Laura Loomer (left) is an American far-right conspiracist and influencer from Arizona who has suddenly (supposedly) seen the light on Ukraine after actually visiting the country that has endured an unprovoked Russian invasion for the last four and a half years. Lily Lynch (right) is a leftyish American foreign affairs writer from California who, apparently, does not need to see a place with her own eyes to give her readers the all-knowing lowdown on what’s happening there. Whose account of the Ukraine-Russia war rings truer to you?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech at NATO’s Defence Industry Forum in Ankara earlier this month was a hymn to drone warfare. Drones, the Ukrainian president proclaimed, had heralded ‘revolutionary changes in the very nature of war’ – as significant as the machine gun in the First World War, or as the modern tank in the Second. ‘Disruptive’ drone tech had allowed Ukraine to increase dramatically the number of Russian casualties, intercept Russia’s Shahed UAVs and hit targets as far away as Siberia. Recent attacks had succeeded in blackening the skies over Moscow and striking oil refineries 2,700 km away in Omsk. The country had transformed itself into a ‘drone superpower’, in the words of the Atlantic Council. Before 2022, there were just seven domestic drone manufacturers – today, there are over 500. And now, as restrictions on drone exports are being lifted, Ukraine will soon be selling them to the world.
The man most responsible for putting drones at the centre of Ukraine’s war effort has been the telegenic 35-year-old, now former Defence Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. This much-hyped tech wunderkind has acquired a following among both patriotic liberals at home and Atlanticists in the West. He has helped promote Ukraine as a kind of ‘start-up nation’ – a high-tech defence industrial powerhouse forged in war. When barely in his thirties, he was appointed Minister of Digital Transformation, where he was responsible for the ‘state in a smartphone’ initiative – which moved government services onto a USAID-funded app called Diiya. Though beloved by the liberal NGO set, Palantir-backed Fedorov has also learned to speak MAGA’s language; in January, he announced his ministry’s objective to kill 50,000 Russians per month, explaining it would ‘make the cost of war for Russia one it cannot sustain, thereby forcing peace through strength’.
In the weeks leading up to the NATO summit, Western media reports alleged that Ukraine had turned the tide in its favour. Russia was in trouble. The narrative was reminiscent of the ‘spring counteroffensive’ of 2023, much hyped in Western media – a supposedly transformational Ukrainian battlefield push that never quite materialized and cost tens of thousands of lives. In Ankara, the latest reversal of fortune was attributed to Ukraine’s drone tech capabilities, its thriving defence industry and its innovative young leadership, who apparently ran the country less like a post-Soviet state and more like a Silicon Valley start-up.
Just one week later, however, this optimistic story began to fall apart. Zelenskyy abruptly dismissed Fedorov, a move that left many feeling furious and betrayed. Fedorov’s loyalists responded by excoriating Zelenskyy on social media and assembling in Kiev, Lviv and Odessa, holding signs bearing messages like ‘Hands off Fedorov’ and ‘Stop Sabotaging Victory’. Ukraine’s supporters in the West did not hide their opposition to the decision either. ‘Firing Fedorov, one of the smartest, most competent and innovative ministers in all of Europe, is one of the dumbest things Zelenskyy has done’, Estonia’s former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves wrote on X. A consensus formed among the Atlanticist commentariat: Zelenskyy had sided with his sclerotic ‘Soviet’ generals – particularly Russian-born commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi – against an energetic young reformer. After several days of virulent backlash, Zelenskyy responded by dismissing Syrskyi too.
