Russia is not a country. Russia is a hub of intelligence service operations.
This view was expressed by sanctions and security expert, co-founder and editor-in-chief of BlackSeaNews Andrii Klymenko.
“For many, many years I have been working on Russia in one way or another. Unlike a great number of people — including experts, scholars, and politicians both in Ukraine and especially in Europe, not to mention the United States — the U.S. does not understand Russia.
The United States consistently misjudges the processes taking place inside Russia and gets its forecasts wrong. It is almost a geographical disease.
You see, Russia is not a country. Russia is a concentration point of intelligence services. Any information coming out of Russia, any actions taking place there, are intelligence operations.
Why is this so? Because the entire Russian government consists of former Soviet intelligence officers. They are incapable of thinking or acting in any other way.
When people are 70 years old and older — and I know this because I am approaching that age myself — they do not think like modern people. They live within old stereotypes.”
Klymenko stressed that he does not trust any official Russian economic data.
“I do not believe a single figure cited regarding Russia’s economic situation. All these figures have only one source — official Russian information. These are data from Rosstat, the Russian Central Bank, the Russian Ministry of Finance, and the Russian Ministry of Economic Development.”
He added that he also does not believe reports on Russian oil prices or alleged large discounts.
“I do not believe any figures regarding the price of Russian oil or massive discounts, because they also have only one source.
Today, this source is echoed by many international agencies that cite ‘sources familiar with the matter’. In reality, there is only one source — the company Argus, which is supposedly British but for many years has been an authorized partner of Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development and Ministry of Finance.”
According to Klymenko, Ukraine relies only on its own verified data.
“We trust only our own figures — what we can see directly, specifically regarding maritime exports of Russian crude oil, which remain the primary source of foreign currency revenue for the Russian state budget.”
He noted that Russian crude oil exports increased throughout 2025.
“In January 2025, exports amounted to 21.5 million tonnes per month. By December 2025, they had risen to 23.5 million tonnes per month. That is a clear upward trend.”
Russia, he said, is doing everything possible to expand seaborne oil exports.
“So far, this trend has not been reversed — neither by the so-called Trump sanctions, nor by the widely advertised sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and other countries against Russian tankers.
This is the perpetual engine of war. Either we stop it — or the war continues.”
Andrii Klymenko, for Espreso
Tags: EMPR media Energy security Geopolitics global security Oil sanctions russia ukraine war russian intelligence sanctions policy
