By Gerry Nolan, Ron Paul Institute, 12/24/25

Gerry Nolan is a political analyst, writer, and strategist focused on geopolitics, security affairs, and the structural dynamics of global power. He is the founder and editor of The Islander, an independent media platform examining war, diplomacy, economic statecraft, and the accelerating shift toward a multipolar world.

When a prime minister tells her own staff to rest because next year will be much worse, it is not gallows humor. It is not exhaustion speaking. It is a slip of the mask, the kind of remark leaders make only when the internal forecasts no longer align with the public script.

Giorgia Meloni was not addressing voters. She was addressing the state itself — the bureaucratic core tasked with executing decisions whose consequences can no longer be disguised. Her words were not about a mundane increased workload. They were about constraint. About limits. About a Europe that has crossed from crisis management into managed decline, and knows that 2026 is when the accumulated costs finally collide.

What Meloni let slip is what Europe’s elites already understand: the Western project in Ukraine has run head-first into material reality. Not Russian propaganda. Not disinformation. Not populism. Steel, munitions, energy, labor, and time. And once material reality asserts itself, legitimacy begins to drain.

The War Europe Cannot Supply

Europe can posture for war. It cannot produce for war.

Four years into a high-intensity war of attrition, the United States and Europe are confronting a truth they spent decades unlearning: you do not sustain this kind of conflict with theatrical speeches, sanctions, or abandoning diplomacy. You sustain it with shells, missiles, trained crews, repair cycles, and production rates that exceed losses — month after month, without interruption.

By 2025, the gap is no longer theoretical.

Russia is now producing artillery ammunition at a scale that Western officials themselves concede outpaces the combined output of NATO. Russian industry has shifted to continuous near-wartime production (without even being fully mobilized), with centralized procurement, simplified supply chains, and state-directed throughput. Estimates place annual Russian artillery production at several million rounds — production already flowing, not promised.

Europe, by contrast, has spent 2025 celebrating targets it cannot ever materially meet. The European Union’s flagship pledge remains two million shells per year — a goal dependent on new facilities, new contracts, and new labor that will not fully materialize within the decisive window of the war, if ever. Even the dreamed target if reached, would not put it at parity with Russian output. The United States, after emergency expansion, is projecting roughly one million shells annually once and a big if, full ramp-up is achieved. Even combined on paper, Western production struggles to match Russian output already delivered. Talk about paper tiger.

This is not a gap. It is a major tempo mismatch. Russia is producing at scale now. Europe is dreaming of rebuilding the ability to produce at scale later.

And time is the one variable that cannot be sanctioned.

Nor can the United States simply compensate for Europe’s hollowed-out capacity. Washington faces its own industrial choke points. Production of Patriot air-defense interceptors runs in the low hundreds per year while demand now spans Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and US stockpile replenishment simultaneously — a mismatch senior Pentagon officials have acknowledged cannot be resolved quickly, if ever. US naval shipbuilding tells the same story: submarine and surface-combatant programs are years behind schedule, constrained by labor shortages, aging yards, and cost overruns that push meaningful expansion into the 2030s. The assumption that America can industrially backstop Europe no longer matches reality. This is not a European problem alone; it is a Western one.

War Footing Without Factories

European leaders speak of “war footing” as if it were a political posture. In reality, it is an industrial condition and Europe does not meet it.

New artillery production lines require years to reach stable throughput. Air-defense interceptor manufacturing runs in long cycles measured in batches, not surges. Even basic inputs such as explosives remain bottlenecks, with facilities shuttered decades ago only now being reopened, some not expected to reach capacity until the late 2020s.

That date alone is an admission.

Russia, meanwhile, is already operating inside wartime tempo. Its defense sector has delivered thousands of armored vehicles, hundreds of aircraft and helicopters, and vast quantities of drones annually.

Europe’s problem is not conceptual; it is institutional. Germany’s much-vaunted Zeitenwende exposed this brutally. Tens of billions were authorized, but procurement bottlenecks, fragmented contracting, and an atrophied supplier base meant delivery lagged years behind rhetoric. France, often cited as Europe’s most capable arms producer, can manufacture more sophisticated systems — but only in boutique quantities, measured in dozens where attritional war demands thousands. Even the EU’s own ammunition acceleration initiatives expanded capacity on paper while the front consumed shells in weeks. These are not ideological failures. They are administrative and industrial ones and they compound under pressure.

