INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT

03.27.2026

March 27^th, 2026

Greetings!

The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran entered its 28^th day today. As we noted here yesterday, Adm. Brad Cooper, the Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), announced on Wednesday that U.S. forces had struck their 10,000th target, & that they were “on plan or ahead of plan in achieving their military objectives.”

But that success may come at a cost in another war taking place in eastern Europe—Ukraine. That war surpassed its 49^thmonth just a few days ago. A war that then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley gave 72 hours, and one that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave 10 days.

Ukraine had other ideas. A defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly stood his ground, telling the Biden Administration and the world, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

AI Image credit: Grok. The U.S. & Gen. George Washington symbolically handing off the fight for liberty to Ukraine & Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The rest of that historic statement went, “I am here. We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this. That is it. That’s all I wanted to tell you. Glory to Ukraine.”

Defend they have, to the tune of inflicting over 1,293,170 Russian casualties. Not to mention the totality of key Russian military weapon systems they have destroyed—the battle damage assessment (BDA): 11,808 tanks, 24,287 armored fighting vehicles, 38,863 artillery systems, and 1,700 multiple launch rocket systems.

Defense of Ukraine@DefenceU

“Every day is a new opportunity to reach that goal.” Rick Ross The combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to March 27, 2026.

6:06 AM · Mar 27, 2026 · 32.9K Views

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42 Replies · 429 Reposts · 2.06K Likes

Ukrainian bravery & initiative were paired with weapons, munitions, and intelligence provided by the U.S.—under the Biden Administration—and our NATO & European Union allies. Significantly, it came at the cost of zero American or NATO flagged soldiers.

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The true bill payers—the ones who are carrying the burden—are the Ukrainian soldiers & civilians. Especially the men, women & children the Kremlin deliberately target with its missiles & drones in their homes, hospitals, churches, marketplaces, & bomb shelters. They are a people & culture Moscow intends to erase.

Resist?

Yes.

But win?

Nobody saw that coming.

Certainly not Putin nor his entourage of then-Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu & Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov. While they prepared for an easy Victory Day Parade—Ukraine primed to fight back.

Putin knows—for he should know by now––he cannot conventionally win this war militarily. His solution? To have President Donald Trump deliver the goods to him—meaning the Donbas & its Fortress Belt—by targeting his two weaknesses: ego and money.

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Now, 49 months later, Putin has turned to Kirill Dmitriev to deliver at the negotiation table what his Russian military could not & likely will not win on the battlefield—the entirety of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Photo credit: Kristina Kormilitsyna / TASS. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy to the U.S. in an undated photograph.

The tool is a “portfolio of potential U.S.-Russia projects [valued at] over $14 trillion.” Bait to entice Team Trump—U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—to force Zelensky’s hand.

The catch?

The deal is contingent upon a peace agreement in Ukraine & the lifting of Western sanctions. It also means getting Zelensky to stop resisting. That peace agreement—national suicide, really—is predicated on Moscow’s maximalist demands which—wait for it—include ceding the Donbas to Putin.

That is—as it should be, in our view—a hard no for Kyiv, which continues to frustrate Trump. On March 14^th, he complained once again—this time to NBC News—that “Zelensky is far more difficult to make a deal with [than Putin].”

Thank heavens Zelensky is. As we argued in the Kyiv Post yesterday, “This is about Ukraine’s survival and the security of NATO’s eastern flank, not about Washington’s pocketbook.” Zelensky—with Ukraine standing beside him—is holding the line.

Consequently, Trump has not been able to deliver the Donbas to Putin. But that did not stop U.S. negotiators in Florida last weekend from trying yet again to pressure Ukraine into handing over the Donbas to Russia.

Team Trump’s parting shot at the conclusion of the talks was a veiled threat: “Washington could walk away from the process and shift focus to Iran if no breakthrough is reached.”

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Yesterday, Team Trump appeared to take the first step. The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is considering whether to “divert weapons intended for Ukraine to the Middle East as the war in Iran depletes some of the U.S. military’s most critical munitions.” No final decision has been made, but the messaging—no doubt—was received in Ukraine.

To be fair, there are—and will be—“growing tradeoffs” between Ukraine & that which is “required to “sustain the U.S. war against Iran.” Nonetheless—as we keep highlighting—this is the same fight against the same Axis of Evil.

While the White House has stopped ‘gifting’ Ukraine weapons and munitions, Team Trump established the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative with NATO, which allows member-states to purchase weapons and munitions, ensuring a flow of select military equipment to Kyiv. The potential—if not looming—diversion to the Middle East of weapons intended for Ukraine comes from the PURL.

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Yet—ominously—a new danger is developing for Ukraine. Team Trump—especially Trump himself—is becoming increasingly angered by NATO.

Last week, a visibly agitated Trump belittled his NATO partners ⁠over their lack of support for the U.S.-Israel war on Iranas the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, with no end in sight, and an oil at the $100 a barrel threshold. The President lashed out on his Truth Social page, calling NATO countries “COWARDS,” and stated, “we will REMEMBER!”

Is raiding PURL how he remembers?

With one intentional leak by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon the message was clear—play ball. The U.S. will no longer support Ukraine, or allow NATO to support Ukraine, if NATO does not support the U.S. in their war against Iran.

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Intended or not, there was another message that was sent to Ukraine. And it was—clearly, in our view—received. Can the Trump Administration be trusted post-war if a peace agreement can be reached?

