Russia is beginning its inevitable collapse, as it has always done: in 1830, 1905, 1917, and 1989. But that also makes it more dangerous; a cornered rat is most vicious, and if the collapse is drawn out, Moscow could lash out and drag us down with it.

Ukraine has regained the initiative over the battlefield and, in some areas, it has taken a small amount of ground. According to Meduza, a Russian-language investigative news website, Russian fatalities since the full-scale invasion in 2022 reached 352,000 last year; it’s likely that the figure could hit 400,000 this month. 

A million Russians have become casualties, dead or wounded. Even in a country with a large population, more than a million casualties without gaining ground is unsustainable.

North Korean troops on Red Square

The Kerch Bridge to Crimea – the Kremlin’s first Ukrainian conquest in 2014 – remains unreliable, and continued Russian control over the area is increasingly at risk. And the 'land bridge' that Russia seized in 2022, running from the peninsula to the occupied city of Mariupol, is now under fire control by Ukraine’s long-range drones.

Morale amongst the Russians is abysmal; and their nationalist bloggers are screeching. One, Evgeny Golman, said: “The front is shocked, everything is screwed”; another, Yegor Guzenko, criticised Vladimir Putin’s conduct of the war and reportedly ended up in a ‘meat’ assault unit with a broken leg.

Victory Day, held annually on May 9, is supposed to represent Russia’s ‘glory’ to the world, but as we saw this year, it had nothing to show. No armour, no power, but plenty of North Korean troops on Red Square. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even mockingly issued a decree permitting the parade.

Russia is collapsing and there are increasingly credible reports that Putin’s position is vulnerable. There will be no sudden soul-searching, no mass realisation about the immorality of the invasion; instead, the rats will flee or fight each other to survive as the war economy crumbles.

But that does not mean Russia is not dangerous, and there is no indication that Putin has the self-awareness to realise his position. His demands remain unchanged: full control of the Donbas region with all sanctions against his regime lifted and no Nato membership for Ukraine.

Trump’s disdain for Nato a factor

Listen to the Kremlin and its propagandists, and you’ll realise there is no possibility of negotiation or compromise. Russia’s leadership is still convinced that it can divide the West and maintain its maximalist demands.

And with good reason. US President Donald Trump’s actions over Greenland and Iran have caused Nato to fracture; there is no trust between Washington and its erstwhile allies in Europe. Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t value the North Atlantic alliance.

With casualties mounting in Ukraine, a looming economic catastrophe at home, and a huge loss of influence abroad, Russia may decide to test Nato to regain the strategic initiative. This test would likely occur in Narva. 

A small, bleak city in eastern Estonia, Narva is plagued by unemployment and post-industrial decline. It is also mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians, and Russian nationalists are already demanding that Moscow intervenes to “return the city to the motherland”.

The exact same messaging played out in 2014 when Russia moved to seize the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. The same flags, rallying cries, and historical distortions.

If Estonia is attacked, this would trigger Article 5 of the Nato treaty, the commitment to collective defence. However, that does not mean nukes would be launched at Russia; a response could take weeks, even months, to occur. 

The Kremlin will bet that Trump will not support Europe, that some Nato countries will prevaricate, and others will be too internally divided to mount an effective response. And thus, the Nato alliance could collapse.

UK military not ready for war

It is a calculated risk with high stakes, but there is a logic to it. Trump’s fury over Europe’s refusal to participate in the war against Iran makes it unlikely that American support would be forthcoming should Russia test Nato.

The Kremlin is probably right that some Nato members would drag their feet. The Czech Republic and Slovakia both have governments that would likely avoid conflict, as could some smaller members like Montenegro and North Macedonia.

The countries with leaders who would be most willing to stand up to Russian aggression – particularly the UK, Germany, and France – may not be able to offer a response either. Their militaries are chronically underfunded and undertrained, and joint exercises with Ukrainian troops utilising drones have repeatedly made it clear that European soldiers are not ready for drone warfare.

Then there’s the disenchantment present in the working classes of Western nations, the traditional recruiting pool of the Armed Forces. Military service is no longer a viable career, it’s poorly paid with no social prestige. Surveys have also repeatedly suggested that many people, in some cases a majority, in Western European countries would not be willing to fight for their country even if invaded.

Can we blame them? Exponentially rising housing costs, cultural disconnect, a sense of no longer belonging in their own countries, of being ignored by the political elite; these are all valid concerns, and all are exploited by Russian disinformation now – and would be again, should a war begin.

Russia is collapsing, and it will, but that collapse must be as harsh, total, and rapid as possible to ensure the Kremlin does have time to pivot to a challenge against Nato. Otherwise, we could be dragged into war that we are woefully unprepared for.