The difference is structural. Western industry was optimized for shareholder efficiency and peacetime margins. Russia’s has been reorganized for endurance under pressure. NATO announces packages. Russia counts deliveries.

The €210 Billion Fantasy

This industrial reality explains why the frozen-assets saga mattered so much, and why it failed.

Europe’s leadership did not pursue the seizure of Russian sovereign assets out of legal creativity or moral clarity. It pursued it because it needed time. Time to avoid admitting that the war could not be sustained on Western industrial terms. Time to substitute finance for production.

When the attempt to seize roughly €210 billion in Russian assets collapsed on December 20th, blocked by legal risk, market consequences, and resistance led by Belgium, with Italy, Malta, Slovakia and Hungary, aligned against outright confiscation, Europe settled for a degraded substitute: a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for 2026–27, serviced by 3B in annual interest, further mortgaging Europe’s future. This was not strategy. It was triage, and further divided, an already weakened Union.

Outright confiscation would have detonated Europe’s credibility as a financial custodian. Permanent immobilization avoids the blast — but creates a slow bleed. The assets remain frozen indefinitely, a standing act of economic warfare that signals to the world that reserves held in Europe are conditional and not worth the risk. Europe chose reputational erosion over legal rupture. That choice reveals fear, not strength.

Ukraine as a Balance-Sheet War

The deeper truth is that Ukraine is no longer primarily a battlefield problem. It is a solvency problem. Washington understands this. The United States can absorb embarrassment. It cannot absorb open-ended liabilities indefinitely. An offramp is being sought — quietly, unevenly, and with rhetorical cover.

Europe cannot admit it needs one. Europe framed the war as existential, civilizational, moral. It declared compromise appeasement and negotiation surrender. In doing so, it erased its own exit ramps.

Now the costs land where no narrative can deflect them: on European budgets, European energy bills, European industry, and European political cohesion. The €90 billion loan is not solidarity. It is securitization of decline — rolling obligations forward while the productive base required to justify them continues to erode.

Meloni knows this. That is why her tone was not defiant, but weary.

Censorship as Panic Management

As material limits harden, narrative control tightens. The aggressive enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act is not about safety. It is about containment, in its most Orwellian form — constructing an information perimeter around an elite consensus that can no longer withstand open accounting. When citizens begin asking calmly, and then not calmly, relentlessly, what was this for?, the illusion of legitimacy collapses quickly.

This is why regulatory pressure now reaches beyond Europe’s borders, provoking transatlantic friction over jurisdiction and speech. Confident systems do not fear conversation. Fragile ones do.Censorship here is not ideology. It is insurance.

Deindustrialization: The Unspoken Betrayal

Europe did not merely sanction Russia. It sanctioned its own industrial model.

By 2025, European industry continues to pay energy costs far above those of competitors in the United States or Russia. Germany. the engine, has seen sustained contraction in energy-intensive manufacturing. Chemical, steel, fertilizer, and glass production have either shut down or relocated. Small and medium enterprises across Italy and Central Europe are failing quietly, without headlines.

This is why Europe cannot scale ammunition the way it needs to. This is why rearmament remains a promise rather than a condition. Cheap energy was not a luxury. It was the foundation. Remove it via self-sabotage (Nordstream et. al), and the structure hollows out.

China, watching all of this, holds the other half of Europe’s nightmare. It commands the deepest manufacturing base on earth without having entered wartime footing. Russia does not need China’s breadth, only its strategic depth behind it in reserve. Europe has neither.

What Meloni Actually Fears

Not hard work. Not busy schedules. She fears a 2026 in which Europe’s elites lose control of three things at once.

Money — as Ukraine’s funding becomes an EU balance-sheet problem, replacing the fantasy that “Russia will pay.”

Narrative — as censorship tightens and still fails to suppress the question echoing across the continent: what was this all for?

Alliance discipline — as Washington maneuvers for exit while Europe absorbs the cost, the risk, and the humiliation.

That is the panic. Not losing the war overnight, but losing legitimacy slowly, as reality leaks out through energy bills, shuttered factories, empty arsenals, and mortgaged futures.

Humanity at the Abyss

This is not just Europe’s crisis. It is civilizational. A system that cannot produce, cannot replenish, cannot tell the truth, and cannot retreat without collapsing credibility has reached its limits. When leaders begin preparing their own institutions for worse years ahead, they are not forecasting inconvenience. They are conceding structure.

