Peter J. Worswick

Sept 20, 2025

Strategic Communication Adviser and Executive Coach | 30+ Years International Experience | 20+ Years Working in and with Ukraine | Helping Leaders Communicate with Clarity and Influence

PJW International

United Kingdom

The war in Ukraine feels endless. That is not an accident – it is Russia’s strategy.

Moscow is betting that delay and distraction in Western capitals will achieve what its armies have not.

Yet on the ground, the picture is more dynamic than many assume. Ukraine has retaken villages and towns across several occupied regions, forced Russian troops onto the defensive, and is striking refineries and oil depots hundreds of miles inside Russia. These attacks are not symbolic: they are eroding the critical revenues fuelling the war.

At the same time, Ukraine is becoming something the Kremlin never expected – an industrialising defence power. Drone production, cruise missiles, armoured vehicles, ammunition: a country once portrayed as reliant on Western aid is rapidly building the capacity to sustain itself and, in time, strengthen Europe’s security architecture.

The West has played a crucial role in this fight – but in a way that often feels improvised. Aid has come in waves, sanctions with exceptions, commitments with caveats. The EU has just passed its 19th package of sanctions covering energy, financial services, and trade restrictions – but it’s worth asking: why did the previous 18 rounds fail to have decisive effect? Without rigorous enforcement, many measures risk taking too long to bite, leaving Moscow time to adjust and exploit loopholes. These aren’t failures so much as signs of a system still learning how to match the scale and ruthlessness of the threat it faces.

What’s needed now is not another dramatic pledge or grand summit, but something harder: resolve. Long-term military contracts, investment into Ukraine’s own industry, and a full decoupling from Russian energy. These are not optional gestures – they are the scaffolding of Europe’s security for decades to come.

Because the real danger is not that Ukraine will falter. It hasn’t, and it won’t. The danger is that we treat this war as a series of short-term crises rather than the defining contest for Europe’s future. If Russia is allowed to outlast us, the precedent it sets will not stop at Ukraine’s borders.

Ukraine has shown it can fight, adapt, and build at the same time. What it cannot do is wait forever for the West to decide whether it truly wants this war to end on Ukraine’s terms: with its land restored, its sovereignty intact, and its people free from attack.

This war will not be endless because Ukraine cannot prevail – it will be endless because the West hesitates to match its determination.

Ukraine #StandWithUkraine #Europe #EU #UK #Security #Geopolitics

Comment from :

Glen Makenzius

Thanks Peter!! You nailed it right on the spot. It is a perfect description of the rapid development that Ukraine creates over time. Right now Ukraine is chasing the best! Ukraine is faster at finding alternative methods to the current threat picture and developing unexpected ways of attacking the current threat picture. Russia is therefore currently second on the ball. As a result, Russia does not have time to defend itself against the rapidly developed new methods to reduce Russia’s way of waging war with its pre-trained, widespread methods that early on in real time give Russia worse effectiveness and resilience. Russia is constantly last on the ball!

Stuart Lothian

The swift reaction to your above article says it all Peter J. Worswick! You have called it to perfection – and a very wide range of us ‘see that’. Let’s hope that your thoughts reach our European Leaders!

Laurence Watkins

The only good thing about this war is that it’s showing us different strategies in fighting ie drone attacks, and before we thought Russia could defeat other countries very easily and now we know different.

John Allen

russia has peddled its two tricks to EU cheap, oil and gas to make EU rich. But it has broken EU like dope DRUG PEDDLERS. The EU is 80% cold turkey now the two rogue imposter countries Slovakia 🇸🇰 and Hungary 🇭🇺 must choose EU or back to its evil 😈 masters.

They cant hold up EU progress.

Boot the MF out ASAP.

And let trustworthy Ukraine 🇺🇦 join the EU family.

It’s a no brainer.

Slava Ukraine 🇺🇦 ♥️

Cecilie Holter,

Brilliantly put! Slava Ukraini! Europe must find its resolve to finally help end Russia’s war.

✊🇺🇦🫡🎖️💪

Alain Peron

BACK TO THE FUTURE: IMPOSSIBLE ❗

Russia has failed!
It thought it could take Ukraine in THREE days (or four). Losses didn’t matter…:
~1,090,000 dead, and its ambitions for wealth have turned into graves.
25% of its refining capacity destroyed, and soon more; Vladivostok hit, all of Russian territory within reach of Ukrainian attacks.
Odessa intact. Moskva sunk. Black Sea off-limits.
Its people will gain neither wealth, nor vacations, nor retirement. Only growing anger…

This time, the ships are sunk. Russia has no escape route.
No turning back.
Humanity’s future demands the disappearance of this regime.

Kenneth Mayfield

We’re reliant on Ukraine. We must by true and energetic allies to Ukrainians.

It doesn’t matter what the evil, greedy monsters in muscovy want.

Tom Solstad

It’s becoming clear that NATO needs Ukraine more than Ukraine needs NATO. While NATO looks passive—even as Russia violates its airspace—Ukraine is transforming into what the Kremlin never expected: an emerging defence power, building drones, missiles, vehicles and ammunition. Once seen as dependent on aid, Ukraine is now on track to strengthen Europe’s security.

Dave Hassan

Sanctions aren’t a great answer. Some intermediary will always trade Ukrainian blood for currency.

Ukraine has the formula. Pound their refineries. Pound their transportation hubs. Pound their oil and gas terminals. Pound their pipelines. Start pounding their central production facilities at the field level. Keep pounding and pounding and when they ask for negotiations, keep pounding even harder until they withdraw and pay compensation for everything that they have done.

