MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Europe is attempting to reshape the US peace plan for Ukraine, while NATO is preparing for a potential confrontation as it conducts yet another exercise near the Russian border. Meanwhile, US leader Donald Trump has announced new sanctions on Russian oil. These stories topped Tuesday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Media: Europe seeking to reshape US peace plan for Ukraine
Following Geneva consultations on a 28-point US peace plan, Washington and Kiev highlighted "substantial progress" in bringing their positions closer together and drafting a new initiative. According to media reports, as the next step, the United States and Ukraine should finalize the document before sending it to Moscow. Meanwhile, Russia has not yet seen the latest draft. In parallel, European capitals put forward their own version of a framework agreement that the State Duma views as an attempt by Brussels to reshape Washington’s proposals to serve the EU’s interests. Moscow anticipates the United States will reach out directly soon. In a conversation with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin affirmed that the US-proposed plan may serve as the basis of a future peace agreement.
It’s hard to say whether the Geneva meeting was effective, Valdai program director Oleg Barabanov told Izvestia. On the one hand, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andrey Yermak, expressed their satisfaction with the outcome and declared great progress. "At the same time, Rubio also said that the Americans are well aware of Moscow's 'red lines' as they try not to cross them. So, this looks like a compromise, and it's hard to say whether Russia will like it or not, but obviously Russia's red lines’ have at least been outlined," he said.
Any words from the lips of European politicians demonstrate an increasingly less concealed ambition to continue the war against Russia, Dmitry Novikov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, told Izvestia. According to him, even as Trump's latest plan is unlikely to suit Russia, Moscow is ready to negotiate based on it.
In his article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, political analyst Fyodor Lukyanov writes that the West is fussing over yet another US peace-keeping attempt because the proposed settlement parameters are based on reality, as US officials insist, rather than wishful thinking. And in reality, Ukraine is not capable of winning this war, and it can lose it entirely, suffering the heaviest losses on all fronts, he argues. So, the goal is to prevent any further losses and formalize the status-quo, albeit a painful one for Kiev.
Moreover, Lukyanov continued, Washington will not impose its 28-point plan on either Ukraine or Europe immediately, the more so that there is no unity in the White House itself. So, yet another round of talks will be convened, he concluded.
Izvestia: NATO seen getting ready for potential conflict as it holds yet another exercise near Russia’s border
The non-stop series of large-scale military exercises on Finnish soil in close vicinity to the Russian border indicates that NATO is preparing for a potential conflict, experts say. According to them, at the Freezing Winds 25 maneuvers, that kicked off in the Archipelago Sea and the Gulf of Finland on November 24, the alliance’s forces are now not only practicing combat cooperation in the Arctic, but they are "setting the stage for a new battleground" and are actually deploying a military contingent near the Russian border under the cover of this exercise, which comes in the wake of the Northern Strike 25-2 live fire drill. Such NATO activity along Russia’s borders is compelling Moscow to take countermeasures.
The latest exercise involves Finland’s fleet, ground and air forces, logistics command and even border patrol. According to information on the Finnish Air Force’s website, round-the-clock fighter, recon aircraft and helicopter flights will take place during the maneuvers, with a focus on practicing military operations in freezing winter temperatures. While coastal forces are mostly concentrated near the Hanko Peninsula and the Archipelago Sea, a number of warships are now carrying out missions in Estonia’s territorial waters.
"Holding such large-scale naval maneuvers in a water area where NATO has not operated before shows how aggressive the alliance’s plans are," military expert Vasily Dandykin told Izvestia. Even as Finland joined the North Atlantic Alliance quite recently, it has already held numerous joint exercises with NATO allies. Under the guise of ensuring the security of maritime communications and critical infrastructure, they actually mask a real strategic goal of cutting off all Russian communications and making the Baltic Sea a NATO one, the expert said. He also emphasized that the bloc is actually practicing the scenario of cutting off the Russian sea corridor, including the St. Petersburg - Kaliningrad sea route. "This causes discomfort to Russia, but we are closely monitoring the maneuvers and will draw a corresponding conclusion," Dandykin maintained.
The expanded intensity and geography of NATO’s maneuvers around Russia indicate that the alliance has launched strategic preparations for a potential conflict, according to military expert Alexey Leonkov. "All training grounds where NATO has held its exercises, be it in Finland, the Baltic states or Poland, are situated not far from the Russian border, a trend that has intensified since 2014. But if previously the alliance’s actions were rather demonstrative, today all those exercises, including the major Defender Europe and Steadfast drills, have the same legend and their goal is to prepare NATO for war," the expert concluded.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Trump floats new US sanctions on Russian oil
US President Donald Trump has announced new restrictions on Russian oil exports. These will be "extremely tough" sanctions, he said in an interview with Fox News.
