After two defeats at the She Believes Cup in March, United States head coach Jill Ellis is looking for redemption as she takes her side into a friendly against Russia this weekend. Find out all about Sunday’s game at the BBVA Compass Stadium in Houston.

The US-Russia relationship has deteriorated to a new Cold War low, and it would be easy to imagine that the two countries are on the verge of a direct military clash. But even if the confrontation does happen, it would not be a purely zero-sum clash between democracies and autocracies like the one between the West and the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s. The economies of the United States and China are entwined in ways that would make a military conflict costly for both sides. And in terms of conventional forces, Russia is far less powerful than the United States — despite its post-Soviet nuclear triad, long-range strike aircraft and an expanding fleet of submarines.

Nonetheless, Americans should communicate the threat posed by Putin’s military and energy ambitions. Specifically, they should highlight the Pentagon’s release of video showing a Russian jet clipping a large MQ-9 drone. Although the Pentagon did not confirm whether the drone was armed, the video is consistent with the US claim that it was conducting an important intelligence mission in Ukraine. This type of information could help allies see through Russia’s attempts to discredit Western assessments of its actions in Ukraine and its invasion of Crimea.