The Hunt: Suspected Russian attacks in Europe indicate Ukraine war is spreading

By J.J. Green
August 8, 2026 | 8:16 AM

This week, Russia launched one of its deadliest attacks on Kyiv in months using missiles and drones.

At least 17 people were killed and more than 40 wounded, but 800 miles away in Germany, Russia is suspected of launching an attack on an airport, possibly expanding the war.

On this episode of “The Hunt with WTOP National Security Correspondent J.J. Green,” Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, discusses what happened.

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Analysis: The world Washington built is fraying. What comes next?

By J.J. Green
August 20, 2026 | 8:57 PM

The United States is confronting a global security environment that increasingly resembles the outcome its Cold War adversaries once hoped to produce: a divided West, weakened alliances, economic exhaustion, multiple simultaneous wars and declining confidence in American leadership. That does not mean today’s crises were orchestrated according to some surviving Soviet master plan. The Soviet Union is gone, and the threats facing Washington now come from several different states with different interests. But the strategic effect is strikingly familiar. Early NATO assessments of Soviet intentions warned that Moscow sought to weaken the democratic powers, deny the West a secure European base and ultimately exhaust North America economically. Now, NATO says Russia is again trying to reconfigure the Euro-Atlantic security order through military force, sabotage, cyberattacks, coercion and disinformation. The difference is that much of the pressure now confronting the West is occurring simultaneously — and some of the damage to alliance cohesion is self-inflicted.

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