Geopolitical Dynamics Analysis

ISW has highlighted "America’s stark choice in UKR and the cost of letting RUS win". “The current US debate about providing additional military assistance to UKR is based in part on the assumption that the war will remain stalemated regardless of US actions. That assumption is false. The RUS is breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore maneuver to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of US military assistance to UKR. UKR cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defense and artillery that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale. [...] The RUS are pressing their advantage and advancing slowly but steadily on several sectors of the front. [...]. RUS advances will accelerate absent urgent American action. [...] Further delaying or stopping [US] military assistance will lead to dramatic RUS gains later in 2024 and 2025 and, ultimately, to victory. The [US] thus has only two real choices today. It can quickly resume providing military aid [...]. Or it can let the RUS defeat the UKR military and drive toward the NATO borders from the Black Sea to central Poland. There is no third option. The risks of a Russian attack against NATO in the near future would rise dramatically if the US allows Russia to defeat Ukraine now, and the challenge of defending the Baltic States in particular could become almost insurmountable. These long-term risks and costs far outweigh the short-term price of resuming assistance to Ukraine." ME: There can be no security and stability in Europe without a free, independent and complete UKR. I have recently outlined the costs of a Russian victory in the report "Why Russia Cannot be Allowed to Win Against Ukraine". The consequences would be devastating. NATO’s border with Russia will increase from today’s 2,553 to 5,887 kilometers. Russian anti-access/area denial capabilities will move nearly 900 km closer to European capitals, enabling the Kremlin to control most of the Black Sea and much of Northern, Eastern and Central Europe. Europe will lose the strongest and most battle-hardened army on the continent and RUS will gain large parts of it, coercing and turning it for use against European states in a relatively short space of time. A RUS victory will be perceived as a Western and NATO defeat. NATO might not be able to survive due to the fundamental discord within the Alliance. It will be seen as having lost its ability to deter crises, conflicts and war. In the words of the Finnish DefMin: “There is a war going on in UKR for the future of the whole of Europe”. I will, therefore, like to strengthen ISWs assessment: UKR is presently defending NATO in Europe. Support to UKR, therefore, equals support to European security. The US can either resume its support of its allies and partners according to the Washington Treaty or declare NATO dissolved. There is no third option. 

🇷🇺 Deep dive into the components of hybrid threats: the criminality +fear mix at the heart of the hybrid warfare waged against Europe 🇪🇺 By GLOBSEC & International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (2025). The report identifies a crime–terror–information nexus, where illicit networks, coercive tactics, and influence ops are deliberately intertwined. It highlights how important info ops are to bring in the “denial” element. Take aways : 🔹Russia’s hybrid operations increasingly rely on criminal structures to project power, generate instability & maintain deniability. 🔹 Integrated hybrid architecture The nexus is reflects a deliberate state design combining: – Organised crime (smuggling, money laundering, trafficking, contract killings); – Terrorist or paramilitary methods (sabotage, targeted violence, coercion); – Information operations (disinformation, intimidation, perception management). These vectors operate in parallel to overwhelm institutional defences and blur the boundary between internal security, intelligence, and defence domains. 🔹 Use of criminal intermediaries Criminal groups and illicit facilitators serve as proxies for covert action. They provide logistics, financing, or access, while enabling plausible deniability for the Russian state. This networked approach decentralises risk while preserving strategic control through Russian intelligence services. 🔹 Information and cognitive effects The information dimension functions as an amplifier for physical or financial disruption. Each operation is supported by a narrative layer — false attribution, manipulated leaks, coordinated online amplification — intended to create confusion and distrust in European publics and institutions. These techniques belong to the domain of cognitive warfare, seeking to degrade perception, cohesion, and decision-making rather than infrastructure. 🔹 Institutional stress and legal asymmetry European states face cross-domain operations that sit at the intersection of criminal law, counter-terrorism, and national security. Legal and institutional silos hinder coherent responses. Existing mechanisms for attribution, evidence collection, and prosecution are poorly adapted to state-directed hybrid criminality. ➡️ Soviet active measures tactics multiplied by 1️⃣ Tech acceleration – cybercrime, digital finance, social platforms amplifying reach and speed. 2️⃣ Systemic integration – criminal, informational& coercive tools coordinated under a single strategic logic. 3️⃣ Expanded targeting – Europe is engaged across multiple vectors simultaneously: financial, informational, and cognitive. Russia’s crime–terror nexus is not a parallel phenomenon but a core component of state strategy, designed to exploit Europe’s openness, legal fragmentation, and trust-based institutions. ➡️persistent, low-visibility confrontation below the threshold of war.

𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐎𝐟𝐟 𝐔𝐤𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞'𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐜𝐤 – 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐳𝐞 𝐏𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧 ▪️ As Boris Johnson sharply frames it, the so-called Ukraine peace proposals now circulating are nothing short of a strategic capitulation. Putin is being offered recognition of Crimea, lifted sanctions, a veto over Ukraine’s NATO future, and economic concessions — in return for merely pausing his war machine. 🔍 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: Russia remains militarily overstretched, struggling to capture small towns like Pokrovsk. Ukraine, despite enormous sacrifices, has not been defeated, and patriotic will remains strong. Putin is exploiting Western fatigue and fear, not battlefield success. ▪️ 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧’𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐥: ⚡ 𝐍𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of conquered Ukrainian territory — not Crimea, not the Donbas. ⚡ 𝐀 𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 only, with Ukrainian sovereignty intact. ⚡ 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐠-𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦, 𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 guarantees: funding, weapons, and an explicit path to NATO if Russia attacks again. ⚡ 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 to economically crush Putin’s oil and gas revenues if he refuses. ▪️ 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬: Putin is testing Western weakness — not through force of arms, but through strategic psychology. 𝐅𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐜𝐭 decisively now ensures a third Russian invasion later. Real leverage — sanctions, frozen Russian assets, binding security guarantees — must be deployed immediately. ▪️ 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬: ⚠️ Ending the war on Putin’s terms would not bring peace. It would bring a pause, followed by a deadlier war. ⚠️ Ukraine's survival as a sovereign nation depends on bold Western commitment now — not future promises. ⚠️ Europe must stop outsourcing responsibility to Washington and back sanctions, frozen asset seizures, and accelerated defense investments. #Ukraine #Russia #Geopolitics #Defense #SecurityPolicy #Leadership #NATO #StandWithUkraine

Not only has Ukraine lacked negotiation leverage, but Russia has also been successful in promoting, to audiences around the world, its land-for-peace approach to ending this round of the war. As Ukrainian counteroffensives after 2022 largely failed and the Russian war machine slowly but steadily took more territory in Ukraine’s east, another Minsk-type deal limiting Ukrainian territorial integrity and political sovereignty seemed to loom on the horizon. Kyiv has not only changed the military narrative on the ground but may also be trying to change the narrative on negotiations—from a “land for peace” deal to a “land for land” deal. This puts Putin in a bind: Loss of control over parts of Russia proper is an enormous embarrassment for the Kremlin. But since their illegal annexation by Russia, the Ukrainian territories Putin seeks to keep are also part of the state territory he is obliged to defend. That said, in terms of Russian elite and popular perception, the restoration of Russia’s legitimate state territory will take precedence over continued occupation of recently conquered domains—especially if a land swap opens an avenue to the end of Western sanctions. In a way, the new Ukrainian strategy may provide an opening for doves in the Russian leadership—assuming they exist and have any influence over Putin—to argue that the annexations should be reversed in order to restore Russia’s territorial integrity. As long as Ukraine can hold on to its captured territories in Russia, there will a strong pressure on Putin to return them under Moscow’s control. None of this, however, changes the most fundamental problem with a negotiated outcome: the fact that Russia has ignored just about every agreement it has signed with Ukraine. But for Ukrainians and their Western supporters hoping for an end to the war, some intriguing possibilities may soon be on the table. https://lnkd.in/dUBKTjue Foreign Policy

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘀 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 Over the past eight years building and advising cannabis businesses internationally, one truth has stood out: geopolitics plays a larger role in the medical cannabis industry than many realise, and ignoring it can cost you everything. This is not just about regulatory paperwork or setting up farms. It is about understanding that the right to operate can be switched off overnight by a ministerial change, a policy reversal, or an external pressure that no business plan can predict. In my work in Colombia, we built a state-of-the-art facility, fully licensed, audited, and staffed with brilliant local teams. Yet despite doing everything 'by the book', a shifting political tide changed the environment drastically. It was not about our product quality or compliance, it was about geopolitics. Why is this so crucial? First, regulatory environments are politically driven. The mood of governments dictates whether a market is accessible or hostile. One administration may be supportive; the next may bow to populism or outdated narratives. Second, international trade barriers persist. While medical cannabis is legal in many jurisdictions internally, exporting it remains tangled in treaties and diplomatic caution. Third, supply chains are vulnerable. A promising project can be shattered by instability, regulatory delays, or shifting foreign relations. Fourth, public perception influences political action. Despite growing evidence of efficacy, cannabis still carries stigma in many parts of the world. Politicians act in response to societal fears, not always scientific facts. How to manage this? From experience, the best strategies are:  • Diversify operations across jurisdictions to avoid overexposure.  • Monitor political climates. Not just regulations, but who is rising and falling in government.  • Work with trusted local partners who understand the unwritten rules.  • Maintain the highest compliance standards, even when shortcuts are tempting.  • Hold intellectual property and core assets in stable jurisdictions.  • Insure where you can, and have a risk plan for sudden changes.  • Invest in local communities authentically, goodwill provides protection beyond legal contracts. Medical cannabis is not just a health sector opportunity. It is a deeply political endeavour that demands rigour, patience, and foresight. Those who build strong foundations, respect the geopolitical landscape, and stay agile will thrive. Those who underestimate it risk losing not just their investment, but years of work. #MedicalCannabis #Geopolitics #InternationalBusiness #CannabisIndustry #RiskManagement #MedicalCannabisLeadership #GlobalMarkets #PoliticalRisk #CannabisInvestment #CannabisBusiness

