Ryan Wesley Routh stalked the US president with a rifle during his 2024 campaign
A US federal court has sentenced Ryan Wesley Routh to life in prison for attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf resort in 2024. Prosecutors said Routh, who was reportedly obsessed with the Ukraine conflict, had stalked the then-US presidential candidate while armed with a rifle.
US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon in Fort Pierce, Florida, imposed a sentence of life plus 84 months following Routh’s conviction by a federal jury on all five counts in the indictment, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. The charges included attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, assault on a federal officer, and multiple firearms offenses.
“Ryan Routh’s heinous attempted assassination of President Trump was not only an attack on our president – it was a direct assault against our entire democratic system,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
Prosecutors said Routh, 59, conducted surveillance and waited for hours in dense bushes outside Trump’s West Palm Beach resort while positioning a scoped semi-automatic rifle through a fence line. A Secret Service agent spotted the weapon and opened fire, forcing Routh to flee before Trump came into view. He was later arrested on a nearby highway.
During his trial, Routh chose for a time to represent himself, delivering rambling courtroom statements – which mentioned Adolf Hitler, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Russian President Vladimir Putin – before a judge curtailed them. After the jury returned guilty verdicts, he attempted to stab himself with a pen.
Prior to his assassination attempt, Routh had been fixated on the Ukraine conflict. Multiple outlets reported that he traveled to the country and sought to recruit foreign Afghans, who had fled the Taliban, for the Ukrainian cause. He also publicly advocated the assassination of Putin.
The New York Times pointed to his “penchant for violent rhetoric,” citing an X post by Routh in which he said he was willing to “go to the border of Ukraine to volunteer and fight and die.”
Routh stalked Trump several weeks after the US president was targeted in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a rally, grazing Trump’s ear with a bullet and killing one spectator before being shot dead by a Secret Service detail.
Moscow is ready for cooperation in the region, but confrontation will not have “any positive effect,” the Kremlin has said
Moscow would welcome a new EU Arctic policy if it is aimed at international cooperation and not confrontation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Russia is an Arctic nation and has major interests in the region, which it will not hesitate to defend, he told journalists on Wednesday.
Peskov was commenting on a recent statement by the bloc’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, who called for a “a fresh EU Arctic Policy” at the 2026 Arctic Frontiers Conference on Tuesday. Brussels needs to “ground this in strong partnerships,” she said.
Kallas, however, framed Russia as a threat and not a potential partner in her speech, as she accused Moscow of turning the Arctic into a “testing ground for Russian missiles” and launching a “military buildup in the region.”
“The Arctic region needs international cooperation,” Peskov said, commenting on Kallas’ words. If the EU seeks “confrontation, which is now fashionable in Brussels, we could hardly welcome that and it would hardly have any positive effect,” the Kremlin spokesman warned.
“We are open for cooperation and partnership,” he said, adding that Russia also “has major interests in the Arctic [that] we will defend by using all the arsenal of international law.”
In her speech, Kallas urged the EU to “catch up” with Russia’s military capabilities in the Arctic. EU member states that are NATO members should ensure that the EU’s security concerns align with those of NATO, including in the Arctic, she said.
This comes amid NATO anti-submarine drills off the coast of Norway. Scheduled for February 2-24, Operation Arctic Dolphin is focused on detecting, tracking, and destroying submarines in an area used by the Russian Northern Fleet to enter the Atlantic, CBS reported on Wednesday.
The drill is a part of a race to secure the region for the US-led bloc, US Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, told CBS. It involves ships, submarines, and aircraft from Spain, Germany, France, the UK, and Norway among other nations, according to the report.
Moscow is offering to play a role if Washington and Tehran strike a deal, the Russian foreign minister has said
The Middle East is like a minefield waiting for a chain reaction, and an escalation between the US and Iran could trigger it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned.
Moscow does not seek to impose itself on the two nations, but is ready to play a constructive role if they manage to find a peaceful way forward, Lavrov said in an interview with RT’s Rick Sanchez on Wednesday.
“Iran is our close partner and neighbor, we care about how the situation develops. More so because it is explosive not only for Iran itself, but also the entire Middle and Central East. Too many mines are buried there, waiting to be set off by a clumsy foot,” he stated.
