Ukraine diplomacy and NATO's exposed edges set the day's agenda.

Ukraine's peace track

  • US envoy Steve Witkoff met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo, then flew on to Saint Petersburg to hand Vladimir Putin an updated American proposal to end the war, as Moscow separately warned its nuclear arms-control framework is collapsing; the proposal's contents and Russia's response remain unclear (more).

NATO's deterrence gaps

  • Russian strikes on civilian cargo ships hit the Black Sea exclusive economic zones of Romania and Bulgaria for the first time this month, a legal gray zone that does not clearly trigger NATO's mutual-defense clause; experts say Moscow deliberately picked Bulgaria, whose government favors dialogue with Russia, as the alliance's weakest link (more).
  • A Nunissum analysis of five unrelated security stories — Turkey raising its 2027 arms budget nearly 230 percent, the US diversifying drone-battery supply chains only after small drones became mass weapons, India shifting toward an Indo-Pacific posture, and the Warsaw Security Forum linking deterrence, Ukraine and energy — finds deterrence being rebuilt reactively rather than ahead of the threats it answers (more).