Meloni’s remark mattered because it pierced the performance. Empires announce triumph loudly. Systems in decline lower expectations quietly, or loudly in Meloni’s case. 

Europe’s leadership is lowering expectations now because it knows what the warehouses contain, what the factories cannot yet deliver, what the debt curves look like — and what the public has already begun to understand.

For most Europeans, this reckoning will not arrive as an abstract debate about strategy or supply chains. It will arrive as a far simpler realization: this was never a war they consented to. It was not fought to defend their homes, their prosperity, or their future. It was fought for greed for Empire, and paid for with their living standards, their industry, and their children’s future.

They were told it was existential. They were told there was no alternative. They were told sacrifice was virtue.

Yet what Europeans want is not endless mobilization or permanent austerity. They want peace. They want stability. They want the quiet dignity of prosperity — affordable energy, functioning industry, and a future that is not mortgaged to conflicts they did not consent to.

And when that truth settles, when the fear recedes and the spell breaks, the question Europeans will ask will not be technical, ideological, or rhetorical.

It will be human. Why were we forced to sacrifice everything for a war we never agreed to and told there was no peace worth pursuing? And this is what keeps Meloni up at night.

By Steven Starr, Substack, 12/30/25

Professor Steven Starr is the former director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri. His work on nuclear issues has appeared in both the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Federation of American Scientists.

A drone attack carried out against one of Putin’s residences was also an attack against a Russian nuclear command and control center located at the residence, according to the ex-adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, Alexey Arestovich, and a military expert interviewed by Sputnik news and Tass.

This is yet another drone attack that attempted to kill the Russian President; the first occurred when Putin was traveling to Kursk in his helicopter and was attacked by a drone swarm. This second drone attack against Putin’s residence was also an attack against a component of the nuclear triad (the nuclear control center in the residence), which under Russian law and military code, justifies a nuclear response.

Who carried out these attacks?

The Russian FSB Chief stated that the British were behind the attacks on the Russian strategic nuclear bombers in June 2025; this attack followed the drone attacks against the Russian land-based nuclear early warning radar sites in May 2024. Ukraine was blamed for the May attacks, but the NY Times later reported that US Generals located in Wiesbaden are directing the war in Ukraine; the US uses its satellite and aerial reconnaissance to provide targeting information for attacks on Ukraine — and Russia.

RT quoted the (British) Financial Times in October 2025, stating that the US was responsible for guiding almost continuous drone attacks against Russian infrastructure — within Russia — “for the last several months”. In other words, throughout the time when the Trump administration has been conducting “peace negotiations” with Russia, the US continues to conduct drone attacks against Russian oil refineries, airports, etc. And now: A Russian nuclear command and control center?

Tass interviewed a Russian military expert who stated that the drone attack on Putin’s residence was guided by NATO systems.

Andrey Marochko stated:

“”The West is clearly involved in this provocation, since the tactical and technical characteristics of the drones launched by Ukrainian militants allow for targeting using geolocation and the NATO satellite system. Therefore, as always, I believe that Britain and the so-called coalition of the willing are involved here, as they provided the target coordinates and flight instructions for these drones. The components for these drones are also supplied by the West,” he said.

Meanwhile, increased interference on the high seas by the Baltic States and NATO is taking place against tankers carrying Russian oil; even drone attacks against the Russian “shadow fleet” are occuring. Drone attacks on ships at sea require satellite intel for targeting purposes; is the intel supplied by NATO member states or the US?

Apparently US and NATO leaders believe that Russia will forgo direct military action in response to this escalating violence against Russia. But under such circumstances, Russia cannot forever carry out reprisals strictly against targets in Ukraine.

In an interview today with Glenn Diesen, Stanislav Krapivnik said that there is now immense public pressure in Russia to take more forceful military action against Ukraine and NATO in response to this war being waged against Russia.

***

Western mainstream media is generally treating this incident as an unproven allegation by Russia as is reflected in the Euronews article below. – Natylie

Russia sticks to Putin residence attack claims as allies question Moscow’s motives

Euronews, 12/31/25

Moscow has continued to claim a Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s residence on Wednesday, in what Kyiv, EU, and US officials have seen as a means to disrupt US-led peace talks.

Moscow stuck to its guns again on Wednesday, furthering its claims of an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on President Vladimir Putin’s dacha, in what allies have described as an apparent attempt to throw a spanner into US-led peace talks to end Russia’s all-out war.

