Moscow Loses Its Grip as Ukrainian Drones Change the Regional Balance of Power

President Volodymyr Zelensky peremptorily last week told Belarus’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, to dismantle four relay stations that Russia was using to guide drones and missiles into Ukraine. Addressing the leader of the Moscow satellite state, the Ukrainian leader asked: “Will one week be enough to remove it or turn it off? Otherwise, we will do it ourselves.”Yesterday, Mr. Zelensky announced that the four stations had been turned off, two days ahead of his deadline. In nations around Russia, a new power equation is emerging. The Moscow center is losing its grip. Former Soviet Union states are going their own way. Tipping the power balance is Ukraine’s huge arsenal of highly accurate, increasingly powerful drones and missiles.For four years, Mr. Zelensky put up with his northern neighbor, Belarus, the junior partner of a union state with Russia. In 2022, President Vladimir Putin used Belarus as a launchpad for his blitzkrieg south toward Kyiv. Since then, Russia has stationed nuclear weapons in Belarus, has drawn down Belarusian military stocks for the war, and has goaded the nation into attacking Ukraine. After Ukraine started blowing up Russian refineries, Belarus tripled shipments of diesel to Russia and increased gasoline sales 13-fold.President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus at Minsk on May 5, 2022. AP/Markus SchreiberEgged on by supporters of the Kremlin, Mr. Lukashenko last month misread the new balance of power. He threatened to join the war. Beyond words, Ukrainian intelligence detected road-building and base-building that indicated that Belarus was working with Russia to open a second front against Ukraine. In response, Ukraine’s commander of Unmanned Systems Forces, Major Robert Brovdi, posted on Facebook: “The first 500 targets have already been identified. Free and very practical advice: do not stick in Ukraine’s craw.” Behind Major Brovdi’s threat was the reality of a Ukrainian long-range drone campaign that has destroyed billions of dollars worth of Russian refineries this year.Showing that Russian air defense is incapable of protecting Russia’s two largest cities, Ukrainian drones and rockets set off spectacular fires at Moscow and St. Petersburg. Moscow’s refinery will not reopen this year, Reuters reported yesterday.All of a sudden, Mr. Lukashenko, ruler of Belarus for 32 years, realized that Russia can no longer protect him. “Belarus is very vulnerable militarily,” he told an Al Arabiya English TV correspondent visiting Minsk. “Because everything in Belarus is in plain sight of the Ukrainian military. We understand perfectly well that our main critical infrastructure facilities — production and logistics — would come under attack.”President Vladimir Putin sits in the cockpit of the Superjet 100 short-haul jet aircraft at the Gromov Flight Research Institute at Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, June 24, 2026. Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin pool via APAdapting to the new regional reality, he said: “If Volodymyr Oleksandrovych [Zelensky] was offended, I apologize to him for these words.” In a humble turn for a hockey playing, former collective farm boss, he said: “Maybe I didn’t need to speak so harshly.”In response, Mr. Zelensky said Sunday on national TV: “Let him keep his apologies to himself.” He renewed the threat he made two days earlier: “If Lukashenko does not remove the relays, we will remove them.”The Belarus leader never responded to the threat. On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, publicly called Mr. Zelensky, who is Jewish, a “Führer.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the leaders of Russia and Belarus would discuss the threat “in the foreseeable future.” The next day, the relay stations were turned off.Belarus and Ukraine are not the only former Soviet republics to see new limits to Moscow’s power. For two centuries, Armenia, a Christian majority nation, has turned to Moscow for protection from surrounding Muslim nations — Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey. However in the fall of 2024, Russia was distracted by its deepening war with Ukraine. It failed to uphold post-Soviet defense treaty obligations with Armenia, allowing Muslim-majority Azerbaijan to overrun an Armenian enclave.Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, at Moscow, May 8, 2024. Evgenia Novozhenina/pool via APTwo years of ill-feeling came to a head in the days leading up to the June 8 parliamentary elections in Armenia. To keep Armenia in line, Moscow threatened to end duty-free exports of natural gas to Armenia. It banned imports of a series of Armenian goods, including flowers, fruit, mineral water, and cognac.However, when votes were counted, half the ballots were cast for the pro-Europe, pro-America party. A quarter were cast for the pro-Russia party. The pro-West party, led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, now has a governing majority in parliament. A clear goal is to join the European Union.Russia’s foreign ministry protested that Armenia’s elections were held “amid unprecedented pressure on the opposition and interference from the West, primarily the EU.” President Trump endorsed Mr. Pashinyan. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Armenia a few days before the vote.Across a religious and geographical divide, Muslim-majority Azerbaijan also has been cool to Moscow. Relations hit the deep freeze in December 2024, when a Russian anti-aircraft missile downed an Azeri airliner, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. After Moscow denied responsibility, tit-for-tat raids and arrests took place in Russia and Azerbaijan. In October, Mr. Putin met the Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, in a third country. Mr. Putin took responsibility and apologized. Photos show the Azeri leader looking stone-faced.

Moscow Loses Its Grip as Ukrainian Drones Change the Regional Balance of Power

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