INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
12.23.2025
December 23rd, 2025
Greetings! It is two days before Christmas and Russian President Vladimir Putin has murdered another child in Ukraine.
This time the victim was a 4-year-old girl. She died in Zhytomyr – a town 143 kilometers west of Kyiv – during a Kremlin air attack spanning the country.
Moscow fired 635 drones and 38 ballistic missiles. 621 were intercepted. Four got through killing her hours before Christas Eve.
A 76-year-old woman was also killed in Kyiv.
Photo credit: State Emergency Service of Ukraine. A house burns after being hit in a Russian air strike.
Moscow has rejected a Christmas ceasefire. Of course, Putin would. He is not a man of peace. He is a man of war.
Meanwhile, the Christmas tree pictured above its bittersweet. On the one hand, it feels like the loneliest Christmas tree in Ukraine. Yet, on the other, it stands evergreen in defiance of Putin’s war crimes.
Please, Steve Witkoff, tell us again and that young girl’s family why you don’t “regard Putin as a bad guy.” In our view, President Donald Trump’s special envoy has lost the plot. Assuming, that is, he ever had it. Putin, as a man, leader and father is as bad of a guy as it gets.
Putin’s war against the West is far bigger than just Ukraine. Today, we highlight his continued gamesmanship in Libya.
In addition, we briefly update the frontlines across the Donbas and focus as well on the potential for the Mideast to spin out of control again in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
Let’s get started!
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NORTH AMERICA
One day after Trump threatened Denmark, his new special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), claimed that no one is trying “to conquer anybody.” Denmark, for its part, said on Monday that Trump’s remarks were “completely unacceptable.”
Book this one as how not to win friends and influence people. Well, countries that is. Our read? This is just Great Power competition messaging to Russia and China. The U.S. is not going to invade Greenland. Nor should we.
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SOUTH AMERICA
Venezuela was center stage at today’s United Nations Security Council emergency meeting. Caracas requested it.
Samuel Reinaldo Moncada Acosta, Caracas’ permanent representative to the UN, told the emergency meeting that Washington’s actions were “the greatest extortion known in our history.” Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the UN countered by declaring, “The United States will do everything in its power to protect our hemisphere, our borders, and the American people.”
Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador claimed, “The acts by the US side run counter to all key norms of international law.” He also accused the U.S. of “cowboy-like conduct.”
Maybe so. That said, that’s rich coming from a man representing a country that has broken all international laws, norms, in pursuit of Putin’s cowboy-like ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine since February 24th, 2022.
Meanwhile, the buildup of U.S. forces in the Caribbean continues. C-17 cargo planes have made at least 16 trips to Puerto Rico this past week alone. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) acknowledges 15,000 troops are operating in the region.
Photo credit: Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters. U.S. Airforce HC-130 foreground & C-17 background at Roosevelt Roads naval base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico.
As is, this was already the largest buildup of U.S. military force in the region since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Yet, the Pentagon is not done.
Stay tuned.
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EUROPE
Peace in Ukraine is unlikely any time soon. When asked earlier today by Ashim Kumar on TVP World to characterize where the peace process is, Mark responded that it increasingly feels like Groundhog Day.
Washington, Moscow and Kyiv all talk of progress and constructive meetings. But the reality remains. Putin is continuing to make his maximalist demands and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not going to cede the Donbas.
Meanwhile, Russia continues with cross-border raids. Ukraine is counterattacking in Kupiansk and Pokrovsk. Moscow has likely taken Siversk after advancing only 12 kilometers over 41 months to achieve it.
It is likely your local Costco is further away from you than 12 kilometers. That demonstrates just how slowly Russia is advancing in the Donbas.
Ukraine, on the other hand, is continuing to expand its deep fight. Over the weekend, the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed two Russian Su-30 fighters stationed at the Lipetsk airfield location in western Russia. Elsewhere, in Crimea, two Su-27 military aircraft were hit at the Belbek airbase on the Crimean Peninsula. A MiG-31 was also destroyed.
Plus, as Jon noted in an interview with David Kirichenko at Forbes, Ukraine was likely behind the assassination of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Russian General Staff’s operational training directorate in Moscow.
Jon noted that, “[Ukraine is being aggressive where they can right now, and that’s in special operations.” He added that “Ukraine is trying to demonstrate to the West that despite the Kremlin’s efforts to project strength, Russia is vulnerable – a hollow force that cannot protect its own generals, even in Moscow, or the assets that generate revenue to fund the war.”
