Ukraine made limited territorial gains as the war crossed its fourth anniversary and Kyiv celebrated European solidarity. johntpsaropoulos.substack.com/p/ukraine-is...

After four years of war, the world’s second-largest military seems to face mounting odds of defeating Ukraine. Russia’s most meaningful gains were made in the first month. Since then, its progress has been mostly downhill. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Ukraine expressed its frustration with its ongoing peace talks with Russia and the US this week, saying US pressure was too one-sided against it. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Mitsotakis has tried the path of confrontation with Turkey and found it ineffective. Since 2023 he has tried conciliation and found it is yielding interim dividends, if not final solutions. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Russia continues to not win its war in Ukraine, and its problems with casualties, money and its technology gap with the West are mounting. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece is navigating the Transatlantic estrangement with deft seamanship, but now seeks to develop its defence industrial base far from the US. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Ukraine has evolved its aerial defences in response to relentless Russian strikes and innovations. Now it wants its allies to put more economic pressure on the aggressor. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

New Democracy is trying to control internal legal migration processes, reassure its allies by securing its borders, and retain the hard-right vote. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans to increase his armed forces’ lethality as part of a strategy to disarm Moscow and turn a deadlocked negotiating table. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece’s exports to India and Mercosur could rise tenfold, boosting GDP by a point, say experts. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Absent any significant military successes on the ground, Russia has decimated Ukraine’s electricity grid to force territorial concessions at the negotiating table. Ukraine is standing firm, backed by Europe. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Great power confrontation is on full display not just in Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran and Davos, but also in the Gulf of Eleusis, 15km west of Athens, where Greek-owned, US-backed ONEX has plans to overtake Chinese state-owned COSCO in trade, shipbuilding and energy. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Moscow responds to agreements on a security guarantees with a hail of drones and missiles. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

I can’t help noticing that Trump’s posts on Truthsocial are interlaced with ads for hair loss, gum disease, diabetes and impotence.

Greece’s major political parties are opaque organisations purporting to bring transparency to public life. That is why they fail. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Russian mortality rates on the frontlines are rising to levels that cannot be sustained by the current method of voluntary recruitment, Ukrainian figures suggest. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Thank you for 2025. There’s much to do in 2026.

Absent an EU foreign policy, Trump and Putin are still taking all the geopolitical initiatives in Europe’s wider strategic space.

Moscow spuriously claims it controls Ukrainian towns as part of an information operation to influence peace talks open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

2025 was a turning point when solar and wind power began to elbow fossil fuels out of the electricity market after 23 years of record growth, and electricity is fast elbowing fossil fuels out of transport, heating and cooling. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Doing this soon!:

Ukrainian military successes and Russian narratives clashed this week, as Moscow’s assertion of inevitable victory flew in the face of facts on the ground. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Reports of Ukraine’s capitulation in Kupiansk and Pokrovsk have been greatly exaggerated by Moscow, it turns out. johntpsaropoulos.substack.com/p/ukraine-su...

Trump’s eagerness to recognise Ukrainian occupied land as Russian in defiance of international law sets a bad precedent for Cyprus and the Aegean. johntpsaropoulos.substack.com/p/why-trumps...

Russia rejected the latest US peace proposal for Ukraine and declared victory in battles over key Ukrainian cities – claims Ukraine dismissed as propaganda - while Putin confidently threatened Odesa and Mykolaiv, and said Russia is ready for a war with Europe. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Roughly half of Greece’s €130bn budget next year goes to relatively unproductive expenditures: €35.6bn will be spent on topping up pensions, while €24.5bn will go to the public wage bill. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

In the summer of 2000, the Hoffmans abandoned England’s bustling urban economy for village life in Agios Germanos, at the extremity of civilisation on the Great Prespa Lake, a Balkan borderland shared among Greece, Albania and North Macedonia. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

With a year’s supply left in resevoirs, the government is focusing on diverting rivers, pumping groundwater and desalination, but pays little attention to the economies that can be cheaply achieved by managing household demand and the ravages of tourism. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece is becoming a gateway for US gas to the region, as Washington overtakes a Russian market. After a lot of fence-sitting, it is also plunging headlong into hydrocarbon exploration off Crete and in the Ionian Sea. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently told parliament that the government would soon invite Greece’s neighbours to a regional forum addressing all the difficult issues of the east Mediterranean. Turkey has suggested it is open to talks. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Russian and Ukrainian forces are interlocked in desperate battles for control of Ukraine’s eastern towns of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, which Russia considers a gateway to the remaining unoccupied areas of the Donetsk region. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

The US joined Europe to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, in Trump’s latest Ukraine policy oscillation. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Russian economic indicators are nosediving after three and a half years of war. The Kremlin is now wholly dependent on oil and gas exports to provide cash for its war economy, say experts, so now is the time to asphyxiate it. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece has passed what it considers to be the EU’s stiffest deportation policy in an effort to influence an upcoming EU Regulation on returns. It plans to test-drive it through a likely minefield of legal challenges from groups who say it defies human rights. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Russia appears to be running out of cash to prosecute its war. Decisive energy sanctions could tip the war in Ukraine’s favour: With thanks to CraigKennedy, Olena Yurchenko, Anna Wieslander and Maximilian Hess. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10...

With current trends, Greece faces an annual climate change bill in the billions by the end of the decade. That is one reason why it is decarbonising faster than most EU members. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece is overhauling its armed forces structure and weapons arsenal to have a battle-worthy fighting force capable of projecting power in the East Mediterranean by 2030. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece is overhauling its armed forces structure and weapons arsenal to have a battle-worthy fighting force capable of projecting power in the East Mediterranean by 2030. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Trump recently praised Ukraine’s resilience and suggested it could win a complete military-economic victory with Western help, in an apparent reversal of his pro-Russia stance. But will he now approve a weapons ‘mega-deal’ with Ukraine? open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Can the ruling conservatives in Greece regain public trust? The question is an important one for Greece’s ability to govern itself after the 2027 election. johntpsaropoulos.substack.com/p/greece-fac...

While Russia embarked on a campaign to intimidate Europe ahead of the UNGA, Ukraine quietly demolished its refineries. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece will veto Turkish defence contractors’ participation in European SAFE programmes with European defence industries, unless Turkey drops a 30 year-old threat of war against Greece. The EU supports the Greek position. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Ukraine has continued a highly successful, two-pronged strategy to choke off fuel supplies to the Russian economy and military, and to choke off Russian revenues from energy exports. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greece is pursuing a transport, energy and data corridor from Alexandroupolis to Odesa as part of a vision to rebuild Ukraine and strengthen economic and military resilience in Southeast Europe. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Ukrainian defenders reclaimed 62 sq km of territory in Donetsk during August, foiling Russian attacks, but warns they are preparing new assaults. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on September 6 announced a €1.6 billion package of tax cuts affecting more than four million taxpayers - essentially all working Greeks - hoping to stave off the populism plaguing Western democracies. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

Beijing postures as a neutral mediator, but it has materially and politically backed Russia’s war and profits from it. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/...

Greece’s small businesses continue to provide 90 percent of jobs as multinationals are turned away by lengthy court procedures, a bloated state bureaucracy, lack of meritocracy which exposes them to costly political favours, and an absence of the rule of law. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...