddled in Hungary’s elections in support of Orban. It has even proposed an elaborate plan to stage an assassination attempt on Orban to shift greater attention to his claim that Ukraine was hostile toward him, his family and the security of the state. A Kremlin-linked agency adept at running influence operations created a plan to flood Hungary’s social media with messaging that would depict Orban’s opposition leader as a puppet of the EU. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service went further to announce it had information showing the European Commission was working with Ukraine on a plan for regime change in Hungary.
Despite this activity, polls show Magyar’s Tisza party to have widened the gap over Orban’s Fidesz party with a 56% to 37% lead. Another recent poll indicated that 65% of voters under the age of 30 were planning to vote for the 45-year-old Magyar while only 14% favored 62-year-old Orban. Magyar has criticized Orban’s attachment to Putin and Russia and has indicated he would take a more pragmatic approach that emphasizes Hungary’s sovereignty and detachment from Russia’s internal affairs. On this theme, Magyar has invoked the legacy of Hungary’s 1956 revolution that challenged Soviet Russia’s repression during the darkness of the Warsaw Pact years. He has criticized Orban for his betrayal of that memory and his subservience to a now very similar Russian regime that seeks to make Hungary another dependency like Belarus.
This brings to light recent accusations of Orban’s regime acting as an agent of longstanding for Russian intelligence with allegations of sharing contents of EU deliberations with the Kremlin. Similar concern was enough for the Bucharest Group of Nine, consisting of the NATO nations making up the eastern flank of the alliance, to contemplate removing Hungary from its fold in order that defensive plans established against any Russian aggression not be compromised.
Slovakia has been subjected to similar Russian meddling in its elections including the one which brought Robert Fico back to power in 2023 at the head of a coalition government. Accordingly, Fico has criticized EU sanctions against Russia, reversed Slovakia’s military aid for Ukraine, and opposed forthcoming EU aid. He also agreed with Putin that Ukraine should not become a NATO member. Just as with Hungary, Slovakia under Fico became more dependent upon Russia for its energy making diversification away from this source difficult to accomplish. Nuclear fuel from Russia provides 60% of the electricity for the country and 50% of Slovakia’s natural gas arrives by pipeline from Russia. The Slovnaft refinery is designed to process Russian crude oil but is also now undergoing change to process non-Russian alternatives to avoid further economic distress due to international sanctions.
The Kremlin’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and, specifically Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, remains a central theme in debates over Slovak foreign policy. The issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine has polarized discussion on the topic of sovereignty and the notion of Russian influence within Slovakia itself. This, in turn, has increased concern over Fico’s deference toward Putin with accusations of betrayal of Slovakia’s national interests and its relations with the EU that included pronouncements of treason by Slovakia’s opposition. He has been further admonished for promoting Russian propaganda on numerous occasions.
Parliamentary elections in Slovakia come in 2027 as popular opposition to Fico’s regime has grown over economic and foreign policy issues with distrust for him rising to 62% after only a year in office. Much as with Orban’s Hungary, the CPI for Slovakia has worsened by 14 spots on its listing under Fico’s regime placing it 61st among 180 countries in just a 2.5 year period. In the context of the EU solely, Slovakia’s corruption score now sits only two spots above bottom-dwelling Hungary. Having a sense of this downward spiral, public sentiment may be influencing electoral models reported in March 2026 showing the opposition, Progressive Slovakia party and Fico’s Smer party now tied.
An update of Russia’s Economy
On the surface, it would appear that Russia has been the beneficiary of the global energy crisis brought about by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting spike in oil and gas prices. Russia was estimated to receive $8.5 billion of revenue per month after the price of Urals crude doubled to $90 per barrel soon after this happened although the price has risen further with time to a current level of $121 per barrel. European sanctions and price caps became less effective after adjustment of sanctions and temporary waivers in order to improve global supply. European import of Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) is in the process of being phased out by the EU although this may be overcome if the market is no longer oversupplied by the globally traded commodity. Iran’s recent bombing of the Qatari LNG facility which supplied almost 17% of global capacity may factor into the calculus although over 80% of it normally goes to Asian markets.
