Weekly Significant Activity Report - September 27, 2025
Analysis of Russia-Ukraine war developments, China-Russia military cooperation, Xi's Xinjiang visit, Iran sanctions, and North Korea diplomacy (Sept 20-27, 2025).
This week’s analysis highlights some of the most significant news concerning America’s adversaries between September 20, 2025 - September 27, 2025.
Summary:
Russia deals with increasing pressure from Trump and Ukrainian strikes as it tries to achieve a military breakthrough in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and a political breakthrough in this week’s Moldovan elections.
New reports illuminate the extent of China’s assistance for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Russia’s reciprocal support for Chinese preparations to seize Taiwan.
Xi Jinping skipped the UN General Assembly this week to visit Xinjiang and highlight China’s achievements in internal security and economic development.
Russia and China have stepped up efforts to economically support Iran even as an attempt to stop the snapback of sanctions failed.
North Korea signals a new openness to dialogue with the US—so long as its nuclear arsenal is accepted.
1. REELING FROM ANOTHER TRUMP PIVOT AND STRIKES ON ITS ENERGY EXPORTS, RUSSIA PREPARES FOR BREAKTHROUGH ASSAULT IN DONBAS AND POLITICAL COMEBACK IN MOLDOVA
Kremlin Downplays Antagonism by President Trump
This week Russian officials and media figures offer a range of different reactions to US President Donald Trump’s denunciations of Russia as a “paper tiger,” his suggestions that the country was on track to being defeated by Ukraine, and his encouragement of European countries to shoot down Russian aircraft violating their territory. The predominant response from the Kremlin however, was to downplay the remarks and to deflect anger toward Ukraine and Europe for suggesting downing Russian aircraft.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov suggested that Trump was being deceived by his most recent discussion with Volodymyr Zelensky.
“As far as we understand, President Trump’s statements were made after communicating with Zelensky and, apparently, under the influence of a vision set out by Zelensky. This vision contrasts sharply with our understanding of the current state of affairs.” - Dmitri Peskov, September 24
Ukraine Ups Strikes on Russian Oil Refineries and Terminals
Ukraine added to its ongoing campaign of strikes on Russia’s energy sector, targeting the following facilities this week:
September 20 - Saratov & Novokuybyshevsk oil refineries
September 22 - Astrakhan Gas Processing Plant
September 24 - Sea drone attacks on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium oil terminal in Novorossiysk, Tuapse oil terminal in Krasnodar
September 24 - Neftekhim Salavat Petro-chemical Complex
September 24 - Bryansk & Samara Oil Distribution Sites
September 24 - Zenzevatka and Kuzmichi-1 oil pumping stations, which service the Kuibyshev–Tikhoretsk pipeline
September 25 - Afipsky Oil Refinery
September 27 - Chuvashia Pumping Station
Russia Concentrating Forces for Two Major Offensives
Several reports by Western and Ukrainian officials suggest that Russia is redeploying tens of thousands of soldiers for a major offensive in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The offensive will attempt a breakthrough in Donetsk oblast around the Ukrainian “fortress cities” of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Pokrovsk which have blocked Russia’s advance to the Dnipro River.
Moldova Warns of Massive Russian Effort to Disrupt Parliamentary Elections
On September 22, Moldovan President Maia Sandu delivered a national address warning that Russia has committed vast sums of money to influence this year’s parliamentary election on September 28. The money, channeled through a variety of intermediaries, most notably exiled pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor, has been directed toward crowdsourcing disinformation as well as organizing fake polling and protests.
This week Moldovan authorities disrupted one such plot aimed at using violent protests to trigger social disorder before the election, detaining 74 individuals—including suspects who had allegedly received paramilitary training in Serbia.
Takeaways:
While some Russian officials have suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin has come to believe that President Trump wants to avoid getting the US further involved in the Ukraine war, Trump’s remarks will nonetheless raise alarms in the Kremlin.
The Russian war effort is at a critical juncture. As noted in this week’s special Situation Report - “Russia’s Economic Resilience is Cracking Under Prolonged Stress”, the Russian economy is facing mounting headwinds that will greatly undermine Russia’s ability to sustain its combat operations at its current pace. The Russian military needs to make a breakthrough in Ukraine’s defensive lines in Donetsk in order to gain a definitive upper hand on the battlefield and in negotiations to end the war on the minimum terms acceptable to Moscow. To do that the Kremlin is putting all its chips on the table to irreversibly alter the battlefield situation.
