INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
12.31.2025
December 31st, 2025
Greetings! Give or take, as we begin penning this New Year’s Eve edition of the INTREP360 Intelligence Report, 97% of the world’s population is living in 2026. We, however, are still existing in 2025.
Hopefully, you are out celebrating the New Year with friends & family or are just now returning safely home.
Photo credit: Gelb Garanich / Reuters. A couple embraces in Kyiv, Ukraine on New Year’s Eve, 2025.
If so, grab a cup of coffee – unless you need more champagne! – as we take a 360 spin around the world highlighting & analyzing the stories impacting our country’s national security and that of our allies.
Let’s get started!
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NORTH AMERICA
What a difference a single day makes. Yesterday, President Donald Trump appeared to have fallen for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Captain Obvious hoax that his presidential palace in Valdai had been attacked by the Ukrainians.
As Mark pointed out earlier today on the Main Edition of TVP World News Tonight, Putin’s claims were nonsense. Putin was out to accomplish two things. Interfere with the real progress being made on the updated 20-point peace plan Ukraine presented to Team Trump – and to undermine Zelensky’s personal standing with Trump.
Initially it worked.
Trump said he “was very angry about it.”
Then, it became clear that there was no evidence supporting Putin’s claim save an alleged picture that the Russian Defense Ministry released showing a picture of a soldier standing near an unidentified wrecked drone.
Photo credit: Russian Defense Ministry. Purported video of a Ukrainian drone downed near Putin’s presidential palace in Valdai.
Despite Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claiming 91 drones “had been intercepted en route to Putin’s residence,” the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – according to reporting in The Wall Street Journal today – bluntly concluded “that “no attempted attack against Putin had occurred.
Trump got the message. Earlier today, on his Truth Social account, he quoted word for word, while sharing a link to it, the headline of an op-ed penned by our friends on The New York Post’s editorial board: “Putin ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace.”
Screenshot source: Donald J. Trump’s Truth Social.
If Putin reads The New York Post’s op-ed, he’s not going to like it. The editorial board – rightly! – declared that “Putin’s entire war is a lie.”
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy to the U.S., isn’t going to like it either. The board eviscerated the Russian president saying – again rightly! – that “Vladimir Putin is not an honest broker who can see reason, nor a business opportunity to be unlocked.”
Only two days before on X, Dmitriev was boasting how “Trump was “shocked and outraged that [Kyiv] tried to strike the Russian president’s state residence with drones.” Dmitriev also overplayed his hand.
He added that it was “reportedly almost immediately after the Mar-a-Lago talks [between Trump and Zelensky.]”
Our free suggestion to Dmitriev: rather than spending time wake surfing in Miami while Russia kills & injures Ukrainian kids, figure out how to up Russia’s false flag game. This attempt was pathetic.
Notwithstanding the egg on Putin & Dmitriev’s faces, as Mark emphasized during his TVP World interview today, it tells us that things aren’t going Putin’s way at the negotiating table and as a result he needed a distraction.
He’s afraid of an 800,000 post-war Ukrainian army. He fears U.S.-led Article 5-like security guarantees, especially if, as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed, that Washington is now prepared to put U.S. peacekeeping troops on the ground in Ukraine.
Ditto Zelensky making it clear – referenda or not – that it is highly likely Kyiv will not withdraw from its key defense belts in the Donbas that protect against Russian military threats against Sumy & Kharkiv in the north and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts in the central and south part of Ukraine.
Why does Putin fear this?
Because as Mark observed on TVP World, Putin still wants all of Ukraine, not just pieces of it. If a temporary peace is achieved, Putin will launch a third invasion at a time and place of his choosing. He won’t be able to do that if the 20-point peace plan gets implemented as currently revised.
For now, at least, in trying to destroy Zelensky’s standing with Trump, Putin & Dmitriev have boxed themselves into a corner. It would be funny if they were the only ones paying the price, but many Ukrainians will pay the toll too as this bloody war enters a fifth year come February 22nd, 2026.
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SOUTH AMERICA
Tensions continued to flare in Venezuela. The U.S. sanctioned four more companies, alleging their oil tankers have ties to shadow fleets transporting Venezuelan oil.
