A very small man can cast a very large shadow

When we talked on Sunday, January 11, Alexander Smukler of Montclair began by offering some grim statistics.

Mr. Smukler started to explain the war in Ukraine to us the week that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, sent his army to invade his neighbor, on February 22, 2022, spouting nationalist rhetoric, aiming for domination, and incorrectly assuming immediate and easy victory.

Mr. Smukler knew what he was talking about when he described the war and Putin’s motives; he grew up in Moscow, became one of the youngest refuseniks, and eventually was granted the right to leave the Soviet Union. He, his wife, and their young children left in early 1991; the empire crumbled just months later. Mr. Smukler went on to a very successful life as a businessman and advocate for Jews from the former Soviet Union, and his extensive network of contacts both there and around the world have allowed him — and us — rare insight into his former home.

Here are the numbers he discussed. “This is a special day,” he said. “It is the 1,418th day of the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is special because the so-called Great Patriotic War” — aka World War II — “started on June 22, 1941, at 2 in the morning, and continued for 1,417 days until May 9, 1945. So today, the current war in Europe — one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since the Second World War — has now lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War did in Russia and Ukraine.

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“That is symbolic. These two nations, people who used to be the closest brothers and sisters, in the same region, with the same religion, very similar languages and a very similar culture, have been fighting now, since the Russian aggression, for longer than they fought in World War II. And that’s why I want to throw in some more numbers.

“During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union lost 26.5 million people. That’s the official number. That included 8.7 million soldiers. The rest were civilians, and almost 5 million of those were Jews. About 6.2 million people died in Ukraine.

“During the 1,418 days of the war between Russia and Ukraine, 600,000 people on both sides are dead. More than 1.5 million on both sides are either dead or injured, and 17,000 civilians — that means, women, children, and elderly people — were killed in Ukraine. According to the United Nations’ statistics, about 5,860,000 people were displaced and have left Ukraine and live outside the country now.

“During the last four years, Ukraine has been spending almost 56 percent of its GDP on defense. That’s a gigantic number. Russia official spends 7.1 percent of its GDP on defense, but in reality, it’s much, much more. According to some sources, Russia spent more than $150 billion in 2025 alone, just on the direct financing of military operations.”

And the war continues. “Despite his promise to finish the war within 24 hours if he were elected, President Trump later recognized that he did not know how hard that would be, although he’d already stopped eight wars,” Mr. Smukler said. (That claim is disputed; Mr. Trump doesn’t specify what those eight wars are, nor can commentators list them.)

All this leads to Mr. Smukler’s dark prediction. “I can say that 2026 is going to be an extremely difficult year for Ukraine,” he said. “I don’t see the end of the war — the light at the end of the tunnel — because although the Russian offensive operation in the occupied territories has been slowing down during the last few weeks, because of the hard winter, they are still slowly, very slowly advancing.

“As far as I understand it, we will see a major military battle, probably the bloodiest battle so far in the 21st century. That will be the battle for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. These cities have become fortresses. They are the two largest industrial cities in the Donbas area, so if Russia takes them over, they will have concluded their occupation of the region.” Russia has been trying and failing to take them over for a long time, Mr. Smukler added, and that just increases their symbolic value to both sides.

Mr. Smukler mentioned the failed peace attempts, which he has detailed in earlier reports in this paper. They failed because Russia demanded capitulation, and Ukraine resisted. “Putin chose the path of war,” Mr. Smukler said. “He had a strong chance to stop the war, because Ukraine accepted most of his demands, and Trump organized tremendous pressure on Zelensky’s cabinet” — Volodymyr Zelensky is Ukraine’s president — but in the end Putin demanded too much.

And Putin chose to freeze the peace process because he made clear that he was enraged by the drone attack that he said the Ukrainians aimed at Valdai.

That story, which he peddled to a sympathetic Trump, was not true, and quickly debunked by Western media. “But every Russian understands that Valdai is the place where Putin’s civil wife lives, and that’s where they’re raising their sons,” Mr. Smukler said. That’s Alina Kabayeva, a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast and the mother of the two young children they share.

“That is why I am saying that the war will continue, in the most brutal way,” Mr. Smukler said. “The Russians will continue to attack, as soon as the weather allows. I expect a very bloody offensive operation.

“I think that if Ukraine does not receive substantial help with military equipment — artillery shells, drones, missiles — and it does not resolve its manpower problem and mobilize new soldiers to the front line, then by the end of the summer Ukraine will suffer major military losses, and the Russians will reach not only a tactical but a strategic victory.”

And that doesn’t even take the horrors of this winter into consideration. “The Ukrainian people are suffering because of the collapse of their energy system,” Mr. Smukler said. “it’s a cold, hard winter. Ukrainian cities are out of heat, out of water, out of sewage treatment. The situation in many cities, especially Kyiv and Kharkov, reminds me of the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War, when people died in apartment buildings because they were starving and they were frozen.

