I am able to now post this final summary of the Dayton Dialog from Day 4, which was Sunday a week ago, on May 25. So much has already happened since then. The last 2 days of the conference, Russia had bombarded Kiev with some of its largest airstrikes of the entire war. This happened right after Trump had talked to Putin, as if Putin was basically sending a message that he would do whatever he wanted to do and Trump was not going to be able to talk him out of that.
Then early last week Germany announced that they were lifting restrictions on the distance that Ukraine had for firing missiles inside of Russia, an escalatory move. Beyond just Germany, many other Western allies, including the US and the UK, lifted range restrictions they had imposed on Ukraine.
Then the Ukrainians launched a massive drone attack on 4 Russian air bases, damaging more than 40 planes. In response, Russia launched a massive retaliatory drone attack of their own, with 472 drones, 3 ballistic missiles, and 4 cruise missiles.
Then last week, the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held a significant Defense Ministers Council meeting on May 28, 2025, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. This event was in parallel to the NATO Parliament meeting that was being held in Dayton, alongside our forum. They worked out agreements on military cooperation, security assessments, and military bi-lateral partnerships.
Meanwhile, Putin publicly chastised the President of Serbia for supposedly supplying weapons to Ukraine, which he denied. The hidden meaning there is that Putin doesn’t like Serbia’s desire to join the EU, and this was a warning/threat to get Serbia to come into line with Moscow’s vision for the Europe and the World.
When we left the forum a week ago, one thing we talked about was that we were expecting to see some significant activity coming to the Balkans region, or the Baltic states, or the Scandinavian states, or perhaps all 3. Also we were expecting that the war was going to escalate, and not de-escalate. We are starting to see all of those things happen now.
Here is the video version of our day 4 summary.