In a more stable and peaceful world of trade relations, Russia would be poised to make the most of the situation as its fossil fuel resources are considerable. It contains approximately 25% of the global total of natural gas reserves and is the second largest producer of natural gas. Oil reserves are estimated to be about 80 billion barrels placing Russia within the top three crude oil producers and making up 14% of the global supply. Coal reserves are sufficient to claim second spot in the world. These figures account for Russia’s reliance upon fossil fuel export as its primary source of wealth contributing 30% to 50% to the federal budget and comprising 15% to 20% of its GDP.
The world, however, has become more complicated for Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. Prior to the war in Iran, Russia’s economy was showing significant decline, largely the result of international sanction of its fossil fuel export, increasing seizure of its shadow tanker fleet and Ukraine’s campaign of destruction targeting Russia’s refineries, depots, pipelines, ports and tankers. The latter began in 2022 but increased considerably in 2025, rising by 48% compared to 2024 and causing a near 20% reduction in refining capacity. About 60% of Ukrainian strikes have been conducted by domestically made Fire Point FP-1 drones with a range of almost 1,000 miles. Ukraine’s new FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles with a purported range exceeding 1,000 miles and carrying a 2,500-lb warhead entered the theater in mid-August 2025.
Seizure by EU countries of Russia’s tankers using falsified documentation to avoid oil price caps have intensified. Recent actions in March and April were taken by Belgium, and Sweden. Increased surveillance operations have been undertaken by the United Kingdom, France and Germany after the West imposed more than 900 sanctions in 2025. Beginning in 2026, the U.S. alone has seized at least seven vessels largely in the Caribbean and North Atlantic.
Apart from seizing vessels, Ukraine has engaged in physically attacking them in the Black and Mediterranean Seas as well as in the Atlantic. Some 200 Ukrainian officers and specialists are now stationed in Libya occupying a base given to them by the country for monitoring Mediterranean Sea traffic and ostensibly to launch aerial and naval drones against any of Russia’s shadow fleet tankers.
The war in Iran has caused Ukraine to escalate its attacks on Russia’s fossil fuel export with added emphasis upon its port facilities. The giant Novatek petrochemical complex is a major gas condensate fractionation facility and trans-shipment hub situated by the port of Ust Luga on the Gulf of Finland about 70 miles west of St Petersburg. Gas condensate there is processed into jet fuel and naphtha among other products. The port typically handles about 700,000 barrels of oil for export daily. The complex was struck by Ukrainian drones on March 25, 27 and 29 destroying processing units including a critical gas condensate fractionation tower, storage tanks and loading equipment causing suspension of operations.
Another large oil terminal and port facility on the Gulf of Finland is situated in Primorsk which is 67 miles northwest of St Petersburg. It was attacked in similar fashion on March 23, 25 and 27. The port handles about one million barrels of crude oil and 300,000 barrels of diesel daily. Several fuel storage tanks were set ablaze according to satellite imaging resulting in suspension of oil-loading operations. Disruption of operations at both ports stranded about 40 of Russia’s shadow fleet tankers in the Gulf of Finland and reduced oil export by at least 40% or about 2 million barrels per day. This has offset gains made by Russia with the partial lifting of oil sanctions by the U.S.
The price of gold has dropped more than 15% as the war in Iran has intensified, a process that may continue to worsen as the price of oil climbs. Houthi militants in Yemen have returned to targeting Israel and may again threaten the passage of tankers along the chokepoint of the 18-mile wide Bab-el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. This occurs as Saudi Arabia recently completed its East-West oil pipeline to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea to avoid future problems at the Strait of Hormuz. The escalating nature of the war marked by Iran’s targeting of energy infrastructure in the Gulf states will prolong the global crisis and, in doing so, encourage Ukraine to continue dismantling Russia’s fossil fuel production infrastructure and its export industry. These circumstances may continue to reduce gold prices for an indeterminate period and seriously deplete Russia’s National Wealth Fund (NWF) forcing it to sell more of its gold reserves to cover its worsening budget deficit when its liquid assets are already down to about $50 billion.