When geopolitics changes supply chains, Transfer Pricing cannot remain static. Conflicts, sanctions, and geopolitical shifts are forcing businesses to rethink sourcing, manufacturing hubs, and distribution models. But one function that often reacts late is Transfer Pricing. When companies re-source suppliers, nearshore operations, or create new regional hubs, the functional, asset and risk (FAR) profile of group entities inevitably changes - and so should the TP policy. Tax team should work together with business teams and revisit • Value chain maps - refresh them to reflect the new operating reality • FAR analysis - document how functions, assets, and risks have shifted • Commercial drivers - clearly capture why the restructuring happened (cost, resilience, regulatory risk, logistics etc.) • Intercompany arrangements - ensure they reflect the revised model Too often, TP documentation continues to reflect yesterday’s supply chain, while the business has already moved on. In a world of rapid geopolitical shifts, tax authorities will increasingly test whether profits are aligned with where value is actually created. As supply chains evolve, tax and transfer pricing policies must evolve with them. #TransferPricing #GlobalTax #SupplyChain #InternationalTax #BusinessStrategy

My latest ISW essay "Denying Russia’s Only Strategy for Success.” https://lnkd.in/emB9xUG6. Key points: - Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West - and will likely lose - if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin. The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. - The notion that the war is unwinnable because of Russia’s dominance is a Russian information operation, which gives us a glimpse of the Kremlin’s real strategy and only real hope of success. The Kremlin must get the US to the sidelines, allowing Russia to fight Ukraine in isolation and then proceed to Moscow’s next targets, which Russia will also seek to isolate. The Russian strategy that matters most, therefore, is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world. - Those whose perspective aligns with the Kremlin’s are not ipso facto Russian dupes. The Kremlin links genuine sentiment and even some legitimate arguments to Russia’s interests in public debate. The Kremlin is also an equal opportunity manipulator. It targets the full spectrum of those making or informing decisions. It partially succeeds on every side of the political spectrum. - The Kremlin’s principal effort is to force the US to accept and reason from Russian premises to decisions that advance Russia’s interests, not ours. The Kremlin is not arguing with us. It is trying to enforce assertions about the Kremlin-generated alternative reality as the basis for our own discussions, and then allow us to reason to conclusions pre-determined by the Kremlin – which may be logical but is certainly not rational, since it is divorced from actual reality and from our interests. - Soviet mathematician Lefebvre defined this process as “reflexive control”– a way of transmitting bases for decision making to an opponent so that they freely come to a pre-determined decision. The Russian goal is to have us freely reason to a conclusion that Russia’s prevailing in Ukraine is inevitable and that we must stay on the sidelines. - The US has the power to deny Russia its only strategy for success. The US has made many sound choices regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine. The key successes achieved by Ukraine and its partners have resulted from strategic clarity. Lost opportunities have resulted from the West’s failure to connect ground truths to our interests quickly enough to act. Fortunately, the US faces an easier task in overcoming the Kremlin's manipulations than Russia does in closing the massive gap between Russia's war aims and its capabilities.  - The US must defeat Russia’s efforts to alter American decision-making for reasons that transcend Ukraine. For the US to deter, win, or help win any future war, US decisions must be timely, connected to our interests, and ground truth, but above all – these decisions must be ours.

