EU on the slippery slope into deep abyss

I have analyzed this topic several times, two recent ones here:

In October/November, I described the performance of Europe as “Suicidal economic and political maneuvering in the EU, NATO collapsing”. Now, at the end of the year 2025, all those trends seem to be deepening and accelerating.

Talks and talks of peace

US and Ukrainian envoys said talks in Miami aimed at ending the war with Russia had been “productive and constructive” – but no breakthrough that could bring Moscow and Kyiv closer to peace seems forthcoming. US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, issued a joint statement with the top Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, after three days of talks alongside European officials.

Separate talks also took place in Miami between the US and the Russian envoy, Kirill Dmitriev. The meetings are the latest step in weeks of diplomatic activity, sparked by the leaking of a 28-point US peace plan last month. That plan shocked Ukraine and its European allies for appearing to favour Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago. Witkoff said representatives from Russia had met himself and other US officials in southern Florida, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The meetings with Russian envoy Dmitriev were also “productive and constructive”, Witkoff said, adding that “Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine”.

However, warmongering in Europe prevails. As prof. Jeffrey Sachs warns, especially the German politicians should be careful not to violate German constitution regarding war propagation.

EU destroying European Culture

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has fired a direct shot at Europe’s globalist trajectory, warning that unchecked mass migration and erosion of core values could shatter the “shared culture” binding the West together—and weaken ties with America.

Echoing the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, Rubio pulled no punches in highlighting how Europe’s slide toward “civilizational erasure” endangers alliances built on liberty and self-governance. At a Department of State press briefing in Washington DC, Rubio addressed backlash from European leaders over the White House’s recent National Security Strategy, which slammed globalist policies fueling mass migration and assaults on free speech.

Rubio emphasized that the United States was founded on “Western values” such as the principles of liberty, individualism, and self-governance, noting that “many of these ideas that led to the founding of our country found their genesis in some of these places in the Western alliance.” However, he expressed concern that “particularly in parts of Western Europe, those things that underpin our alliance and our tie to them could be under threat in the long term.”

Turning to mass migration, Rubio cited the recent Islamist terror attack at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Australia as a grim example of its fallout. Rubio drew a clear line between controlled immigration and “mass migration,” calling the latter a “negative thing” because it is “very difficult for any society to absorb and assume hundreds of thousands if not millions of people over a short period of time, especially if they come from halfway around the world.” Similar American statements have been said by JD Vance many times before.

BREAKING: Marco RubioWarns Europe Supply Chains At Risk As Global Conflicts Escalate | AC1F

DWS News , December 20, 2025

The remarks come amid escalating transatlantic tensions, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz deeming parts of the US strategy “unacceptable” from a European viewpoint, and EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen urging America to stay out of European affairs. This pushback follows the Trump team’s denial of alleged plans to pull nations like Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Poland away from Brussels’ influence.

The EU has imposed sanctions on Colonel (ret.) Jacques Baud from Swiss intelligence for spreading “Russian propaganda” and the EU justifies this with the claim by Baud of Ukraine “orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO”. Baud’s crime was to quote Zelensky’s former top advisor Oleksi Arestovych, who in this 2019 interview argued that the threat of NATO expansion would provoke a Russian invasion: “With a probability of 99.9%, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia”. The EU does not have counterarguments against Colonel Baud, only sanctions. Welcome to the new Europe—where free speech comes to die.

Jacques Baud: Unter EU-Sanktionen – Der Westen im Krieg gegen die Wahrheit

Patrik Baab , December 18, 2025

SANCTIONED: Col Jacques Baud Explains Being the EU’s TARGET

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive , December 22, 2025

The EU Council, in which the ambassadors of all EU countries voted on these sanctions, has made a very stupid mistake. Sanctioning Baud guarantees that an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information. Please let everyone know that Jacques Baud got sanctioned by the EU, which is more and more resembling as Orwellian-type dictatorship.

