Date: Friday, 26 September 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/europes-desperate-decline
https://theduran.com/europes-desperate-decline/
Europe’s Desperate Decline
26 September 2025, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
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https://theduran.com/how-finland-is-losing-forests-jobs-homes-and-businesses-without-russian-timber/
“How Finland Is Losing Forests, Jobs, Homes And Businesses Without Russian Timber”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYZ5p4xb7Ts
Rhod Mackenzie, 26 September 2025
Finland feels the pain from imposing sanctions on Russia and now it has a problem with the EU. The impact of losing Russian timber on Finland’s economy is a complex issue that affects various sectors, including the timber industry, construction, and forestry practices.
Finland’s wood market is heavily reliant on Russian wood, and the loss of this supply has significant implications for the country’s forest management and timber supply. The timber industry in Finland is a crucial part of the country’s economy, with many businesses and jobs depending on the availability of timber. The construction materials market in Finland is also feeling the effects, with the lack of Russian timber affecting the production of wood products and other essential materials.
In Helsinki and other parts of the country, the shortage of timber is leading to increased costs and reduced availability of wood products, which in turn is affecting the construction sector and the overall economy.
The geopolitical trends and timber economics at play are having a profound impact on Finland’s forestry practices and the timber market, with many wondering how the country will adapt to this new reality. The sustainable forestry practices that Finland is known for may be at risk due to the loss of Russian timber, and the country’s economy is likely to feel the effects for years to come.
The timber logistics and woodworking industries in Finland are also being affected, with many businesses struggling to stay afloat without access to Russian timber. As the situation continues to unfold, it will be important to monitor the impact on Finland’s economy and the timber industry, and to explore alternative solutions to mitigate the effects of the loss of Russian timber. Rhod Mackenzie looks at how Finland is reluctant to comply with EU environmental standards. This is because the country is forced to cut down its own forests, which it previously protected by importing and consuming Russian timber. Now, not only the environment is suffering, but also industry, and even the Finns’ needs for heating and housing.
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September 26, 2025
Another Crazy Idea On How To Steal Russia’s Assets: Make EU Taxpayers Pay For It
by “Bernhard”
The war hawks have long tried to steal Russian assets held in West to then use the money to finance the proxy war against Russia. The sums involved are serious:
Nearly three years after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Belgium holds €258 billion in frozen or immobilised Russian assets.
The General Administration of Treasury at the Ministry of Finance confirmed the figures on Wednesday to La Libre and De Tijd.
Some of these assets belong to institutions not sanctioned by the European Union. Frozen assets amount to €65 billion, with an additional €193 billion in immobilised transactions, primarily from the Central Bank of Russia.
The money is not really held by Belgium but by the Belgium company Euroclear which acts as depository for international central bank assets denominated in Euros.
Currently the EU is confiscating the interest, not the principal, of that money to distribute it to Ukraine. That step is likely already illegal and Russia will certainly use the courts to get it back.
There were also talks to invest the Russian assets in junk bonds with aim of achieving a higher yield:
Euroclear chief executive Valérie Urbain told the Financial Times that European Union plans to raise additional revenue from frozen Russian assets by investing them in higher-risk securities would amount to “expropriation.”
Urbain also warned that such a move could prompt “Russian retaliation in all sorts of forms,” as well as damage Euroclear’s reputation.
The majority of Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are currently held at Euroclear.
The E.U. has reportedly been discussing the possibility of transferring these assets to a special E.U.-administered fund that would make higher-risk investments. The goal is to generate greater returns to support Ukraine.
That move was blocked as no one was ready to accept the potential liability for it. Not only Belgium, but also Germany and other fiscal conservative states, have warned that such a move would endanger their own assets. Russia has announced that it will retaliate against any confiscation of its money. It threatens to confiscate whatever European companies own or hold in Russia. Those companies would then have to sue their own governments for cover of their losses.
Now a new idea has crept up. How it is supposed to work is not clear to me but it seems to have the support of the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
In a Financial Times op-ed Merz claims (archived):
Germany has been, and remains, cautious on the issue of confiscating the Russian central bank’s assets that are frozen in Europe, and with good reason. There are not only questions of international law to consider, but also fundamental issues concerning the euro’s role as a global reserve currency. But this must not hold us back: we must consider how, by circumventing these problems, we can make these funds available for the defence of Ukraine.
In my view a viable solution should now be developed whereby — without intervening in property rights — we can make available to Ukraine an interest-free loan of almost €140 billion in total. That loan would only be repaid once Russia has compensated Ukraine for the damage it has caused during this war. Until then, the Russian assets will remain frozen, as decided by the European Council.
Such extensive assistance will require budgetary guarantees from member states. Those bilateral guarantees should, as soon as the next Multiannual Financial Framework is in place in 2028, be replaced by collateralisation under the EU’s long-term budget.
What sounds like AI slop is not Merz’ own idea but a plan that had been proffered earlier by the EU commission. But no one seems to understands how its is different from an outright confiscation of those assets:
Frustration has been building in EU capitals around the lack of details surrounding the so-called reparations loan, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first pitched in her State of the European Union speech Sept. 10.
The bulk of the Russian assets are held by the Brussels-based financial firm Euroclear and are invested in Western government bonds that have matured into cash. The cash is sitting in a deposit account with the European Central Bank.
