The Russian Geostrategy Monitor is a monthly brief that tracks Russian geostrategy worldwide employing the framework set in The Structure of Modern Russia’s Foreign Strategy. Russian geostrategic activities are also tracked on the regularly updated interactive Russian Geostrategy Map. You can see older issues of the Monitor here.
Issue 34 covers the Russian geostrategy for the month of October 2025. The numbering and contents of the Outcomes, Goals and Objectives follows The Structure of Modern Russia’s Foreign Strategy framework.
Goal 2: Failure of key Western international security policies
- In a statement on 2 October 2025, the Russian foreign ministry’s speaker Zakharova once again expressed Moscow’s attitude towards American geopolitical interests. Reacting to the US President Trump’s ambition to restore American military presence at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, Zakharova said that “the USA, who shamefully ran away from Afghanistan in 2021 after a 20-year failed campaign, seek to restore their military presence in this country in one form or another,” but that “the Afghan people, which won its freedom in the fight against NATO members, will not concede its national sovereignty in response to ultimatums.”
Objective 3: Enhancing internal political instability and polarization within Western states
- On 9 October, Intelligence Online wrote about “Paris’s concerns about Russian [intelligence] services roping in Islamic State fighters to carry out attacks in Europe.”
- On 19 October, the interior minister of Bulgaria stated that Russian intelligence was “working with people smugglers to flood Europe with illegal migrants.” He also said that Russian spies were “helping people smugglers find weaknesses in the EU’s external borders,” and “telling migrants how to exploit EU and UK asylum systems and avoid removal.”
- On 27 October, Germany‘s security service chief said that Russia was trying to influence German politicians, especially those on the left and right “fringes of the political spectrum,” seeking to undermine popular trust in democracy in the country.
Objective 7: Achieving instability in the Western Balkans
- On 28 October, the Russian foreign minister Lavrov held a meeting with a secessionist Bosnian Serb politician Milorad Dodik. The Russian foreign ministry referred to Dodik as “leader of the Bosnian Serbs” despite Dodik no longer being the president of Republika Srpska (the Serb administrative entity within Bosnia) with its legislature appointing another person as the interim president on 18 October 2025.
Objective 8: Undermining US Foreign Policy in the Western Hemisphere
- On 5 October, Moscow expressed “serious concern about Washington’s escalating actions in the Caribbean Sea that are fraught with far-reaching consequences for the region” during Lavrov’s conversation with Maduro’s foreign minister, and condemned US strikes on illicit drug-carrying boats in the international waters near Venezuela.
- On 11 October, Russia’s representative in the UN said that the US was trying to change the regime in Venezuela “under the pretext of fight against drug trade,” doing so “according to the classic tool set of color revolutions and hybrid wars.”
Objective 9: Achieving de-sovereignization of Ukraine
- In the Russo-Ukrainian War, during October 2025, Russians semi-encircled the Ukrainian-held territory in the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad area, and achieved considerable advance on the frontline east of Zaporizhzhia.
Objective 18: Gaining strategic presence on the waterways connecting the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean basins
- On 30 October, reports emerged that Russia had resumed conducting military aircraft flights to its air base in Khmeimim, Syria, after series of negotiations with the current Syrian leadership.
Objective 21: Alignment with Iran
- On 1 October, Russia announced it “does not recognize the reimposition of United Nations sanctions on Iran,” with Moscow’s ambassador at the UN saying: “We’ll be living in two parallel realities, because for some snapback [of the sanctions] happened, for us it didn’t.”
Objective 22: Developing partnerships with South Asian regional powers
- On 7 October, Russia and India launched joint “Indra 2025” military drills “in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan aimed at improving counter-terrorism operations.”
Objective 26: Developing cooperation platforms with non-Western powers
- The seventh meeting of “the Moscow Format” regional platform on Afghanistan was hosted by Russia on 7 October, with representatives from China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as the Taliban’s foreign minister.
Objective 27: Alignment with North Korea
- In a meeting between Lavrov and the North Korean foreign minister on 27 October, Moscow expressed its “understanding that aggressive actions by the USA and its allies are the main reason behind the growing tensions on the Korean peninsula, in the North-Eastern Asia, and in the world as a whole,” as well as its “full support of the measures” taken by the North Korean leadership “to defend the sovereignty and provide for the security of the country.”