March 27, 2026 – The command center for the American operation against Iran is in Ramstein, Germany. US bombers take off for their missions from Fairford, England. Refueling operations are based in Aviano, Italy, and Le Tubé, France. The Lajes base in the Azores, Portugal, is a key stop in transatlantic military logistics, and spy planes operate from the Cretan base of Souda, Greece, and Akrotiri, Cyprus, from where they were already actively involved in the Gaza massacre.
Ukrainian attacks on Russia have recently intensified. Between March 9 and 15, six regions of the country, including Moscow and Leningrad, as well as Southern Russia, the Volga River basin, the North Caucasus, and the Northwest region, were attacked with drones. In March, Ukraine attacked the three main infrastructures for exporting Russian crude oil: the ports of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea. These attacks have reduced Russia’s oil export capacity by approximately 40%, according to an estimate by Reuters, which does not provide an estimate of how long this reduction will last. Attacks on Russian merchant ships, or foreign vessels transporting Russian raw materials, are also on the rise. Since January 8, there have been nine known cases of drone attacks, detentions, or inspections of these ships, all of which are illegal and considered acts of piracy.
European media outlets report very little on Russian civilian casualties in these attacks, at least compared to the impact of Russian attacks on Ukrainian facilities, but in Russia, the flow of information on this matter is extensive and daily. In the last week of March, 133 civilians were killed in Russia in Ukrainian attacks, according to official Russian reports. It is a common opinion among Russian analysts and commentators that all these attacks are being carried out with the complicity, and sometimes in close collaboration, of European security agencies and militaries, especially British ones. American and British spy planes and drones routinely fly over the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the waters surrounding northern Russia, providing Ukraine with real-time intelligence to select and strike targets in Russia.
In Moscow, there’s a murmur of discontent because the Kremlin isn’t responding to these attacks. The proposal is to shoot down these drones and planes. The argument is that Iran should be actively supported, and the West should be met with a response of its own making. On some television programs, without mentioning the President by name, the highest authority has been directly criticized for being weak. The lack of response projects an image of weakness and encourages the country’s enemies to continue and escalate their attacks, it is argued.
Europe is fully involved in all of this. “Last month we supplied Ukraine with 3,500 drones, 18,000 artillery shells, and three million rounds of ammunition,” British Defense Secretary John Healey told The Guardian on March 16. Swedes, French, British, and Baltic forces are participating in the harassment and targeting of cargo ships. British military personnel have just been authorized to board Russian vessels. Contracts are underway to produce Ukrainian weapons in European nations, including Spain. Drones targeting Russian ports in the Baltic have flown over NATO airspace, Latvia, and Estonia, which are monitored by European militaries, including the Spanish. At the same time, there are clear connections between the Ukrainian front and the war against Iran.
The command center for the American operation against Iran is in Ramstein, Germany. US bombers take off for their missions from Fairford, England. Refueling operations are based in Aviano, Italy, and Le Tubé, France. The Lajes base in the Azores, Portugal, is a key stop in transatlantic military logistics, and spy planes operate from the Cretan base of Souda, Greece, and Akrotiri, Cyprus, from where they were already actively involved in the Gaza massacre. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says that the bombers taking off from his territory are “defensive,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says he has no choice but to allow American operations on German soil because of agreements signed with Washington, but that this is not his war, and the French defense minister states that “a refueling plane is a gas station, not a fighter jet.” All of this is discussed daily in the Russian media.
Iran once supplied Russia with drones, which Russia has apparently perfected and refined, and now Russia is returning the favor with a flow of supplies across the Caspian Sea. On March 18, Israel attacked the infrastructure of this flow in the Iranian port city of Bandar Anzali, on the southern Caspian coast. The Israeli report stated that “dozens of ships were destroyed,” as well as “the Iranian Navy’s central command post and the infrastructure used for the repair and maintenance of military vessels.” Moscow denied reports that Russian transport ships had also been destroyed in the attack, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Pskov declared that the expansion of the conflict to the Caspian Sea would be “extremely negative.” For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova threatened “political and diplomatic measures” in response to attacks on and inspections of Russian ships or ships carrying Russian goods.
All of this seems insufficient to critics of Putin’s perceived weakness, given his close relationship with Netanyahu, with whom he has spoken regularly by phone in recent months. The Kremlin continues to employ Trump’s highly ambiguous negotiating tactics, sidelining the Foreign Ministry in the operation. So far, this approach has yielded no results, fueling growing irritation. Many are wondering what else would have to happen for the Kremlin to adopt military measures commensurate with those it is currently experiencing against European countries, and especially against the UK.
It is unclear whether this lack of response from the Kremlin is a prudent and astute calculation that time is on its side anyway, or whether it is an expression of pure Russian weakness.
