Prediction: What Will Have Changed on Monday, September 22, 2025

john raymond
Sep 18
2 min read

For years the West has debated the Ukraine war in terms of limits: containment, off-ramps, appeasement, “not losing.”

What will have changed after Monday, September 22, 2025, is that this debate will have ended. NATO and the EU will no longer speak in the language of delay or mitigation. They will act in the language of victory.

From this point forward, the strategic shorthand is fixed: Ukraine is on the path to win, Russia is trapped in the cycle of loss.

Warburg’s Foundation

Paul Warburg has shown how Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have created irreversible dilemmas. Every port disabled, every pumping station struck, every refinery kept offline pushes Russia deeper into collapse.

The question for the West was whether it would match this clarity. For too long, it did not.

The Culmination of Debate

What will have changed is not Ukrainian brilliance—it was there from the beginning—but Western recognition. By Monday, NATO and the EU will have crossed from maintenance and symbolism into concrete commitment.

Eastern Sentry proves NATO can move without the United States. EU leaders will now act beyond rhetoric, closing the space for illusions.

Ideas once floated—containment, appeasement, negotiated off-ramps—appear to be finished. They are no longer on the table.

The coalition of the willing is no longer a vanguard but the new consensus. What will have changed is that the only acceptable outcome left to the West is a Russian defeat.

Why It Matters

This matters because time itself is now aligned against Russia. Ukraine’s campaign all but guarantees Russian shortages in the winter. NATO’s political alignment guarantees that Ukraine will not be left half-supported.

This means what will have changed is that Russia will face not just Ukrainian drones and missiles, but a Western coalition unambiguously willing to see it broken.

The Main Implications

For NATO: The alliance will have proved resilient enough to act without a defective Washington.
For Ukraine: The question will no longer be “can Ukraine survive?” but “how fast can Ukraine win?”
For Russia: Putin will have lost the hope that Western debate, confusion, and defection can buy him more time. It will not.