“Right now, Ukrainians aren’t starving. They have food. But there are huge apartment buildings in the major cities, and the elevators don’t work. They have no water; no hot water, and even no cold water. Surviving with winter will be brutal.”

Meanwhile, the world is being destabilized. “There’s the situation in Venezuela, with Maduro. And there’s Iran. We are witnessing the revolution and hoping that it works. That’s probably the most important point right now in our global monitoring.

“And we have to see what will happen in Greenland”; President Trump has been threatening to take it over, saying that it is important to U.S. security.

That’s why Mr. Smukler thinks that it’s accurate to quote the TV show “Game of Thrones.”“Oftimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow,” we were told then. That was about Tyrion Lannister, an actual dwarf who used his large, sharp brain instead of his unimposing body. Putin, who is a fairly small man, grew up on the street of Saint Petersburg, where toughness mattered, and he used his wits to survive, casting aside any morality as strategically useless.

“The attack on Valdai wasn’t real, but Putin chose to use it to continue the war,” Mr. Smukler said. “It’s a choice — and it’s also a reflection of how countries now are operating in a world with no rules.”

He quoted Steven Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, who told Jake Tapper, on CNN, that “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”

That lack of rules, except the rule that the strongest player wins, brings Mr. Smukler back to his discussion of Yalta 2, a term that more commentators are adopting but he first used some time ago. Yalta 2, Mr. Smukler has been saying, will be a repeat of Yalta 1, the 1945 summit between President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the Soviet Union’s strongman, Josef Stalin. The three victorious Allied leaders set the terms for the peace — albeit tenuous at times, but still generally holding — that has prevailed in the world since then.

Now, though, that peace is falling apart; Mr. Smukler has been saying that the three new powers — U. S. President Donald J. Trump; Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and China’s President Xi Jinping — and possibly a fourth, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — will meet to carve up the world into spheres of influence. Those would be the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, and perhaps the Islamic world.

Trump is in a hurry to see this happen, Mr. Smukler said, because he wants to cement his legacy before his term ends in 2028, and possibly even before his power might be weakened if the Republicans lose the House of Representatives in the midterm elections this year. The president cares dearly about his legacy, Mr. Smukler believes.

He talked about Nicolas Maduro, who once was Venezuela’s president and now sits in a Manhattan jail cell, awaiting trial on drug smuggling charges.

“To my mind, that was one of the most successful military operations I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Smukler said. “We’ve seen three major secret operations that blew my mind during the last two years. One was the strike against Hezbollah in Iran, organized by Mossad. That’s the one where Israel blew up 2,500 pagers. One was Operation Spider Web. That’s the one Ukrainian intelligence organized against the Russians, when they delivered drones inside Russia, and the drones attacked strategic Russian air force bases.

“And the third was one of the most complicated and successful I have ever seen or read about.” That was the one that captured Maduro. “There are two reasons. One is that Maduro was protected. His security was organized by Russian intelligence. Getting him from out of his bed — that was a knife in the throat of Russian intelligence.

“And as we know, his bodyguards were Russians and Cubans. The Cubans already have announced that 32 special agents were killed. The Russians obviously aren’t saying anything about it, but I have no doubt that it’s a major, major failure.

The reason that Trump and his cabinet often gave about why the United States invaded Venezuela, at least at the beginning, was that Venezuela was responsible from many of the drugs smuggled into the United States. “That was fake,” Mr. Smukler said. Now, the reason has moved on to the country’s oil; that is more true in general, although not in detail.

“Maduro and his administration played a key role in the Russian oil trade, which is under sanction,” he said. He talked about the oil tankers that the United States has captured. “They all delivered naphtha to Venezuela. That’s a product that’s produced from Russian light oil. It’s mixed with Venezuelan heavy oil, which is almost impossible to export without being mixed with naphtha.” Apparently, Venezuelan oil is heavy, dirty, and therefore of low quality; it’s expensive and difficult to export. “So for the last four years, when the Russian oil industry has been under sanction, Russia sent tankers to Venezuela with naphtha to mix with Venezuelan oil.

“And then those tankers brought that oil to China and North Korea.

“Taking Maduro out of the game, removing him from the chessboard on the global game of thrones, is a gigantic punch in Putin’s nose,” Mr. Smukler said. “A very strong economic punch. Because now Russia lost the ability to mix its oil and send it to China. And also, it lost the ability to sell it to other countries, including Cuba and Brazil, which was buying it as Venezuelan oil and so was able to avoid the sanctions.

“So Venezuela played a very important part in a special mechanism that Russia created to avoid sanctions.

“I consider this operation so important and so successful not only because of how skillfully it was done, but also because I know how much Russian intelligence and Russian special forces were involved in Venezuela, controlled Venezuela, controlled the Venezuelan oil industry, and provided defense and security for its administration and its president.