In the latest attempt at backing the Kremlin’s claims, the Russian defence ministry released a video purportedly showing a downed drone it said Kyiv launched at Putin’s residence in Novgorod overnight on Monday.

The video shows a damaged drone lying in snow in a forested area at night, next to what appears to be a masked member of Russian military personnel talking about the UAV as the footage shows close-ups of the drone and its internal parts.

In another segment of the footage, two masked Russian troops sitting inside a military vehicle state that “On the night of 29 December, an attempt was made to strike an aircraft-type UAV on the territory of a protected facility.”

No evidence was provided to confirm that the alleged drone attack took place near Putin’s residence. Euronews could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage or the location where it was filmed.

Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov initially dismissed providing further proof to back Moscow’s claims, stating on Tuesday, “I don’t think there needs to be any evidence here.”

‘No noise, no explosions,’ Valdai residents say

Putin’s residence, also known as Dolgiye Borody or “Long Beards,” is situated near the town of Valdai, whose residents told domestic media outlets they did not witness any signs of a drone attack.

“There was no noise that night, no explosions, nothing,” one resident told Mozhem Obyasnit outlet. “If something like that had happened, the whole town would have been talking about it.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that an alleged Ukrainian drone attack involved 91 long-range drones.

“Such reckless actions will not go unanswered,” Lavrov told Interfax news agency, stating Moscow’s negotiating stance would shift following.

Lavrov did not clarify whether Putin was present at the residence during the alleged attack.

Russian foreign minister’s figures contradicted the official report from the Russian Defence Ministry, which first claimed that its forces took down a total of 89 Ukrainian drones overnight on Monday, 18 of which in the Novgorod region.

Putin’s Valdai dacha — a vacation retreat for top-level officials since the Soviet times — is protected by significant air defence installations including at least a dozen surface-to-air batteries, according to reports.

‘Deliberate distraction’

Kyiv immediately dismissed Moscow’s claims of the attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shot back at Moscow’s claims, calling it “another lie from the Russian Federation”.

“It is clear that yesterday we had a meeting with (US President Donald) Trump, and it is clear that for the Russians, if there is no scandal between us and America, and we are making progress, for them it is a failure,” Zelenskyy stated in a conversation with journalists on Monday afternoon.

“They do not want to end this war, they are only capable of ending it through pressure on them. Well, I am sure they were looking for reasons,” he added.

Since then, several European and US officials echoed Zelenskyy’s belief that by insisting on the alleged attempt on Putin’s life, Moscow is deliberately derailing the US-led peace talks, which US President Donald Trump has been actively pushing forward in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas accused Russia of promoting “unfounded claims,” branding the allegation as a “deliberate distraction”.

“Moscow aims to derail real progress towards peace by Ukraine and its Western partners,” Kallas wrote on X.

One day earlier, US ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker also cast doubt on Russia’s allegations, stating he would want to see US intelligence instead.

“It is unclear whether it actually happened,” Whitaker said in an interview for Fox Business.

“It seems to me a little indelicate to be this close to a peace deal, Ukraine really wanting to get a peace deal done, and then to do something that would be viewed as reckless or not helpful,” Whitaker added.

Ukraine and its allies have previously accused Moscow of intentionally stalling on any ceasefire or peace agreements, while the Kremlin continued to repeat its maximalist demands as a prerequisite for talks to progress.

Merz warns of hybrid war

On Monday, the Kremlin said Putin informed US President Donald Trump of the alleged Ukrainian attack during the call and that this led to Moscow’s change in its position in the negotiations as announced by Lavrov, Russian state-run media reported.

Asked about the alleged attack later on Monday, Trump — who spoke to the press in Florida together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — said, “I don’t like it, it’s not good.”

“It’s a delicate period of time, it’s not the right time. It’s one thing to be offensive … it’s another thing to attack his house,” the US president added. “I was very angry about it.”

Quizzed on whether Washington had any intelligence to corroborate Moscow’s claims, Trump said, “Well, we’ll find out. You’re saying maybe the attack didn’t happen, it’s possible too, I guess.”

“But President Putin told me this morning it did.”

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz accused Russia of pursuing a hybrid war against Europe in his New Year’s address on Wednesday.

“A terrible war is raging in Europe, one that poses a direct threat to our freedom and our security. Russia is continuing its war of aggression against Ukraine with undiminished intensity, however,” Merz said.

“And this is not a distant war that does not concern us. After all, we are seeing more and more clearly that Russia’s aggression was and is part of a plan targeted against the whole of Europe.”