I've Experienced Nightly Attacks by Iranian Drones; The Despotic Regime Deserves No Sympathy

Iran’s cancerous regime sends drones to Russia that are used to attack Ukrainian civilians and interferes in the Scottish independence debate.

They say never to judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. You might also want to hold off on judgment from what I’m about to say until you’ve lived under bombing yourself: Israel and the United States were right to bomb Iran, it’s only a shame they didn’t achieve more substantial results.

I’m saying this as someone who’s endured night after night of attacks by Iranian Shahed drones in Ukraine. Before the pearl-clutching becomes too constricting, let me reassure you that this is no revenge fantasy, or an expression of hatred for the Iranian people. They have languished under the regime of the mullahs for too long. 

The regime itself, however, is as cartoonishly evil as it gets and deserves no legitimacy, or sympathy. Its malign influence extends far from Tehran to Kyiv and even Edinburgh.

Iran has supplied Shahed type 131 and 136 drones to Russia since the autumn of 2022 with the full knowledge that these weapons would be used to target civilians. They have limited battlefield use and are weapons of pure terror, much like the German V1 and V2 rockets during the Second World War.

Dreading the late-night lawnmower

Regimes like Iran’s and Russia’s should be fought, and any action towards their overthrowing should be welcomed, even if it comes from quarters unpalatable to the Scottish body politic, like Israel. Justification for the regime’s overthrow for its actions against its own people and in the countries of the Middle East abound; its actions in Ukraine are reason enough too.

Since 2022, Moscow has launched 28,743 Shahed-type drones against Ukraine — with 2,736, or roughly 9.5 per cent, fired in June this year alone. Though many are now manufactured in Russia under the name Geran 1/Geran 2, Iranian design, manufacturing and maintenance expertise remain vitally important to their operation.

Imagine lying in your bed late at night, you’ve heard the air-raid siren go off but you’re shattered, sleep-deprived from previous air raids or hot nights without electricity. You drift back to sleep, until the loud cracks of anti-aircraft fire wake you up again.

Then you hear the growl, a buzzing noise overhead that sounds like a lawnmower on its last legs. That’s the Shahed, and if you can hear it, it’s very close, maybe even over your apartment building. As awful the sound is, in that moment you pray you continue to hear it, because if it suddenly cuts out that growl might have been the last thing you ever hear as it drops on top of you.

That is the reality of living under Shahed drone attacks, a reality that most Ukrainians have had to face for three years now. Thousands have lost their homes, their loved ones and their lives as a result of this terror bombing.

Airstrikes or any other form of military campaign that halt Iran’s support for Russia, even incrementally or momentarily, or result in the regime’s eventual downfall, should be welcomed. 

Iran’s interference in Scottish politics

Don’t feel any sympathy for its wretched government; you are an enemy or a target for manipulation as much as any Ukrainian. The fact that a number of pro-independence X accounts mysteriously went dark after an Israeli airstrike on June 13, which caused an internet blackout that affected 95 per cent of national connectivity, should not come as a surprise.

Iran sees us as a target whether we’re nationalists or unionists, their aim is to merely stoke division. With that being said, and while I wouldn’t be surprised if some fringe pro-UK accounts are also run by the regime’s security forces, Iranian interference in Scottish constitutional matters would be welcomed by some on the pro-independence lunatic left, the types for whom Scottish identity is merely a means to an end, an extension of class warfare.

Believers in mere ‘whataboutism’, where any cause, any regime and any atrocity can be justified so long as it is ostensibly opposed to American imperialism or the dreaded ‘Zionists’, this leftist fringe is no stranger to supporting Iran. 

One of its darlings, former British diplomat and Israel-obsessed grievance-grifter Craig Murray, is well known to the regime’s state media. This is the same Murray who has backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, claimed the Ukrainian state tolerates a “current strain of Nazism in Ukrainian nationalism”, and regurgitated the baseless lie that Russian language speakers in the country’s east were being subjected to genocide. 

Such views are a calumny, demonstrably false and ridiculous as anyone who has actually been to Ukraine can attest. Murray also believes that despotic regimes like Iran are entitled to defend themselves, while countries like Ukraine are apparently not. 

Such views are those of a fringe, granted, and are demonstrably false and usually motivated by either ill-placed grievance or attention-seeking behaviour, but nonetheless, they are there.

They represent the very worst of Scottish politics, a hateful cancer on the independence movement that distorts truth to suit their own aims. That Iran facilitates the terror bombing of one country, Ukraine, while supporting malcontents in ours who condemn the victims of that terror as Nazis, highlights the unscrupulousness of both.

Do not give Iran, nor its stooges, any of your sympathy, wherever they may be. The country’s leaders are happy to weaponise social media manipulation and bad-faith actors in our body politic, and any time they receive a bloody nose should be welcomed.

Wait until you’ve lived under a Shahed’s growl before you think otherwise.