Putin lashed out at what he called systemic errors committed by the “West’s globalist circles,” insisting that Russia posed no danger to European countries, which he said “seek to frighten their populations with a mythical Russian threat.”

He also insisted that the West was to blame for the war in Ukraine by seeking to expand NATO. “They directly supported separatism in the Caucasus and sought to break up Russia; this is a matter of fact. Furthermore, today’s crisis in Ukraine was likewise instigated by them.”

As if to put an exclamation point on Putin’s remarks, a Russian drone strike hit passenger rail infrastructure in western Ukraine as many Western diplomats, officials and experts, including former CIA director David Petraeus, former British prime minister Boris Johnson and former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt were leaving the country after attending the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv.

Passengers on at least one train were evacuated, but no deaths or injuries were reported from the strike.

German Defense Minister Boris ​Pistorius called the drone strike a calculated escalation to fuel fear in Europe.

“It is ​all the more important that we ⁠remain levelheaded, that we do not ​allow ourselves to be provoked, but ​that at the same time we leave no doubt that we are capable of defending ​ourselves,” Pistorius told reporters. “What Vladimir Putin is doing is dangerous. He knows that, and that is ​why he ​is doing ⁠it.”

The rail line attack further alarmed European officials who have been warning that Russia could attack near Ukraine’s border crossings with NATO countries or could intensify sabotage operations inside Europe to discourage Western leaders from further aiding Ukraine.

“These coming weeks and months will be a time of very intensified actions on the Russian side, and unfortunately we cannot rule out that this escalation will also affect our territory,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday following a government security briefing.

The Trump administration in recent days has renewed its efforts to jump-start peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, including with trips by presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow and Ukraine.

Following those talks, Kushner said that Washington had already drafted most of the peace agreement but that it was being held up by Ukraine’s reluctance to make territorial concessions to Russia, which now occupies about one-fifth of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

Putin has demanded that Ukraine surrender all of its eastern Donbas region, and Russia has claimed, illegally, to have annexed four Ukrainian regions, even though militarily it does not control all of that land.

“President Putin laid out his position regarding what he wants to achieve,” Kushner said at the YES conference. “If Ukraine wanted to retreat to that line, we would have already prepared and agreed on the remaining terms of the deal. Currently, Ukraine does not want to do this.”

Ukraine has repeatedly said that ceding land that Russia failed to capture militarily is a nonstarter, arguing that withdrawing from fortified cities in Donbas would only expose the country to future attacks.

Kushner and Witkoff said they were pushing for trilateral negotiations. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he is willing to meet Putin at the Group of 20 summit scheduled for mid-December at Trump’s resort in Doral, Florida.

The Kremlin immediately ruled out such a meeting, calling it “impossible” and saying that Putin would only meet Zelensky in Moscow. Kyiv repeatedly has dismissed the offer of a meeting in Moscow as the Kremlin playing games.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the talks on Ukraine probably would resume in October, after Russia holds a key parliamentary election this weekend.

The potential deployment of a European peacekeeping force has been discussed as one potential way to provide Ukraine with “security guarantees.” But any such step would first require the signing of a durable truce between Kyiv and Moscow.

Britain and France previously had agreed to deploy forces in Ukraine if the country reaches a peace deal with Russia, with then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron signing a “declaration of intent.”

But as negotiations stalled, with Washington focused on its own war in Iran, the proposals to send European troops to Ukraine have also gone quiet.

Europe, because of its increasing role in Ukraine’s capability to launch strikes against Russian territory, is becoming “Moscow’s central strategic problem, overshadowing the United States, Ukraine and, to some extent, even NATO,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote on X.

“This will shape the nature of negotiations with and about Ukraine, as well as the outcome of any settlement, far more than it did a year ago,” Stanovaya added. “It is likely to dominate European geopolitics for decades.”

