INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
03.25.2026
Editor’s note. Updated at 2:09PM CT to add clarity. Changed ‘European leaders’ to ‘some European leaders.’
March 25th, 2026
Greetings!
As the wars in Ukraine & Iran continue, the source of their conflicts—the root cause—continues their mission to distract attention and resources away from them, while creating instability elsewhere and sowing distrust & division amongst Western allies.
The root cause is Russia, and they continue to create chaos & instability throughout the globe—through hybrid warfare, disinformation campaigns, election interference or direct support. Wherever there is a kinetic hot spot, the Kremlin & Federal Security Service’s (FSB) fingerprints can be found.
AI-Image credit: Grok. Russian President Vladimir Putin standing over the map of a burning world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has his hands in the cookie jar be it in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Sudan, Libya, the Sahel region of Africa, Serbia, Hungary, Romania & beyond.
Today we’ll take a look at three of the latest examples, so let’s get started in a mini-sweep of the globe!
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EUROPE—MOLDOVA
Earlier this week, on Tuesday, the Moldovan Parliament voted to impose a state of emergency in the country’s energy sector after Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid disconnected a key power line linking Moldova to Romania.
Coincidence?
We highly doubt it.
This was Russian retribution—a message—sent to Moldova after its Parliament on March 21st approved the first reading of a bill denouncing the agreement establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The Moldovan government approved the denunciation of the CIS’s founding documents on March 11, formally launching the procedure for the country’s final withdrawal from the organization’s statutory bodies.
Foreign Minister Mihai Popșoi told members of Parliament, “Today we stand at a crossroads, and this decision can no longer be postponed. For more than three decades, we have carried a heavy burden, an invisible chain that kept us tied to a past that no longer belongs to us.” He went on to describe the CIS as an organization born from the ashes of a fallen empire & later turned into a tool for preserving Moscow’s influence over its neighbors.
Moldova wants out of the Kremlin-dominated CIS.
As Moldova turns West—Chișinău is seeking membership in the European Union (EU)—Russia pushes back harder. Plus, recognizing their vulnerability to future Russian aggression—with Ukraine & Georgia serving as the most prominent examples—Moldova is considering reunification with Romania which would afford NATO protection.
In 1940, during World War II, Romania was pressured into ceding Bessarabia & northern Bukovina—now modern-day Moldova—to the Soviet Union. It then became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Either way—EU membership or reunification with Romania—the Kremlin is focused on the isolated Russian speaking population in Transnistria—a breakaway Moldovan province bordering western Ukraine. President Maia Sandu may have designs on Transnistria as well. Last month, she drafted a comprehensive plan for its reintegration into Moldova.
Used with ISW permission. Credit: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project. Moldova map dated September 5th, 2025.
Sandu’s plan was presented by Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Valeriu Chiveri to European Commission Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos and other EU officials in Brussels earlier this month.
Those are fighting words, only a militarily weakened Russia—at least from a conventional perspective—has little recourse. They could not come to the rescue of Syria President Bashar al-Assad, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, and now the Cuban government is on the verge of collapse as Russia watches—and protests—from afar.
1,500 Russian soldiers are stationed in Transnistria, but Moscow has little available capability to project any force into Moldova. While the Russian State Duma is reviewing a law developed by the Ministry of Defense, which would expand Putin’s powers to use the Armed Forces abroad to “protect Russians,” the Kremlin is hardly in a position to do that today, creating a window of opportunity for Chișinău.
Photo credit: European Union. Moldovan President Maia Sandu addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France on September 28th, 2025.
That said, the FSB can, and likely will, conduct an aggressive disinformation and intimidation campaign designed to disrupt Chișinău’s plans. We saw this in Moldova’s parliamentary elections in September 2025.
Sandu—however—is undeterred. She is Moldova’s Iron Lady on a mission to forever escape Moscow’s Iron Curtain.
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EUROPE—HUNGARY
The situation in Hungary is approaching a boiling point as the nation’s April 12th parliamentary elections draw nearer. The political fate of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is in doubt.
Photo credit: Grigory Sysoyev / Sputnik. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán (left) meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing in 2023.
Polls today show that Hungary’s opposition Tisza party has widened its lead to 23 percent over Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and as we documented in our March 6th and March 12th editions of the INTREP360 Intelligence Report, Orbán turned to Moscow to develop a disinformation campaign aimed at helping him get re-elected.
