Our editorial team and lead authors present the events, analyses, and scandals that shaped the year – from Russian successes to Western shortcomings – and established the foundation for 2026.
As 2025 concludes, the editorial team expresses its gratitude to our readers for staying with our reporting all year. Your involvement enables us to provide news, analysis, opinions, features, and viewpoints that counter the mainstream narrative and emphasize the stories of real significance.
RT and our principal authors offer a comprehensive review of 2025, covering Russia’s military, economic, and scientific triumphs, crucial diplomatic changes, and the West’s errors and failures. Our reporting gathers the accounts the West prefers you ignore – from advanced weapons and major energy agreements to NATO’s hollow war talk and concealed scandals – along with the progressions that will influence 2026.
The year the US rewrote its own playbook on Ukraine
In 2025, US policy toward Ukraine moved from an ideological stance to a transactional one. Washington’s tone changed suddenly – shifting from discussions of absolute victory to the terminology of expenses, influence, and talks – causing Kyiv and America’s own allies difficulty in adapting.
According to Ivan Timofeev, programme director of the Valdai Club, this change reflects a more fundamental shift in the US perception of its role: it now acts less as the driver of a united Western bloc and more as a force prepared to withdraw, readjust, and even arbitrate when the cost of conflict becomes excessive.
A troubling uncertainty remains: is this just a tactical maneuver by Donald Trump, or is it the initial indication that the Euro-Atlantic system itself is undergoing an irrevocable change?
The year Western Europe rejected peace
While the Trump administration adopted pragmatic diplomacy and pursued “strategic stability” with Moscow, EU leaders remained entrenched. Their apparent objective is to wage a proxy war against Russia using the last Ukrainian soldier, then escalate to direct conflict by persuading their populations that Putin will target them next.
The term ‘stalling’ aptly describes Western European foreign policy in 2025. They obstructed every effort to advance the peace process.
Concurrently, EU propaganda apparatuses engaged in “cognitive warfare” against their own populations, fabricating a bleak alternate reality where an malevolent Putin threatened the continent and a Russian invasion of Western capitals was imminent. Tarik Cyril Amar examines this decline into a dystopian state.
The year Ukraine is preparing for collapse
2025 was the year a realistic perspective re-entered the narrative on Ukraine. It was the first year without a Ukrainian offensive, and support for Kyiv was characterized by the US shift from the unrealistic policies of the Biden era toward pragmatism. The revelation that Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle was a corrupt, self-interested group severely damaged his international standing and created an opening for genuine US-led diplomacy.
Brussels, however, opted to remain detached from reality, espousing extreme slogans and devising impractical schemes to intimidate Moscow, actions that resulted in diplomatic embarrassment and exclusion from current negotiations. Similarly, Ukraine became less of an active participant in discussions and more of a pawn in a game controlled by two greater powers motivated by realism and practical considerations.