Anne-Gaëlle Amiot

Isolated wartime leader, withdrawn into his convictions, Vladimir Putin moves about in a traveling bunker. An armored limousine, a convoy of vehicles packed with weapons, offices replicated identically in his residences – these themselves transformed into cloned shelters across the country – ubiquitous air defense systems, heavily armed bodyguards and soldiers in camouflage: This is the world of the Russian president who, before the parliamentary elections held from Friday, September 18, to Sunday, September 20, resumed his travels across Russia this summer, after nearly six months without venturing into the country. Out of fear of Ukrainian drones, a fortress accompanies him on his journeys, both within Russia and during his rare trips to so-called “friendly countries,” such as India, where he traveled from September 11 to 13 for the BRICS summit.

The more the “special military operation” in Ukraine has become bogged down, the more Putin, 73 years old, fixates on his own security. Four and a half years after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the stalemate of this endless war has become a dead end for the Kremlin and could threaten to shake its authority. Ukrainian drones are not the only danger Putin fears. “They will hang me,” he confided to associates, according to a source quoted by the British weekly The Economist on September 1. He did not specify whether the enemy he feared was external or internal. “One thing is certain: Putin ties his fate to the outcome of the war in Ukraine. He fears what might happen to him if he fails,” warned a political scientist, an expert on Putin’s elites and clan rivalries. Reached by secure messaging in Moscow, she wished to remain anonymous.

A quarter of a century after Putin took power in Russia, the siloviki – members of the security apparatus, a neologism derived from the Russian word sila, meaning “force” – have seized control. At the top sits the FSB, successor to the KGB. At the same time, the Kremlin has steadily increased the ranks of the presidential guard, the Federal Protective Service (FSO). Since 2022, four decrees have raised the number of agents at the central headquarters to more than 800, including drone operators and even presidential food tasters. Overall, this guard is enormous: While the exact figure is classified, it is believed to number more than 50,000.

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Ukraine’s people face a winter from hell. Thwarted on the battlefield, Russia is stepping up systematic, daily attacks on civilians, their homes, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and the vital infrastructure that sustains human life. Wave after wave of terrifying daytime ballistic missile and jet-drone strikes on Kyiv and other cities are destroying supermarket distribution hubs, pharmaceutical and medical facilities, logistics centres and warehouses. The result is sharply rising civilian casualties and growing shortages of food and other essentials. As a freezing winter approaches, Russia will again try to blow up Ukraine’s water supplies and power grid, cutting off electricity to millions. This is Vladimir Putin’s version of darkness at noon. He’d rather kill everybody than admit he’s lost.

Russia’s leader reportedly told Donald Trump this week that his “special military operation”, now in its fifth year, was going to plan. Trump may believe him. Western analysts certainly don’t. Failing militarily and taking huge casualties, his regime is under growing domestic economic and public pressure to wind down the war. Yet Putin seems to think one last big push can finally break Ukraine’s will. Trump’s renewed meddling – after months of inertia, he sent his patsy envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, back to Moscow last weekend (they also visited Kyiv for the first time) – perpetuates Kremlin delusions of victory. Now there’s talk of more talks. And all the while, Putin kills and kills. Each day is a crime against humanity.

This prospect of daily mass killings, rampant war crimes, malnutrition, homelessness and renewed, large-scale displacements of Ukrainian civilians – this intensifying Russian campaign of terror – is intolerable. So why don’t the western allies and Nato intervene to stop it?

The principal reason is chronic US ambivalence and unreliability, which has turned Ukraine into a seemingly irresolvable forever war. Former president Joe Biden tossed lifebelts to the Ukrainians in 2022, then left them to sink or swim. Trump has since tried to drown them. Despite halting the ground invasion and taking the fight to Russia’s heartlands, Ukraine is more vulnerable than ever to air attack. That’s largely because Trump has backtracked on allowing Ukraine to produce Patriot missile interceptors and paused weapons deliveries. Europe has so far failed to fill the gap. Trump’s fawning and feting of Putin, seen at last year’s nauseating Alaska summit, and his bullying of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, undermine Ukraine’s resistance, European security and hopes of an expedited settlement. Vulnerable civilians pay the price.