“The Iranians, the Israelis, the Americans know we are prepared to offer our services that could contribute to implementation of agreements, when – hopefully when – or if they are reached.”
Last year, a major flare up was triggered by an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that West Jerusalem claimed was involved in a nuclear weapons program – which Tehran says it does not have. The two-week series of long-range strikes by the two nations culminated with a US intervention, as it bombed fortified sites in Iran that the Israeli military had no means to destroy.
In recent weeks, US President Donald Trump has alluded to the possibility of a new attack on Iran to pressure Tehran amid mass anti-government protests. The US and Iran are also engaged in tense negotiations, echoing the situation before the June 2025 escalation.
The full interview with Sergey Lavrov, given ahead of Russian Diplomats Day, will air on RT on Thursday at 14:30 GMT.
Hungary’s prime minister has vowed to expel those responsible for forced conscription
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has condemned Ukraine’s forced conscription of ethnic Hungarians following the death of another recruit.
Ukrainian draft officers have been detaining military-age men on the streets and at workplaces as the army struggles to replenish its ranks amid the ongoing Russian offensive. The officers have used physical violence during detentions, with multiple deaths reported in custody at enlistment offices.
“Dragged off to war, another Hungarian has died due to Ukraine’s forced conscription. This is unacceptable. We stand with the family, and we will not let this slide,” Orban said in a video address posted on X on Wednesday.
“All Ukrainian officials responsible for forced conscription will be expelled from Hungary without delay. Our people cannot be used as cannon fodder,” he added.
Officials in Ukraine’s western region of Zakarpattia, which is home to a sizable ethnic Hungarian minority, announced the death of Zsolt Reban, 46, on January 20.
Balazs Orban, a political adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, said Reban was “taken from the street by force and pushed into conscription” despite having previously been declared unfit for military service due to a lifelong heart condition. Hungarian media said Reban died at a training center near Lviv. According to Balazs Orban, Reban was an EU citizen.
In July 2025, Jozsef Sebestyen, a dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizen, died weeks after being drafted. The family of the 45-year-old conscript said he was beaten at a training center. The Ukrainian authorities denied any wrongdoing, stating that Sebestyen died from a pulmonary embolism.
Unlike many fellow NATO members, Hungary has refused to send weapons to Ukraine and has called for diplomacy with Russia over sanctions. Budapest has also criticized Ukraine for striking the pipeline used to transport oil into the EU. In August 2025, Hungary imposed sanctions on Robert Brovdi, Ukraine’s top drone commander.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has requested that the clothing giant turn over documents related to DEI
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is investigating whether sportswear giant Nike discriminated against white employees.
On Wednesday, the commission asked the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri to compel Nike to turn over information about its human resources policies, including those related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
The EEOC said it is examining whether the company engaged in “disparate treatment” of white employees and applicants in hiring, promotions, layoff selections, and training programs.
The EEOC said it is acting on allegations of systemic violations at Nike dating back to 2018. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said workplace discrimination law is “colorblind and requires the EEOC to protect employees of all races from unlawful employment practices.”
Nike described the subpoena as “a surprising and unusual escalation,” adding that it had already “shared thousands of pages of information.”
“We are committed to fair and lawful employment practices and follow all applicable laws, including those that prohibit discrimination,” the company said in an email to CNN.
Conservatives have long argued that DEI programs unfairly target white individuals. US President Donald Trump has made combating what he calls ‘woke bias’ a priority of his second term in office.
“I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country, and that can’t be allowed,” Trump told Time magazine in 2024.
After returning to the White House in 2025, Trump signed several executive orders rolling back DEI initiatives in the civil service. A number of corporations, including Walmart and Google, have since removed DEI commitments from their websites.
Why supplying the world’s money pressures the US to import more than it exports, and why the imbalance is so hard to reverse
“Money promises abundance, only to return want.” (The Author)
In its disquieting force, this dictum cuts through the allure of monetary power to expose its central paradox: Abundance may broaden choice at the outset, only to unsettle balance and narrow freedom over time, as advantage matures into obligation.
The global supremacy of the dollar bestows upon the US an extraordinary latitude, permitting it to borrow on exceptionally favorable terms and thereby opening a wide spectrum of spending possibilities.
Yet over time, persistent budget deficits build into a mountain of debt, as the costs of debt service, compounding year by year, absorb an ever greater share of resources and progressively constrict the scope of policy choice. And still this is but one turn of the screw.
