Modern Great Game Watch

Russian Geostrategy Monitor, Issue 32: August 2025

The Rondeli Foundation’s 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.

Issue 32 covers the Russian geostrategy for the month of August 2025. The numbering and contents of the Outcomes, Goals and Objectives follows The Structure of Modern Russia’s Foreign Strategy framework.

Objective 2: Strengthening the Western political forces considered by Moscow to be inimical to the Western-led international order, and the Kremlin’s relationships with such forces

• Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued a statement accusing the European Commission of considering a “regime change” in Hungary.

Objective 3: Enhancing internal political instability and polarization within Western states

• On 13 August, the Polish prosecutors charged a group of the Russian intelligence’s assets, accusing them of engaging in sabotage in Poland “aimed at generating public unrest and creating a sense of helplessness among state authorities.”
• The Norwegian authorities stated on 13 August that Russian hackers had taken control over a Norwegian dam in April 2025, opening a flood gate and releasing “500 litres (132 gallons) of water per second for four hours before the attack was detected and stopped,” with the aim “to influence and to cause fear and chaos among the general population.”

Objective 7: Achieving instability in the Western Balkans

• Moscow said on 7 August that “a Bosnian court ruling banning the separatist Bosnian Serb president [Dodik] from political office for defying orders from the international peace envoy has put Bosnia and Herzegovina’s existence as a united country at risk.”

Objective 9: Achieving de-sovereignization of Ukraine

• In the Russo-Ukrainian War, during August 2025, Russians made an attempted breakthrough in the area east of the town of Dobropillya, which was then stopped by Ukrainian counterattacks. Elsewhere on the fronts, Russian pushes to advance continued along with Ukrainians counterattacks, with fighting particularly intense in the areas of Pokrovsk, Kostyantynivka and Kupyansk.

Objective 11: Achieving decisive influence over Moldova

• On 21 August, the Russian foreign ministry accused the Moldovan government of engaging in “totalitarian practices on the eve of the legislative elections,” saying that “M. Sandu’s regime is turning the republic into a ghetto” where “political repressions and censorship” have become a norm. Moscow’s foreign office expressed its confidence that “the Moldovan people itself will soon speak its word,” adding that the Moldovans, “although patient, are not so patient as to allow four more years of oppression of themselves and their country.”

Objective 15: Entrenching Russian influence in the Western Balkans

• On 15 August, Moscow pledged support to the Serbian president Vucic in the face of popular protests against his rule, saying it could not “remain unresponsive to what is happening in brotherly Serbia,” while claiming that Serbian police were “using lawful methods and means to contain the violent mobs.”

Objective 16: Entrenching Russian influence in sub-Saharan Africa

• As of August 2025, the Russian African Corps forces were engaged in joint operations against jihadist rebels together with the Malian regime forces.
• On 8 August, Angola‘s authorities announced an arrest of two Russian citizens that had been trying to orchestrate a propaganda campaign promoting “demonstrations and looting in the Angolan provinces of Luanda and Benguela.

Objective 19: Gaining strategic superiority in the Arctic region

• On 13 August, the Russian foreign ministry issued a new set of various accusations against Norway regarding the Svalbard archipelago, saying Moscow considered Norway’s “militarization” of the archipelago “categorically unacceptable,” and promising that the Russian scientific, infrastructural and other “presence on Svalbard… will be developing and widening further.”

Objective 20: Alignment with China

• Between 1-5 August, the Russian and Chinese navies conducted joint exercises in the Sea of Japan. Destroyers and submarines from both powers took part in the drills.

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