Latest / The President's Daily Brief / September 16th, 2026: Ukraine Launches a New Ground Offensive Against Russia & NATO Faces New Baltic Tensions

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September 16th, 2026: Ukraine Launches a New Ground Offensive Against Russia & NATO Faces New Baltic Tensions · The President's Daily Brief

0:13
It's Wednesday,
0:14
the 16th of September.
0:15
Welcome to the President's Daily Brief.
0:17
I'm Mike Baker,
0:18
your eyes and ears on the world stage.
0:21
Alright,
0:21
let's get briefed.
0:23
First up,
0:23
Ukraine is back on offense in northern Donetsk,
0:27
launching a new push in one of the most heavily contested areas of Ukraine.
0:31
I'll have the details
0:32
later in the show.
0:33
The US
0:34
is urging Syria to consider sending forces into Lebanon.
0:38
To help disarm Hezbollah,
0:40
but Damascus,
0:41
here's no surprise,
0:42
is warning that the move could pull it directly into the war.
0:46
Plus
0:47
NATO fighter jets shoot down a Russian drone over Lithuania,
0:50
or at least it's a suspected Russian drone,
0:53
while a Russian warship fires flares near a Danish military helicopter
0:58
in another tense encounter in the Baltic.
1:00
And in today's Back of the Brief,
1:02
President Trump rejects calls for new restrictions on artificial intelligence.
1:07
Arguing that a high IQ president
1:10
is the only guard rail needed,
1:12
and I am not making that up.
1:14
But first,
1:15
today's PDB spotlight
1:17
in a conflict that has been largely defined by static lines and grinding,
1:21
costly incremental gains,
1:23
Ukraine says it's going back on offense in one
1:26
of the most important sections of the Donbass.
1:28
The operation is called Vivaldi,
1:31
and it's unfolding in northern Donetsk
1:33
around the approaches to Liman,
1:35
where Ukrainian forces say they've spent
1:37
weeks quietly pushing back Russian troops
1:40
and dismantling positions that Moscow had hoped to use for a larger advance.
1:45
According to Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps,
1:47
its forces have cleared roughly 75 square kilometers
1:51
that had been infiltrated by Russian troops and retaken another
1:55
10 square kilometers outright.
1:57
Ukrainian commanders also say they've pushed
1:59
Russian forces out of several communities
2:01
and disrupted some of the logistics supporting Moscow's operations in the area.
2:07
Now those are Ukrainian battlefield claims,
2:09
and Reuters
2:11
says it has not been able to independently verify the full extent of those gains.
2:16
But outside assessments do support the broader picture that Ukraine has managed to
2:20
dislodge some Russian positions in this sector.
2:24
Leman sits northeast of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk,
2:27
two cities that form the heart of Ukraine's remaining defensive belt in Donetsk.
2:32
For months,
2:32
Russian forces have been trying to improve their
2:34
positions around that belt from several directions.
2:37
One of those approaches came from the north,
2:39
where Moscow had been building out a position near Leman.
2:42
That could eventually help put additional pressure on the region.
2:46
Ukraine now says Operation Vivaldi has largely pushed that threat back.
2:50
The Institute for the Study of War
2:51
has assessed that Ukrainian forces
2:53
have substantially reduced the Russian presence
2:56
north of Leban,
2:57
complicating Moscow's efforts to use that area as one
3:01
part of a broader attempt to squeeze Ukraine's defensive positions
3:05
from multiple directions.
3:07
So this is not really a story about Ukraine capturing
3:10
a few more villages or several square miles of ground.
3:14
This is about
3:14
Ukrainian forces disrupting one of Russia's planned
3:17
routes toward a much bigger objective.
3:20
Front lines across eastern Ukraine have often remained static.
3:23
Russia can spend weeks or months
3:25
fighting for a handful of villages while both sides pour
3:28
troops and drones and artillery into a relatively small area.
3:33
Even a localized counteroffensive can force the other side to move troops,
3:36
rebuild defensive positions,
3:38
or
3:38
rethink an axis of advance that it had spent months preparing.
3:43
There's also a broader battlefield context here.
3:45
For much of the past several years,
3:47
the basic pattern in eastern Ukraine has been Russia pushing forward
3:51
while Ukrainian forces try to slow that advance.
3:55
Those Russian gains have often been small and costly,
3:58
but Moscow has generally held the initiative across much of the eastern front.