The Lex Boomerangi: America’s degradation from without
Issuing the world’s reserve currency does more than invite fiscal laxity; it warps the economy from the outside in. This is the law of the boomerang applied to money: global liquidity, domestic costs. As the systemic price of dollar supremacy, liquidity curdles into liability, and dominance hardens into dependency.
The so-called “exorbitant privilege” of reserve-currency status is not merely a financial distinction; it is a structural condition that quietly rewrites the nation’s external accounts, distorting incentives, and redistributing opportunities and risks, gains and losses, across regions, communities, and sectors.
With the passage of time, reserve-currency status leaves a familiar and deep-seated imprint on the US economy: not only chronic budget deficits and exponentially mounting debt, but also persistent trade imbalances and the gradual hollowing out of the industrial core, fueling populist revolt.
To begin with, the dollar’s global dominance distorts the terms of international exchange. A humble hand tool makes the logic plain.
Balance-of-payments mechanics: A vicious closed circuit
A ratchet turns only one way; in much the same fashion, reserve-currency dynamics, unfolding through iterative, self-reinforcing loops, propel trade disparities forward that are far easier to deepen than to undo. A brief recourse to the fundamentals of international economics renders the forces at work intelligible.
The balance of payments is the ledger of all economic transactions between a country and the rest of the world. It is governed by an unforgiving arithmetic rooted in the principles of double-entry bookkeeping on a planetary scale. Every flow gives rise to equal debit and credit entries, appearing as a payment or receipt matched by a corresponding financial transaction that changes assets or liabilities.
As the economy’s closed circuit, the balance of payments constitutes an accounting identity, an equation that admits no exception. By definition, the current account (encompassing trade in goods and services, net primary income from abroad, and unilateral transfers) and the capital and financial accounts (recording cross-border capital and financial claims) must exactly offset one another.
Accordingly, a deficit on the current account necessarily finds its counterpart in a surplus on the capital and financial accounts taken together, and conversely. This implies that the totality of trade flows, tied to the production of goods and services in the real economy, together with income and transfer flows, are matched in the aggregate by corresponding capital and financial flows. The practical consequences of what appears to be an arcane accounting identity extend far beyond the ledger.
From the liability side, a country whose imports exceed its exports in current-account terms must, as a matter of accounting necessity, be a net borrower from abroad.
In monetary terms, there is no such thing as an external dissipation of funds. Every dollar that leaves the US must, by definition, ultimately find its way home, reappearing as a claim on the domestic economy. The consequence is nothing short of momentous.
Whenever dollars flow abroad to satisfy global demand for the greenback, they can do so only through an external deficit. In current-account terms, the US is compelled to absorb more goods, services, income, and transfers than it dispatches abroad, as corresponding capital and financial claims return upon the domestic economy.
To the extent that dollars flow abroad to pay for imports, they must, by necessity, return as foreign purchases of American assets. Every container ship departing Shanghai laden with goods is mirrored somewhere in New York or Washington by a corresponding external claim on US assets, taking the form of Treasuries, equities, real estate, or the simple holding of dollars in American bank accounts. By virtue of this operating logic, world reserve status entails grave implications over the long run.
The Triffin Dilemma: A hard-wired reserve-currency constraint
In a dollar-based global order, the balance-of-payments identity, as time accretes, hardens into a macroeconomic constraint of a structural kind. At the heart of this configuration lies the systemic necessity known as the Triffin dilemma.
Modern finance can recycle dollars, but it cannot conjure them ex nihilo. An individual central bank abroad may acquire dollars in the market, yet the world as a whole can expand its dollar reserves only insofar as the US supplies them. Succinctly stated, the foreign-exchange market moves money; it does not mint it.
In practice, the system’s logic renders the US structurally prone to large chronic deficits on its balance of trade. To convey a sense of the scale: Merchandise imports exceeded exports by more than one trillion dollars in 2025.
A surplus in services trade and net income receipts do no more than temper the immense imbalance, permitting the steady accumulation of dollar-denominated claims abroad, the counterpart through which the gap is financed.
In balance-of-payments accounting, these regular outcomes register as persistent current-account deficits matched by relentless capital and financial inflows.
