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This week: a wounded American colonel, alone in the Zagros Mountains with a $60,000 bounty on his head — rescued after 36 hours and a firefight 200 miles inside Iran. Meanwhile, Ukraine's drone commanders have calculated the plunging cost of killing a Russian soldier.
One says everything about what we value. The other says everything about what Putin does not.
The Global Fight for Freedom
- MAGA's False Prophet on the Brink
- This Time, "WE GOT HIM!"
- For Russia, "The Executioner" Lives Within
- The Price of "Hugs": 130,000 Lives
- Vampires and Frankensteins Haunt Russian Army
Country names are followed by their 2026 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.
Last week, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Hungary's Viktor Orbán is a "true friend, fighter, and winner" — urging Hungarians to "GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBÁN." JD Vance arrives today — 5 days before the election.
The MAGA right's love affair with Orbán runs deep. Tucker Carlson called Hungary a model for Western civilization. Their grievances carry some legitimacy: The EU can be heavy-handed, imposing mandates from above with little democratic accountability. Criticism of mass migration is not inherently authoritarian.
But there's a crucial distinction between genuine conservative reformers — those who advance free markets, constitutional order, and limited government — and the authoritarian nationalist strain that uses conservative rhetoric as cover for raw power consolidation. Orbán belongs firmly in the latter camp, alongside El Salvador's Bukele and Brazil's Bolsonaro — three figures MAGA has lionized.
The numbers documented by CATO this week are damning. The CATO/Fraser Human Freedom Index ranked Hungary 31st in 2010. By 2023, it had collapsed to 67th — behind Namibia and Botswana. Freedom House has made it the first EU member ever to be downgraded to “Partly Free”.
Orban’s free-market record — formerly a pillar of conservatism — is abysmal: He seized private pension funds worth nearly 10% of GDP, nationalized hundreds of companies, and funneled contracts to childhood friends and relatives. When the government wanted a company and the owner refused, regulators, tax inspectors, and prosecutors would appear — until the owner yielded.
Independent polls show reformist opposition party Tisza leading 56% to 37% — while government-aligned pollsters flip those numbers. Neither may matter. Orbán's gerrymandered map means Tisza needs a double-digit margin just to win a simple majority.
When an American president and vice president cheer a blatant authoritarian days before his election, they betray the free society they claim to defend.
Sources: The CATO Institute, Reuters
He was bleeding profusely, his ankle wrecked, alone in the Zagros Mountains with a pistol and a survival vest — and a $60,000 bounty on his head. Armed Bakhtiari tribesmen, intimately familiar with every ridge and gorge, were already fanning out to collect it.
When the F-15E "Dude 44" was downed by Iranian air defense over southwestern Iran on Friday, both crew members ejected. The pilot was recovered within hours. The weapons systems officer — a colonel — landed alone and immediately began moving, using his SERE training to push southeast from the crash site. Wounded and hunted, he climbed to a 7,000-foot ridgeline and wedged himself into a mountain crevice. He keyed his emergency beacon: "God is good." Washington initially suspected a trap.
Iran's state TV broadcast the bounty to every village. The IRGC, Basij militia, and tribesmen with hunting rifles quartered the sky with helicopters and drones. The first rescue attempt was driven back by small-arms fire, wounding crews on both helicopters. An A-10 Warthog supporting the mission took a hit and barely limped to Kuwaiti airspace — proof that Iran, whatever its broader defeat, retains air defenses that administration rhetoric had outrun.
The CIA then ran a masterful deception, spreading word inside Iran that the colonel had already been found and was being exfiltrated overland. As the IRGC chased a ghost, CIA pinpointed his crevice. Nearly 100 satellite-guided bombs cratered every mountain road closing in on him. After 36 hours, 155 aircraft, and a heavy firefight, commandos reached him 200 miles inside Iran.
Forty-six years ago, Operation Eagle Claw collapsed in a desert staging area — a helicopter collision, eight dead, the rescue of 53 American hostages aborted. Sunday, America rewrote that ending.
"'WE GOT HIM,” Trump wrote. For once, the caps were earned.
The heroism of the hundreds of American men and women who risked their lives to pull a wounded colonel from a mountain crevice 200 miles inside enemy territory cannot be overstated.
Sources: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Sky News, Bafford Military Institute
In occupied Luhansk, a Russian commander lives in a one-bedroom underground apartment—parquet floors, aquarium, full kitchen—built and paid for by his own soldiers. He greets new recruits with a speech: he's buried 12 companies, and they could be the 13th. "Only 5% survive assaults," he says. But survival, he adds, is negotiable.
This week, an Economist investigation revealed Russia's frontlines as a pay-to-live marketplace. A rear position costs 1 million rubles—over $12,000. Wounded? Pay 100,000 rubles for leave. Commanders confiscate soldiers' bank cards before assaults, then withdraw cash at ATMs using dead men's PINs. Those who refuse pay get "zeroed out"—tied to trees, shot, or left for drones. Elena from the Altai region buried her son in February 2025 after he refused to pay up. Her husband filed a corruption complaint, was recaptured, and sent back to the same commander. On January 11th, he was tied to a tree and killed.
Then there's Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Frolov—call sign "Executioner," celebrated war hero—now on trial for running a scheme where soldiers shot themselves for injury payments, defrauding Russia's army of $2.6 million.
That corruption is just one symptom of an increasingly desperate regime. With Ukraine's drones now cutting deep into Russia's oil revenues, Putin's financial crisis has become as acute as his military one.
Last week, after already hiking taxes and preparing emergency spending cuts, Putin privately summoned Russia's oligarchs and demanded donations to the war chest. Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov reportedly pledged $1.23 billion.
And the Kremlin is now moving to silence the truth tellers. FSB-ordered mobile internet blackouts have paralyzed Moscow for weeks and are spreading. Putin has now moved against Telegram—reaching 94 million Russians monthly—blocking it ahead of schedule. Milbloggers once free to criticize Russia's battlefield failures have gone silent.
Yet this week, retired General and former CIA Director David Petraeus returned from the Ukrainian frontlines and observed that over the past two months, Ukraine has made greater incremental gains than Russia, which “no longer has the upper hand.”
Putin has not yet have lost this war outright, but he sure as shit ain’t winning.
Sources: The Economist, New York Times, Critical Threats, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
The Ukrainians are revolutionizing warfare — every 6 weeks.
The rest of this story — on Ukraine's battlefield revolution, plus another story on the Western government that would rather bury its victims than count them — are for Full Dispatches members only. No ads. No corporate backing. Just the work. Join us below.
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