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MIDDLE EAST
Trump’s December 31st deadline for Hezbollah to withdraw north to the Blue Line in southern Lebanon is fast approaching. This remains an underreported story – so it is again our most underreported story of the day.
Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s Prime Minister, claimed on Saturday that the disarmament of Hezbollah “south of the Litani River is only days away from completion.” Israel isn’t buying it. Avigdor Liberman, the head of the Israeli Yisrael Beiteinu Party, countered, saying “This is simply nonsense, just fiction. [We’re] not even close to dismantling Hezbollah’s arsenal, not even in Southern Lebanon.”
As Mark warned over the weekend on Al Qahera News in Cairo, Egypt, there is a very real risk that both Lebanon and Gaza become hot wars again. Hamas and Israel are struggling to get to Phase II of the October peace deal signed in Sharm El-Sheikh.
Used with ISW permission. Credit: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
And, as The Institute for the Study of War warns, Iran is rapidly reconstituting its ballistic missile program. Why? So that Tehran can “reestablish deterrence against Israel.” Jerusalem, undoubtedly, sees that as an unacceptable emerging kinetic threat.
All three are on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s list to discuss when the two leaders meet on December 29that Mar-a-Lago. NBC is reporting that Israel wants approval to consider new strikes against Iran.
***
AFRICA
Muhammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad, the chief of the general staff of Libya’s National Army, was killed in an air crash in Turkey. Al-Haddad earlier today met with his Turkish counterpart Selcuk Bayraktaroglu and Turkey’s Defense Minister Yasar Gular in Ankara.
Photo credit: Turkish Defense Ministry. Al-Haddad, left, shakes hands with Bayraktaroglu.
Libya has been geographically divided since 2014 and in the aftermath of a second civil war that lasted until October 2020. The Government of National Unity (GNU) controls Tripoli while the Libyan National Army rule the heart of Libya, including the Mediterranean port cities of Benghazi and Tobruk.
The southern part of Libya is dominated by unaffiliated tribes.
Map credit: Aljazeera.
Turkey supports the GNU and maintains a military base at Misrata (see map above). The LNA is backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Russia.
The United Nations-recognized GNU is led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh while the LNA is controlled by the 82-year-old Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar. We have long warned about Haftar’s growing ties with Moscow.
Tobruk in eastern Libya, in conjunction with the Russian naval base in Tartus, Syria, is a key logistics node in supplying Russian paramilitary forces operating across the Sahel in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Moscow is seeking to acquire military port facilities in Tobruk. Earlier, in May, Putin met with Haftar at the Kremlin.
Photo credit: The Kremlin. Hafter, left. Putin, right. From their May meeting in Moscow.
Was Al-Haddad’s death accidental? Or given Libya’s divide and Putin’s machinations in Tobruk, is something more nefarious at play?
Either way, the plot is thickening. Yesterday, Pakistan announced that it signed “a deal worth over $4bn to sell military equipment, including warplanes jointly built with China, to [Haftar]. Note Beijing’s involvement.
The Axis of Evil continues playing power games in North and Sub-Saharan while the U.S. – under Team Trump’s new National Security Strategy – de-prioritizes the continent. The fallouts and power vacuums we warned about in our analysis of the NSS are compounding.
The U.S. Sixth Fleet operating from Naples, Italy doesn’t need an even stronger Russian proxy staring at it from Tobruk. Neither does the U.S. Fifth Fleet operating from Bahrain that is charged with safeguarding the Suez Canal, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf and parts of the Indian Ocean.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping keep expanding the geo-strategic map as Team Trump shrinks it. As we questioned in our analysis, we won the Cold War only to give it all back? None of this is good.
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INDO-PACIFIC
The Defense Department released its annual report to Congress late today on the Military and Security Developments involving the People’s Republic of China.
Stay tuned. We will be analyzing this report in an upcoming edition of the INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT. The annual report comes on the heels of the U.S. announcing an $11.1 billion arms deal last week.
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WHAT WE ARE READING!
Supreme Court blocks National Guard deployment to Chicago in defeat for Trump. Mark Berman and Julian Mark reporting for The Washington Post.
Ukraine faces Christmas Eve power cuts after massive Russian attack. Stanisław Kaleta reporting for TVP World.
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Don’t miss our special Christmas Day column in The Hill at 7AM ET. We will be updating our readers on Daryna and Ivan, the young Ukrainian children we have been interviewing since the beginning of the war. Here’s a sneak preview of a picture they sent!
Photo credit: Kateryna. Ivan, 13, background, Daryna 4, foreground.
Thanks for reading! We will see you tomorrow. Please subscribe, comment and 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.