Ukraine has launched large-scale strikes in the Moscow region, European leaders are talking about "retreating Russia" - what are the possible plots for the development of the war, commented on "The Network" on the "Hristo Botev" program Vlado Yonchev, editor-in-chief of "OFFNews".
Vlado Yonchev outlines three major lines: the military situation, the motivation of the two societies, and the behavior of the Bulgarian authorities towards Russia and the EU.
Military dynamics: "Ukraine invented something extremely important"
Yonchev describes how the war changes after 2022. Russia has been on the offensive for a long time, but Ukraine compensates for the lack of "Patriot" through asymmetric drone strikes:
The line of contact
"It is not only the line of contact that is important. The context is a little bigger. Over a long period – let's say from October 2022 to the end of last year, 2025 - Russia was on the offensive and was putting a lot of pressure on Ukraine.
Something that Ukraine cannot respond to in any way is the Russian ballistic missile strikes. The reason it cannot respond is that it does not have enough "Patriot" missiles, which the Americans cannot deliver in any way.
Ukraine has come up with something extremely important - asymmetric drone strikes, with which on the one hand it shows Russia that it can bring the war to its territory. For a long time, its Western partners, especially the United States, did not supply it with missiles with which it could strike the Russian rear, but Ukraine made them itself. Or there were bans –"we will give you such and such, but you cannot shoot at Russia".
And on the one hand, Ukraine can now hit very deeply and worsen the Russian economy – especially the oil refining, arms industry and the military-industrial complex. On the other hand, it can control logistics routes.
Ukraine is destroying trucks, bridges and logistics, which leads to a shortage of everything in the Russian army – "bread, water, cartridges". When you are at the front and waiting for some delivery – it could be bread, it could be water, it could be cartridges, ammunition, whatever it is – and the first truck did not arrive on schedule, the second did not arrive because it was blown up, the third did not arrive, the fourth did not arrive… At some point, the cartridges simply run out. Everything runs out. And either they capture you, or you surrender, or whatever.
And right now the war is extremely double-edged.
The big news, according to him, is the first battle in history won by autonomous robots:
"Nobody controlled them… equipped with artificial intelligence… they defeated the Russian unit."
The motivation: "On one side is Ukraine – a country that cares about people, on the other – Russia - poverty"
Yonchev makes a contrast between Ukraine and Russia. "One of Putin's great trump cards in this war was that the lower strata of society fought. And the outskirts – only they felt this war. The elites, Moscow, St. Petersburg, the most educated and the richest - they did not feel it. The motivation of the Russian army is poverty - millions of Russians who have been brutalized by poverty."
He emphasizes the huge social differences:
"The main part of the population of Russia lives in such poverty that we cannot imagine."
The possible end of the war: "The real end will be either in Warsaw or in Moscow"
Yonchev believes that: "The Russians already feel the war and a large part of them categorically do not accept it. There are several options from now on. If Putin is smart enough - something I am not very convinced of - he will seek a quick freeze on the conflict. Because Ukraine is currently on the rise, but on the other hand, Ukrainians do not know how long this rise will last.
However, if we draw a line from the beginning of the war - Russia still has its victories. It has conquered a territory larger than Bulgaria, taken from Ukraine. That is, Putin can present even the current situation as some kind of victory and perhaps still has the resources to convince the public of this.
The other option is for him to continue to seek his initial goal - the defeat of Ukraine. But then things become very uncertain. Because in fact, victory in any war is not decided so much on the front line as within society. Which society will endure and which will collapse first?
The Russian economy is overstretched. The Ukrainian economy is also overstretched, but they cannot retreat - otherwise they will lose their country. And the Russians - nothing will happen to them if they retreat. In fact, they will start to live better.
And everyone realizes that at the moment all this tension, all this fear - which inevitably exists for their loved ones at the front, and for themselves, because Ukrainian drones are already reaching them - is actually pointless.
This war can be ended. Russia will still be there - it will still be where it has always been. And in fact it will be richer and stronger than it is now. Because not all the money will go to the war.
One of the explanations for why this war is not ending is - imagine what will happen if the war ends tomorrow. What will be done with this one million-strong army that somehow has to come home - brutalized people who lived in trenches and with machine guns? In my opinion, there is no way... Something has to be invented. And in fact, what has been invented will be destroyed in the coming weeks, in the coming months. This war will become very bloody at the end, so that at least the mass of soldiers who return home will not be so large. The bloodiest battles are at the end of the war. This will be the mark.
Bulgaria, Radev and the "new Orban"
We have repeatedly seen Radev completely diverge - one speaks to the public in Bulgaria, another speaks to the European partners, and he votes for a completely third.
But even if this trick was previously considered minor, this time it is a phenomenal blunder. Europe suffered a lot with the Trojan horse Viktor Orban, who blocked a number of decisions related to Russia in order to blackmail the European Union.
His scheme was clear: "I will impose a veto, and you, in order to lift it, release some money. Or stop the checks for some kind of theft of European funds."
And the Europeans learned how to get around him. Even when Radev was elected, they approached him with the suspicion that Radev was the new Orban. Now he has confirmed it.
Most likely, when he formulated his brilliant judgments, he thought how cleverly he had come up with it - one for a Bulgarian audience, another for a European one. But this resonated extremely strongly.
And the message is that he is trying to change Bulgaria's geostrategic choice, the geopolitical one, and to put us back into the Russian orbit, and to take us out of Europe.
The consequences of this statement will be enormous. Europe cannot afford not to control this... not to … not to "bridle" this Trojan horse. And how he does it - we have seen many times. He does it with soft power, with financial pressure, with suspension of funds, with control procedures.
That is, this remark will cost us an enormous amount in financial terms and it will cost us in unification."