Red Lines of the 21st Century: Thoughts of a Ukrainian Volunteer

March 28, 2026March 28, 2026

This is a translation of reflections by a well-known Ukrainian volunteer who goes by the nickname “Pan Hotelier“.

Let’s talk about the red lines of the 21st century — or the taboos of the modern world order. By now, everyone agrees: the world order is broken, and the mechanisms that were supposed to maintain it have stopped working. Why that happened is a separate topic I’m almost afraid to touch. It’s genuinely difficult to explain how the Western world suddenly developed a fashion for Greta Thunberg and “Palestine from the Black Sea to the Red Sea.” Let’s stick to the red lines.

The foundation of the post-WWII world order rested on several taboos. Every state in the world — especially the major geopolitical players — carefully observed these taboos. Let’s trace what they were, how they fell one by one, and which red lines still remain.

A Long List of Wars That Didn’t Cross the Line

After WWII, military conflicts erupted across virtually every part of the world. Countries split apart peacefully, like the USSR and Czechoslovakia, or violently, like Yugoslavia. Others merged, like the two Germanys. Major powers invaded weaker ones — the USSR in Afghanistan, the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Quasi-states and ghost entities like Transnistria were manufactured and kept on life support.
Yet until 2014, not a single country had seized part of a neighbor’s territory and formally annexed it. That was the first taboo — annexation of another country’s land. Nothing like it had happened since Hitler. Muscovy¹ broke that taboo in 2014 and crossed the red line. For the first time since 1945, part of a neighboring state was officially annexed.

The world’s reaction was remarkably limp for what was, in fact, a geopolitical earthquake. That was a mistake — because both Ukraine and the world are now living with the catastrophic consequences of letting that first taboo fall. Predictably, emboldened by the non-response, Muscovy openly attacked the sovereign state of Ukraine, calling the genocide of a neighboring people by the baffling term “SMO.” The second red line of the world order was crossed.

The Second Taboo: Open Aggression

Unprovoked open aggression — full-scale war with all available means, with elements of genocide. Again, the Western world’s response was remarkably limp. A war that isn’t stopped quickly and decisively tends to spread like cancer. Could the war in Ukraine have been ended swiftly? Of course. The way the Western coalition decisively ended Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait. But world leaders couldn’t muster the political will for even basic measures — like halting trade with Muscovy and Belarus. So the war kept growing. A new phase of hybrid war spread across Europe. A new war ignited in the Middle East.

The Third Taboo: Don’t Kill the Leadership

Even in wartime, certain rules hold between warring parties. One such rule — observed by both Ukraine and Muscovy — is don’t strike at the heads of state of the countries you’re fighting. The question of why Khuilo² hasn’t been eliminated yet almost certainly has a political answer rather than a military one. How else do you explain that our intelligence services successfully eliminate Russian generals in Moscow, but Pootin is still around, fouling the air? So: the third taboo — an unspoken prohibition on striking the leadership of an enemy state. Ukraine respects this rule and doesn’t go after Khuilo. That this taboo existed at all is confirmed by the extremely nervous reaction from both the US and the EU when Muscovy floated a fake story about a drone strike on Valdai.

Then, on February 28, 2026, Israel crossed that line first — eliminated all of Iran’s top leadership, along with the families of some of them. The taboo no longer exists and the world dropped another step toward chaos. Can you imagine how tense every head of state is right now? And I mean every head of state — not just autocrats and dictators. Muscovy has long disliked Poland’s leadership. Emperor Xi dislikes the leadership of Taiwan and Japan. And a great many people, in turn, dislike Khuilo, Emperor Xi, and North Korea’s little tsar, Piggy Kim.

The Fourth Taboo: Don’t Hit Bystanders

How did Iran respond to Israel crossing the red line? By crossing the fourth taboo itself. Iran began striking every Gulf country in range — simply because Iran was having a bad time, simply because the US and Israel had launched military operations against it.

The reaction of the Gulf states that were hit turned out to be remarkably limp. They didn’t just fail to respond to Iran’s strikes on their territory — they actually started pressuring the US to stop attacking Iran. Saudi Arabia operates the world’s second-largest fleet of F-15s, after the United States. And it’s sitting quietly under the baseboard. What exactly did they buy those planes for?

The Scorecard: Red Lines of the 21st Century That No Longer Exist

• Annexation of territory — crossed;
• Aggression and war against another state — crossed;
• Elimination of enemy state leadership — crossed;
• Missile and drone strikes against anyone, simply “because I can” — crossed.

What’s Left

What taboos remain? What red lines are still standing? Here’s how I see it.

1. Destruction of underwater cable infrastructure.

Muscovy and China have already tested the West by damaging underwater cables in the Baltic Sea. They found that the West is weak, infantile, and incapable of protecting even its own underwater infrastructure.

2. War in space.

Space warfare is prohibited by international treaties. But who cares about those anymore? Take the destruction of enemy space assets. Muscovy doesn’t have Starlink — and it’s being denied access to it. So why not destroy Starlink? Muscovy has always been in the business of regression, not progress. The thriving, developed Ukrainian Donbas it turned into a bombed-out garbage dump. Starlink satellites orbit at 340–480 km. Even in its current state of steady industrial decay, Muscovy is capable of putting a nuclear warhead at that altitude and detonating it to wipe out the satellite constellation.

3. Use of nuclear weapons.

Here are the rules for nuclear weapons use that Muscovy rewrote in 2024:

Joint attack: Aggression by any non-nuclear state — say, Ukraine — but with the support of a nuclear one (the US, Britain, France) is now classified as a joint attack on Russia. And as Muscovy tells it, Ukraine attacked the Rabid Federation back in February 2022 and has been bombing it every day since.

The “critical threat” threshold: It’s no longer necessary to wait for a threat to the “existence of the state” before using nuclear weapons. A “critical threat to sovereignty or territorial integrity” now suffices. The wording is conveniently vague.

Response to drones and missiles: Muscovy has officially reserved the right to a nuclear response in the event of a mass launch of air and space attack systems — cruise missiles, aircraft, drones — crossing its border. Meaning Ukraine is technically triggering that threshold every single day.

Following the escalation ladder, we no longer ask “will nuclear weapons be used?” After crossing nearly every red lines of the 21st century, the real question is no longer “will” — it’s “when?”. This is part of the landscape now — an objective fact of the modern world. People and countries are crossing red lines and dismantling former taboos. Expecting the taboo on nuclear weapons to hold is, at this point, naive and reckless.

¹ Muscovite – a historical term used for Russians in the times when Russia was known as Muscovy or the Tsardom of Moscow.

² Khuilo – the most popular nickname for Russian dictator V. Putin. First used during the 2014 invasion, and since 2022 most Ukrainians call him only that. See more on Wikipedia.