In early December, Marco Rubio sent a chilling message to the EU bureaucrats after they fined X for €120m: “This is an attack on the American people by a foreign government. The days of censoring Americans online are over!” The EU has no idea what’s coming…

EU & Debt, freezing & confiscation of Russian assets

In early December, UK banks join French banks in refusing to steal billions in frozen Russian assets for Ukraine. They fear legal concerns and Russian retaliation, citing a lack of government guarantees. Despite this, Starmer and Macron still pressure Belgium to seize Russian assets. British banks refused to confiscate $10.6 billion of Russian assets for Ukraine.

December 18, THE EU JUST BROKE THE EURO’S TRUST – GOLD WINS AGAIN.

EU appropriates €300 billion of Russian assets, freezing them indefinitely but that doesn’t mean the funds will be used for a Reparations Loan for Ukraine just yet. The final call will be made at the EU summit on December 18–19.

On Dec 18, Thursday, EU ambassadors agreed to keep the Russian assets frozen indefinitely without requiring unanimous renewal every six months, a move designed to prevent potential vetoes by Hungary or Slovakia. EU finance ministers formally approve the measure on Friday, effectively linking any future unfreezing of the assets to the end of the war. EU leaders then set to discuss the asset freeze and Ukraine loan structure at a Dec. 18 summit.

Russia’s response to the EU did not take long: December 12. The Bank of Russia has filed a lawsuit against the Euroclear depository in the Moscow Arbitration Court for damages caused to the Bank of Russia, the regulator’s press service reported. Russia is following the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) procedure through arbitration courts. This helps it to avoid seeking judgment in any potentially hostile national jurisdiction. ISDS procedure have been successfully used by Russian billionaires who had been sanctioned.

Russia’s central bank filed a lawsuit against Belgium-based Euroclear, accusing the securities depository of unlawfully blocking access to frozen Russian sovereign assets, as the European Union moves closer to approving a plan to use income from those assets to finance loans for Ukraine.

The lawsuit comes as the EU advances a framework to raise funds for Kyiv in 2026–2027 by using income generated from roughly €210 billion of Russian central bank assets frozen across the bloc following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Belgium-based Euroclear holds the largest share of those assets, about €185 billion, immobilized under EU sanctions.

The EU used the Article 122 of the treaty to make the freezing of the Russian assets in Europe permanent by the vote of a qualified majority in the Council of Europe where each nation has a vote. Previously that freeze was voted on every six months and required unanimity. Any country could thus veto further sanctions. Putting the freeze under Art.122 in effect deprives Hungary and others of their veto power.

WAR, THEFT, LIES: Brussels STEALS $300 Billion in Russian Assets as Global Trust in EU Fades

World Affairs In Context , October 22, 2025

Russia’s Response Shocks Europe as the EU’s $105 Billion Asset Seizure Backfires | Yanis Varoufakis

Global Power Talk December 20, 2025

Europe tried to weaponize frozen Russian assets to bankroll Ukraine—then Russia struck back with legal, financial, and escalation threats that exposed the EU’s internal fractures and forced a humiliating retreat. This episode breaks down how the EU’s proposed $105B asset move triggered blowback, why Brussels pivoted to debt instead, and what Russia’s counterplay reveals about the crumbling credibility of Western financial power. Expect a hard-hitting, Yanis Varoufakis–style narrative on sanctions, sovereignty, and the new era of financial warfare.

December 19, EU summit concluded with no consensus on the expropriation of Russia’s immobilized assets under the guise of a so-called reparations loan to Kiev. Instead, the union opted for an alternative 90-billion-euro loan that will keep Ukraine funded for two years.

Ukraine will be receiving it in tranches and no one know how long it will take because Ukraine is insolvent. It cannot redeem the loan, so, the European Union will have to repay it. In the long run, the European leaders will have to acknowledge, no matter how hard they may try to avoid this, that these financial obligations will be referred to their national budgets. The EU’s “Russian Asset Scam” failed but European Warmongers still grab others’ money.