Secular dollar appreciation: A quiet tax on US exporters
To the detriment of the US, the massive offsetting capital and financial imports do not arrive neutral.
For a start, these inflows entail a progressive surrender of claims on domestic assets. This means that a growing share of ownership rights, and of the future income they confer, passes abroad. The fateful consequence is a steady narrowing of the nation’s economic autonomy, and with it the very foundations of sovereignty.
As foreign ownership of US assets expands, the interest, dividends, and profits flowing abroad rise in tandem. Over time, America’s external position comes to rest less on what it sells abroad than on global confidence and foreigners’ enduring inclination to hold US assets.
Beyond this, global demand for dollar assets bids up the currency, lifting the dollar above its trade-consistent equilibrium. This amounts to a silent tax on American exporters, levied so that the rest of the world may hold more American money. The effect is to shift the burden of global liquidity away from the trading desks of Wall Street to the shop floor.
The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimates that reserve-currency demand alone may keep the dollar overvalued by some 5–10 percent. By pricing American goods out of foreign markets while subsidizing imports at home, this price distortion depresses US export revenues by roughly $30–60 billion a year. Each additional five-percent appreciation of the dollar adds roughly another $30 billion to that burden.
Because the dollar anchors global trade and reserves, foreign actors readily absorb US liabilities in lieu of goods, blunting the exchange-rate correction that would otherwise restore external balance.
Absent reserve-currency status, deficits would, as a rule, exert downward pressure on the currency, raise competitiveness, and lift net exports until the trade gap is closed. The dollar’s exceptional role arrests this salutary adjustment, entrenching deficits that would in ordinary circumstances correct themselves.
In the language of economics, the dollar’s persistent overvaluation is described as a “secular” trend (from the Latin saeculum, meaning “age” or “generation”): a long-term, structurally driven shift that endures across business cycles.
This upward tendency does not preclude intermittent episodes of pronounced depreciation. One such deviation from the long-run trajectory occurred in 2025, when the dollar declined by roughly 8 percent on a broad, trade-weighted basis, with losses approaching 10 percent against the major currencies, representing one of its weakest annual performances in recent years.
Sustained dollar appreciation begets structural deficit: persistent trade gaps, mirrored by the expanding foreign ownership of US assets. The red ink in trade statistics, together with the concomitant current-account deficits, is not a malfunction of the system or a mere policy error, but the system’s central mechanism and its price: the real-economy expression of a global financial regime centered on the dollar.
In essence, America lives on goods it does not make and leaves behind claims it cannot escape. To compound the predicament, the dollar’s hegemony, hard-wired into the global monetary architecture, carries repercussions that extend far beyond trade, reaching into the very foundations of industry and the power that rests upon it. Heavy indeed rests the crown of the world’s currency.
[Part 3 of a series on the global dollar. To be continued. Previous columns in the series:
The organizers say more than 200 companies from Russia, China, Iran, and Belarus are showcasing their products
A major civil aviation and drone technology exhibition opened at the Crocus Expo Center near Moscow on Wednesday. The organizers say more than 200 companies from Russia, Belarus, Iran, and China are taking part.
The two-day National Aviation Infrastructure Show (NAIS) features state-of-the-art technologies for airports and airlines. Leading Russian defense contractors, including Kalashnikov, Almaz-Antey, ZALA Aero Group, and Supercam Unmanned Systems Group, are showcasing their products.
Around 15 Chinese contractors specializing in airport services are taking part, NAIS head of business development Nikita Smirnov told RT.
Smirnov said the Russian government’s plan to build or modernize 75 airports across the country presents lucrative business opportunities.
Supercam is showcasing its flagship S350 drone, designed for aerial photography, surveillance, and reconnaissance flights, as well as analyzing gas and radiation levels.
The company has been testing equipment that allows operators to pilot UAVs from great distances, “effectively from halfway across the country,” with minimal signal delay, Supercam spokeswoman Ekaterina Zgirovskaya told RT.
Ambassador Andrey Kelin has said Moscow would treat NATO soldiers on the ground as a security threat
Russia would treat the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine as a threat to its security, Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin has said.
Kelin rejected plans by the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to send ‘peacekeepers’ to Ukraine after a ceasefire is reached with Russia.
“We will not allow [the deployment] of any NATO member state’s troops on the territory of Ukraine because it will be another line of attack against Russia,” he said in an interview with Channel 4 News aired on Wednesday. “We understand that Ukraine wants guarantees. We also need guarantees.”