“This operation only was possible because someone in Venezuela, in Maduro’s inner circle, betrayed him. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to conduct such an operation. Someone, for some reason, wanted to get rid of Maduro.

“The only explanation for why the United States did not replace the current administration is Venezuela” — the country now is led by its former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez — “is that they gave up Madura, and now they will rule the country under U.S. control. That’s the only logical explanation.

“Donald Trump is doing what he said he would do, and now the next step will be Greenland.

“And now we’re at the stage when there is no one and nothing in the world that can stop the strongest players. Look at the reaction at the U.N. when Maduro, the president of an independent country, suddenly was captured and put in jail with very weak legal reasoning. And the Security Council is totally impotent.”

To be fair, the international bodies did respond, but flaccidly, when Maduro was captured; they did not respond to the tankers being taken.

“They were in the territory of an independent country, and they raised the Russian flag,” Mr. Smukler said. “We were one minute away from the Third World War.

“Could you imagine this situation during the Cold War. Let’s say that at the end of the ’70s, the U.S. shut down a Russian military ship. They would never let that happen.

“This is the most dangerous time in civilization. We have reached a new phase, which is more dangerous than the Cold War was, because World War III could start at any minute.

“But the major players in the Global Game of Thrones have different intentions. They do not want a world war. But they understand that now is a time when they can grab whatever they can grab.

“That’s why I predict that Ukraine will not be a major focus of attention in the Trump administration, because the clock is ticking. They need to complete some major steps because of the midterms in November this year. I expect that Rubio” — that’s Marco Rubio, the Republican former Florida senator who is now the secretary of state, among many other titles — “will present ultimatum to Denmark and the European Union this week.

“The ultimatum will be very simple. It will be just give us a price and we will buy it, or we will just take it for free. And then the next target will be Cuba. Russia cannot support Cuba in the military situation it’s in now, and without Venezuelan oil, Cuba cannot sustain itself.

“So, if you follow my logic, 2026 will be the year of stealing, grabbing, and taking over. China will move against Taiwan. China is gaining an enormous amount of influence over Russian mineral resources and now it will be much more active and aggressive, taking control in the Russian Far East.

“Russia is weakening and it is choosing a very dangerous path. Russia wants to continue the war, thinking that it can take over all of Ukraine, and that Ukraine will capitulate, but Russia does not have enough energy and military force to protect itself in the Far East. I’m not predicting any military clash between Russia and China, but I think that China will increase its economic penetration into the Russia economy.”

But, perhaps surprisingly, Mr. Smukler does not see the situation as hopeless.

After the tankers were captured, he watched the response to it on Russian television and in Russian propaganda. “When it first happened, I was thinking, ‘that’s it,’” he said. “We are one step away from war. Russia will start shooting at the Americans. And every member of the Russia Parliament was screaming, ‘How come we didn’t respond?’ ‘We must respond!’”

That’s where the delicate balance between the three world leaders, all elderly, all used to power, all intent on retaining power, comes in. “The strongest leaders of the world somehow agree that they won’t use nuclear power, but I don’t exclude the idea that at a certain point they will attack each other,” Mr. Smukler said.

“It’s a very thin road they’re on.

“But you see that Putin, for some reason, decided to withdraw and he did not clash with Trump. The only logical explanation is that Trump did what he did because he knew that Putin would not use force.

“They are playing games. And they see each other. They know each other well. And Putin said, ‘Okay, fuck it. Trump is taking over all of Latin America. He’ll control it. He’ll control Greenland. I will take over Ukraine and Moldova and Xi will increase his influence in Southeast Asia and then move to Taiwan.

“The reason that we’re not hearing much from Xi is that China is quietly taking over Russia as a colony right now, and when they meet at Yalta 2, Russia will be the weakest player — but with an enormous stockpile of nukes.”

There’s even more going on, Mr. Smukler said, including the major threat posed by the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty at the end of February. “Gorbachev and Reagan signed it 35 years ago.” But now China also has military nuclear warheads. Reaching a new agreement “will require a new Yalta,” Mr. Smukler said. “The three of them must sit together, because if they do not control the production of nuclear warheads it will lead to the end of civilization.

“Also” — as if the end of civilization were not enough — “it’s extremely expensive not only to produce them, but also to store and maintain them.

“So they need a new treaty, which will connect these three countries that have such a huge arsenal of nuclear warheads. And that’s another reason why they must sit together to start working on this treaty, which will be a beginning of a new disarmament.

“But before that, they all will be aggressively attaching the weak points in this world.”

And of course, Mr. Smukler acknowledged, the future is never clear for any of us; death and dementia can strike any one at any time, even those of us with the best possible medical care, and especially those of us in our 70s — or nearly 80, like Mr. Trump — and in extraordinarily stressful jobs.

Still, he thinks, it will be possible that we might emerge from this world re-ordering still alive, and that must be considered to be a good thing.