Many Ukrainians are weary of war. About 60% oppose ceding Donbas land to Russia but a similar number would support a ceasefire, backed by western security guarantees, that freezes current positions, a recent poll suggests. Most Russians also want it to stop. And like Moscow, Kyiv is feeling the financial pinch, notwithstanding a $100bn EU loan. There’s plainly a deal to be done. But Putin (like Trump over Iran) ignores public opinion. The indifference of authoritarian leaders to the popular will, let alone global opinion, is another reason forever wars proliferate. Whether the conflict is Ukraine, Gaza or Iran, ordinary people, watching from the margins, feel powerless to influence events. Familiarity deadens the senses over time. The horror of it all is scary and upsetting. It’s easier to look away.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet at the Elmendorf-Richardson military facility in Alaska, 15 August 2025. Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Efforts to halt the US-Israel war on Iran, which began in February and has now extended to the Red Sea (Trump, remember, said it would only last a few weeks), and relentless post-2023 violence in occupied Palestine, are hampered, as in Ukraine, by the absence of credible, independent peace processes. This is another major factor fuelling the modern forever war phenomenon. Trump clumsily inserted himself into the Kyiv-Moscow argument, blatantly favouring one side. At no point did he trouble himself about the rights and wrongs of Putin’s war of choice. He aimed not to save lives but to win a Nobel peace prize (plus lucrative Russian energy deals).

Self-serving motives have similarly upset hopes of rescuing Gaza’s civilians from the Israeli military and Hamas. Trump’s “board of peace” and 20-point plan are primarily vehicles for his ego and greed, not a plausible route out of a political, military and humanitarian dead-end. As for ending the Iran debacle, the US president has lost interest. His refusal, like Putin, to accept the obvious, admit he failed to achieve his war aims, and seek a compromise with Tehran undercuts regional mediators and Gulf state allies, who rightly fear fighting will drag on indefinitely. Desperately needed: impartial, UN-empowered peace envoys to knock heads together.

Forever wars develop and grow entrenched in the absence of authoritative, universal legal frameworks respected and observed by all. The contempt shown by Trump, Putin and Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, for basic principles of the post-1945 world order – rule of law, national sovereignty, oversight and enforcement by the international court of justice and international criminal court – directly contributes to the prolongation of conflict. Once the rules are cast aside, anything goes. That has ineluctably led to war crime atrocities such as those experienced in Gaza since the 7 October massacres; in Bucha, Mariupol and other towns and cities across Ukraine; and in Minab, southern Iran, where a US Tomahawk cruise missile allegedly killed more than 100 schoolgirls in February. Almost invariably, the culprits escape punishment. It’s impunity made law. It’s forever anarchy.

Another increasingly common feature of endless wars is the obstruction of full public scrutiny and accountability through independent media and UN investigations. Since the war with Hamas began, Israel’s army has tightly restricted international journalists’ access to Gaza. Despite the efforts of brave reporters, this policy has inevitably disguised and distorted the true picture of what happens there, not least for Israelis. Likewise, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, releases only limited, selective information about Iran-related operations. This has led, for example, to under-reporting of the extent and cost of successful Iranian strikes on US bases in the Gulf. Russian state media routinely censor news from Ukraine. Most Russians have little idea how badly the war is going. Generally speaking, public ignorance facilitates abuses and prolongs conflict.

Forever wars are ultimately caused by failing, foolish leaders. For sure, generals foul up. In battle, things rarely go as expected. Clever strategies backfire. But the core problem is politicians who promise too much, underestimate their opponents, ignore less macho, peaceful alternatives, think they are above the law, will not admit mistakes – and, without shame or compunction, lie to your face. This is an age-old problem with no quick solution. But Ukraine’s people, facing a season from hell, urgently need additional assistance now.

