Marion Messmer
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mgmessmer.bsky.social
Marion Messmer
@mgmessmer.bsky.social
Senior Research Fellow in International Security at Chatham House
Former BASIC, King's College London
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Something happened in Yasnyy/Dombarovskiy. There is also a video and some NOTAMs t.me/militaryruss.... Looks like a failed ICBM launch. The color of this cloud doesn't look good. Not clear if it's Sarmat. There are other options: SS-18 or SS-19. Wait for more information.
November 28, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
I wrote about Oura's security and privacy practices earlier this year for this.weekinsecurity.com, and found:

• Oura rings *don't* end-to-end encrypt users' health data;
• Oura *can* access its users' data;
• Oura told me that the company *has* received U.S. government demands for users' data.
November 28, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
If your starting point is that you are more afraid of escalation than you are concerned about Russian sabotage, then you have effectively decided that you aren't willing to run the necessary risks to deter Russian grey-zone activity.
November 27, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Anecdotally, while I was looking for a source to refer to for this article with the search words ”Russia rejects US peace plan”, I found media articles on that topic from November 2024, February, May, June, September, and October 2025.
Made an effort to establish a timeline of this latest iteration of essentially the same old attempt by the Trump administration to force a peace deal, doomed to fail like the previous three times.

The number of plot twists would have been amusing, if it wasn’t so cruel to Ukraine.
The Rise and Fall of the Dim-Wit Plan
The latest iteration of a "secret US-Russia peace plan for Ukraine" would have been funny, if it wasn't so cruel to Ukraine.
open.substack.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Spaß an Wissenschaftskommunikation? Interessiert an Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik? Dann schnell sein, bis zum 28.11. bewerben und als Student:in im SWP-Kommunikations-Team starten!

📆 Beginn: 1.2.2026
⏰ 11h/Woche
📍 Arbeiten in Berlin
🗓️ Bewerbung bis: 28.11.2025

👉 swp-berlin.pulse.ly/6y7cbtbgmy
November 26, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Zwei sehr ernste Themen aber es freut mich, dass mein PhD Mitstreiter @gerritkurtz.bsky.social im Sicherheitspod auftaucht 🙂
🎙️ @sicherheitspod.de #101 ist da. Zunächst erklärt @gerritkurtz.bsky.social uns die Hintergründe des Krieges im Sudan. Im zweiten Teil diskutieren wir Genese und Inhalte des 28-Punkte-Ukraine-Plans, der inzwischen kein 28-Punkte-Plan mehr ist - und wie das diplomatische Chaos weitergehen könnte.
Folge #101 Krieg im Sudan | Diktatfrieden in der Ukraine? - Sicherheitspod
“Sicherheitshalber” ist der Podcast zur sicherheitspolitischen Lage in Deutschland, Europa und der Welt. In Folge 101 sprechen Thomas Wiegold, Ulrike Franke, Frank Sauer und Carlo Masala zuerst mit Ge...
sicherheitspod.de
November 25, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
"We have built factories that could start making equipment tomorrow. But we can’t until an order is placed”

Worked with @estwebber.bsky.social on a sad tale about Britain's defence industry, waiting to hear if the government will ever pour money into the sector

www.politico.eu/article/keir...
Starmer promised to spend big on defense but Britain’s arms industry is still waiting
Six months after a major inquiry into how the U.K. would meet geopolitical threats, many in the industry complain they haven’t received the certainty they need about where the British government pl…
www.politico.eu
November 25, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Depending on US digital services and infrastructure may not be a good idea for Europe.
The situation these judges are being put in for doing their work is unbelievable. They can’t use any US services - and not just for work, in their private lives too.
November 24, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Good @emmaclairefoley.bsky.social piece pushing back against a recent Foreign Affairs article:

"Below the confidence in America’s power to shape the global status quo seems to lurk a quiet admission that the American empire is fracturing" jacobin.com/2025/11/nucl...
The Return of Nuclear Proliferation
A recent article in the establishment security journal Foreign Affairs makes the case for nuclear proliferation among America’s allies. Not only are its arguments unsound, but they also understate the...
jacobin.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
💬 “The 28-point plan looks like a brainchild of the Kremlin” and “resembles more a demand for capitulation” @chathamhouse.org experts Keir Giles, Orysia Lutsevych, Mark Weller give their early analysis as Zelenskyy is pressured by Trump to accept a ‘peace deal’. www.chathamhouse.org/2025/11/trum...
Trump pressures Ukraine to accept peace deal: Early analysis from Chatham House experts
Chatham House analysts give their initial analysis after Zelenskyy was pressured by Trump to accept a White House plan to end the war with Russia.
www.chathamhouse.org
November 24, 2025 at 1:56 PM
This applies to any year since 2015 🫠
It’s just that almost everything is worse today than it was even a year ago. I hate it.
November 23, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Sickening that trans women are being pushed out of public life while some company is trying to make money out of an "AI trans girlfriend" experience
November 23, 2025 at 12:30 PM
In 2025, I have been reading a lot about the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis in Germany as it has felt like one of the best examples to process what is happening in Europe and the US (and maybe to find a solution to safeguard democracy, so that we can do better this time).
November 23, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
So, to recap, Ukraine and Europe understand that America has effectively endorsed a 28-point plan to force Kyiv to capitulate, set a Thursday deadline to accept it, and threatened to cut off all aid.

Now Marco Rubio says it's all wrong, that's not the plan, there's no deadline and no threat.
November 22, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
I just dipped a toe in the cesspit that used to be Twitter, and I think the surest indication that the “28 points” were translated from Russian is the number of Russian mouthpiece accounts busy shouting, unprompted, that that is absolutely not the case and they were drafted in the White House.
There is plenty in the 28-point list of US/Russian surrender demands for Ukraine that is nonsensical, unenforceable, or so vague as to be meaningless. My favourite might be

“9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.”

It could have been written for maximum vagueness to wrangle over -
November 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
@casmudde.bsky.social makes the case (again!) to social democratic leaders that aping the far right is not a good electoral strategy!

… it’s almost like they a deliberately ignoring political science research in their dash to oblivion 🤦‍♂️
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark | Cas Mudde
This week’s local elections are the latest reminder that when social democrats move rightwards, they’re making a mistake, says academic and author Cas Mudde
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
The Moscow Times: „The very emergence of such a U.S. initiative signals, in Putin’s view, that Washington is capitulating. And capitulating not because it has suffered losses — it has lost neither tanks nor aircraft nor soldiers — but because it is tired,frightened and eager to avoid involvement.“
November 22, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
It has a cover!

WE SHALL OUTLAST THEM tells the story of how Russia has reinvented itself on the global stage since February 2022—to try to outlast the West in a struggle over Ukraine and over global order: wwnorton.com/books/978132...

🧵 /1
November 18, 2025 at 3:14 PM
This is the best hypothesis I've seen as for how START I made it into the US-Russia peace plan
I'd bet Russia wrote "START III," their name for New START, and the U.S. team translated it wrong and was too ignorant of the issues to know the difference. The whole thing reads like Putin's wish list. As I have long feared would happen, Trump just signed up for Putin's priorities.
November 21, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Some notable things in what's being called the "Trump peace plan" but which could not have been more clearly written in Moscow if it came with a 2 for 1 deal on tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet. 🧵
November 21, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
my number one most serious writing tip is to make cool friends. in the last year I've needed to know about blacksmithing, neo-medievalism in the american empire, and mid-century lesbian pulp publishing and each time I've been able to just. call a guy.
November 17, 2025 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas & city center in 2021.”
Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death
The capital city is Finnish’ed with car-related fatalities.
www.politico.eu
November 17, 2025 at 6:31 AM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Yes. By the same token, I don't think Germany as a society truly understands what Germany's complicity in all this means for the country. I predict Gaza will be a significant factor in alienating or repelling the "high-skilled" workers the economy needs: www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/g...
November 16, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
Who were they clubbing with? They were clubbing with trafficked children, correct?
Seriously, what is wrong with these people?
November 16, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Marion Messmer
You could literally do a horror anthology based on the different ways this can go wrong.

AI dead mom escapes into your TV, and your digital fridge, and your pacemaker.
What if AI dead mom ends up neglected just like one of those digital picture frames. Sold at a digital goodwill for $2.50.
November 15, 2025 at 7:27 AM