The envoy stated that the presence of foreign troops on Ukrainian soil would be unacceptable. Asked about a Financial Times report that Ukraine and its European backers had agreed to deploy Western troops in the event of a violation of a potential ceasefire, he said these plans are “dead.”
Kelin reiterated that Russia is seeking a comprehensive peace deal with Ukraine rather than an immediate, unconditional ceasefire. He added that normalization of ties between Russia and the West, as well as trust-building measures, would help prevent further conflicts.
“There are positive and negative security guarantees. If you send troops, this is one thing. But many agreements that end conflicts [are based] on political guarantees, legal guarantees. The best would be a good relationship between the United States and Russia, between European countries and Russia, including London.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited Ukraine’s military cooperation with NATO and its aspirations to join the US-led bloc as a key cause of the conflict. Moscow has warned that it would treat any Western troops in Ukraine as legitimate military targets.
For all the media storm the final release is making, neither victims nor predators are likely to see justice
The long-anticipated release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s illicit activity was supposed to deliver justice to hundreds of underage women who were victimized by the late sex trafficker and his elite circle of powerful friends. On that score, it failed dramatically.
It’s pretty much guaranteed that anytime anything is released in the United States on a Friday evening it will land in the public domain with all of the intensity of a soggy firecracker. That’s no coincidence, as the US Justice Department wrapped up its delayed release of files related to the disgraced financier, although authorities conceded that the disclosure was unlikely to tamp down the suspicions that surround the case.
“I think there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General who just happens to have been Trump’s personal attorney, told reporters. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Hours after the release of more than 3 million pages, 180,000 images, and 2,000 videos related to the late sex offender, a group of 18 survivors of Mr. Epstein’s exploitation announced in a statement that the disclosure did not do enough to hold his enablers accountable.
“Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. That is outrageous,” they said, without specifying exactly what material had been disclosed. “This is not over. We will not stop until the truth is fully revealed and every perpetrator is finally held accountable.”
Throughout the tortuously slow release of the documents, the public was teased by the possibility that perhaps it might actually happen that dozens, possibly even hundreds, of sick and depraved child molesters would end up behind bars for their purported crimes.
While the release fell short of expectations, the masses at least had the opportunity to laugh at the expense of wealthy and powerful pals of Mr. Epstein’s, like Bill Gates, who was forced to release a furious denial after the files alleged that he slept with Russian girls, acquired a sexually-transmitted disease and asked for antibiotics to give to his then-wife Melinda. Who says the rich and famous don’t have problems, too?
Melinda is said to have expressed displeasure with Bill’s relationship with Mr. Epstein since at least 2013, years after the latter was convicted of child molestation charges. Following the Gates’ highly publicized divorce in 2021, Melinda went on to become the world’s second-richest woman, with a fortune estimated at $73bn.
Another embarrassing revelation to emerge from the files involved Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary (1999-2001), and former contributor to The New York Times, who asked the convicted sex offender for relationship advice and the chances of “getting horizontal” with a female colleague. Summers maintained a cordial relationship with Epstein long after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008. In fact, the chumminess lasted right up to July 5, 2019, the day before Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges and one month before his apparent suicide in a Manhattan prison.
Another person of high-renowned was Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his last royal titles by his older brother, King Charles. Yes, Andrew is now just your average commoner. One of Epstein’s trafficked females was Virginia Giuffre, who asserted that she was raped by Andrew on three occasions when she was just 17. Giuffre committed suicide on April 25, 2025.
Of all the powerful names who featured prominently in the files, perhaps none invited more mockery and scorn than that of former US President Bill ‘Slick Willy’ Clinton, who himself was embroiled in a separate sex scandal with White House intern Monica Lewinsky back in 1998 (Clinton was subsequently acquitted on two impeachment charges, of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day US Senate trial). As CNN reported, the former president flew at least 16 times in Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet – infamously known as the ‘Lolita Express’ – on domestic and international trips, often accompanied by both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a lengthy albeit comfortable 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, according to flight logs released during Maxwell’s 2021 trial. Some of those flights were part of extensive international trips with multiple layovers.