His campaign also resorted to a ‘blame Ukraine’ strategy for the country’s energy shortfalls, presented Ukraine as a threat to Hungary and even went as far as to set conditions for a Russian-like false flag operation—filming himself in a despondent state, talking with his daughter on the phone, telling her that the “Ukrainians were threatening not only me, but you too, your child and your mother.”
Shortly afterwards, it was disclosed that Russian operatives had proposed a way to “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign … the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orbán.” The plan was called “the Gamechanger.”
In a report prepared for the Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) main unit for political influence operations—the Active Measures Department—they stated that “Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system.”
Team Orbán has become a little too chummy with the Kremlin. As one western official observed, “Orban has been one of Russia’s best assets.”
So has his Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó. Last Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Szijjártó was passing information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during “breaks at EU meetings to provide [him] live reports on what’s been discussed.” Furthermore, Szijjarto has made 16 official visits to Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most recently on March 4th when he met with Putin.
This certainly explains Orbán’s persistent veto to EU funding & arming of Ukraine. Putin masterfully built a Hungarian dependency upon cheap Russian energy—much the same way a crack dealer does to a drug addict. In exchange, he bought a veto vote in the EU, and a seat at the table.
One has to assume he bought the same access with NATO—virtually ensuring an Article V veto if and when the time comes.
Think about that. Yet President Donald Trump & some European leaders are actively campaigning for Orbán. Welcome to a real-life version of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. What Russia can’t win on the battlefield, the FSB & SVR are obtaining surreptitiously via cloak and dagger—and at the hands of naïve politicians.
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NORTH AMERICA—CUBA
Cuba—long an ally of the Soviet Union & now Russia since the 1960s—is in danger of falling to the U.S. 67 years after Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar in 1959.
Trump––clearly––wants it.
On Monday, he said: “I do believe I’ll have the honor of taking Cuba.” We suspect––and this is just our informed speculation––that Trump is waiting to topple the Cuban government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel until after the war in Iran is over.
Putin can’t be pleased.
Especially since Díaz-Canel acknowledged today that Raúl Castro—the former president & 94-year-old brother of Fidel Castro is in preliminary talks with Team Trump to reach some kind of understanding. Reportedly, Trump wants to see a “Cuban version of what he has done in Venezuela and Iran—remove the leader—only this time without the use of military force.”
Photo credit: Agencia Cubana De Noticias. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel (second from left) meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin (second from right) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Kremlin in 2024.
Yet, like in Moldova, Putin is powerless to act. This is not going to be a rinse and repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis between the U.S. & Soviet Union in 1962.
He is putting up a symbolic fight. Putin—although he won’t admit it—has dispatched the Anatoly Kolodkin oil tanker holding to 730,000 barrels of crude oil to an oil starved Cuba since Team Trump implemented an oil embargo against the island nation. Its destination? Cue Rod Serling again—it’s “Atlantis, USA.”
How to read it?
It’s twilight time for Putin in Cuba & Latin America in general. As noted by The New York Times, leaders across the region—including leftist leaders—have gotten the message. Cuba, sooner or later, is going to fall to the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine.’
Photo credit: Adalberto Roque/AFP. Fidel Castro (left) with Raúl Castro in 2001.
Whether that frees its people—as it should—remains to be determined. The people of Cuba deserve better than leaving Raúl Castro in power. Even in retirement, he is still the real power in Havana.
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Russia—and Putin by extension—is reeling as a result of Team Trump. That said—maddeningly—Trump won’t put Moscow down for the count in Ukraine.
That easy win is there for the taking.
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PROGRAMMING NOTE!
Tomorrow, our weekly 7:00 AM ET national security column at The Hill in Washington, D.C., focuses on Trump’s self-defeating lack of strategic patience & knack of getting in the way of his generals, intelligence analysts & diplomats.
He needs a hard reset.
You can read it here when it goes live.
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Thank you for reading! We will see you tomorrow. Please subscribe, comment & share. We truly appreciate it!
Jon & Mark
Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.
Thank you for this clarification which has the merit of being clear and coherent. As a Belgian and European, the weakness of the EU leaders towards Hungary and Slovakia is distressing and makes the institution less and less credible. What a naivety to have waited four years before realizing that the 2 countries mentioned are the metastases of the Kremlin! To conclude: there is a lack of leadership at the head of the EU: I would see Macron instead of von der Leyen.