The decision to remove Fedorov forced a simmering Ukrainian political crisis into the public eye. In Ankara, NATO officials were intent on depicting Russia – and only Russia – as the country in dire political and economic straits. At one briefing, I listened to a senior NATO official speak of possible tensions within the Russian political elite. These days, he said, they look outside their windows and see oil refineries in flames from Ukrainian drone attacks. This, he asserted, must be having a psychological effect, and resentment towards Putin was likely mounting. A fracture could be coming any day now. The Russian economy, meanwhile, was ‘in the worst state it’s been in for decades’. He recited a litany of grim statistics: the federal deficit was now 2.3 times what it was during the same period last year, the economy was now 70 per cent security-related expenditures, which came at the expense of the regular economy and would be ‘very hard to reverse’. And despite rising oil prices due to the war on Iran, Russia would still have to cut non-military spending by 10 per cent this year.
Russia was also reportedly performing poorly on the battlefield and any progress it was making came at an enormous cost. According to the NATO official’s estimates, there had been between 1.3 and 1.5 million Russian casualties in the war, and between 30,000 and 35,000 Russians were now being killed each month. The military was now ‘increasingly relying on convicts, indebted citizens and foreigners’ to fill its ranks. Russia’s territorial gains had also been ‘far less steady’ in recent months: its forces were now purportedly advancing at just 3.79 sq km per day, down from a reported 16 sq km last year. Another morbid statistic touted at the summit was the alleged average life expectancy of a Russian soldier: thanks to Ukraine’s drones, I was told, the average Russian recruit only lived between 20 and 30 minutes at the front.
Listening to all this, I thought about what I’d heard [sic] about life in Russia. I was certainly aware of the mounting wartime pain. I knew there were now petrol shortages in parts of the country, though these are partly seasonal, and that this has meant long waits outside stations. Whereas the war had previously been experienced by most Russians as a distant conflict – only seen on social media or television – the drone attacks on Russian oil refineries had brought the war home. But the idea that this would inevitably provoke a major anti-government backlash didn’t quite follow. Videos have even surfaced on Russian social media showing people drinking and dancing as they waited in long queues for petrol. As one commentator put it, ‘coronavirus divided us, but petrol shortages brought us together’. The domestic problems were all very real and getting worse, but Russians appeared to be weathering them, at least for now. Prophesies of the Russian economy’s imminent collapse had been issued for years, but had all come to nothing.
Polls from inside Russia also hint at a more stable situation than that depicted at the NATO summit. Russia experts always caution readers to be sceptical of polls from inside the country, but even so, the results suggest that at least some of the graver prognostications might be exaggerated. According to a survey by the independent Levada Center, Putin’s popularity is indeed in decline, but as of May, as many as 79 per cent of Russians polled still said they approved of his performance. Only 15 per cent said they disapproved. In the same survey, 74 per cent of Russians said they supported their country’s actions in Ukraine. (Still, some 60 per cent of Russians reported that they favoured peace negotiations to end the war, and only 30 per cent said they wanted to continue fighting it.) Even adjusting for a degree of wartime self-censorship, these numbers do not exactly hint at a coming cataclysm.
But the question that most nagged at me throughout the summit was: what about Ukraine? The assessment of Russia’s position in the war included a host of criteria: a survey of the situation on the homefront, elite political fractures, the economy, the demography of its soldiers. Yet Ukraine’s position was portrayed according to a single hopeful indicator, its success in drone warfare.
According to a recent Gallup poll (one that was largely buried in the Western press), Ukrainians are even less enthusiastic about fighting this war than Russians are. Less than one in four adults (24 per cent) say Ukraine should keep fighting until it wins the war, while 66 per cent say Ukraine should seek to negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. And while NATO officials were eager to tout staggering casualty figures for Russia in Ankara, there was naturally far less said about Ukraine’s dead – unless they could be presented in terms of a favourable ‘kill ratio’ with Russia. According to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (which receives funding from the US government, Lockheed Martin and NATO among others) the Ukrainian military has suffered between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities. However, some believe the actual number is higher.
