INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
12.22.2025
December 22nd, 2025
Greetings! It’s 3 days until Christmas and Russian President Vladimir Putin is still targeting and endangering Ukrainian civilians.
Moscow is continuing to hammer Odesa – Ukraine’s strategic port city on the Black Sea – by launching drone and ballistic missile attacks. Increasingly the Russians are targeting bridges to isolate the city and disrupt road logistics key to Ukraine’s economy.
This time, it appears only a 30-year-old man was injured by shrapnel. Perhaps, it is time to send Putin a message-in-kind by dropping the Kerch Bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland.
Elsewhere around the world, Team Trump is playing Battleship. Russia appears to be evacuating dependents of its diplomats in Venezuela. And China just filled 100+ silos near its border with Mongolia with nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Photo credit: Jessica Koscielniak / Reuters. “Trump Class” rendering of the USS Defiant.
Let’s get started covering those stories and more and putting them into context on a global 360-degree basis!
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NORTH AMERICA
President Donald Trump said today that the U.S. Navy as part of his plans for a “Golden Fleet” is going to build two new “Trump Class” battleships. The first ship is designated as the USS Defiant and appears to be a nod to Trump raising his fist after being shot.
Per reporting in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), “the new battleship will be an upgrade to the Navy’s Arleigh-Burke class destroyers.”
Early reviews are not encouraging. While the Navy and its 291-ship fleet needs upgrading and expanding to compete with a 332-ship Chinese Navy, many analysts are denouncing Trump’s plan as foolhardy.
Former Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, U.S.N. (ret.) was quoted by the WSJ as saying Trump’s plan is “exactly what we don’t need.” He continued, noting that “We do not need ships that are not optimized to provide lethality against the Chinese threat.”
Trump’s battleship comes days just after the Navy’s new frigate class – designated as the FF(X) – was widely panned as well. Montgomery dismissed the new class as having “zero tactical use” given that it will not “be equipped with a vertical launch system or the Aegis ballistic defense system.”
Tyler Rogoway, the creator and editor in chief of The War Zone was even more blunt. On X, he argued “We are choosing to lose.”
Ouch.
Given similar widespread alarm amongst naval experts, it begs the question whether this is a Golden Fleet or a Golden Fleece in the making? Is Trump even listening to his Admirals?
The White House needs to get this right. As we noted in Friday’s INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT, Chinese’s naval footprint in the Pacific is getting bigger, not smaller and is now reaching all the way to Guam.
Elsewhere, Greenland is suddenly back in the news. During his press conference announcing the USS Defiant, he once again declared that “We need Greenland for national security.” To that end, he has appointed Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland. As we pointed out at the New York Post in January, this is more about “hands off the Western Hemisphere” messaging to Beijing than anything else.
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SOUTH AMERICA
War drums in and around Venezuela continue to dominate the region. Per the Associated Press, “Russia’s Foreign Ministry has started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.”
However, Moscow denies on X that it is evacuating its embassy in Caracas. Notably, it doesn’t mention women or children.
On Saturday, the U.S. seized a third the shadow fleet tanker transporting Venezuelan oil named the Centuries east of Barbados in the Caribbean after departing Venezuela. The Centuries was flying a Panamanian flag and was reportedly headed to China.
Photo credit: Department Of Homeland Security. U.S military helicopter flying over the Centuries on December 20th.
Beijing – predictably – condemned the U.S. seizure. What happens in the Caribbean doesn’t stay there. This Western Hemisphere spat between Chinese President Xi Jingling and will carry over into Panama where the two leaders are in a standoff – as we’ve covered in previous INTREP360 reports – over ownership of the key Pacific and Atlantic ports of Balboa and Cristóbal.
All of a sudden, Puerto Rico has become a bedrock in U.S. strategy in the Caribbean Sea and beyond.
See our recent piece in the New York Post for more geo-strategic context.
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EUROPE
Don’t be fooled by Russia’s cross-border raids into Sumy or Kharkiv. We concur with The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) that these Russian raids are simply Moscow attempting to falsely portray Ukraine’s defensive lines as collapsing.
Used with ISW permission. Credit: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
They are not. Further, as the ISW notes, Moscow has “not set conditions to start a new offensive across the international border in northern Ukraine.”
Putin wants the West to believe he is stronger than he really is. And while Russia maintains the initiative, his generals are overplaying their hands to appease Putin.
Over the weekend, peace talks went nowhere in Miami. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy to the U.S., claimed they were constructive.
In reality, they were not. The key obstacles remain. Russia is maintaining its maximalist demands and Ukraine is unwilling to withdraw let alone cede its Fortress Donbas to Putin. Russia is unlikely to accept any U.S. security guarantee.
Come Thursday, tragically, this will be the fourth Christmas in a row in Europe at war with Russia in Ukraine.
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MIDDLE EAST
Fars News Agency – Iran’s state-aligned media service – reported multiple ballistic missile tests in the skies across the country including in Khorramabad, Mahabad, Isfahan and the capital city of Tehran.
The Freedom for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) noted that this is the second purported testing of Iran’s missiles in the last 30 days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted that Israel is “aware that Iran is conducting military exercises. We are monitoring this and making the necessary preparations.”
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AFRICA
Reuters is reporting that the U.S. is conducting daily surveillance flights over Nigeria. The overflights – purportedly approved by Abuja – come on the heels of “Trump’s threats in November to militarily intervene in Nigeria over what he says is its failure to stop violence targeting Christian communities.”
Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for renewed efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the ongoing Sudanese Civil War. Fighting in Kordofan has intensified in recent days. Rubio called on outside actors to end weapons supplies to both sides – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Army.
Notably, the UAW is accused of supplying the RSF. Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are supporting the Sudanese Army.
Elsewhere on the continent, the Trump Administration announced that it had signed health agreements with Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda and at least six other unnamed countries. The new health pacts come after many USAID agreements were voided by Washington earlier this year after Trump took office.
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INDO-PACIFIC
In today’s most underreported story, China has completed construction of three new ballistic missile silo fields near its border with Mongolia.
Photo credit: Jason Lee / Reuters. DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles pictured in Tiananmen Square in 2019.
To give them teeth, Beijing “reportedly has now loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles” into the silos.
China remains on pace to have 1,000+ nuclear ICBMS by 2030.
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WHAT WE ARE READING!
How upbeat battlefield briefings are fueling Putin’s confidence. Anastasia Stognei and Max Seddon for the Financial Times.
China urges opposition to Japanese official’s remarks about possessing nuclear weapons. China.org.
Trump Administration Orders Nearly 30 U.S. Ambassadors to Leave Their Posts. Edward Wong reporting for the New York Times.
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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.