Western democracies cannot sit on their hands as the civilian toll from Moscow’s barbarous onslaughts mounts daily. Nato must finally switch to the offensive, make clear more war crimes will not be tolerated, threaten to strike Russian drone and missile launch sites from the air (as previously, repeatedly, urged here) – and force Putin to back off before his forever war becomes everybody’s war.

• Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The 1999 episode on the German train, disclosed in the final report of the U.S. commission that investigated the attacks, is based on interrogation reports that until recently were kept secret. According to the account, a mysterious passenger — identified as Khalid Masri, a name that has not previously surfaced in public records of the investigation — urged the Islamic radicals from Hamburg to put off their mission to Chechnya until they could speak with a Mauritanian businessman, who in turn arranged a personal introduction to bin Laden.

The circuitous path that led the group to Afghanistan is one key piece of evidence cited by the commission in concluding that members of the Hamburg cell had no intention of attacking the United States until they were recruited almost by happenstance by the al Qaeda leadership to become the field marshals of the Sept. 11 operation.

That finding contradicts a long-held theory advanced by German prosecutors, who have argued that the Hamburg radicals wholly conceived of the plot themselves in Germany and only later traveled to Afghanistan to seek the support and sponsorship of al Qaeda.

According to U.S. and German investigators, the Hamburg cell included 11 core members and supporters who played a role in preparing for the attacks. Of those, three died during the hijackings, including plot leader Mohamed Atta; two are facing trial in Germany; two are in U.S. military custody and one is imprisoned in Syria. The other three remain at large.

The competing version of how the conspiracy began is threatening to derail Germany’s attempts to prosecute two men accused of belonging to the Hamburg cell and providing assistance for the attacks. One of the suspects, Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan, was scheduled to go on trial Tuesday in Hamburg on 3,066 counts of serving as an accessory to murder.

Motassadeq was found guilty 18 months ago and is still the only person convicted in connection with the attacks. But the verdict was overturned on appeal, in part because of new information about the conspiracy that emerged from U.S. investigations, and a new trial was ordered.

The Sept. 11 commission’s findings are based on classified reports of interrogations of Ramzi Binalshibh, a core member of the Hamburg cell who was supposed to serve as a lead hijacker but could not get a visa to enter the United States. He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and is in U.S. custody in a secret location.

During interrogation, Binalshibh described the 1999 encounter on the German train that ultimately led the Hamburg group to meet bin Laden. His statements also led the Sept. 11 commission to reach a conclusion different from that of the German prosecutors, who alleged the plot originated in their country.

In 1999, “when the four core members of the Hamburg cell left Germany to journey to Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that they already knew about the planes operation,” the commission wrote. “No evidence connects them to al Qaeda before that time.”

For years, German authorities have wondered how the hijackings could have been planned in their midst without triggering any alarms. Now, the U.S. investigation has answered their question by saying the plot was not hatched here.

“This was the assumption for a long time,” said Manfred Murck, a German intelligence official in Hamburg whose agency is responsible for monitoring domestic extremist groups. “In a way, we feel a little bit better that not all the responsibility is on our shoulders.”

But the fresh disclosures present a severe challenge to German prosecutors in the upcoming trial. The indictment against Motassadeq charges that he played a direct role in furthering the attacks. Under German law in effect at the time, he can be found guilty of helping or belonging to a terrorist organization only if the conspiracy was planned within Germany.

A panel of judges that will hear the case in Hamburg has already requested that the Sept. 11 commission’s report be included as evidence. Defense attorneys are also demanding that Binalshibh and other al Qaeda suspects in U.S. custody be allowed to testify, arguing that their accounts could exonerate their client.

The U.S. government has refused in the past to allow access to Binalshibh, citing national security concerns. U.S. officials have provided summaries of his statements to German intelligence agencies, but only on condition that they not be used in the courtroom.

German legal experts said the court will be hard-pressed to accept the argument that the interrogation reports cannot be included in the trial, given that they have already been made public in great detail by the Sept. 11 commission.