A month ago, Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, were added to the US Treasury’s SDN list. And since January 2025, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz have been designated on instructions from former US President Joe Biden. So, next month - the latest sanctions against Lukoil come into force on December 13 - US restrictions will affect all vertically integrated Russian oil majors, except Tatneft. However, in the past few years, the Tatarstan-based oil company has accounted for no more than 7% of Russia’s oil production, so even if it is added to the SDN list, this will hardly imply severe sanctions, with the other Russian oil majors already designated.
Therefore, the US leader likely meant Russian oil buyers rather than the Russian oil industry as he touted new sanctions. The United States has been in trade talks with China and India, the two largest importers of Russian oil. And any restrictions on private or public companies from those countries will unlikely improve the United States’ negotiating positions.
Washington has already demonstrated its readiness to target key market players, and the rationale behind the push to toughen the sanctions makes blacklisting Tatneft or smaller oil companies a plausible scenario in the coming months, Daniil Tyun, who heads the department of client services at AMCH, argues. And adding export subsidiaries of Russian gas giant Gazprom or Novatek, Russia’s largest independent gas producer, to the SDN list may hurt the global market further.
Finam analyst Sergey Kaufman, too, says Gazprom and Novatek could likely be blacklisted: the two gas producers have so far continued to export natural gas to the EU and are direct rivals of US LNG producers. Novatek’s competition against US majors is an additional risk, he told Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
However, any active expansion of secondary sanctions or closer scrutiny of the implementation of the existing restrictions pose the greatest danger to Russian oil companies, Kaufman argues. Should the United States choose to pursue the goal of designating everybody in the Russian oil business, this would indeed slash Russian oil exports, even as that would require substantial administrative resources and is hard to implement technically, he specified.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Whether Russia should restore grain deal
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced plans to discuss reviving the grain deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, during the next phone call. Experts argue that the resumption of the grain deal is no longer relevant for Russia, which rerouted its grain exports long ago.
Anatoly Tikhonov, director of the Center for International Agribusiness and Food Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that he doesn’t see any sense in reviving the Black Sea grain initiative. Russia has long established its own grain export logistics, as it sells more than 70% of its grain and other foods to friendly markets and conducts transactions in national currencies, he explained.
According to Tikhonov, nor would potential restoration of the grain deal benefit the global market: as Russia has been exporting its grain unhindered, the Black Sea initiative would not affect the grain market balance anyway, except that Turkey itself may benefit from reviving the deal, for the country earned quite a lot from redirecting grain flows through its ports, the expert noted.
While Russian grain exports are not performing well this year, the non-functioning grain deal is not the reason why, Dmitry Rylko, General Director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, argued. Instead, he said, there are three other reasons for that, including the global oversupply of wheat and other grains, owing to good harvests across the EU and in Canada, Argentina and Australia, among other factors. "The second reason is ruble strengthening, with the Russian currency rising against the USD and the majority of `agrarian currencies.’ And the third reason is a major drought and quite a modest grain harvest in southern Russia, the country’s key export region," he explained.
Izvestia: Trump’s tariffs pushing EU toward a deep crisis
The European market is suffering because of Washington's aggressive economic policies. And the EU may end up reshaping its economy to serve American interests by reaching an agreement with the United States, experts warn. In November, the US and EU trade chiefs met in Brussels. The White House is ready to conclude a deal to reduce duties on steel and aluminum imports in exchange for the easing of strict digital regulation by the EU, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said following the talks. However, the EU is not ready for such a step yet, and new sanctions on Russia or finding alternative suppliers of rare earths to reduce dependence on China could become points of discussion.
According to media reports, the Europeans are demanding more favorable terms on several items, including wine and spirits, medical devices, and pasta. The EU is also seeking a 50% reduction in duties on steel and aluminum. Trump explained that imposing high tariffs specifically on these imports could revitalize and protect the American steelmaking industry, Fyodor Sidorov, a private investor and founder of the School of Practical Investment, told Izvestia. Meanwhile, maintaining high duties on steel and aluminum has severely affected European steelmakers. "Europe will need to redirect its metal exports to other markets, where it will face competition from Chinese and Turkish suppliers," the expert said.
Meanwhile, a complete ban on energy imports from Russia will slash the GDP by several percentage points, push the cost of energy-intensive industries higher, and make the EU embrace expensive American raw materials, which will actually increase the EU's energy dependence on the United States, Denis Astafyev, an entrepreneur, fund manager and founder of the SharesPro fintech platform, noted in an interview with Izvestia. Further down the road, the risk of moving production away from European countries to regions with more affordable energy may increase, he warned. As a result, the EU will get a new strategic dependence, not on Russia this time, but on the United States as a key supplier, Tural Aliyev, a junior analyst at Freedom Finance Global, told Izvestia.
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