Weekly Significant Activity Report - August 16, 2025
Putin gains a strategic victory from Alaska Summit as Russian forces make surprise advances in the Donbas, China suffers embarrassing setbacks from attempted power plays at sea and in cyberspace.
This week's analysis highlights some of the most significant news concerning America's adversaries between August 9, 2025 - August 16, 2025.
Summary:
The August 15 summit between US President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska resulted in a strategic victory for the Russian leader who was able to compel an end to demands for a ceasefire and evade further US sanctions without making any significant concessions.
Russian forces made unexpectedly rapid advances near the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast in the lead up to the August 15 summit.
Chinese navy and coast guard ships collide in the South China Sea amid an attempt to harass Filipino fishermen.
A hack of a North Korean spy’s computer revealed Pyongyang’s access to South Korean classified communication channels.
1. TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT RESULTS IN STRATEGIC VICTORY FOR RUSSIA
US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, August 15. No deal to achieve either a temporary ceasefire or long-term peace was reached during the summit. The meetings, originally set for 7 hours, were abruptly ended after 3 hours. A follow on joint dinner was also canceled.
Takeaways:
The exact nature of the discussions were closely guarded, but it is apparent that the summit resulted in an unforced strategic setback for the US. President Trump surrendered significant diplomatic leverage in granting Putin a meeting on US territory without concessions. He abandoned his own demands for Russia to commit to a ceasefire. He further admitted to deviating from earlier commitments made to both Ukraine and the US’s European allies not to negotiate territorial concessions.
By contrast the summit was a clear victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin was able to emerge from isolation to be welcomed in the US without preconditions. Putin further convinced the US President to postpone additional economic pressure on his beleaguered economy while not withdrawing any hardline demands.
The end result of the summit was the elevation of the leader of an intractable US adversary and the disruption of US alliance systems, made worse by shameful symbolic gestures such as US service members pictured literally rolling out a red carpet for Vladimir Putin to walk on.
OPFOR Journal is a non-partisan publication. It similarly tries to avoid policy advocacy. It is however a project dedicated to telling the truth about the nature of America’s adversaries. Russia is and will remain of those adversaries. Attempts to accommodate revisionist Russian interests will invariably compromise US national security by weakening Western alliances and undermining the pillars of global stability which were cultivated to protect US interests.
The US and Russia will continue to be intractable adversaries due to incompatible national interests and strategic imperatives, and long running civilizational divides that are not easily bridged. This is something that needs to be accepted based on an actual realist understanding of the sources of Russian behavior:
Persistent insecurity has been used to explain, and in too many cases, justify Russian despotism and military aggression. This justification has produced a misunderstanding about the sources of the modern Russian Federation’s behavior and resulted in both failures to reset relations with the country and deter it from taking aggressive action. History does shape Russia’s national identity, but the narrative of insecurity and grievance, is in turn shaped by the same forces driving the Kremlin’s centralization of political control and military aggression—geopolitical advantage. Tyranny and territorial conquest still convey strategic advantages. These advantages have been undervalued by many thinkers and policymakers in the West in part due to over optimism about the prospect of globalization eroding the appeal of hard power since the end of the Cold War. It is a failure of imagination shown on both sides of the political aisle with the liberal political left’s misreadings of the universality of the West’s own strategic advantages: open societies and values based alliances, and the isolationist political right misunderstanding the potential for win-win “deal making” between the US and its adversaries.
Our shared principles and interdependence have made US alliances the most expansive in history. The cohesiveness of US alliances comes with trade offs. The strong ties that bind the US to its allies and partners force it to not only consider but share interests when it is inconvenient. These strong ties constrain the US by reducing its overall tolerance geopolitical risk and limiting options for wielding power to those which are mutually acceptable. But the US has benefited immensely by accepting these costs as part of a grand strategy of integration. Geopolitical integration does not appear to be replicable strategy for Russia, which has had to build strategic advantage through confrontation and expansion.
Russia envies the power and prestige the US has accumulated leading its alliance network and has repeatedly attempted to create its own Moscow-centric regional order following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These include its efforts to incorporate other post-communist states into a common security architecture through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an economic bloc through the Eurasian Economic Union, and a shared political order through the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Never an equal to NATO or even the Warsaw Pact, these Russian led multilateral institutions continue to fade into irrelevance as they have been shunned by potential stakeholders like Ukraine, and hemorrhage support from existing members like Armenia.