Sustained Western support for Ukraine at this critical juncture could prove decisive in preventing Russian military success. Even indirect signals of Trump administration backing for Ukraine and Europe complicate Moscow’s calculus and raise the stakes for achieving a war-altering breakthrough. The window to make such a breakthrough appears to be narrowing as a growing number of indicators suggest that Russia’s defense industrial capacity has passed its peak.
An investigation released by Novaya Gazeta Europe this week documented a steady decline in both hiring rates and salaries across Russia’s defense sector throughout 2025, returning to pre-war levels. This trend indicates that Russia’s once booming military industry is losing momentum and may not be able to sustain future offensives with the same amount of ammunition and equipment enjoyed now.
Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s oil refining and petro-chemical production present another major threat to the Kremlin’s ability to sustain the war. An analysis by the Financial Times has found that Ukraine struck 16 of Russia’s 38 oil refineries with long-range drones and missiles in the past two months. These strikes affected as much as 1 million barrels per day of oil refining capacity, and reduced Russia’s oil exports to its lowest level in five years. This strategic bombing campaign is simultaneously degrading Russia’s refined oil exports which have been a vital source of state revenue, while causing increasingly widespread gasoline shortages that threaten to undermine public confidence in the direction of the war effort.
A compilation of clips of Crimean fuel stations experiencing gas shortages on September 24. Source: Exilenova+ (@exilenova_plus) on Telegram
The Kremlin is also trying to derive strategic advantage in Moldova’s elections through a win for the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc, against President Maia Sandu’s pro-European ruling party Action and Solidarity. A tilting of the Moldovan parliament away from Europe would upend the security of Ukraine’s western flank, and undermine future expansion of the European Union.
Russia already maintains a small military garrison of 1,500 troops in Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria, that sits near Ukraine’s vital western port of Odesa—a city Moscow has long sought to capture. But Russian troops in Transnistria are isolated and unable to be incorporated into Russia’s war effort so long as Transnistria remains at odds with a Western-oriented government in Chișinău. While a true flip of Moldova against Ukraine under even the most overtly pro-Russian government is unlikely, a Moscow-friendly Moldovan government would pull away from the European Union’s support to Ukraine. In a worst case scenario, a sympathetic government could turn a blind eye to Russian efforts to turn Transnistria into a base of operations for destabilizing the Western regions of Ukraine through sabotage. Such a turn would further divide the attention of Ukrainian security forces and put pressure on Ukraine to pull troops and intelligence assets from the east to perform border security in the west. It could lead Ukraine’s European supporters to conclude that Ukraine risks losing control of Odesa over the long-term if the war continues, and lead to pressure on Kyiv to settle the war on terms favorable to Russia.
Russia will be more successful in influencing this kind of outcome if Europe feels abandoned by an isolationist America. The Kremlin will therefore carefully consider responses to any statements by Trump suggesting continued support for Ukraine and Europe, hoping the US President will eventually change positions again if not antagonized.
2. NEW REPORTS HIGHLIGHT SINO-RUSSIAN MILITARY COOPERATION
Russia Helping China Prepare for War with Taiwan
Hacked documents analyzed by the Washington Post this week found that Russia is providing extensive technical and military assistance to prepare the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for expeditionary operations in Taiwan. This cooperation includes training and equipment for Chinese paratrooper units based on lessons learned from Ukraine as well as advanced command and control systems for coordinating complex airborne operations.
Chinese Experts Advise Russian Arms Makers on Drones
Reporting by Reuters this week revealed that Chinese drone experts have visited sanctioned Russian state-owned defense company IEMZ Kupol at least six times over the past year to provide technical guidance on drone manufacturing. IEMZ Kupol also received shipments of various attack and reconnaissance drones from Chinese manufacturer Sichuan AEE Aviation Technology during the same time period. This latest evidence of China-Russia cooperation builds on previous Reuters reporting from September 2024, which found that IEMZ Kupol developed the Garpiya-3 attack drone (a variant of the Iranian Shahed-136 drone) with assistance from Chinese specialists.
Takeaways:
While China claims neutrality in Russia’s war in Ukraine, China has not only provided Russia with a vital economic lifeline for sustaining its war effort, but has also supplied Russia with dual use technology that it has used for arming its military. China’s support with drone production is essential for the Russian military as drones are now the most effective weapon employed in the war, accounting for the majority of casualties sustained by both sides. China’s assistance developing the Garpiya-3 drone is particularly egregious as Russia routinely uses the drones to attack civilian targets in mass air attacks on Ukrainian cities.
