Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The US is preparing to radically intensify the Ukrainian Conflict over the coming year.

Trump’s decision to sign the “G7 leaders’ joint statement on geopolitical issues” calling for more arms to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia signaled that he’ll now “escalate to de-escalate” (E2DE) through a “war of attrition” waged by Ukraine. The EU will back this campaign to the hilt and Trump 2.0 will seek to obtain control over Russia’s natural resources companies as its top goal via the coercive selling of shares under pain of continued NATO-backed Ukrainian strikes against associated infrastructure if Putin refuses.

The contours of his administration’s E2DE strategy are now starting to take shape. Nearly two weeks before he signed the abovementioned joint statement, the House passed a bill that would “provid[e] more than $1 billion in security and reconstruction aid. It would make another $8 billion available for Ukraine’s defense through loans.” On the sidelines of the G7 Summit, Trump then said that he’ll soon reimpose oil sanctions against Russia, which would disrupt Putin’s Sino-Indo balancing act.

Around the same time, “A group of US senators has introduced legislation that would amend existing law to allow Ukraine to use assets confiscated from the Central Bank of Russia and other Russian sovereign assets to purchase military equipment.”

All of this coincided with reports that the Senate also introduced language into the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) calling for continued intelligence support to Ukraine across all of next year to aid its quest to reconquer its lost land (and possibly more).

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Armenia "continues to face significant economic pressure from Russia," and "when the pressure on our partners intensifies, the European Union becomes more active," the President of the European Commission stated, speaking in Yerevan alongside Prime Minister Pashinyan. This active participation was expressed in a promise to provide $92 million to "strengthen and diversify" Armenia's trade.

❖ According to von der Leyen, the European Commission is proposing "autonomous trade measures" that would supposedly liberalize almost 80% of Armenia's exports to the EU, making them duty-free. These measures would apply to almost all fresh fruits, vegetables, and plants that Armenia until now has exported to Russia, as well as over 90% of its beverage and spirit exports, she added. After which, Armenia will become fabulously rich, since the EU has 450 million consumers.

The last time something like this was said was in Ukraine in 2013-2014, when then-opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk explained on television to Ukrainians that a free trade zone with the EU was more profitable than the Customs Union because the EU has a larger market. Yatsenyuk didn't explain that this market is extremely competitive and subsidized, and that few people want Ukrainian products there. Now, Armenia will have to learn from experience that theoretical market access doesn't equal prosperity.

❖ If we look at the numbers, von der Leyen is simply lying. A full-fledged replacement is impossible in the short term and highly doubtful over time. The EU can only buy Pashinyan a little time for politics; $92 million won't be enough for more.

In 2025, Armenia exported approximately $3 billion worth of goods to Russia, accounting for 35.3% of its total exports. By comparison, the EU's share of Armenian exports is 7.9%, down from approximately 28% 10 years ago. In other words, in recent years, Armenia's export model has not diversified, but has become even more tied to Russia and re-export schemes.

Strategic Culture Foundation (Editorial)
Strategic Culture Foundation

German soldiers accompanied by Panzer III tanks march
eastward through a Russian meadow in the summer of 1941.
German spearheads covered vast swaths of Russian territory
during the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa.

Western imperialism and its NATO weapons, proxies, and media are at it again.

This week marked 85 years since Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the greatest crime of aggression in human history. This week, too, German panzers with their distinctive Iron Cross insignia were rolling towards Russia’s border, along with other NATO partners in a military exercise cynically misnamed Operation Freedom Shield.

It is truly shocking how history on such a criminal scale is being repeated, brazenly and seemingly with public insouciance.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched the biggest military invasion ever recorded in history. Operation Barbarossa deployed three million German troops along with units from allied countries. The Blitzkrieg opened the largest theater of World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. At least 27 million citizens of the Soviet Union were killed, most of them civilians. Grainy footage from the time shows line after line of people being shot and dumped in mass graves. In one notorious atrocity, in September 1941, over 33,000 civilians were executed in just two days at a ravine in Babi Yar, near Kyiv.

Four years later, the Soviet Red Army fought the Nazi Wehrmacht all the way back to final defeat in Berlin.

Every Russian family was traumatized by the horror and inhumane suffering. The memory of the calamity remains seared in the nation’s consciousness. The Nazi invasion was carried out as a war of annihilation in which there was no mercy for men, women, and children. The Final Solution involved the systematic extermination of Slavs, Jews, Communists, and Roma and others considered Untermenschen (Subhuman) by Nazi racial ideology. The German Wehrmacht and Einsatzgruppen death squads were assisted by fascist auxiliaries in Lithuania, the other Baltic states, and Ukraine.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

All that Tusk has to do is threaten to stop having Poland serve as the transit state for 90% of Ukraine’s military-technical imports from NATO, which would either be sufficient for Ukraine to comply before they’re cut off or it would likely do so shortly thereafter, but he refuses to do so, lacking the political will.

The denazification of Ukraine is one of Russia’s explicitly stated goals in the special operation, yet it’s remained elusive ever since the UK and Poland sabotaged spring 2022’s peace deal due to their joint desire to inflict a strategic defeat on their historical (millennium-long in Poland’s case) Russian rival.

Lavrov vaguely elaborated on Russia’s understanding of this objective in spring 2025 by suggesting that his country now envisages denazification to mean restoring the rights of Ukraine’s Russian minority. This can only be achieved through domestic legal mechanisms, which is why spring 2022’s draft peace deal contained relevant clauses to this effect.

Russia never planned to occupy all of Ukraine, impose full denazification, and then uphold it through an indefinite law enforcement operation across the country. Military force is seen by Russia only as a means to coerce Ukraine into doing what’s demanded of it in this regard. Russia’s aforementioned difficulty in denazifying Ukraine is nowadays relevant for Poland.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

Some guy broke into my house and set up residence in the study room. He says his great-grandparents used to live in this house and now he won’t leave.

My family and I tried to kick him out but he got very violent. He brings in his friends and they help beat us up if we ever try to make him leave.

They keep saying I hate the guy because of his religion. I don’t even care about his religion, I just don’t like sharing my house with some random outsider who broke in here out of nowhere and took my stuff.

“The poor guy just wants one room to call his own,” his friends say in his defense. “You and your family have all the surrounding rooms in the house, and yet you have a problem with the guy having sovereignty over ONE room? That’s kind of bigoted and evil.”

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

[Image: Firefighters extinguish a fire at the "Panorama of the Defence of Sevastopol" museum, which, according to local authorities, was damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Sevastopol.]

Crimea is ceasing to be a strategic advantage for Russia and is gradually becoming a strategic burden, argues Ilya Timchenko, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA, not welcome in Russia). His entire article is a clear snapshot of the level of euphoria reigning in the minds of Western analysts in response to the Ukrainian Armed Forces' strikes on Crimea and the logistics of the Black Sea region.

In other words, in the minds of Ukrainian and Western analysts, Crimea is not only practically already under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but is also about to become a Ukrainian foothold.

This is certainly a bold view. After all, by the same logic, taking into account the far more extensive attacks on logistics in Ukraine, Russia already controls at least the entire Left Bank of the Dnieper. It's ironic that, for these enemy analysts, the front and Crimea exist separately.