Russia has seen more success emeshing itself in a broader network of less coherent anti-Western projects and ad hoc partnerships based on immediate interests. These “weak ties” provide Moscow with strategic flexibility which can elude strong, values based alliances whose cooperation is oriented around a much broader set of criteria. Russia’s weak ties span the globe and have produced current partnerships which resemble Western alliances but are much looser and less aligned over the long-term. Chief among these are Russia’s new “comprehensive strategic” partners Iran, and North Korea, and its “no limits” partner China.
Russia’s willingness to quickly make and break ties with friends has made some American analysts and officials see it as a potential partner in waiting. This is a mistake. The divide between the US and Russia runs deep and is not easily bridged by even an appeal to short term win-win deal making.
The conditions which have created this present day conflict between the US and its allies and Russia are rooted in geopolitical faultlines that are likely impossible to completely resolve. In “The Eurasian Century,” historian of grand strategy Hal Brands notes that competition for territorial control of Eurasia over the past hundred plus years provided a crucible for political and ideological formation. Different states responded in different ways to the incentives of insecure geography and unevenly distributed resources. The powers in the core of the Eurasian heartland such as China and Russia, responded by centralizing state power and expanding their territory to the maximum extent possible. Powers on the periphery of Eurasia have played a different advantage, binding together to counter the expansionist impulses of the large continental empires, with those of other primarily maritime commercial powers like the US and UK. The need for closer international cooperation helped incubate the modern political West, providing a strategic impetus for more open societies and greater economic integration, resulting in the transatlantic security architecture visible today with NATO and the European Union. There are no similar transnational trends uniting the US and Russia with a constructive basis for forming sustainable strategic partnership.
While the US and NATO should pursue stable relations with Russia, such stability cannot be built on accepting Russia's repeated use of military aggression to expand its territory over the past 17 years. Characterizing Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine as legitimate responses to Western expansion, misrepresents both the defensive nature of NATO enlargement (an organization which neither Georgia or Ukraine were members) and the voluntary basis on which former Soviet states sought Western integration. Genuine stability requires that Russia respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of its neighbors, principles that have underpinned European security since the Cold War's end.
The historical record shows that NATO expansion has been both peaceful and defensive in nature. Military power in Western Europe has declined precipitously since the end of the Cold War. With few exceptions, countries which joined NATO since the 1990s reduced military spending after membership. The number of American troops stationed in Europe declined dramatically since the end of the Cold War as well, dropping from over 300,000 to under 70,000 before Russia’s 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine. Increases in both US troop levels and European defense spending since then has often been a response to, rather than a provocation leading to Russian aggression.
Further, the expansion of NATO in recent years has itself been prompted by feelings of insecurity among small European states in areas that Russia has historically tried to exert influences, such as the Balkans and Scandinavia, following periods of Russian military aggression. This included Montenegro in 2017, Northern Macedonia in 2020, Finland in 2023, and Sweden in 2024. These nations joined NATO precisely because they feared becoming the next Georgia or Ukraine, a not unreasonable fear given that Russian military intelligence attempted an armed coup in Montenegro in 2016.
The US has been the key to ensuring the stability of the European continent. It is the only power large enough to deter Russian expansion westward. America has provided the security umbrella that allows smaller European nations to coexist peacefully, which has reduced insecurity along its borders. It has served as the sole intermediary capable of defusing the millennia long struggle to dominate Western Europe that served as a root cause for previous invasions of Russia. In this way, the adversarial relationship between the US and Russia has nonetheless had a stabilizing influence on the continent and allowed rivalry among all its states to be played out in more constructive fields of competition such as in technological innovation, economic development, and popular culture.
2. UKRAINE CONTAINS UNEXPECTED RUSSIAN ADVANCE IN DONETSK
Russian Forces Make Unexpectedly Rapid Advance in Donetsk
Between August 9-10 Russian forces made an unexpectedly rapid advance north of the city of Pokrovsk. Russian forces, which had been relentlessly attacking settlements near the city for months were able to bypass Ukrainian positions north of the city to advance 17 kilometers and threaten the supply routes to the city.