Russia appears to be thinning its air defences in the High North. I discussed what this may reveal about Moscow’s growing resource constraints with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Several air defence systems deployed in the Russian High North, home to some of the country's most sensitive military bases, operational areas and critical infrastructure, have vanished from their positions - likely redeployed further south. Their absence points to a growing mismatch between the assets Russia must protect and the launchers, interceptors and trained personnel it has available. Ukrainian strikes on air defence batteries have forced Moscow to backfill losses by drawing systems from lower-threat regions, as production cannot keep pace with attrition. The redeployment fits a broader pattern: over the past four years, transfers to the front have hollowed out Russia's ground-force posture on the Kola Peninsula. None of this means the Kremlin considers the High North strategically unimportant, or that it expects the reduced posture to become permanent. Rather, it suggests Russia does not anticipate an imminent large-scale attack in the region and judges that it can thin its defences there without incurring unacceptable risk. The central questions are how long Russia will be forced to accept thinner air defence coverage in the north, and how rapidly it can replace expended interceptors and systems once the war's intensity declines. Equally important is whether the eventual architecture will see the same batteries return to the same concentrated sites, or whether it will produce a more dispersed, layered posture, shaped by the war's demonstration that fixed positions are acutely vulnerable to drones and saturation attacks. https://lnkd.in/eRiQTf5E

Intelligence agencies and the FBI, DOJ and CISA have revealed that unit 29155 of Russia’s GRU—a unit responsible for coup attempts, assassinations, and bombings—is now engaged in brazen hacking operations with targets across the world, including in Ukraine and the US. A broad group of Western government agencies from countries including the US, the UK, Ukraine, Australia, Canada, and five European countries on Thursday revealed that a hacker group that has launched multiple hacking operations targeting Ukraine, the US, and other countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America is in fact part of the GRU's Unit 29155, the division of the spy agency known for its brazen acts of physical sabotage and politically motivated murder. That unit has been tied in the past, for instance, to the attempted poisoning of GRU defector Sergei Skripal with the Novichok nerve agent in the UK, which led to the death of two bystanders, as well as another assassination plot in Bulgaria, the explosion of an arms depot in the Czech Republic, and a failed coup attempt in Montenegro. Now that infamous section of the GRU appears to have developed its own active team of cyber warfare operators. Since 2022, GRU Unit 29155's more recently recruited hackers have taken the lead on cyber operations, including with the data-destroying wiper malware known as Whispergate, which hit at least two dozen Ukrainian organizations on the eve of Russia's February 2022 invasion, as well as the defacement of Ukrainian government websites and the theft and leak of information from them under a fake “hacktivist” persona known as Free Civilian. "Special forces don’t normally set up a cyber unit that mirrors their physical activities,” one official tells WIRED. “This is a heavily physical operating unit, tasked with the more gruesome acts that the GRU is involved. I find it very surprising that this unit that does very hands-on stuff is now doing cyber things from behind a keyboard.” https://lnkd.in/ehvpRzeJ

Opinion piece by the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, Oleksandr Lytvynenko, on the signing of the Agreement on Security Co-operation between Ukraine and Britain on January 12th and the stakes for global order.   “Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, hopes that victory over Ukraine will help him regain control over the former Soviet republics on the principles of Russian imperialism that both preceded and have followed the communist era. The Kremlin understands that if Ukraine falls, it will be easier to reclaim other former Soviet republics. If Ukraine stands, it is a matter of time before Russia loses influence over the South Caucasus and Central Asia.”   “He believes that if the West, and above all the United States, suffers a crushing defeat in Ukraine—a second such humiliation in just a few years after the disorderly exit from Afghanistan—it will rapidly lose global influence.”   “Over the past two years Moscow has created a coalition whose members include North Korea and Iran, as well as a number of less overtly active participants from the global south which hope to benefit from rising geopolitical tensions. This coalition is largely informal, but its impact is keenly felt: it provides political and material support for Russian aggression, supplying artillery shells, drones and other military hardware and technology. Beyond the military realm, it devotes much energy to economic, cyber and information warfare and other subversive actions. Its goal is to destabilise the global order.”   “At the same time, if Russia fails to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, its global goals will be significantly undermined. Strengthening Ukraine’s defence and security capabilities and ensuring the resilience of society and the state is the easiest and cheapest way for the West to stop Russia and other revisionist states.”   “The agreement between Ukraine and Britain could prove much more significant. It is the first of its kind to touch the core of the former Russian empire; Mr Putin considers Ukraine to be an integral part of “historical” Russia. It is the first between Ukraine and a major power which enshrines emerging geopolitical reality in a legal agreement. … The deal signed on January 12th can pave the way for similar pacts with other Western countries. Eleven of them are at various stages of negotiating such agreements with Ukraine.”   “By signing the security agreement, Britain has taken a step in deterring the Russians. When others follow suit, their combined efforts will have a big impact on Russia’s war of aggression and on its future ambitions.” David V. Gioe, Ph.D. Jill Goldenziel Dr. Joanna Siekiera Irregular Warfare Initiative Doug Livermore Dan Rice 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 #diplomacy #ukraine #ukrainewar #nato #unitedkingdom #greatpowercompetition #china #northkorea