This assistance explains Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s public rebuke of China before the UN Security Council this week.
“China is also represented here. A powerful nation on which Russia now depends completely. If China truly wanted this war to stop, it could compel Moscow to end the invasion. Without China, Putin’s Russia is nothing. Yet too often, China stays silent and distant instead of active for peace.” - Volodymyr Zelensky, September 24
Russia has less to offer China, beyond continuing its war effort to keep the US distracted from the Indo-Pacific—an objective Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi explicitly acknowledged to stunned European leaders in July. China already possesses its own versions of the equipment and training Russia is purported to be offering it. It is also not clear what valuable insights Russia has to share with China on airborne expeditionary operations. Russia’s only major air assault of the war, at Hostomel’s Antonov airfield between February and March 2022 ended in failure, and wiped out many of Russia’s most elite troops.
Mick Ryan provides the most compelling argument for this exchange, suggesting that China may be interested in the systems and knowledge that Russia possesses as a way of assessing gaps in its own capabilities and know-how.
3. XI SKIPS UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY FOR VISIT TO XINJIANG
As world leaders gathered this week in New York for the United Nations General Assembly and 80th anniversary of the founding of the organization, Xi Jinping remained in China to celebrate a different milestone: the 70th anniversary of Xinjiang’s incorporation into the People’s Republic of China. There, Xi attended a celebration put on by local leaders and members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, where officials touted the progress made in developing the region and promoting ethnic and religious harmony.
Takeaways:
The visit highlights Xi’s signature initiative to “harmonize” Xinjiang after periods of unrest in the region culminated in multiple suicide terrorist attacks by Islamist separatists in 2014. One of the suicide bombings occurred on April 30, 2014 at the Urumqi South Railway Station during a visit by Xi to the region. Following that attack, and a subsequent and more deadly attack on May 22, Xi decreed a “Strike Hard Against Violent Extremism” campaign to combat terrorism in the region. The result has been a decade long operation to subordinate all aspects of society and individual private life in the region to the needs of political stability.
Since 2014, Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang have been subjected to ubiquitous surveillance, including by hundreds of thousands of state cadres who moved into Uyghur homes to monitor household activities, along with a million arrests, widespread forced labor and torture, and an unknown number of executions, and forced sterilizations.
Xi visited Xinjiang next in 2022, eight years after the initiation of the Strike Hard campaign. The 2022 visit, meant to highlight the Chinese efforts to stabilize and develop the region was clouded by a pending UN report on China’s human rights violations in the region, as well as China’s ongoing challenges managing the Covid-19 pandemic.1 This current trip has presented Xi an opportunity to rewrite the record that was missed in 2022.
The value proposition for Chinese-style governance that Xi is promoting has inadvertently been bolstered by the US’s recent decision to step back from its traditional role of supporting individual human rights and international law. This has provided Xi with an opening to highlight China’s achievements in fostering social stability and economic development with little pushback on the immense human costs involved. More broadly, it has given China an opportunity to sell the world on an alternative to the messy and “hypocritical” leadership of the West, and to undercut self-determination and individual liberty as values worth defending in other places like Taiwan and Ukraine.
The carefully orchestrated tranquility during Xi’s visit to Xinjiang and his previous visit to Tibet in August advertise Beijing’s value as a security partner by showcasing the effectiveness of its digital surveillance technology. This approach may appeal to many countries seeking assistance with internal security challenges such as crime, insurgency, and political instability. Exporting technology and know-how for internal security provides China an avenue for competing with the US on global security cooperation, a key means of shaping international order. The US alliance system focuses primarily on external security threats, and has had a mixed record supporting partners with stability operations. China has featured these efforts as part of its Global Security Initiative, one of four major initiatives China has developed as an alternative framework for international cooperation.
China is already actively exporting elements of its internal surveillance technology. A September leak of over 100,000 internal documents from Geedge Networks (a firm involved in China’s Great Firewall censorship system) illuminated the scope of China’s current exports of digital surveillance technology and plans for expansion. The leaked documents revealed the company’s operations across Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar, and plans to expand into other Belt and Road Initiative countries. The hiring of Spanish and French-speaking technicians suggests further expansion will focus on Latin America and Francophone Africa. Countries in both regions have already adopted other elements of China’s digital surveillance technology such as Huawei’s “Safe Cities” Solutions.