This week, the Republican-led House is expected to vote to hold both Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for failing to testify on the Epstein files. House Oversight Republicans together with some Democrats voted last month to hold the former president and secretary of state in contempt, a misdemeanor that could result in up to a 5-year prison sentence, something the formidable Clinton clan probably need not fret over. After all, who has not heard of the notorious Clinton ‘kill list’?
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice has dismissed suggestions that incriminating material about Donald Trump was withheld from the public, and the US president felt emboldened enough to suggest that the latest document dump exonerated him.
“I didn’t see it myself, but I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping – you know, the radical left,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late Saturday.
And just like that, it’s another sad day in America as justice has once again gone missing in action whenever it involves the wealthy and powerful. In the Epstein file saga, the public will have to content itself with a few good chuckles and regrettably nothing more.
History suggests the country’s physically and mentally decimated population is in for years of prolonged social strife
Four years after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, some sort of peace deal appears to be somewhere around the corner as Moscow, Kiev, and Washington have started holding trilateral negotiations. But while these developments suggest peace could potentially soon be at hand, history shows that the struggles for Ukraine are likely far from over as the ‘echo of war’ is sure to ring out for some years to come.
The prolonged fighting has seen many Ukrainian men forced to the front line by the Kiev regime with estimates suggesting some one million Ukrainians have been mobilized since 2022. The physical and mental toll on these soldiers, many of whom did not want to fight in the first place, has been immense.
Coupled with an influx of weapons to the country, many of which have made their way to the hands of civilians and criminal groups, Ukrainians appear to be in for many more years of internal strife, as has been the case in numerous countries following prolonged conflicts.
In June, The Lancet Regional Health medical journal reported alarmingly high rates of PTSD and other mental health conditions among Ukrainian soldiers who had been “relentlessly” exposed to violence, trauma and death, while also noting a lack of adequate support systems in the country.
According to the Lancet, many combat-exposed Ukrainian soldiers, two-thirds of which already have PTSD, have been resorting to alcohol and drug abuse, particularly cannabis and synthetic ‘bath salts’ which cause severe health effects including behavior change, violence, depression, and suicide. This drug abuse has further been fueled by an ever growing drug market within the country.
Another study published in October by the New Line Institute, authored by several clinical psychologists, found that the issue extends to civilians as well, with 76% of respondents meeting PTSD criteria and 66% exhibiting significant moral injury between 2022 and 2023.
“Trauma exposure, including PTSD and moral injury, can increase aggression among affected populations, creating a feedback loop in which societal violence escalates even in areas not directly attacked by military forces,” the authors noted citing extensive research on the issue.
Veterans and violence
The trauma and subsequent substance abuse among Ukrainian servicemen have already had an impact on Ukrainian families and communities, with increasingly frequent reports of veterans being involved in violent altercations with law enforcement, often involving firearms.
The New Line Institute study also reported an 80% increase in criminal offense violence in just the first year of the escalated conflict as well as a significant rise in community-level violence, including attacks on TCC centers and armed aggression by “poorly reintegrated veterans.”
Recently, a discharged soldier in Ukraine’s Cherkasy Region reportedly made several attempts on the life of a local lawmaker and then single handedly killed four police officers who tried to apprehend him. Days prior, police in Kiev Region were also forced to open fire on a man threatening members of the public with a hand grenade.
PTSD has long been linked with subsequent violent behavior. After the US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, health experts noted that multiple combat tours and repeated trauma led to a “tsunami” of social issues, including increases in “homicides, suicides, domestic violence and divorces,” with veterans also being noted to descend into homelessness or crime within months of returning home.
A 2018 study in the British Journal of Psychiatry on violent behavior and PTSD in US Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found that combat trauma, PTSD and moral injury combined with alcohol misuse, have been strongly associated with markedly elevated rates of violence in communities.
Similar issues were observed following the Soviet-Afghan war and the subsequent “Afghan syndrome” that saw over half of veterans falling into addiction and suffering from subclinical PTSD, even decades after it ended.
Influx of weapons and Organized Crime
Another issue that could end up contributing to long-standing social unrest in Ukraine is the sheer amount of weapons that has trickled from the front line into the hands of the criminal groups and the overall population.
A 2025 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found that an increasing amount of military-grade small arms, light weapons, and hand grenades were regularly being salvaged by civilians from the battlefield which has already contributed to an increase in arms-related violence among civilians.