As NATO officials look for cracks in the Kremlin matrix, there are plenty to worry about in Ukraine. In addition to the rupture between Fedorov and the military brass, a ‘spectacular’ corruption scandal has implicated members of Zelenskyy’s inner circle, part of which involves corruption in drone procurement. Meanwhile, the ‘stable stagnation’ of the Ukrainian economy also rests on relatively fragile foundations – continued support from Western partners. Often missing from Western wartime reporting is the brutal economic reality of everyday life in Ukraine: the number of Ukrainians living below subsistence levels has increased dramatically in wartime; while Russians have been inconvenienced in this conflict, most haven’t faced the same material devastation.
The Ukrainian armed forces may be an even worse state than their Russian adversaries. A transition to a corps-based command structure last year may have aligned Ukraine with NATO standards, but no amount of restructuring can change the fundamentals. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 45. Mobilization remains a persistent problem. One of the reasons cited for Fedorov’s dismissal was his failure to fix this (ever the tech solutionist, Fedorov had reportedly pushed for a ‘digitalization’ of mobilization). The brutal practice of ‘busification’ – whereby military age men are snatched off the street – continues to inspire loathing. Reports regularly surface of forcibly conscripted men being beaten or killed. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is suffering a desertion crisis. Though the exact figures were classified last year, in January, Fedorov said that 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers had gone AWOL.
The Russian armed forces may be filled with convicts and debtors, but they still haven’t had to resort to conscription [sic], while the Ukrainian side is partially composed of men who are middle-aged and don’t want to fight. Ukraine also increasingly relies on foreign fighters; while Russia has recruited hapless Africans to serve as cannon fodder, Ukraine now employs thousands of recruits from Colombia, Brazil and various European countries, designated as ‘volunteers’ to get around anti-mercenary laws. And there remains the fundamental problem of massive asymmetry: Russia still has Ukraine outmanned. Ukraine has attempted to make up for this difference with drones, but this has only succeeded in slowing the pace of Russian advances.
The image of a Ukraine filled with patriotic liberals eager to fight a high-tech war until total Russian collapse is a fiction. In reality, the majority of both Russians and Ukrainians want negotiations to end the war now. Only a minority want to continue fighting until their side’s most maximalist aims are met. Absent the propaganda of a youth-driven drone tech revolution in war, Ukraine looks in a remarkably similar situation to Russia: two countries hurtling toward demographic oblivion, in a conflict directed by a profiteering political elite and fought in part by the unwilling, the coerced, the foreign and the old. At the NATO summit, however, the alliance continued to promote its PR-manufactured image of Ukraine, through selective statistics and polite obfuscation.
This essay was supported by the Alameda Institute.
Source: Lily Lynch, “Costs of War,” Sidecar (New Left Review), 23 July 2026
Laura Loomer became infamous for spreading conspiracy theories online. Now, as she travels across Ukraine to see the damage inflicted by Russia in its years-long war, she wants to admit that she fell for some falsehoods of her own.
A close ally of President Donald Trump, Loomer has completely reversed her longtime criticism of Ukraine and is urging fellow conservatives to be wary of Moscow’s propaganda, which she blames for duping large swaths of the American right.
“You don’t need to listen to a podcaster and let them influence your opinion about a country. You can look at those facts yourself,” she told the Associated Press in Kyiv shortly after returning from a trip close to the front line in Ukraine’s east. The interview was supposed to take place in Loomer’s hotel, but it had to be moved to the building’s underground bomb shelter as the city faced another ballistic missile attack.
Loomer has remained influential with Trump despite not having an official role, and she said they spoke over the phone after she sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She also said that she expects to meet with Trump after returning from her trip.
Loomer’s turnaround on Ukraine has been welcomed by the country’s leaders, whose relationships with Trump have been strained at times. But it has also stirred confusion, surprise and suspicion in the United States. She continues to insist that Ukraine is not paying for her travels.
As Trump and Zelenskyy prepare to meet on Tuesday in Washington, Loomer said it’s clear that her trip has already made a difference, refocusing attention on the war as Congress debates new sanctions intended to punish Russia.
“It’s looking good for Ukraine, right?” she said. “Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good.”