“It’s simple and easy,” said Ulrich von Jeinsen, a German lawyer representing families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. “If the U.S. doesn’t cooperate and this information remains classified, then Motassadeq will go free. It is a very critical situation.”

There are signs that German authorities are bracing for a defeat. Last month, officials in Hamburg filed papers seeking the deportation of Motassadeq and another Moroccan defendant scheduled for trial later this year. The officials said they acted out of concern that the men could remain in the country if acquitted.

Kay Nehm, Germany’s chief federal prosecutor, visited Washington in April in an attempt to persuade Justice Department officials to provide more access to captured al Qaeda suspects for the trial. He said the response was not encouraging.

“I met with a great deal of understanding,” he said in a statement last month. “But they gave me to understand that there were restrictions which went way beyond the authority of the people I was talking to.” A spokeswoman for Nehm’s office called the lack of information from the United States “a black hole,” but said prosecutors were still hoping for a breakthrough.

If Motassadeq is found not guilty, legal experts said, the German government will likely drop its case against another alleged member of the Hamburg cell, Abdelghani Mzoudi. He was acquitted in February on similar charges, but prosecutors have appealed.

While the Sept. 11 commission presented the most detailed account yet of how the Hamburg cell formed and allied itself with al Qaeda, much remains unclear.

For instance, German and U.S. investigators had initially placed great emphasis on the role played by Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a 300-pound auto mechanic known as a leading Islamic radical in Hamburg who had fought in Afghanistan and favored violent jihad. Investigators said he inspired formation of the Hamburg cell and provided a link to the al Qaeda leadership.

But according to the Sept. 11 commission, it was another man who pushed the Hamburg crew in al Qaeda’s direction: a Mauritanian businessman named Mohamedou Ould Slahi.

Citing statements given by Binalshibh, the commission reported that Masri, the mystery man on the German train, urged the Hamburg radicals to contact Slahi when they expressed interest in finding a way to join Islamic fighters who were resisting Russian forces in the breakaway region of Chechnya.

They did, and Slahi invited them to visit him in the German city of Duisburg, where he was running an import-export business.

According to the commission, Slahi advised the men that it was difficult to slip across the border into Chechnya. He encouraged them instead to go to Afghanistan. He assisted with their travel plans and arranged for them to meet operatives for al Qaeda in Pakistan, who in turn arranged a private meeting between Binalshibh and bin Laden in December 1999.

The trip to meet bin Laden prompted the Hamburg contingent to swear allegiance to al Qaeda. It also resulted in an immediate assignment: to lead and plan the Sept. 11 hijackings in the United States.

Slahi was well known to U.S. and German intelligence agencies as an al Qaeda follower, but neither government was aware that he was living in Germany, according to the commission. He was later identified by U.S. investigators as having aided in the creation of a cell in Canada that was to carry out the plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the 2000 millennium celebrations, which was ultimately foiled.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Slahi was arrested in West Africa. He disappeared after that and is now reportedly in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Hamburg court has asked the Justice Department for more information about Slahi in preparation for the upcoming trial. The Sept. 11 commission’s report did not cite any statements made by Slahi.

There are other suspected members of the Hamburg cell who could provide insight into the operations of the group but who remain at large.

Zakariya Essabar, an Islamic extremist from Morocco who was close to the cell leaders, left Hamburg for Pakistan on Aug. 30, 2001, so he could notify the al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan that the U.S. hijackings were imminent, according to the commission. German authorities have a warrant for his arrest, but his whereabouts are unknown.

Said Bahaji, a German citizen of Moroccan ancestry, shared an apartment with two members of the cell in Hamburg. He also left Germany shortly before the attacks, flying to Pakistan on Sept. 3, 2001. He is also wanted as a fugitive in Germany. Letters and e-mails that Bahaji recently sent to relatives in Germany have been traced to Pakistan by German law enforcement officials.

Special correspondent Shannon Smiley contributed to this report.

09 September 2026 16:03

Caliber.Az

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