In the past, an uncontrolled flow of weapons into civilian hands has often triggered prolonged eras of violent organized crime, as was seen in the 1990s in Russia and other post-soviet countries following the collapse of the USSR when poorly secured military arsenals flooded into criminal hands.
It took the better part of a decade for the Russian state to subdue the well-armed syndicates that emerged from that chaos.
Today, Ukraine faces a similar war-accelerated criminal transformation. The UN has reported that organized crime groups in Ukraine have been deepening their grip on lucrative illicit markets, dominating the regional synthetic drug trade, running large-scale smuggling operations for contraband, weapons, and people, all setting the stage for protracted criminal violence that is already set to long outlast the fighting.
The forced conscriptions and ‘busification’, along with rampant corruption and links between organized crime and top government officials have ultimately decimated the social fabric and relations between the state and the people in Ukraine.
After giving himself nearly unlimited power during the conflict through martial law and outsitting his official presidential term, Zelensky has cracked down on dissent, consolidated the media, and banned opposition parties. However, when he recently attempted to neuter Western-funded anti-corruption bodies, a glimpse of the nation’s pent up frustration became evident as massive protests broke out across all major cities.
But the strongest evidence for the inevitable standoff between the government and the people are the constant standoffs between military conscription police (TCC) and the public, which have been reported almost daily across Ukraine for the past several years and have been growing increasingly violent.
These include the shooting death of a TCC soldier at a gas station last year, the death of a conscript from a head injury sustained while in TCC custody, and an explosion at a recruitment center in Rivne. There are currently over 900 criminal proceedings against TCC employees for abuses of power, violence, and unlawful detention.
Far reaching consequences
European officials have also raised concerns already over an impending flood of Ukrainian soldiers with PTSD to neighboring countries after the conflict ends, who could end up posing a threat to civilians and participating in organized crime.
“These extreme experiences related to stress, threats to life, witnessing injuries, destruction, hunger, and exhaustion will have great significance not only for Poland but for Europe. Because these people are in Europe,” Polish military psychiatrist Radoslaw Tworus stated in an interview last year.
”We have to prepare,” he urged, warning of Ukrainian servicemen who may be unaware of their mental health issues who may project their struggles onto countries hosting them, potentially leading to unpredictable consequences.
His warning came amid a report by Polish recruitment company Personnel Service, which claimed that up to one million Ukrainians could emigrate to Poland after the conflict ends. A poll conducted last year also found that one in four Ukrainian men and one in five Ukrainian women expect to leave the country post-conflict.
While similar issues have also been popping up in Russia, with a reported rise in violent crimes involving veterans with untreated PTSD returning from the front line, the scale of the issue in Ukraine and Russia is likely to differ in the long run. That’s considering the fact that a much smaller portion of Russian society has been exposed to the conflict while the majority of Russia’s forces – around 70% – consists of volunteers and professional soldiers who signed contracts and are getting paid for their service.
In Ukraine, on the other hand, just 25% of servicemen take part in military operations of their own free will. Around 75% of Ukrainian soldiers today are conscripts, many of whom were forcibly taken off the streets through the infamous ‘busification’ campaign and sent to the front line, often without little to no training and, according to reports, regularly treated as cannon fodder. Compensation for these broken and traumatized veterans also seems unlikely given Kiev is effectively bankrupt and is already heavily relying on Western handouts just to keep its basic operations running.
Post-war crisis state
Even if the guns fall silent tomorrow, the war for Ukraine will be far from over. The most immediate battles will simply shift from the trenches to the home front, with an entire traumatized generation and streets flooded with weapons and rising organized crime that arguably has already been ruling the country for the past several years.
Throughout the conflict, Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the human cost for Ukraine has been catastrophic – a population decimated, with an entire generation scarred, physically and mentally, by a Kiev regime that sacrificed its people as cannon fodder to wage a proxy war to further Western interests.
While the West keeps talking about the cost of rebuilding Ukraine, ultimately its greatest long-term challenge will likely be the reconstruction of its society, as well as addressing the issue of a coherent national identity that, as described by French historian Emmanuel Todd, has for years been defined by nothing other than opposing everything Russian.
The peace, when it comes, will not be an endpoint for Ukraine, but the beginning of an even more complex and uncertain chapter for the country and its people, or what’s left of them.