The country’s president Nicolás Maduro isn’t getting the message. Caracas is detaining U.S. citizens in an attempt to gain negotiating leverage with Trump. That has worked in the past but that was this, this is now.
Photo credit: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Agence France-Presse. USAF C-130 Hercules pictured in Puerto Rico earlier this month.
The build-up of U.S. military assets in the region continues. Trump, clearly, is preparing for a military option if Maduro tries to hang on. The increasing size and scale of the array of U.S. weapons & capabilities is far beyond now what is needed for messaging to Maduro.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports Maduro is now having to begin “shuttering [oil] wells in the Orinoco Belt.” Given the U.S. blockage, the country is running out of oil storage space. Petroleos de Venezuela SA likely will have to cut production by 25%.
Overall, that would mean a 15% cutback of the country’s “output of 1.1 million barrels [of oil] a day.”
Maduro is getting squeezed but he is not caving in for now.
In today’s most underreported – or perhaps, it is just the funniest story – of the day, an empty oil tanker fleeing the U.S. Navy is taking on a Smokey and the Bandit vibe to it. The vessel that was sailing under a false Guyana flag has now painted a Russian flag on its side.
There is no word on whether there are Coors onboard. In all likelihood, the U.S. will probably let the tanker get away.
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EUROPE
It is already 2026 in Europe as we pen this. Putin, in his customary New Year’s address, focused largely on the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. He claimed that they “have taken on the responsibility to fight for your native land, for truth and justice.”
It briefs well, except it is Putin who is sending them potentially to their deaths or to be injured in a war that remains largely static outside of a foot’s pace.
He assured them that “We believe in you and in our victory.” Meanwhile, those not charged with taking up arms in Russia partied in Moscow as if there was no war going on in Ukraine that has now injured or killed 1,207,910 of their fellow citizens and allies.
Zelensky address his people too. In direct contrast to Putin, he was honest with his citizens. He started by saying, “I would give anything in the world, if in this address, I could say that peace will also come.”
Video credit: Ukraine’s Office of the President.
He added that “Ukraine is doing everything for peace.” He noted that they are 90% there in hammering out a peace framework with their U.S. & European allies.
But, as he noted, that remaining 10% is “everything” that will “determine the fate of peace and the fate of Ukraine and Europe.”
He also made it clear while Ukraine wants peace, it will not accept peace at any price. He declared that “We want the end of the war, not the end of Ukraine.”
It was a moving speech. As good as any speech, if not better, than Winston S. Churchill, the British prime minister, gave during World War II.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, after weeks of enduring Russian drone & ballistic missile attacks, sent Putin a New Year’s greeting of their own.
Graphic credit: T.ME.DRONEBOMBER.
Kyiv launched a massive drone attack against Russian military & economic targets inside of Russia & occupied Crimea. Zelensky & his generals, clearly, wanted to make sure Putin rang in the new year just right.
Especially given the high human toll at the cost of so little territorial gain. The Institute for the Study of War’s final report for 2025 assesses that Russian “forces seized 4,831 square kilometers in Ukraine and regained roughly 473 square kilometers that Ukrainian forces had taken in Kursk Oblast in 2025.”
Used with ISW permission. Credit: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
All told, that only represents 0.8% of Ukraine. The cost to Putin? 416,570 casualties. Party on Moscow. You are blindly dancing on the graves of your sons & daughters.
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MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
Protests continue breaking out across Iran. We will have more on Iran next week. For now, here is a graphic provided to us by the ISW detailing where the protests against the regime of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are breaking out.
Used with ISW permission. Credit: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
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INDO-PACIFIC
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Once again, we are running out of room for the email version of this report. But before we close, we wanted to point out that Chinese President Xi Jinping in his New Year’s address threatened Taipei by saying “reunification with Taiwan is unstoppable.”
Washington must take note. Xi has now put his personal prestige on the line. He cannot afford to stop. For Xi now, it is Taipei or bust.
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WHAT WE ARE READING!
The Separation: Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership. Adam Entous reporting for The New York Times.
Note: We are gifting this article so that our readers & viewers can read it. It will be an eye-opening piece for many.
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Thanks for reading! We will see you tomorrow for a special New Year’s Day edition of the INTREP360 Intelligence Report. Please subscribe, comment and share. We truly appreciate your time & support!
Happy New Year!
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.