Putin Is the Quiet Winner of America's Middle East War
While Washington watches the Middle East burn, Vladimir Putin is quietly cashing in
In a cramped medical evacuation unit somewhere in the Donbas, Ostap Mokryk works around the clock to save soldiers’ lives. The orthopedic surgeon from Lviv has transformed his peacetime skills into a wartime necessity, building a field evacuation system from almost nothing.
Four years into the war, through donated funds and sheer determination, he commands two evacuation vehicles racing wounded soldiers from frontline positions before Russian artillery finds them. His wife, Valentina, once a dog trainer, now volunteers on the front lines.
“Four years, four long years, this madness continues; a huge number of crippled lives, broken destinies, bombed houses. For what? It doesn’t fit in my head,” Dr. Mokryk told me. “We didn’t go to war against our neighbors and didn’t encroach on their land, but we must defend ourselves at any cost.”
This is the reality on the ground in Ukraine in 2026. And yet the geopolitical moment we’re living through, the American-Israeli campaign against Iran, the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the spiraling oil prices, is doing something that deserves far more scrutiny than it’s getting: it is actively, measurably benefiting Vladimir Putin.
That should be a collective source of outrage, regardless of where you stand on the Middle East.