The expanding reach of China’s digital surveillance is particularly concerning as the documents revealed that Geedge’s activities extended far beyond censorship and into tracking international media and human rights organizations. The company actively monitored Amnesty International, as well as prominent Western news outlets including Austria’s Der Standard and Canada’s The Globe and Mail. This is the latest evidence to suggest that China’s Global Security Initiative serves as a vehicle for not only gaining influence in partner countries and supporting authoritarian governance, but also for expanding Beijing’s ability to police critical voices worldwide.
4. RUSSIA AND CHINA FAIL TO STOP RETURN OF IRAN SANCTIONS, BUT ARE BOLSTERING THEIR ASSISTANCE TO THE COUNTRY
Final Bid to Delay Snapback of Sanctions Fails
On Friday, September 26, a resolution by Russia and China to the UN Security Council to postpone the return of UN mandated sanctions on Iran failed to pass. The vote was the final opportunity for Iran and its allies to stop the reimposition of sanctions on September 27, after the European signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—France, Germany, and the UK—initiated the snapback mechanism of the deal at the end of August. The three European powers, prodded by the US, initiated the snapback after reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that Iran stockpiled large quantities of highly enriched uranium and suspended cooperation with IAEA inspectors after the end of the 12-Day War (which Iran blamed IAEA reporting for sparking.)
Russia Signs Deal to Construct Multiple Nuclear Reactors with Iran
This week Russia and Iran negotiated a $25B deal for the Russian state-owned nuclear energy corporation Rosatom to construct four modular nuclear reactors in Iran. The reactors will be constructed in the Sistan and Hormozgan provinces of southeastern Iran.
Data Shows China Likely Importing Iranian Oil through Indonesia
Reporting by Bloomberg this week shows that China has greatly increased crude oil imports from Indonesia over the past two months. The increase, which exceeds the entire known production of Indonesia, suggests transshipment of crude from Iran.
Takeaways:
Iran will likely end its recently renewed cooperation with the IAEA in response to the snapback of sanctions. In a September 26 interview with PBS’s Frontline, Ali Larijani, the new Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, stated that Iran would end inspections of its nuclear sites if sanctions were reinstated.
Ending inspections is likely as far as Iran will go for now in retaliation. While some Iranian officials had previously floated leaving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in response to a sanctions snapback, this policy is unlikely. Leaving the NPT would be a highly provocative move that would invite military retaliation by Israel and the US. It would also isolate Iran from its most important international partners, chiefly Russia and China, who would not back a move which upends the nonproliferation regime.
China’s apparent oil imports from Iran and Russia’s deal to support Iran’s development of modular reactors, which use uranium enriched to low levels (20% at most) and have little potential utility in a weapons program, appear to be efforts to incentivize Iran to endure sanctions without dropping out of the NPT.
5. NORTH KOREA SIGNALS OPENNESS TO DIALOGUE WITH TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Senior North Korean Official Attends UN General Assembly
Vice Foreign Minister Kim Sun-kyong attended the UN General Assembly in New York this week. Kim Sun-kyong is the most senior North Korean official to attend the UN since 2018. North Korea has been represented at the UN by its permanent representative Kim Song-gyong for the past seven years.
Kim Jong-un Recalls Good Memories of Trump Relationship
In an address to North Korea’s parliament on September 22, Kim Jong-un said he has a positive memory of diplomacy with President Donald Trump and suggested renewing dialogue if US demands to give up nuclear weapons are dropped.
“If the U.S. drops its hollow obsession with denuclearization and wants to pursue peaceful coexistence with North Korea based on the recognition of reality, there is no reason for us not to sit down with the US.
“Personally, I still have a good memory of U.S. President Trump.” - Kim Jong-un, September 22.
Takeaways:
Both moves indicate North Korea’s interest in renewing diplomacy with the US. This opening will not come cheaply for the US. Kim Jong-un may perceive that North Korea’s strategic position has improved significantly since his last meeting in June 2019, and that he can negotiate from a position of greater strength.
Kim is, at a minimum, looking for the US to recognize North Korea as a de jure nuclear power and back off from economic pressure over the country’s nuclear program as part of any future relationship. Kim may offer reducing tensions on the peninsula and curbing military assistance to Russia as part of any dialogue with the US. If his entreaties are ignored, Kim could resume ballistic missile tests, including testing its new Hwasong-20 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and potentially authorize long-awaited new deployments of North Korean troops to Russia.
I truly appreciate the effort and thought you put into these weekly insights. You communicate complex issues with such clarity, and it’s always engaging to read. Thank you for sharing your reflections each week.