On September 10, during her speech on the State of the European Union, the President of the EU commission Ursula von der Leyen introduced the idea of robbing Russian state assets which are currently frozen in Europe under EU sanctions. The idea was too illegal and stupid to get much traction. But when Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany started to back it, others picked up on the theme. In September 26 op-ed in the Financial Times Merz supported the idea but proposed that all money spent under the plan should go to the owners of European weapon factories. Most of the Russian assets are frozen in Belgium and it was the Belgium Prime Minister Bart De Wever who immediately rejected the idea. Despite the resistance to and problems of the idea, UvdL and Merz invested three months to push it. They threatened Brussels, launched a campaign of anti-Russian propaganda and came up with fake legal reasoning to justify their attempt of the biggest bank robbery in history.

On Thursday night, December 18, their plan crashed: European governments failed to reach a deal on sending Russian frozen state assets to Ukraine after a 16-hour summit in Brussels, in a major setback for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Countries were forced instead to agree on an emergency backup plan based on EU joint debt that was pushed for weeks by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever and was deemed a long shot until hours before the deal was done. In a further blow to EU unity, three countries ― Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic ― won’t take part. Leaders agreed to jointly borrow €90 billion to fund a loan to Ukraine over two years. This will be guaranteed by the common EU budget.

The original plan was to take €135 billion from the Russia assets of which €45 billion would be used by Ukraine to pay back an older loan it had received from the EU. €90 billion would thus go towards Ukraine’s budget.

The new plan is to give Ukraine €90 billion. How much of that will have to be used to pay back the old loan to the EU has not yet been mentioned. It seems that the EU will have to pay for the total €135 billion!

Ukraine will only have to pay back the new loan if Russia agrees to pay reparations to Ukraine. As Russia cannot be defeated by the rest of Europe the €90 billion will have to be paid by EU taxpayers. How national parliaments of already overextended states will handle this issue.

Those are not the only problem with the new loan. No details have been spelled out yet, how it will be structured or financed. The official Conclusions of the EU meeting ominously notes: The European Council will revert to this issue at its next meeting.

Europe tried to weaponize frozen Russian assets to bankroll Ukraine—then Russia struck back with legal, financial, and escalation threats that exposed the EU’s internal fractures and forced a humiliating retreat. This episode breaks down how the EU’s proposed $105B asset move triggered blowback, why Brussels pivoted to debt instead, and what Russia’s counterplay reveals about the crumbling credibility of Western financial power.

Here below two real masterpieces. These videos explain in detail, why “the Russian reaction” to EU’s confiscation attempt was so masterful and superior, the EU elite became thoroughly humiliated and knocked out. Every European should see these videos.

How Russia DESTROYED Europe’s $245 Billion Theft With ONE Legal Move

Egov Haze , an independent geopolitical analyses, strategic interpretations, and educational commentary, December 20, 2025

The EU just attempted the largest sovereign asset seizure in modern history – $245 billion of Russian money – and it’s already backfiring spectacularly. Russia’s legal counterattack is threatening $800 billion in European corporate assets, Belgium is panicking, and the entire post-war financial order is cracking. This isn’t just about Ukraine funding – this is the moment when weaponized finance started consuming itself. I break down the mechanics of this financial warfare, the doom loop it’s created, and why every central bank in the world is now questioning whether Western financial institutions are safe. The age of consequence-free asset seizure just ended.