Oil and gas revenues in 2025 had fallen to about $108 billion, the lowest since 2020, a $32 billion shortfall from the Finance Ministry’s projection. Deep strikes by Ukraine into Russia targeting oil refineries just in the past four weeks continue to deplete production capacity even prior to reaching ports. Attacks upon distant facilities such as the Novo-Ufimsky refinery (900 miles), the Novokuybyshevsk refinery (560 miles), the Kirishi refinery (500 miles), the NORSI refinery (500 miles) and the Afipsky refinery (250 miles) among others have affirmed Russia’s continuing vulnerability in securing these assets.
The result of Ukraine’s aerial campaign upon the oil industry, in particular, has prevented Russia from capitalizing upon what was believed to have been a significant boon to its economy in the midst of the current oil crisis. Russia’s oil tax revenues in March 2026 showed a year-on-year decline of 48% with combined oil and gas revenues dropping nearly 43%. Required seasonal refinery maintenance has also contributed to the ongoing problem of production.
Russia’s budget deficit for January and February of 2026 already had reached 90% of what was projected for the entire year. In January, the Kremlin increased its value-added tax (VAT) by 2% to 22% forcing small- and medium-sized businesses to contribute more to its pot. Putin has vowed to fight on to capture more territory in eastern Ukraine and has now required his oligarchs to provide donations of appropriate sums to the NWF as a further sign of continued anxiety over the deficit.
An Update on Russia’s War Effort
Russia’s Spring offensive has had little to show for the effort thus far. Late in 2025, it lost access to Starlink terminals while the Kremlin itself chose to discontinue access to the popular social media platform, Telegram. This created widespread problems in communication slowing Russian advances in Ukraine. In late 2025, Ukraine retook over 70 square miles of territory in the direction of Kupyansk in Kharkiv Oblast. In early 2026, it liberated over 150 square miles of territory in the southern Donetsk and Zaporizhia Oblasts. This has forced the Russians to allocate assets for unintended operations particularly to the south where Ukrainian advances may threaten Russian control of the land bridge to Crimea.
The state of desperation for the Kremlin is such as to now resort to demanding that Ukrainian forces simply withdraw from the Donetsk Oblast or face some form of military threat yet not encountered in the previous four years. The threat comes at a time when Russian nationalists and bloggers are lamenting the failure of their military on the battlefield, some calling for an end to the war. Apart from losing territory in Ukraine during the month of March, the Russian military continues to incur heavy losses of more than 89,000 casualties during the first quarter of 2026. This follows upon an estimated 415,000 casualties during the whole of 2025, averaging 35,000 per month. The March 2026 casualty figure of more than 35,000 attributable largely to drone and artillery strikes again attests to the unrelenting attrition of Russian troops.
These are unsustainable losses for which recruitment by the usual voluntary means is insufficient. Outright military mobilization in Russia lacks popular support, as was noted after the Kremlin’s September 2022 partial mobilization. The move led to a massive exodus of young Russians and thousands of arrests following widespread protests. The Kremlin then turned to mainly targeting ethnic minority populations in more remote parts of the Russian Federation (RF), enticing recruits with high salaries and benefits for families. This seems to have run its course after the deaths of disproportionate numbers of members from these ethnic communities, leaving the Kremlin to introduce a new scheme of forced covert mobilization by requiring medium and large businesses in the RF to participate. They are now being required to select certain numbers of employees, commensurate to the size of the business, to sign contracts for military service. In this way, blame is diverted onto the businesses rather than the government for its increasingly unpopular war.