“Germany is also facing sabotage, espionage and cyberattacks on a daily basis,” he added.​​​​​​​

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 12/7/25

Former Russian President and incumbent Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev published a scathing article at TASS in early September about “The New Finnish Doctrine: Stupidity, Lies, Ingratitude” in which he excoriated Finland for its former alliance with the Nazis and warned about new threats from it. This follows reports in May that Russia has been beefing up its defenses along the Finnish frontier, which was analyzed here and includes links to several briefings on this subject. [https://tass.ru/opinions/24989035]

Much of Medvedev’s article is devoted to the WWII-era period, with special attention drawn to what the Supreme Court of Karelia (an autonomous republic in Russia bordering Finland) recognized last year as the Finnish Genocide of the Soviet People during that time. This focus is meant to remind Russians that Finland was once their country’s enemy even though Moscow showed mercy upon it after WWII in order to create a neutral buffer zone that formally remained in effect till Finland joined NATO in 2023.

Medvedev’s motive is to rally Russians in support of their country’s more muscular policy towards Finland in response to its new hostile policies since joining that bloc. These include compliance with Western sanctions and agreeing to let the US possibly use up to 15 military facilities. Moreover, NATO “is now intensively mastering all five operational environments of Suomi (how Finns refer to their country) – land, sea, air, space and cyberspace”, according to Medvedev. The threats are therefore multiplying.

He warned that Russia might pursue criminal liability for Finland’s WWII-era genocide of the Soviet People, since there’s no statute of limitations on this crime in international law, and demand more reparations if this trend continues as expected. His piece ended soon thereafter on the ominous note that Finland might lose its statehood “forever” if it participates in another war against Russia. The subtext is that this is an increasingly credible scenario that Russia is taking very seriously going forward.

It’s timely to re-evaluate the threat that NATO poses to Russia via Finland in light of this article. Prior to recent developments, it was thought by some in Russia that Finland’s formal membership in the bloc wouldn’t really change much since it was already a de facto member for decade, thus making this more of a symbolic achievement for NATO than a meaningful military-strategic one. What they didn’t foresee, however, was what Medvedev described as the “Ukrainization of Finland itself (that) took place quietly.”

This was brought about by the NATO-backed resurgence of ultra-nationalist sentiment in society that takes the form of ethno-territorial revanchist goals vis-à-vis Russia. To oversimplify a complex historical subject, Finno-Ugric people are indigenous to parts of modern-day Russia, including Karelia. Although they’ve integrated into society and are actually privileged in today’s Russia due to their minority status, which affords special rights for such groups, Finnish ultra-nationalists still want to annex their land.

The stage is accordingly being set for an escalation of New Cold War tensions between NATO and Russia along the Finnish frontier, thus serving as a triple extension of their already boiling ones in the Arctic, the Baltic, and Central Europe. Finland boasts the bloc’s largest land border with Russia by far, however, so NATO-related threats from there are more dangerous than from anywhere else. Russia is taking them very seriously though and is prepared to defend itself from any form of aggression that it might face.

By Pietro Shakarian, Substack, 12/26/25

Pietro A. Shakarian, PhD, is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and a lecturer in history at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan. He is the author of Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin (Indiana University Press, 2025).

Earlier this month, on December 17, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi paid a working visit to Moscow where he held a high-level meeting and press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Although the visit went almost entirely unnoticed by many observers of international affairs, it marked yet another significant milestone in Russo-Iranian relations, signaling a further deepening in ties between Moscow and Tehran amid the rise of a new multipolar world order.

Both Lavrov and, even more pointedly, Araghchi underscored the main aim and achievement of the meeting – a program for intensifying cooperation and consultation between the Russian and Iranian foreign ministries over the next three years. In his remarks, Araghchi underscored the historic signing as a “roadmap” or an “action plan” of cooperation between the two sides, building on their Treaty of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership inked at the beginning of this year. Araghchi likewise underscored the degree of closeness that had developed between Moscow and Tehran over the course of 2025. He maintained that Russo-Iranian cooperation had strengthened in virtually all areas and tracks, especially in the military-technical and political spheres. Meanwhile, consultations between the two countries, already held regularly, had grown in frequency and intensity throughout 2025. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had met with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin five times “over the last 18 months,” Araghchi underscored. “This, indeed, is a very important number,” he concluded, emphatically. For his part, Lavrov highlighted that his talks with Araghchi took place “as always, in a friendly, constructive, and trust-based atmosphere.” Such statements indicate a sincere, steady, and consistent deepening of relations, contradicting periodic Western reports, particularly in the British press, underscoring areas of disagreement between the two Eurasian giants.