Ukraine Reinforces Pokrovsk and Stems Advance
Ukraine responded to the advance by deploying one of its elite battalions held in reserve, 1st Azov Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine, to reinforce its lines. By August 15, Ukrainian forces claimed that some of Russia’s progress had been rolled back, with Azov soldiers retaking six villages.
Takeaways:
While the August 9-10 advance appeared to foreshadow a major breakthrough of Ukrainian lines, it largely appears contained for now.
The attack was likely a well reconnoitered and planned attempt at achieving a dramatic breakthrough for effect ahead of the August 15 summit between US and Russian leaders.
The success of the attack does highlight continued manpower challenges facing the Ukrainian armed forces. While Ukraine has made great strides in improving its military recruiting and retention, and in supplementing its forces with unmanned systems, satisfying the demand for infantry soldiers remains a perennial challenge, which may require future changes to conscription.
3. CHINA FALLS VICTIM TO ITS OWN POWER PLAYS
Confrontation in the West Philippine Sea Leaves Chinese Coast Guard Cutter Severely Damaged
On August 11, Chinese vessels aggressively intercepted Philippines fishing boats near Scarborough Shoal, a contest reef in the West Philippine Sea. The ships from the Chinese Coast Guard and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy used water cannons and attempted to ram the Philippines ships during the encounter. The confrontation lead to a collision between a Chinese Coast Guard cutter and destroyer of the PLA Navy. The collision, which China subsequently blamed on the Philippines, resulted in severe damage to the Chinese Coast Guard cutter.
Source: 9 News Australia on YouTube
New Deepseek Model Delayed After CCP Requests Use of Huawei Chips
The Financial Times reported on August 14 that leading Chinese AI company Deepseek was forced to delay the release of its newest AI model due to issues substituting chips made by Nvidia for those made by Huawei.
Takeaways:
The August 11 maritime confrontation at Scarborough Shoal exemplifies China's broader hybrid warfare campaign in the South China Sea. Beijing has pursued an increasingly aggressive policy of asserting territorial claims throughout its "nine-dash line," employing what analysts have termed a "maritime insurgency." This strategy coordinates the Chinese navy, coast guard, and paramilitary maritime militia forces in a coordinated effort to dominate regional neighbors and force their vessels from contested waters.
The Philippines has emerged as a special target of China's maritime aggression, after Manila successfully challenged Beijing's territorial claims before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016. The court ruled that China's claims to territory within the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone, including Scarborough Shoal (site of the August 11 confrontation), violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. China rejected the ruling and has since intensified its presence and aggressive behavior in Philippine waters through coordinated deployments of naval, coast guard, and militia vessels. Beijing's pressure campaign extends beyond maritime operations to economic and cultural spheres, including threats to block the international release of the Filipino documentary "Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea," which chronicles the impact of Chinese aggression on the local fishing industry of the Philippines.
China’s attempts to force its industries to use inferior but domestically produced Huawei chips come amid intensifying competition with the US on semiconductors and artificial intelligence. China had recently extracted concessions from the US to lift export restrictions on Nvidia’s advanced H20 chips, only to then quickly turn against their use in Chinese systems.
Nvidia's chips have drawn fresh scrutiny from Chinese authorities following recent reports that batches of H20 chips authorized for export to third countries contained trackers designed to detect unauthorized smuggling into China. These reports heightened Chinese officials' concerns about potential backdoors in Nvidia that the US government could exploit. However, it is important to note that the H20 chips under surveillance were specifically those not authorized for sale to China, suggesting the tracking was intended to monitor compliance with export restrictions rather than target authorized Chinese customers.
4. HACK REVEALS NORTH KOREA SPY SECRETS
This week two hackers reported to hacking digest Phrack magazine, that they had gained access to the computer of an official working for Kimsuky, North Korea’s elite advanced persistent threat cyber unit. The break-in revealed that the official’s computer contained the source code to Kebi, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official email platform, and additional evidence of contacts with Chinese hackers.
Takeaways:
While cooperation between North Korean and Chinese hackers has long been suspected, the revelation that North Korean operatives had access to classified South Korean government communication channels is highly concerning. The discovery, made by a third party, suggests a significant counterintelligence failure by the South.