Would security guarantees offered by the U.S. in exchange for Ukraine ceding the Donbas to Russia be honored by Trump who seemingly all too often acts on impulse & often without consulting Congress?

Would ‘America First’ trump Ukraine’s security when the balloon went up the next time Putin or a future president of Russia decides to invade? Would the next deal to end that future potential come at the expense of Kyiv?

Zelensky simply can’t take that chance. Ukraine has been badly burnt before. Look no further than the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Is there any wonder why Zelensky wants a formal treaty versus a signed security agreement between Washington & Kyiv?

Meanwhile, Dmitriev is actively taunting Zelensky over the proposed U.S. security guarantees. Yesterday, he said “Zelensky finally understood that the United States would only provide security guarantees to Ukraine if Ukraine completely withdrew from Donbas. This understanding is encouraging.”

Kate from Kharkiv@BohuslavskaKate

Balding goblin Dmitriev is happy that the US government is siding with Russia: "Zelenskyy finally understood that the United States would only provide security guarantees to Ukraine if Ukraine completely withdrew from Donbas. This understanding is encouraging." Once again,

6:52 PM · Mar 26, 2026 · 108K Views

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302 Replies · 753 Reposts · 2.94K Likes

Let’s be clear here. Putin sees U.S. security guarantees as an expedient means to an end—to bank the rest of the Donbas at no cost. However—be assured—Russia has no intention of allowing any U.S. security guarantees to stop Moscow in the future.

Putin is betting—as long as U.S. security guarantees don’t come in the form of a treaty that is ratified in law by the U.S. Senate—that the U.S., like Minsk and Budapest before it, will never back them up once Trump is out of office.

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Nonetheless, what Putin cannot understand is that Zelensky & his generals have new & powerful cards to play. Ukraine has survived a brutal winter & the conditions on the ground are not the same as they were in December.

Washington senses it, even if Trump can’t admit it. Earlier today, at the Le Bourget Airport in Paris, France, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that, “The Russian side in particular is losing—I think they’re losing now more soldiers than they’re recruiting.”

Russia is losing leverage. They are hemorrhaging men & giving up occupied terrain. As we observed in the Kyiv Post:

“The Russian Spring offensive was preempted by a Ukrainian offensive that reclaimed over 400 square kilometers—liberating most of the Dnipropetrovsk region and halting Russian advances toward Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine has once again varied its tactics—transitioning into a network-centric warfare model utilizing their drones—taking advantage of Russia’s inability to access Starlink, isolating and destroying Russian forces in Ukraine, and cutting off their means of supply and reinforcement.

What spring offensive the Kremlin was able to generate last week (March 17^th-24^th) resulted in over 9,810 casualties.

From a strategic standpoint, efforts remain focused on undermining Russia’s capacity to finance the war.

On Monday Ukraine targeted the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk near St. Petersburg— considered Russia’s biggest oil port—which exports more than 1 million barrels of oil per day—that also “serves as a base for Russia’s secretive ‘shadow ships’ network.”

Tuesday, they struck the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga in the northwestern Leningrad Oblast, a port that handles around “700,000 barrels of oil exports per day.”

And Wednesday they struck again in Leningrad Oblast, hitting Russia’s second-largest refinery by processing capacity.

These deep strikes led Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu to correctly conclude, “Not a single region of Russia can feel safe.”

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Four years of sustained combat operations have taught Ukraine to become self-reliant. Range restrictions, authorization for munition usage, supply chain disruptions, armchair quarterbacking from the Oval Office, permission to strike targets, & political shenanigans—from both the Biden and Trump Administrations—have contributed to weapons & tactics innovations unimagined by the West.

Its use of drones in combat—offensively & defensively—triggered a Revolution in Military Affairs. Contrary to Trump’s comments that “the U.S. does not need Ukraine’s help with drone defense,” the Pentagon has turned to Ukraine for lessons learned on drone warfare. So are many Gulf nations &European countries. Eleven nations have reached out to Ukraine for support in defending their countries from Iranian Shahed drone attacks.

Plus, when Ukraine is denied use of Western weapons to strike Russia directly, it simply makes its own. Kyiv is developing and producing their own deep strike weapons that are taking the war to the Russian motherland—the Fire Point (FP)-2 deep strike drone, FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile & the FP-7 ballistic missile.

They have also developed munitions that can be fired from the U.S. Patriot missile system & HIMAR—–and have even offered to produce these munitions for European countries to replenish their stockpiles, if approval from U.S. defense contractors is authorized.

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Earlier today, Zelensky announced that Ukraine & Saudi Arabia reached an important agreement on defense cooperation during a surprise visit to the kingdom. The agreement “lays the foundation for further contracts, technological cooperation, and investment, while strengthening Ukraine’s international role as a security donor.

Photo credit: Volodymyr Zelensky / Telegram. Ukraine & Saudi Arabia signing a defense pact in Riyadh today.

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Ukraine has fully embraced the aphorism of “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” From a 72-hour death sentence to the most sought-after experts on drone warfare, Ukraine is not only surviving, but it has also revolutionized warfare.

Ukraine—250 years later—is also reminding Washington about 1776. Superpowers—then Great Britain, now the Russian Federation—can be defeated. Just as the Continentals carried the torch of liberty then, the Ukrainians are carrying it now.

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ICYMI!

Earlier today, Jon appeared on Al Qahera News in Cairo, Egypt to discuss the latest on the war in Iran.

It was a lively debate. You can watch it here.

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Thank you for reading! We will see you Monday. Please subscribe, comment & share. We truly appreciate it!

Jon & Mark

Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.