Would a Billion People Watch the "High-Tech Duel" That Decided the Ukraine War?

According to the Gemini AI, the most streamed event in history was the November 15, 2024 professional boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, which attracted an estimated global audience of just over 100 million, peaking at 65 million concurrent live viewers. I’ll admit I only vaguely remember anything about that sports event and until I glanced at the Wikipedia page wasn’t even sure which boxer had won.

But if the Russian government were sufficiently shrewd in its understanding of political psychology and media strategy, it could stage a match of its own that would probably attract a vastly larger global audience and have a geopolitical impact far greater than did Paul’s eight-round unanimous decision. The Coup: 1953, the CI... Abrahamian, Ervand Check Amazon for Pricing.

In ancient times, two large armies preparing for battle might occasionally decide to save lives by instead allowing the single combat of their two respective champions to decide the outcome. Or at least such Homeric legends have become part of our literary traditions.

The grinding war between Russia and Ukraine has now lasted well into its fifth year and a few weeks ago it surpassed the length of the First World War. Deaths have certainly run into the many hundreds of thousands, probably totaling over a million, and additional hundreds of thousands have been seriously injured, enormously tragic losses for those two largest and closely related Slavic peoples.

With the European NATO countries backing Ukraine becoming more and more directly involved in the conflict, there has been increasing talk of the possible employment of nuclear weapons. But their use could very easily spiral out of control, leading to the destruction of most of human civilization.

It would obviously be far better for the world if this war could instead be brought to a rapid end by single combat between the champions of the two sides. Oddly enough, there is a real possibility of exactly that situation, and I think that such a contest could possibility draw a global live streaming audience of a billion or more.

Russia could arrange the match, forcing the participation of its NATO opponents, and would almost certainly win. And by doing so before such an enormous worldwide audience, the Russians would gain their greatest global propaganda victory since they beat the West into space by launching the Sputnik satellite into orbit nearly seventy years ago.

Russia’s adversaries in the West totally dominate the world media, and they can normally spin the facts howsoever they choose. But a live audience of a billion would be immune to all such obfuscating clutter, and people in every nation on earth would know what they had seen. “The propaganda of the deed” would sweep all before it.

Back a couple of years ago Russian President Vladimir Putin had actually challenged the West to exactly that sort of “21st-century high-tech duel.” But Western leaders had ignored him. He should now revive that same proposal, but in mandatory rather than voluntary fashion. Iran’s Grand Str... Nasr, Vali Check Amazon for Pricing.

Over the last couple of weeks, the Iran War has largely gone into abeyance. So many of the peace terms of the signed “Memorandum of Understanding” have been ignored or violated that the agreement seems to have largely collapsed but without combat operations so far resuming.

Meanwhile, as if on cue, the war between Russia and Ukraine has greatly heated up and may now be taking a very dangerous turn, and that was the main subject of my article last week.

The crucial development was that Ukraine has suddenly begun launching huge waves of drone and missile attacks against Russia, even hitting important targets deep within that enormous country.

One of the sections in my article had been entitled “Russia’s Unsuccessful Ukraine War” and in it I summarized some of this situation:

Meanwhile, Russia’s war against a much weaker Ukraine has already lasted longer than its colossal Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. Yet Russia has still failed to capture much of the territory of the four eastern oblasts that it had officially annexed and incorporated back in September 2022.

Casualty figures are hotly disputed, but I think that the Russian forces have probably suffered many hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, including at least a couple of hundred thousand fatalities. Although Ukrainian losses have likely been far greater, such Russian casualties still loom very large in a population of about 143 million, especially one that has low fertility rates, rates that are far below replacement levels. Hundreds of thousands of severely wounded or maimed Russians may have become a grim and unwelcome sight across all the cities, towns, and villages of that huge country.

Russia is far stronger than Ukraine and Iran is far weaker than America, but the results of the two conflicts have been exactly the opposite of what might have been expected.

Worse still for the Russians, there has been a steady escalation in the boldness and size of the Ukrainian strikes deep within Russian territory. Last month, Moscow was attacked by many hundreds of heavy drones, and earlier this month St. Petersburg suffered a similar fate. For huge Ukrainian attacks to be regularly striking Russia’s most important cities represents a tremendous national humiliation.

The sharp contrast between the battlefield achievements of Iran and Russia was shown on the front page of this weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. One story reported the great destruction the former had inflicted upon America’s Persian Gulf bases. Meanwhile, another described the very successful recent waves of Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia’s prized Crimea territory, which had led to a severe fuel and electricity crisis and forced the declaration of a state of emergency. America and Iran: A Hi... Ghazvinian, John Check Amazon for Pricing.

Ukraine has also begun successfully attacking Russian oil refineries, inflicting substantial damage upon that country’s main export industry.

Last month, a Ukrainian drone strike on a college dorm killed 18 young women studying to become teachers, and there is considerable speculation that this atrocity was deliberate, intended to embarrass Russian President Vladimir Putin and demonstrate his weakness in the face of such brutal attacks.

Indeed, the Ukrainian government has now grown so self-confident and aggressive that it recently threatened to expand the war by attacking neighboring Belarus, a longtime Russian ally.

Meanwhile, advances in drone technology seem to have drastically reduced the pace of Russian progress on the battlefield, with signs of a deadlock developing.

• How Russia Can Defeat Ukraine and NATO
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 29, 2026 • 8,200 Words

Since then, the difficulties resulting from all these effective Ukrainian blows have even worsened.

Many major Russian refineries have been damaged by these long-distance drone attacks, even those in distant Siberia. The result has been a severe shortage of fuel in many parts of the country, including in the capital of Moscow, with first-hand observers confirming that Russians have been restricted in their gasoline purchases and often forced to wait in long lines to buy it. The problem has become so serious that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that Russia was urgently seeking to import replacement supplies from overseas. This obviously constituted a major national humiliation for one of the world’s largest oil producing countries, and potentially a serious blow to the Russian economy.

All the Shahu2019s Men... Stephen Kinzer Best Price: $8.95 Buy New $12.29 (as of 04:20 UTC - Details) The huge drone strike against St. Petersburg had coincided with the annual meeting of the prestigious St. Petersburg Economic Forum, timing that was obviously aimed at embarrassing the Russian government.

For centuries the Crimean Peninsula has been one of Russia’s greatest national jewels, with its major city of Sebastopol being one of Russia’s most important naval bases. But the Ukrainian drone strikes have become so severe that its territory has been mostly cut off from the rest of Russia, almost transformed into an island.

Stanislav Krapivnik is a Russian-born former American military officer who moved back to his original homeland some years ago and now lives in Moscow. He is extremely sympathetic to Russia in the current conflict, but in his interview with Prof. Glenn Diesen a few days ago he fully confirmed the very serious problems Russians were now facing both from those shortages and from the constant terror attacks against civilians by Ukrainian drones in border regions. He considered this an absolutely unacceptable situation that couldn’t be allowed to continue, and that a conventional or nuclear war with Europe was unavoidable.

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