Although the Araghchi-Lavrov meeting had been planned in advance, it was given additional impetus by recent news reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet US President Donald Trump on December 29. Bibi’s main demand? To resume the Israeli-US “12-day war” on Iran that has been halted since June. The main justification for the attack will no longer be Iran’s nuclear program, but instead its sophisticated ballistic missile defense system that had succeeded in wreaking havoc across Israel. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi has stressed, “Israel’s military doctrine does not allow for any of its regional foes to deter it or challenge its military dominance. Iran’s missile program currently does exactly that.” Araghchi’s visit to Russia, therefore acquired additional significance, augmenting a growing strategic partnership between two major BRICS countries.

While the threat of a new Israeli-instigated war with Iran looms large, it is only the most pressing of a litany of security concerns facing both Moscow and Tehran. As Araghchi and Lavrov noted, these areas of mutual concern include the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, security dilemmas in Transcaucasia, stability concerns in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Of these, one zone of particular interest is Transcaucasia, a small but critical region sandwiched between Russia to the north and Iran to the south. Here the Israel-allied Republic of Azerbaijan has increasingly goose-stepped its way toward NATO, even going so far as completely aligning its military to NATO standards. Emboldened by its conquest and ethnic cleansing of Armenian-inhabited Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku has made no secret of its efforts to gradually orient itself toward the Western alliance. It also continues to openly espouse extensive territorial claims on neighboring Armenia and Iran, confident in its belief that military might will serve its interests far better than any diplomatic negotiation. At the same time, despite such actions and rhetoric, both Moscow and Tehran have taken a cautious approach toward President Ilham Aliyev’s blustery bravado, with both expressing hope that Baku will “return to reason” and even participate constructively in the Western section of the International North–South Transport Corridor.

Meanwhile, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has also vocally backed the idea of pivoting toward the West, to such a degree that he even sacrificed his own co-ethnics in Nagorno-Karabakh. Already broadly unpopular in Armenia, Pashinyan’s domestic reputation took another hit in August when he signed a declaration with Aliyev endorsing the US-backed “Trump corridor” (or TRIPP) in Armenia’s southern Syunik Province, granting a free hand to Israel, Turkey, and the US on Iran’s sensitive northern frontier. Faced with widespread accusations of treason at home, Pashinyan has since moved to crack down on the political opposition and the Armenian Apostolic Church, the country’s main religious institution since its Christianization in the 4th century. At the same time, Pashinyan has turned to the EU to bolster his flagging domestic position, while imposing himself over an increasingly recalcitrant Armenian population. “I am the government,” Pashinyan declared in one recent speech in Yerevan, channeling France’s Louis XIV. For his part, Lavrov has accused the EU of meddling in Armenia’s internal affairs.

The “Trump corridor” has ramifications well beyond Transcaucasia. Backed by an unholy alliance of US neocons, Israeli Likudniks, Western war interests, and big energy corporations, the plan aims to remove Russia and Iran from the Caucasus altogether while creating alternative “energy conduits” linking post-Soviet Central Asia to the EU. The extension of US geopolitical influence into Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan, is of particular alarm, not only to Russia and Iran, but also, ultimately, Trump’s chief geopolitical rival – China. The idea itself is not new. Zbigniew Brzezinski expounded on it in his Grand Chessboard. Meanwhile, Clinton’s “Russia hand,” Strobe Talbott, once praised such a policy approach in his correspondences with George F. Kennan, promoting an “exasperated” response from the then-93-year-old veteran US statesman. Now the idea has been given new life under Trump, despite his “no war” campaign pledges.

Although such schemes present a clear and direct strategic threat to Russia, Moscow has generally taken a publicly restrained stance toward them. By contrast, Iran has been far less reticent in voicing its concerns on the matter, with some Iranian commentators even giving the “Trump corridor” the alternative moniker of “NATO’s Turan Corridor.” During the Araghchi-Lavrov press conference, one Iranian journalist pointedly asked Araghchi about the dangers facing Iran and Russia in the South Caucasus. In his response, the Iranian foreign minister stressed that Moscow and Tehran hold a “clear position” on the region, as articulated in the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty – specifically Article 12, which expressed overt opposition to the presence of any external actors in the larger Eurasian region. Araghchi further added that both the South Caucasus and Central Asia together are areas “that must ensure security” in the critical zone of Eurasia adjoining both Russia and Iran. Any “non-regional presence,” Araghchi maintained, is inadmissible in the view of Moscow and Tehran, including, presumably, any “Trump corridor.”