To Crush
This means to crush the enemy regarding him as being weak.
In large-scale strategy, when we see that the enemy has few men, or if he has many men but his spirit is weak and disordered, we knock the hat over his eyes, crushing him utterly. If we crush lightly, he may recover. You must learn the spirit of crushing as if with a hand-grip.
In single combat, if the enemy is less skilful than ourself, if his rhythm is disorganised, or if he has fallen into evasive or retreating attitudes, we must crush him straightaway, with no concern for his presence and without allowing him space for breath. It is essential to crush him all at once. The primary thing is not to let him recover his position even a little. You must research this deeply.
Miyamoto Musashi

……………

On a the same topic, another staunch friend of Ukraine :-

Official. ‘Russia is losing.’

The Death of Russian Oil and Gas.

ROBIN HORSFALL

SEP 20, 2025

In 2015, US Senator John McCain described Russia as’ a gas station.’ After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia built a successful national economy by investing is oil and gas. As the economy grew, so did international investment; the living standards of working people improved; Russians travelled abroad and purchased holiday homes on the Black Sea and in Crimea.

When Russia had enough cash in the National Wealth Fund, Putin treated it as a war chest and in February 2022, invested it in a special military operation, the invasion of Ukraine. All his ambitions were dependent on the sale of hydrocarbons. Europe was dependent on Russian gas. Putin believed they could not, or would not, stand by Ukraine.

In August 2025, US Joint Staff Chairman and envoy to Ukraine, US (retired) General Kellog and US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Kaine, told President Trump ‘Russia is losing the war.’

Although there is little progress for either side on the battle front in Donbas, Ukraine’s strategy is dominant. If Russia has made any progress in two years it can be measured in metres rather than kilometres. A few fields and a few villages reduced to rubble, a sustained attempt to affect public opinion in the west, and a lot of idle threats backed up by missile attacks on inner Ukrainian cities; none of which reduce Ukraine’s ability to wage war. Since 2022 Ukraine has become the most experienced and innovative nation in the world in modern conventional warfare.

Ukraine’s leaders and generals have taken a strategic approach to the campaign, accepting they cannot concentrate enough forces to mount a major conventional offensive, they hold the front and grind down enemy logistics. Initially this process could only be affected within the range of Ukrainian offensive capability and weapons range. Troop deployments, arms shipments, storage facilities and headquarter groups were destroyed in increasing numbers. In response, Russia changed very little, apart from improving its electronic warfare capacity and pouring more men into the battlefield in the hope, mass would eventually overcome Ukrainian resilience. As Ukrainian air parity and later, air superiority developed, the range of Ukrainian missiles and drones also increased and so did their strategy.

Russia has lost 1218 air defence systems and 422 aircraft, 55% of their entire air defence capability, plus 33,000 artillery systems which is about 70%. Most of this materiel cannot be replaced.

One thing is keeping the Russian war machine operating: the transport and sale of oil and gas. Despite multi-national sanctions Russia still manages to ship enough black-market oil to customers though a shadow fleet of tankers with suspect insurance and safety standards. Money from this oil is keeping Russia’s head above water but recent events tell a different story, Russia is close to drowning.

Ukraine’s drones and missiles can now penetrate up to 3000 kilometres into Russia. Ukraine has hit 63 oil refineries 45 oil storage depots many of them more than once. They are striking the pumping stations that carry the oil to refineries and distribution hubs and most significantly on September 12^th drones struck Primorsk, Russia’s largest oil-loading port the Ust-Luga terminal on the Baltic Sea. This mission suspended operations, striking at least one ship in port.

60 million tons of oil pass through the port every year, earning Russia roughly $15 billion, or $41 million per day. SBU drones also struck three oil pumping stations, part of the pipeline sending crude to Ust-Luga.

The oil cannot flow from the wells to the ports or the refineries. The storage facilities with their reduced capacity are full. In response, Russia has reduced production and shut down some wells. This sounds temporary but in the harsh regions of the arctic where these wells operate, reopening or raising production is a complicated procedure. The wells can become inoperative.

The stomach of the system is the oil well, the arteries carry the oil, the pumping stations are the hearts, but the ports are the link to revenue. The most vital sector of Russia’s economy is being hit daily. As Russia spends more on the war, it earns less on the international market.

If Ust-Luga cannot operate the shadow fleet becomes pointless. If there is no oil and no terminal, the fleet is defunct and sanctions against the fleet become superfluous. The tankers cannot move to ports further north. Winter ice will block the routes and there are no oil terminals.

Added to all this Ukraine is striking Russia’s main communications system, the railways. Russia with its limited road links relies heavily on the rail network. There are several key hubs rail traffic must flow through to transport necessary supplies across the whole nation. Every delay and every derailed train raise prices and directly affects the Russian war effort.

Putin must decide soon whether he will use his dwindling resources to feed and shelter his people or continue his war. He can’t manage both. He has robbed Siberia and his eastern provinces of manpower, emptied his prisons, and bribed untrained foreign conscripts to wear uniforms (often under duress). His political power base resides in Moscow and St Petersberg.

The lights went off in Rostov on Don last night and the water mains failed. There is no fuel in the provinces, fuel prices are up 40%; there is no relief in sight and winter is coming.

This, more than any other factor is why Kellog and Kaine told Trump ‘Russia is losing.’

Slava Ukraini!

Who Dares Shares!

Robin Horsfall

Comment from :

DONALD IAN MACLEOD

A spot-on analysis Robin, as always. The question for Putin’s inner circle now should (or must…) be how soon they will come to the conclusion that Vladimir Vladimirovich “has to go” (either an “accidental” fall down the stairs or from a window, or perhaps that other old Soviet favorite: “Comrade you are in need of urgent medical treatment – from which unfortunately you will not recover…..”