re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

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It is a big political story in that an election for his seat will now need to be held. Hopefully, the Republicans can retain that seat.

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It is a big political story in that an election for his seat will now need to be held.

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Okay, but I'm sure he is. He uses identical personal attacks and clichés.

Plus, he mentions previous disputes with posters on here from "years ago."

He won't be here for long.

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You are posting about it like it's some big gotcha... It's not.

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T1gerNate Are you back from the Ayatollah’s funeral?

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Cope more than your faggity neocon queen is dead.

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Question: From a geo political point of view, how has the war in Ukraine affected Russia's standing with it's allies? Who were Russia's allies prior to the 2022 invasion, what is the status of those allies today? Venuzuela, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Africa, Armenia, etc...

Short version: the war gutted Russia's value proposition as a patron. Moscow's pre-2022 network was built on two things — security guarantees and arms exports — and the war consumed both. The pattern since 2022 is near-uniform erosion, with exactly two exceptions: China (deepened, but on Beijing's terms) and North Korea (the only genuine upgrade). Here's the ledger.

**The baseline (pre-2022).** Russia's network was a mix of formal treaty allies (CSTO: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), client regimes it militarily underwrote (Syria, Venezuela indirectly, CAR), strategic partners (Iran, China, India as top arms customer), Cold War legacy relationships (Cuba, Nicaragua), and an expanding Wagner-driven footprint in Africa.

**Syria — total loss.** Assad's fall in December 2024 was the single biggest strategic defeat outside Ukraine itself. Russia couldn't spare the airpower or ground forces that saved him in 2015 because they were committed in Ukraine. Assad now sits in Moscow, and Russia's Tartus naval base and Hmeimim airbase — its only Mediterranean power projection and the logistics hub for all African operations — have been reduced to negotiating chips with a Damascus government Russia spent nine years bombing. This is the clearest demonstration of the war's opportunity cost.

**Venezuela — total loss.** Maduro was removed from power in a January 2026 US covert operation. Russia's response was rhetorical. Twenty-plus years of Rosneft investment, arms sales, and political backing evaporated without Moscow lifting a finger — because it couldn't.

**Iran — exposed as one-directional.** Iran became Russia's critical drone/missile supplier after 2022, and the two signed a strategic partnership treaty in January 2025. But when Israel struck Iran in June 2025 and then the US launched its own campaign against Iran in February 2026, the Kremlin's response was muted — a direct test of the partnership that demonstrated the Ukrainian theater now defines Moscow's priorities. The lesson every Russian partner drew: the relationship flows one way. Iran armed Russia; Russia did not defend Iran.

**Armenia — defection.** The starkest CSTO failure. Russia stood aside during Azerbaijan's 2023 retaking of Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow failed to deliver arms Armenia had already paid for, settling disputes through debt write-offs; Armenia cut Russian arms imports from 96% to roughly 10%, shifted to France and India, and suspended CSTO participation. Yerevan is now openly courting the EU. A formal treaty ally walked, and Moscow absorbed it.

**Cuba/Nicaragua — rhetorically loyal, materially hollow.** Cuba still votes with Moscow and provides diplomatic cover, but Russia can't deliver the economic lifeline Havana needs amid its worst crisis since the Special Period. The most notable dynamic is extractive: thousands of Cubans recruited (some coerced) to fight for Russia in Ukraine. That's not alliance, that's manpower harvesting.

**Africa — peaked and now receding.** The Sahel looked like Russia's post-2022 success story, but it's cracking. Jihadist insurgents have besieged dozens of towns across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, blockaded fuel into Bamako, killed Mali's defense minister, and forced Russian paramilitaries to retreat from Kidal. Roughly 1,000 Africa Corps fighters helped secure convoys but fuel access to Bamako still hadn't fully resumed in early 2026, and abuses by Russian-linked forces have alienated local communities. Meanwhile Russia's arms share in Africa has declined as Moscow preserves supply for Ukraine, and China became West Africa's largest arms supplier between 2020 and 2024 — Beijing is quietly backfilling the market Russia is vacating. The Sahel juntas have nowhere else to go, so they stay, but they're clients on a sinking security guarantee.

**Central Asia — quiet hedging.** Kazakhstan refused to recognize the annexations, complies (unevenly) with sanctions, and expanded ties with China, Turkey, and the West. All the -stans pursue multi-vector policies now. Nothing dramatic — they can't afford open rupture — but the trajectory is away.

**India — customer, not partner.** Still buys discounted oil in volume, but countries like India that relied on Russian arms manufacturing are building up their own defense production and diversifying to France, Israel, and the US. Russia's arms-export franchise, its main relationship currency for fifty years, is in structural decline.

**The two exceptions.** North Korea is the only country that formally recognized the annexations and proved a loyal combat ally — in exchange Moscow forged a mutual defense treaty, accepted the DPRK's nuclear-state status, and resumed large-scale assistance in defiance of sanctions. That's a genuine deepening, but note who needed whom: Russia paid a heavy strategic price (legitimizing a nuclear DPRK) for artillery shells and infantry. China is the other: Russia has grown heavily dependent on China since 2022, with Chinese technology a critical enabler of its defense industry, and the economic relationship is now structurally important for Russia. But dependence isn't alliance — Beijing never recognized the annexations, extracts discount pricing, and treats Russia as a useful distraction that ties down Western attention in Europe.

**Net assessment.** Pre-2022, Russia offered partners three things: security intervention (proven in Syria 2015, Kazakhstan January 2022), arms, and a counterweight to the West. The war destroyed the first (Syria, Armenia, Venezuela, Iran all prove it), degraded the second (production absorbed domestically), and inverted the third — Russia went from patron to supplicant, taking from Iran, North Korea, and even Cuba rather than giving. What's left is a narrower, more transactional network centered on Beijing and Pyongyang, plus clients too isolated to leave. Its support network is under strain, and its ability to translate battlefield pressure into decisive gains remains limited.

One caveat worth holding: Russia has repeatedly proven more resilient than obituaries suggest, and a war termination on terms Moscow can sell as victory would let it begin rebuilding the arms-export and patronage machine. The erosion is real, but "Russia's alliance network collapsed" would overstate it — hollowed is the better word.

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