Russia’s Legal Masterclass: How ONE Filing Turned Europe’s $245B Victory Into Defeat

Yanis explained December 22, 2025

Europe celebrated seizing $245 billion in Russian assets as the most aggressive economic sanction in history, confiscating frozen central bank reserves, oligarch properties, and corporate holdings to fund Ukraine reconstruction and demonstrate that aggression has consequences. Then Russia’s legal team filed one document—847 pages across 14 jurisdictions simultaneously—arguing the seizure violated sovereign immunity under international law, contradicted EU’s own legal frameworks, and exploited internal EU documents showing European lawyers had warned the seizure was legally dubious but politicians ignored them. Within 72 hours European legal experts called it “the most sophisticated legal warfare operation in history,” within two weeks Swiss and arbitration courts issued preliminary injunctions freezing Europe’s use of the funds, and within a month global banks began capital flight from European financial institutions fearing no one’s reserves were safe. Russia doesn’t need to win every case—they just need enough legal uncertainty that Europe can’t use the seized assets, which now sit in legal limbo costing Europe hundreds of millions in legal fees while undermining future sanctions effectiveness and destroying European moral authority on “rules-based international order.” This is how Russia turned Europe’s greatest weapon against them: by using European courts’ independence and rule of law principles to legally challenge what was always a political seizure dressed up with dubious legal justifications, forcing Europe to choose between abandoning legal principles or admitting the $245 billion theft was illegal.

BREAKING: EUROPEAN FARMERS SEND A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE — FROM THE FRONT LINE Not from parliaments. Not from studios. From the fields. Tonight, across parts of Europe, farmers delivered one of the most powerful political images of the year — not with slogans or riots, but with hundreds of tractors lit up like Christmas trees, rolling together in silent formation. The message was simple. And impossible to ignore: “Merry Christmas from the farmers.” And finally …

Destiny of EU & NATO

Recent and current events show the fatal path Europe and particularly the EU is walking on, both politically, economically, militarily and morally. Europe is facing complete disintegration and downfall of the EU like its “sister association” – the NATO.

“Europe Can’t Stop What’s Coming — The Collapse Has Begun | Larry C. Johnson”

Unfiltered Minds October 22, 2025

Larry C. Johnson delivers a hard-hitting breakdown of the deep structural crisis facing the West. He explains why Putin will not concede—that Russia views territories like Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea as permanently part of its federation, not as negotiation chips. Johnson highlights Russia’s rapid wartime adaptation, contrasting its speed and efficiency with the bureaucracy strangling Western defense systems. He warns that Europe has become a spectator, crippled by economic fatigue and political disunity, while the U.S. keeps misreading Russia’s resolve. Drawing on firsthand military insights, he reveals that most Russian soldiers now fight not out of ideology but out of conviction that their survival and sovereignty are at stake. The message is clear: Russia won’t stop until its goals are met, and Europe—already weakened by energy crises and internal divisions—can’t stop what’s coming.

Steven Jermy: US-EU Conflict Is Coming – Time to Dissolve NATO

Glenn Diesen December 21, 2025

Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jermy commanded warships in the 5th Destroyer Squadron and Britain’s Fleet Air Arm. He served in the Falklands War and in the Adriatic for the Bosnian and Kosovo campaigns. Then retired after an operational tour, in 2007, as Strategy Director in the British Embassy in Afghanistan. He is the author of the book:”Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century”.

Hysteria from the West: Preparing for War w/Russia /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Alastair Crooke.

Why Alastair Crooke says Moscow sees no reason, interest, or incentive to move west.

Daniel L. Davis  December 17, 2025

“A period of hysteria in Europe — and Moscow isn’t buying it.” Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke breaks down what he saw on the ground in Russia… and it’s not what Western leaders are telling you. Europe is spiraling into fear of a future Russian invasion, but Crooke says Russia has “absolutely no interest in coming into Europe — none.” Russians now see Europe as “weak” and culturally unfocused. Russia isn’t even interested in potential westward conquest, he said, because “they’ve got enough land, enough resources of their own” and have neither the interest nor need to conquer anyone.