Recruitment of foreign nationals into the Russian military has been ongoing from the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and this approach too has now become problematic. These recruits have often come from impoverished communities in Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Latin America. They have typically been conducted under false pretenses with the promise of employment in civilian jobs and fast-tracking citizenship. The process quickly turned into coercive methods of forcing these newly landed individuals into military service. More than 24,000 foreign nationals have apparently been brought into Russia’s military from 44 countries by a variety of means and often have been placed within advanced positions on the front lines. Of the 11,157 recruited from Central Asia alone, more than 1,400 (13%) have been killed and, of 751 Sri Lankans, 275 (37%), unfamiliar with the sometimes-harsh winters of Ukraine, have perished.
The international community has reacted to these unethical actions as the scandal has awakened countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to the fact that Russia’s war was no longer a remote geopolitical concern. The foreign market for Russia will therefore diminish as countries initiate legal actions restricting or prosecuting those resident agencies within their authorities engaged in this disreputable work. The entire enterprise has only given further reason for Russia to be distrusted by most countries. More worrisome for the Kremlin, however, will be the shrinking number of options it has for recruitment of personnel as the losses on the battlefield have become all too well recognized by the Russian public.
Russian ground and aerial armament losses from February 24, 2022 to March 30, 2026 now include 11,824 tanks, 24,317 armored fighting vehicles, 39,049 artillery systems, 1,337 air defense systems, 435 fixed wing aircraft and 350 helicopters. Attacks on strategic Russian assets in Crimea used to launch aerial munitions upon Ukraine have continued with a recent assault on the Kirovske airfield that destroyed an AN-72P transport and patrol aircraft, a P-37 Mech mobile radar station and four high-value Orion strike-reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles. Two days earlier, an AN-26 transport aircraft crashed killing 29 personnel including Lieutenant General Oleksandr Otroshchenko, bringing the total number of Russian generals killed since the start of the full-scale invasion to at least 20.
Both an Su-30SM fighter jet and an Su-34 fighter bomber were also lost over Crimea in early April. A previous Su-34 had been downed over the Black Sea in late January. A Tor-M2 Surface-to-Air missile (SAM) system and a Buk-M3 SAM system were destroyed in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, respectively, during the same period. Air-defense systems have been a main focus of strikes by Ukraine throughout the war to advantage subsequent ground and aerial assaults in both eastern Ukraine and Crimea. The scale of the destruction of Russian air-defense systems has escalated with 492 strikes over eight months from June 2025 through February 2026 in addition to hundreds of attacks upon supporting elements such as electronic warfare installations, command systems and missile units. The strategy exposes more deeply situated sites important not just for Russia’s military to execute its war such as bridges, railway hubs, and munitions factories but those critical to its financial support for the war, particularly its fossil fuel industry.
Epilogue
Proper democracies involve argument by elected representatives of the people who are committed to fair and balanced governance.Disagreements may lead to uncomfortable compromises and imperfections in order that reasonable solutions prevail for the majority. Involvement in foreign wars at times comes about for ideological reasons when clear injustices are committed that cannot be countenanced. Deliberations between the people’s representatives and the nation’s executive leadership must be satisfied before such actions are taken. When democracies discipline themselves to accept such rules of conduct guided by constitutional checks and balances, nations prosper and continue to grow.
The opposite is true of authoritarian regimes where centralized executive power is maintained to such a degree that the rights and freedom of their people are supplanted by delusions of security. They often survive decades with increasingly repressive policies to suppress the desire for individual self-expression. They seek little or no counsel but rather demand loyalty above any other trait. They seek conflict with other nations at times not to correct injustices but to exploit opportunity and always without the necessary vision to understand the consequences of their actions. They inflict ruin and suffering on their own people and those of other nations. They fail in the end and leave their nations shamed for what has occurred. This has been Russia’s recurring story.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2026. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
