Deterrence has always been a belief, not a weapon. This week, in Tehran, Kyiv, Tokyo and along the Korean border, that belief started to fail in the same place at once.
Ukraine sent more than 400 drones toward Moscow on July 20, hours after a Russian strike on a ship near Odesa killed 10. Read as it is being sold, this is escalation. Read carefully, it is the same war, louder.
Russian strikes on Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson and Ukrainian drone attacks into Russia and occupied Zaporizhzhia killed nine people overnight. The exchange came as the US senator who spent a year fighting to pass a Russia sanctions bill died hours after finally securing a White House deal to move it — leaving its next steps unclear just as Kyiv called the legislation essential leverage.