Europe’s Economic Collapse Is Now Mathematically Inevitable | Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis explained December 26, 2025

A document circulating among European finance ministries contains one devastating sentence: “Maintaining monetary union becomes net-negative for a majority of member states by Q4 2027.” This isn’t political rhetoric—it’s cold arithmetic showing that Europe’s economic model is approaching mathematical collapse. In Q1 2025 alone, the Netherlands moved €87 billion out of eurozone assets, while net capital outflows hit €400 billion for the year, exceeding even the 2012 crisis. The ECB is trapped: raising rates pushes Greece into depression, keeping them low inflates German asset bubbles—there is no policy that works for both economies simultaneously. Europe now faces three endgames: orderly dissolution, chaotic collapse, or technocratic authoritarianism—and time to choose is running out faster than anyone admits.

Europe has crossed a line it will never uncross. Not with tanks, not with treaties, not with declarations of war, but with something far more permanent: the politicization of sovereign property.

When Friedrich Merz announced an “interest-free” €90 billion loan to Ukraine while insisting Russian sovereign assets remain frozen until Moscow “compensates” Kiev, he was not issuing a warning to the Kremlin. He was delivering a notice to the world that Europe’s legal order has become conditional, transactional, and dangerously ideological.

That notice will outlive the war, outlast this Commission, and reshape global finance in ways Brussels no longer controls. This is not a misunderstanding. It is not confusion. It is not excess rhetoric. It is intent. Brussels does not merely know that outright seizure of Russian sovereign assets is illegal under international law, it has attempted to do it anyway.

What stopped it was not only law, not conscience, not precedent, but also resistance from within: Hungary, Belgium, Slovakia, Malta, Italy, and a growing number of EU members who understand that once sovereign immunity is broken, it is broken for everyone. Ursula von der Leyen made this explicit when she declared she would not leave the table until a “solution” was found. And she didn’t. The solution was not one restraint. It was reconfiguration.

The outcome of the EU summit revealed far more in failure than success. Despite immense political pressure and marathon negotiations, the European Union could not secure unanimous approval to confiscate or directly deploy Russia’s frozen central bank reserves—estimated at roughly €210 billion across the EU, with around €185 billion immobilized at Euroclear in Belgium. Belgium refused to turn Euroclear into a geopolitical weapon. Hungary refused to sign Europe’s financial suicide pact. Others quietly backed them.

Blocked from seizure, Brussels pivoted, and not away from the objective, but toward a different, equally radioactive architecture. Forced into retreat on outright confiscation, the Commission fell back to borrowing: a €90 billion package raised on capital markets, secured against the EU budget with stolen assets as de-facto collateral, and while Russian assets remain frozen indefinitely as leverage.

The money is now socialized through European debt; the coercion is externalized through permanent asset immobilization. This separation is not a compromise. It is a doctrine. This distinction is existential. Because while Brussels failed to seize the assets outright, it succeeded in something far more dangerous, it established the principle that sovereign reserves can be frozen indefinitely and politically conditioned without judicial process, treaty settlement, or legal adjudication, even while war financing is laundered through “normal” capital-market borrowing. This is not rule-of-law financing. It is imperial finance, clean on the balance sheet, corrosive in precedent.

Under customary international law, sovereign immunity, particularly for central bank assets, is not ambiguous. It is foundational. The UN Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property, though not universally ratified, codifies a norm long treated as binding: the property of a foreign central bank is immune from measures of constraint. That norm exists for one reason only, to prevent financial warfare from metastasizing into systemic collapse.

Europe is now openly hollowing it out. No court ruling. No reparations treaty. No arbitration award. Just political assertion backed by majority pressure. The legal fiction is that the assets are merely “frozen.” The reality is that indefinite freezing with political conditions attached, especially when decoupled from judicial process, constitutes expropriation in substance, if not in form. International lawyers recognize this distinction instantly. Markets will too.

Europe has sealed its own shocking fate.

As Yanis Varoufakis states it:

Can there be a better demonstration of the EU’s performative irrelevance? They spent weeks negotiating with each other the issuance of 90bn euro debt which the EU cannot afford that will do nothing to win the War and much to obstruct Peace.