The idea is for the EU to redirect the cash to Ukraine and “enter into a tailored debt contract with Euroclear at 0 percent interest,” according to the note.
Euroclear holds €185 billion in cash balances linked to the Russian assets, a part of which will pay back a preexisting G7 loan to Ukraine.
The remaining €140 billion will be paid out to Ukraine in tranches and used for “defense cooperation” as well as supporting Kyiv’s ordinary budget needs.
Reuters has more details on it:
To avoid seizing the Russian assets, the idea is to transfer the cash from Euroclear to a newly created Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) owned by EU governments, or G7 governments as well. In exchange, the European Commission would issue Euroclear with zero-coupon bonds guaranteed by the owners of the SPV.
The EU bonds would cover Euroclear’s risk against Russian litigation while the cash in the SPV could be invested more profitably than overnight deposits in the ECB and thus generate a higher return for Ukraine.
Why would this scheme, as Merz say, ‘require budgetary guarantees from member states’? Doesn’t that mean that the tax-payers of those member state will eventually have to pay it? Who’s money is at risk when Russia wins its litigation? Who pays if something goes wrong?
Some 62% of German voters disapprove (in German) Merz’s policies. Only a record low 35.5% says that he is right in what he is doing. In the fiscal conservative Germany any attempt to borrow more money for the war in Ukraine will further sink his and his party’s chances of ever being reelected.
Merz knows that the scheme has little chance to find unanimous EU approval. He plans to circumvent (archived) opposition to it:
I propose that, at the European Council at the end of October, we give the mandate to prepare this instrument in a legally secure manner.
That decision should, ideally, be unanimous — failing that, it should be adopted by the large majority of member states who are firmly committed to Ukraine. We should also invite partners around the world that have frozen Russian assets to join the instrument. To this end, we will co-ordinate closely with our partners in the G7.
Luckily it is Belgium which has the last says in this. It is, naturally, opposing the scheme:
Speaking in the margins of the UN General Assembly, Mr De Wever said that Chancellor Merz’s proposal “will never happen”. The Belgian Prime Minister argues that seizing central bank assets of a third country would set a dangerous precedent
“If countries see that central bank money can disappear when European politicians see fit, they might decide to withdraw their reserves from the eurozone.”
De Wever added Chancellor Merz’s public statement regarding this is regrettable. “I’ve told everyone that I am happy to discuss this. But let’s talk and come up with something, rather than sharing an opinion on it every day. I find it quite frustrating.”
It is, in the end, Russia’s money. Any attempt to seize is outright thievery. How long will it take for sane people to intervene and to shoot this idea down?
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Earlier on September 26th, I had posted:
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Garland Nixon’s Comprehensive View of Today’s U.S. Empire
26 September 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3xyyii8e5A
“THE EU HAS COLLAPSED AS ITS SUICIDAL LEADERS SCREAM FOR ATTENTION AND DESTRUCTION”
26 September 2025
Mr. Nixon explains many mysteries, such as why the heads-of-state in U.S.-empire countries are despised by the people who live there (in those 'democracies'), and what causes the immigration-problems in those countries. I think that his explanations are correct, so I’m calling attention to them here. What do you think of his explanations? Please say in reader-comments.
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All of this was foreshadowed in my 28 September 2022 “How America Is Crushing Europe”. So, this raping of Europe by America and acquiescing in it by Europe’s American-empire stooges, such as Starmer, Macron, and Merz (and keeping in mind that the EU was set up by the CIA to serve America’s billionaires), has been happening at least ever since Russia’s ‘unprovoked’ invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, which was provoked by America and its NATO anti-Russian miliary alliance contemptuous rejection on 7 January 2022 of Russia’s 17 December 2021 request that they sign a peace agreement with Russia to end the war in Ukraine that Obama had started in February 2024 by his bloody coup in Ukraine overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist President and installing a rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian government on Russia’s closest doorstep, Ukraine, a mere 300 miles away from The Kremlin, and so being able to blitz-decapitate Russia’s central command via missile in a mere five minutes if that U.S. plan proceeded to its completion.
Now that Russia is finally enforcing its long-stated national-security “red lines,” Europe’s heads-of-state will have to choose between peace with Russia (and rejection of America) or else World War Three with Russia. America’s current President Donald Trump is the first U.S. President since the end of WW2 who is ambiguous and even self-contradictory about whether he would use America’s nuclear weapons to defend any foreign country (except possibly Israel). NATO is verging toward becoming meaninglless. America’s stooges are left speechless and shocked. The extremely high disapproval-rating of those leaders among their own populations might ultimately produce their switch to abandoning America’s NATO and instead joining into alliances with Russia and China, so as to halt continuation of Europe’s slide. The big mystery as-of now is why Putin still hasn’t publicly reached out to them to offer such mutual-cooperation treaties, which would enable restoration of commerce between Europe and both Russia and China — and all the rest of Europe’s continent, which is the Eurasian Continent — the homeland of ALL Eurasian peoples, not MERELY of Europeans.That would cause Europe to blossom, instead oof to continue on their current path, toward wilting and becoming a global backwater dependent upon natural and human resources 3,000 miles away across the Atlantic Ocean. The peoples of Europe need to rise up and demand this, or else their grandchildren will be living in poverty on America’s cross-Atlantic plantation.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