4:03
Operation Vivaldi is an example of Ukraine trying to reverse that dynamic,
4:07
at least in one sector.
4:09
There are some important caveats.
4:12
This is not a major Ukrainian breakthrough,
4:14
and it does not mean the broader battle for Donetsk
4:16
has suddenly turned in Kiev's favor.
4:19
Russian forces continue applying heavy pressure elsewhere in the region,
4:22
including farther south.
4:25
For now this looks like a
4:26
localized but potentially significant Ukrainian counteroffensive
4:30
rather than the start of some sweeping reversal.
4:32
And the name Vivaldi may offer a hint about what Kiev intends to do next.
4:37
Ukrainian commanders say the operation was named
4:40
after the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi,
4:43
best known for his composition The Four Seasons.
4:46
The commander overseeing the operation
4:49
has suggested that what we're seeing now
4:51
is only the first season.
4:54
All right.
4:54
Coming up next,
4:55
the US pushes Syria to help disarm Hezbollah,
4:58
and NATO faces additional encounters with Russia
5:01
in the Baltic region.
5:03
I'll be right back.
5:06
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6:20
Turning to the Middle East,
6:22
the US is encouraging Syria to consider sending forces into eastern Lebanon
6:27
to help disarm Hezbollah.
6:29
Now that's according to people briefed on the discussions.
6:32
That would put,
6:33
of course,
6:33
Damascus in direct conflict
6:35
with the Iran-backed group that once sent fighters into Syria
6:39
to try to help keep Bashar al-Assad in power.
6:43
As you might suspect,
6:44
Syria's new government is understandably hesitant,
6:47
fearing that
6:48
sending troops into Lebanon
6:50
could drag the country into the wider regional war
6:53
and inflame sectarian tensions at home.
6:56
Now why anyone
6:57
would be concerned about being embroiled in a long-term
7:00
complex conflict involving Lebanon and an Iranian proxy,
7:04
well,
7:04
that's anyone's guess.
7:06
In an exclusive report from Reuters,
7:08
5 people briefed on discussions between American and Syrian officials
7:12
say Washington encouraged Syria to consider sending forces into eastern Lebanon
7:16
to help disarm Hezbollah.
7:18
As for those discussions,
7:20
they began last year reportedly and were raised again
7:24
around the beginning of the war against Iran in February of this year.
7:28
They've taken on more urgency,
7:29
at least from a US perspective,
7:31
since
7:31
the 2nd of March
7:33
when Hezbollah lobbed missiles and attack drones at Israel in support of Tehran,
7:37
prompting the ongoing IDF offensive in Lebanon.
7:40
And according to Reuters,
7:42
Washington has gone considerably further than
7:44
simply asking Syria to think about it.
7:47
Two Western diplomats who requested anonymity to discuss the details
7:51
confirmed Washington approved the idea.
7:54
One senior Syrian official backed that claim up,
7:57
saying the US has given Damascus the green light
7:59
to act when the time is right.
8:01
The official says Washington has asked Syria's military
8:05
to take a more active role against Hezbollah,
8:07
potentially including an incursion
8:09
into eastern Lebanon.
8:11
Now I do want to point out that US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack
8:15
is denying the report,
8:16
calling the reporting
8:18
false
8:18
and inaccurate.
8:20
Reuters though says it spoke with 10 Syrian and Western officials and sources,
8:24
all of whom described Damascus as cautiously considering the idea
8:29
but deeply hesitant to actually go through with it.
8:31
And you can understand
8:32
why Damascus is hesitant.
8:34
During Syria's civil war,
8:36
Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters into the country
8:39
to fight with Assad's forces against
8:42
the rebellion trying to overthrow his regime.
8:44
That rebellion,
8:45
of course,
8:45
is now
8:46
the new Syrian government.
8:48
Iran had backed Assad for years,
8:50
meaning Tehran and Hezbollah spent years fighting many of the forces
8:54
associated with the rebellion
8:56
that eventually brought Assad down.
8:58
Now the country's new president Ahmed al-Sharra
9:01
has already backed Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's effort
9:05
to disarm Hezbollah.
9:07
Hezbollah,
9:08
of course,
9:08
has shown no interest
9:10
in giving up its arms,
9:11
and as we've discussed here on the PDB,
9:13
the Lebanese government has never been able to control Hezbollah.
