President Stubb: I’m not optimistic about a ceasefire or peace talks in Ukraine this year — maybe by February or March.
Until then, we must maximize pressure on Russia and force Putin to rethink his aim of denying Ukraine’s independence. 1/
Stubb: Ukraine needs two things: financial support, using €140-180B in frozen Russian assets as collateral to get through winter — and increased military pressure.
West must keep supplying weapons. With Putin, only the stick works, he won’t negotiate unless forced. 2/
Stubb: Sanctioning Lukoil and Rosneft was the right move — it hits Russia’s oil sector and the machine funding the war.
Ukraine now needs maximum firepower, not just Tomahawks but anything that can strike Russia’s military and defense industry. 3/
Stubb: Peace mediation requires patience and realism. I’ve focused on building security guarantees for Ukraine, exploring how a ceasefire at the contact line could start, and defining parameters for future talks.
It’s a grind — but in diplomacy, patience matters. 4/
Stubb: Zelenskyy must clear this corruption case fast, and he has already begun. War leaves no space for corruption.
Russia exploits every scandal to weaken Ukraine. I want this cleaned up so we can keep building Europe’s and America’s defense of Ukraine. 5/
Stubb: Budapest meeting cancelled because Trump and his team saw that Russia isn’t interested in a ceasefire or peace.
They saw it first in Alaska, then in Trump’s call with Putin and again when Rubio and Lavrov spoke about the agenda for a meeting. 6/
Stubb: Russia won’t come to talks voluntarily. They’ve gained 1% of Ukraine in 1,000 days while losing 5-7,000 troops a week, over a 1M killed or wounded.
They’re nowhere near Kyiv and won’t get there. What could bring them to talks? Security guarantees, the economy and land. 7/
Stubb: Nuclear use is very unlikely — China and India already pushed Putin to drop early threats. My worry is key arms-control treaties are expiring while more states can access nuclear tech.
Major powers [U.S., Russia and China] must restart nuclear-control talks. 8/
Stubb: Be Finnish — calm and firm. Russia fights a hybrid war: pushing asylum seekers over our border, damaging undersea cables and violating our airspace with drones.
Each time, we acted fast and set up NATO’s Baltic and Eastern Sentry operations and the incidents stopped. 9X
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Russia abducted Ukrainian journalist Yana Suvorova in occupied Melitopol when she was 18.
After a closed, staged trial, she was sentenced to 14 years for “terrorism” and “treason.” Her case is classified. She vanished from exchange lists, United24. 1/
Yana: “The cell is cold. Rats run around. The light is on constantly.”
Her boyfriend says her condition collapsed after transfer to Donetsk — held with girls who had attempted suicide. Psychological pressure was constant. 2/
Russia is prosecuting journalists as “terrorists” — to erase them from prisoner swaps.
By reclassifying Ukrainian media workers as terrorists, Moscow locks them out of exchanges, hides them from public view, and sentences them to decades in prison. 3/
Germany broke up a network supplying Russia’s defense industry.
Police arrested 5 suspects accused of exporting sanctioned goods to Russian military firms. The network shipped €30M worth of goods since 2022 — Reuters. 1/
German prosecutors say the group used shell companies and fake end-users inside and outside the EU to hide shipments to 24 Russian defense firms.
Raids took place in multiple cities, assets were frozen, and 5 more suspects remain at large. 2/
An asset freeze has been ordered against the equivalent value of the transactions.
Finance minister Lars Klingbeil: “Today's operations, ordered by federal prosecutors, show that we rigorously enforce the sanctions we have agreed on the EU level.” 3X
By Clausewitz’s definition, Russia has already failed on all three pillars of war: political goals (what the Kremlin sought to achieve), military (how its army actually performed), and public support — United24. 1/
Russia set maximalist political goals in 2022: subjugate Ukraine, replace its government, and force Kyiv back into Moscow’s sphere of control.
After full-scale war, none of these goals have been achieved. Ukraine remains sovereign, mobilized, and politically unified. 2/
On military means, the gap between propaganda and reality is now structural.
Russia’s most ambitious summer offensive in 2025 failed to break Ukrainian defenses.
Losses exceed U.S. casualties in World War II, while battlefield gains remain marginal and reversible. 3/
UK may move from sanctions to seizures — targeting Russia’s shadow fleet.
The Guardian: London is weighing the capture of a Russia-linked tanker, an escalatory step that could open a new front against Moscow as oil revenues fall. 1/
KSE Institute: Russia’s oil and gas revenues fell 24% in 2025, down to 22% of state income from 41% in 2022.
A maritime services ban plus tanker seizures would be very painful for the Kremlin. 2/
British defense sources confirm NATO discussions identified military options to seize “stateless” shadow fleet ships.
In Jan alone, 23 tankers using false flags transited the Channel or Baltic, many carrying Russian oil to China, India, Turkey. 3/
Jeffrey Epstein spent years trying to meet Putin, cultivated ties with Russian officials including an FSB academy grad.
Epstein once asked a Kremlin contact for help after claiming a Russian woman was blackmailing "powerful businessmen" in NYC — The WP. 1/
Putin’s name appears 1,000+ times in newly released DOJ files. He made repeated attempts from 2013-2018 to arrange a Putin meeting, often through former Norwegian PM Thorbjørn Jagland. No evidence shows it ever happened. 2/
Sergey Belyakov, a high-ranking FSB academy graduate and Russia's deputy economic development minister, maintained a close friendship with Epstein from 2014-2018. He invited Epstein to Russia's top investment forum multiple times. 3/