In the backdrop of all these developments stands the much greater geopolitical context of the rise of global multipolarity, or the “rise of the rest.” This theme of multipolarity was clearly and unambiguously discernable throughout the entire Araghchi-Lavrov press conference. Both foreign ministers stressed the need for the “democratization” of the international order and unity against the “impunity” of the United States, particularly in light not only of the recent US and Israeli war on Iran, but also the growing attacks on Venezuela by the Trump administration. “They consider themselves untouchable,” noted Araghchi, who added that “they’re using brute force to achieve favorable terms.” Above all, he stressed that the US was “pushing the international community into the atmosphere of the jungle” and that both Russia and Iran were committed to opposing such developments by adhering to the legal institutions safeguarding the post-World War II global order. Lavrov concurred with Araghchi’s assessments. “It is necessary to implement these principles [of the UN Charter], respect them, and apply them in practice not selectively, on a case-by-case basis, but exclusively in their entirety, completeness, and interrelatedness,” Lavrov noted. Both stressed continued mutual support against “illegal sanctions” imposed on Iran and Russia by the West. Taking to X/Twitter, Araghchi further stressed that the December 17 agreements “will enable stronger action against unlawful Western sanctions, promote regional stability, advance infrastructure projects, and block illegal measures in the UN Security Council.”

Thus, while the December 17 agreements may have gone “under the radar” of many geopolitical analysts, they represent a significant step not only in the intensification of Russo-Iranian relations, but also in global developments more broadly. As multipolarity proceeds to rise, advocates of unipolarity in Washington’s Beltway will not retreat into introspection and policy reevaluation, but will continue to double-down on the same failed policies in an eager bid to preserve what they believed was an era of American primacy. Whether such policies are framed as “liberal interventionist” or “transactionalist” makes no difference as their objectives remain essentially the same. In this regard, the Beltway “blob” is not motivated by any desire to “defend democracy,” but rather by the cynical self-interest of the various lobbies that continue pushing for war – e.g., the need to continue producing weapons to ensure the continued generation of profits.

Therefore, until America’s domestic troubles become too great to ignore, the stream of crusades to “counter” Russia, Iran, and China will continue into 2026, with regions such as Transcaucasia and Central Asia becoming new theatres of soft power competition and potential geopolitical conflict. From the view of Moscow and Tehran, the disastrous record of the Trump administration in 2025 already indicates that “business as usual” continues in Washington. The Strategic Partnership Treaty of January and the December 17 agreements thus function as effective “insurance policies” to maintain security and stability in Eurasia amid the rise of the rest.

By Kyle Anzalone, Libertarian Institute, 12/28/25

Ukrainian representatives participated in NATO war games simulating the alliance’s response to an attack.

According to a NATO press release, 1,500 soldiers and civilians from multiple European countries participated in the Loyal Dolos 2025 drills that were conducted at the beginning of the month. 

On Sunday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces posted on Facebook that Ukrainian officials participated in Loyal Dolos. “Ukraine is becoming part of the collective defense architecture of NATO. Ukrainian JATEC experts have, for the first time, joined the work of the mechanisms of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty on the training LOYAL DOLOS 2025,” the post explained. 

Senior National Representative of Ukraine in JATEC, director of Implementation of the programs of the Joint Center NATO-Ukraine Colonel Valery Vyshnivsky said, “The participation of Ukrainian JATEC experts in the LOYAL DOLOS 2025, which is one of the key elements of NATO’s preparation according to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, has strategic significance for us, as for the first time Ukrainian representatives have been involved in the work of the Alliance’s collective security mechanisms.” 

Kiev’s military ties to NATO countries are one of the primary reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Kiev agree to neutrality as a condition for ending the war. 

President Zelensky recently announced that Ukraine would agree to stop seeking formal membership in the North Atlantic Alliance if members of the bloc agreed to bilateral agreements with Kiev that are similar to NATO’s Article 5. Article 5 is considered the mutual defense pact in the NATO charter. 

That Ukraine is continuing its integration into NATO suggests that Kiev is still seeking to become an informal member of the bloc.