9:17
Sending Syrian troops into Lebanon to confront
9:19
one of Iran's most important regional proxies
9:22
is,
9:22
well,
9:23
one could argue,
9:24
adding fuel to a very combustible situation.
9:27
Especially when Syria has only recently emerged from
9:30
more than a decade of civil war,
9:32
and Damascus has agreed with its Arab allies that it should stay out of this 11 senior
9:38
Syrian official says there's also a very real
9:40
concern about what Iran could do in response.
9:43
Damascus fears that the Iranian regime could retaliate with missile attacks
9:47
if Syrian troops enter Lebanon.
9:50
There's also,
9:50
of course,
9:51
the danger of sectarian violence.
9:53
Syria's government is Sunni-led.
9:55
While Hezbollah is a Shiite organization with considerable support
9:59
among Lebanon's Shiite population.
10:01
Damascus fears an intervention could inflame those
10:04
divisions on both sides of the border.
10:07
And then,
10:07
well,
10:08
as if we needed another reason to rethink this concept,
10:12
there's Syria's history in Lebanon.
10:14
Syrian troops entered the country during its civil war
10:16
in 1976 and remained there for nearly three decades,
10:20
dominating much of Lebanon's post-war
10:22
politics
10:23
until withdrawing
10:24
in 2005.
10:27
Shifting back to the war in Ukraine,
10:30
NATO has gone from scrambling fighter jets
10:32
over drone threats near its eastern front
10:35
to actually shooting one down.
10:37
The confrontation played out overnight into Tuesday over Lithuania,
10:40
where an explosive carrying drone
10:42
entered the country's airspace and became the first ever shot down there.
10:46
The aircraft reportedly remained inside
10:48
Lithuanian airspace for roughly 30 minutes
10:52
before being brought down.
10:54
The head of Lithuania's national crisis management center
10:57
says the drone most likely crossed in from neighboring
10:59
Belarus before flying along the outskirts of populated areas.
11:04
Eventually
11:05
NATO fighters
11:06
brought it down near a village that sits
11:07
roughly 60 miles west of the capital Vilnius.
11:11
Once Lithuanian bomb disposal teams reached the wreckage,
11:14
they discovered that there was an explosive device on board
11:18
which they had then neutralized.
11:21
At this stage,
11:21
Lithuania still doesn't know where the drone came from or its intended target,
11:25
but an investigation,
11:26
of course,
11:27
is underway.
11:28
Here's why the timing of this latest incident is getting so much attention,
11:32
as we've been following here on the PDB.
11:34
Russia just carried out its largest drone barrage against Ukraine in months,
11:39
bringing Moscow's attacks
11:41
dangerously close to NATO territory.
11:43
One Russian drone struck an evacuated train barely more than 1 mile from Poland.
11:47
Another
11:48
hit a separate crossing,
11:50
prompting Poland to scramble fighter jets
11:53
and put its air defenses on heightened alert.
11:55
And that's not the only confrontation unfolding around NATO territory.
11:59
While NATO was dealing with that drone over Lithuania,
12:02
Denmark was confronting a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea.
12:05
0,
12:05
2026 is really shaping up,
12:07
isn't it?
12:08
One of its air force helicopters was carrying out routine surveillance
12:11
of a Russian frigate in waters off a Danish port when,
12:15
according to Denmark's military,
12:16
the Russian ship fired two flares toward the helicopter.
12:20
One of them passed close to the aircraft.
12:23
Now these weren't missiles,
12:24
but
12:24
firing them toward a military helicopter
12:27
is something that Denmark says crossed the line.
12:29
Its foreign ministry called the incident
12:31
completely unacceptable
12:33
and summoned the Russian ambassador.
12:35
Well,
12:35
that should do it.
12:36
Moscow,
12:36
unsurprisingly tells a very different story.
12:39
Russia's ambassador says it was the Danish helicopter conducting
12:42
dangerous and provocative maneuvers around the Russian warship because,
12:46
you know,
12:47
the Danish helicopter crews are known for their provocative maneuvers.
12:51
The Kremlin isn't offering much in the way of clarity.
12:54
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov,
12:56
perhaps you've heard of him,
12:57
declined to comment,
12:58
saying he didn't have details about what happened.
13:01
Germany,
13:02
Poland,
13:02
Denmark,
13:02
the United Kingdom,
13:03
and other countries
13:04
have accused Russia in recent weeks
13:07
of involvement in drone incursions,
13:09
sabotage,
13:10
arson,
13:10
and surveillance of military facilities.
