With a war on their borders, Poland and Romania have set out to revitalize their arms industries. Russia’s offensive in Ukraine has upended plans across the European Union — which has launched an €800 billion rearmament process — and has especially affected these two Eastern European countries, each of which shares hundreds of miles of border with the invaded state. Since the conflict began a little over four years ago, Warsaw and Bucharest have become central hubs for supplying weapons and delivering humanitarian aid to support Kyiv in its struggle to defend its sovereignty.

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Located hundreds of miles from the front, the R-280 Novorrosiya highway was, until a few months ago, not only a quiet route between southern Russia and Crimea. It was arguably the Kremlin’s biggest strategic achievement in four years of war in Ukraine. This land corridor along the Sea of Azov freed Russian logistics from relying on its massive Kerch Strait bridge to supply the peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, and the forces deployed in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. However, new Ukrainian weapons have made all routes to Crimea extremely perilous, a situation comparable to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, giving Kyiv new leverage to pressure Moscow. Crimea, the jewel of Putinism and a pilgrimage destination for Russian tourists, is no longer safe and is running out of fuel.

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The impact, shooting-down, or near-miss of about a dozen Ukrainian drones over the past two months has once again placed the Baltic region at the center of a gray zone where air safety, electronic warfare, and strategic ambiguity blur together. Ukraine says its attack drones, launched toward ports in the Leningrad region in Russia’s northwest, have been diverted by the enemy and redirected against its allies.

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The G-7 summit, which brings together seven of the world’s most industrialized democracies, will gauge this week the depth of the rift in the West — the division between the United States and its traditional allies. The summit runs from Monday through Wednesday in the French town of Évian-les-Bains, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The eve of the meeting was marked by a protest in Geneva, attended by thousands, during which there were acts of vandalism and clashes with police.

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