The phrase sounds like a warning from a war room: the merging of two wars. Olga Lautman traced it to a sales campaign.
“Everywhere you see this merging of two wars coming from Iranian agents, from Russia’s influence agents,” the Russia analyst told Zev on Narativ Live. “I guarantee you that Russia is behind this narrative — because in December they were completely quiet.”
December is the tell. Ukraine first struck Russian vessels in the Caspian Sea last December — ships Kyiv says ran weapons between Russia and Iran, cargo invoiced as bananas. Nobody objected. “The Russians didn’t say anything. The Iranians didn’t say anything. The Americans didn’t say anything,” Lautman said. This week Ukraine hit the same route again — and Tehran erupted. A senior Iranian parliamentarian threatened Ukraine on Twitter, in Ukrainian. Iran claimed the struck vessel as its own; Ukraine says it hit Russian ships. The difference between December’s silence and this week’s screaming, Lautman argued, is an audience of one — the story exists to tell Trump that Ukraine is wrecking his Middle East plans.
The wars did merge — years ago, and in hardware, not headlines. Iran handed Russia its Shahed drones in 2022, then opened joint drone factories inside Russia. China ships military components and helps Moscow dodge sanctions; Russia trains Chinese troops for an invasion of Taiwan, Lautman said, while North Korea sent 10,000 soldiers last year and, per new intelligence she cited, prepares 30,000 more. “Ukraine has been the laboratory for this.”
And the country supposedly dragging America into world war keeps picking targets a general would choose. “Ukrainians are going after logistical routes,” Lautman said — refineries and export terminals 1,300 kilometers inside Russia, supply lines “choking off Russia’s reach into Crimea,” even Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon. The bill so far, she said, citing the British Defence Ministry and U.S. intelligence: 1.4 million Russian casualties, several hundred thousand of them dead.
Then came Navy Day. Putin marks it most years by reviewing the fleet. This year the fleet stayed out of sight — Ukraine has sunk roughly 30 percent of it, Lautman said — so Putin reviewed a painting. “They couldn’t bring the vessels, so Putin had to deal with the banner of a submarine.” Even the wall behind him was painted on.
That humiliated navy shares the Black Sea with Romania, where Russian drones crossed the border three days running — Friday, Saturday, Sunday — and Romanian F-16s shot down all three, the first such kills in the country’s history. On Monday, Bucharest declared a Russian embassy staffer persona non grata after prosecutors confirmed the wreckage as Russian. Moscow denied aiming anything at Romania and promised retaliation.
Lautman set the incursions inside a warning European intelligence services keep raising: Russia “might test Article 5” — strike a Baltic state or Romania — “to see how NATO will respond” while Trump sits occupied elsewhere and cold on the alliance. And the test would not look like tanks. “They can do drone swarms and hit Romania or Estonia or Lithuania, and that would be enough,” she said. Russia rehearses with 200, 300, 400 drones a night over Kyiv. Ukraine now sends the same numbers back.
Her oldest warning ties it together: Russia moves on Europe while China moves on Taiwan — one axis, two theaters. The merging of two wars is propaganda. The merging of four regimes is documented.
Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Lalisa, Chardonai, Deborah J., Kelly, and many others for tuning into my live video with Olga Lautman! Join me for my next live video in the app.