13:13
Moscow has
13:14
denied many of those allegations,
13:16
not all,
13:16
but many.
13:18
To be fair,
13:18
Lithuania is no stranger to these kinds of
13:21
security scares.
13:22
The NATO member sits between Belarus and the Baltic Sea
13:25
and also shares a border with Russia's heavily militarized Kaliningrad enclave.
13:31
Unidentified aircraft have repeatedly approached or
13:33
entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus.
13:36
In May,
13:37
drone activity near that border became serious enough
13:40
that residents of Vilnius were told to shelter in place
13:43
while Lithuania's president and prime minister
13:45
were temporarily moved to secure locations.
13:49
Putin's war remains concentrated inside Ukraine,
13:51
of course,
13:52
but
13:53
along NATO's eastern front,
13:54
well,
13:54
the distance it seems between Russia's war
13:57
and NATO territory
13:58
is shrinking.
14:00
All right.
14:01
Coming up in the back of the brief,
14:02
some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence
14:05
are calling for new safeguards,
14:06
but President Trump,
14:07
uh,
14:08
he says the technology
14:09
already has all the oversight it needs.
14:12
Now,
14:12
there you go.
14:13
More on that when we come back.
14:16
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In today's back of the brief,
17:17
President Trump says artificial intelligence doesn't
17:19
need any new government guardrails.
17:21
In his view,
17:23
it already has the most important one,
17:24
that would be a strong,
17:26
high IQ president.
17:27
Those were his words.
17:29
Trump weighed in Monday as some of the biggest
17:31
names in artificial intelligence are calling for greater caution
17:34
over how quickly the technology is advancing.
17:37
Now,
17:37
in a series of posts,
17:38
the president said,
17:39
quote,
17:39
The only control or guardrails that AI needs
17:43
is a strong and smart,
17:45
and then he put in parentheses high IQ,
17:47
president,
17:48
and he spelled that in all caps,
17:49
so you know he was serious,
17:51
adding that the federal government already has enough.
17:53
and regulatory authority to deal with companies that step out of line.
17:57
Trump also dismissed some of the more dire
17:59
warnings about artificial intelligence as a hoax,
18:03
arguing that additional restrictions
18:05
would only make it easier for China to overtake the US in the global AI race.
18:10
The comments came as several prominent figures
18:12
inside the industry are sounding increasingly concerned.
18:15
The anthropic CEO has called for independent
18:18
audits of the most advanced AI systems,
18:20
while Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
18:24
have also backed calls to slow the pace of development.
18:27
The concerns range from widespread job losses to
18:30
AI being used for cyber attacks,
18:32
biological weapons,
18:33
or autonomous warfare.
18:36
Now,
18:36
Trump is not alone in worrying about what tighter restrictions could mean for
18:41
America's competition with Beijing.
18:43
US Congress House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that
18:47
he opposes a moratorium on AI development because,
18:50
well,
18:51
it could hand China a major competitive advantage,
18:53
though he has expressed support for measures like independent audits and
18:57
greater transparency from AI companies.
19:00
Interestingly,
19:01
China is wrestling in a way with many of the same questions.
19:05
Beijing is developing
19:06
new safety standards aimed at keeping increasingly
19:09
autonomous AI systems under human control,
19:12
well,
19:12
as long as those humans are approved by the Chinese Communist Party,
19:16
while still pushing aggressively to expand the technology across its economy.
19:20
So despite Trump's confidence that Washington already has the tools it needs,
19:24
that tool being
19:25
a smart,
19:26
strong,
19:26
high IQ president,
19:28
The debate isn't going away.
19:30
The people building the technology increasingly say
19:33
some new safeguards are necessary.
19:36
Trump's argument is that America shouldn't self-regulate itself out of the race.
19:41
I suppose
19:42
actually
19:43
we could just ask Chat GPT what it thinks.
19:47
And that,
19:47
my friends,
19:48
is the President's Daily Brief for Wednesday,
19:50
the 16th of September.
19:51
If you have any questions or comments,
19:53
and I hope you do,
19:53
just reach out to me at PDB@tv.com.
19:57
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I'm Mike Baker and I'll be back later today with the PDB
20:10
afternoon bulletin.
20:11
Until then,
20:12
stay informed,
20:13
stay safe,
20:14
stay cool.