Loomer says she was ‘bamboozled’ to oppose Ukraine
Loomer had spent years minimizing the war and amplifying Russian propaganda until she made a dramatic reversal this week.
“I’ve come to realize I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda and I came to believe a lot of untrue things about Ukraine. I used to think that this was a country full of Nazis,” Loomer told Zelenskyy as she interviewed him for her show on Rumble, an online video platform.
Loomer blamed her indoctrination on getting banned by American social media platforms, leading her to try Telegram, where Russian media is widely shared.
“The Russians,” she added, “are very good at capitalizing on people’s rage. And I was very angry,” she said, recounting her feelings about the 2020 election, which she falsely maintains was stolen from Trump despite all evidence to the contrary.
She said her change in perspective had been gradual as she started to see podcasters like Tucker Carlson “turn on President Trump” while having their rhetoric amplified by Russian sources.
Loomer, who casts herself as an independent journalist, told the AP she believed her reversal was already changing minds within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“Oh, 100%,” she said. “I’ve received messages all day from different people and media and politics and people just who follow me online who said, ’Wow, I didn’t realize how much we’ve been lied to.’ ‘Wow you really opened my eyes.’”
Loomer was welcomed with open arms
Ukrainian officials seemed to recognize the opportunity of winning over an ardent Trump ally with a large online following. In addition to her interview with Zelenskyy, Loomer had audiences with top Ukrainian officials and the country’s chief rabbi.
“It takes courage to come to Ukraine and not be deterred by Russian propaganda or air raid sirens,” Zelenskyy’s office wrote on social media.
Loomer also got a tour of Dormition Cathedral of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a monastic complex that came under Russian attack last month.
“Laura is very powerful and she’s a very authoritative in the U.S., so I hope that everything she has seen by her own eyes will help her to spread the truth when she is back at the U.S.,” Tetyana Berezhna, the deputy prime minister and Ukrainian minister of culture told the AP. “I do really hope and I believe that her visit will have a huge impact on relations with the U.S. administration.”
While some have tried to downplay Loomer’s influence with the president, he has often followed her advice. She occasionally traveled with him during the 2024 campaign, and last year he purged his National Security Council staff after she raised concerns about their loyalty in an Oval Office meeting.
Trump appears to be tracking Loomer’s trip, sharing video of her conversation with Zelenskyy on social media.
“Very good!!!” he wrote on Thursday evening.
The conspiracist denounces conspiracy theories
Loomer has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories. She once shared a video that called 9/11 an “inside job” and amplified a lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Ohio, which Trump went on to repeat during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
Although Loomer may have changed her mind about Russia’s invasion, her bigoted views have not budged.
“One thing I really love about Ukraine is I haven’t seen a single Muslim here,” she posted on Saturday. “It’s so refreshing.”
But in the interview, she bemoaned how influential podcasters can spread misinformation.
“They have been able to warp people’s minds to the point where people aren’t even capable of analyzing a subject with common sense anymore because they want to depend on these personalities to give them the opinion that they think they should have,” she said, calling the situation “a major national security threat.”
She said she thinks that “information war” has “the potential to be more destructive than any kinetic war that our country may ever face” and called on the Trump administration to take the threat of Russian propaganda, foreign interference and influence operations more seriously.
“I think that some of our leaders are being influenced by propaganda,” she said.
The White House has routinely downplayed the role of Moscow’s influence, especially because Trump has long chaffed at investigations showing that Russia worked to boost his 2016 candidacy.
Loomer has said repeatedly that Ukraine did not finance her trip and insisted she had traveled in her own capacity.
“I can guarantee you I wasn’t paid by anybody. I certainly wasn’t paid by the government of Ukraine to come here,” she said.
“If it’s fake, why did I risk my life? I’m in a bomb shelter right now. I barely slept this week,” she said.
‘Ere, 2018. Graffiti found in Central Petersburg. Photo by the Russian Reader