Watch: Kharkiv pensioner pleads, “If I die, let it be here”

February 27, 2026

Watch: 'If I die, I want to die here' - Kharkiv pensioner — Workers put up anti-drone nets along a stretch of motorway

Before Dawn in Saltivskyi: The Quiet That Breaks

It was almost four in the morning when the sky over Saltivskyi, a northern suburb of Kharkiv, split for a moment and the block of flats on the corner answered with a shower of glass. The sound was not like a bomb in movies — no great roar, just a metallic percussion as windows exploded outward, curtains sucked through frames, and the street filled with a fine, glittering rain.

The missile was not a cruise missile but a Shahed — one of the loitering drones that have become grim punctuation marks in Ukraine’s second winter of war. Miraculously, there were no deaths. No bodies were carried down stairwells that morning. But lives were upended: tenants woke to rooms scattered with shards, kitchens rendered unusable, and the urgent, private arithmetic of what to salvage and what to leave behind.

The woman who came back

Margarita Belkina is 72, slight, and wrapped in a cardigan that could tell stories of other winters. She moved back to her second-floor studio in December after years as an internally displaced person in Kyiv. She had been away for almost four years, part of the great, ongoing shuffle of Ukrainians who left and returned depending on where the shells fell and where work and family tugged.

“I thought Saltivskyi was safe,” she said, tea black at the bottom of a chipped cup. “For four years nothing touched this district. I returned because my son was frightened for me in Kyiv — he said ‘come home, here is quieter.’ Now look.” Her hands folded, then unclenched. “If I must die, let it be here. This is my city, my people.” The words landed like a small flag planted in shattered glass.

Her pension, she told me, amounts to 3,000 Ukrainian hryvnia a month — roughly €60 by current conversion. “It does not buy warm blankets or peace of mind,” she joked, then cried. She had spent the night at her son’s apartment nearby and learned of the strike through a neighbourhood messaging group; at 3:52am a single text pulsed across screens: “Is everyone alive?”

Boarding up, handing out blankets

By late morning, municipal teams were at work gluing plywood over jagged window frames, while volunteers with the Ukrainian Red Cross handed out blankets, hot drinks, and small emergency kits. A young volunteer named Olena, who had the practised calm of someone who had seen too much, moved through the apartments with a clipboard.

“We don’t just give out bandages,” she said. “We listen. People need to name what happened. The practical help, the hot water, the glass repair — that comes later. Right now, they need to feel seen.” Her voice softened when she spoke of Margarita. “She says she regrets coming back but then — she says she will not be taken from her columns and her trees. That is the kind of stubbornness that keeps this city breathing.”

Community networks — a modern lifeline

In a war where the sky is the front, neighbourhood chat groups have become as vital as cellars. From the ministerial evacuation lines to private Telegram channels, residents warn one another of incoming attacks, share shelter locations, and coordinate help. “We text, we drive, we knock on doors,” said Yaroslav, a 34-year-old IT worker who runs a local group that maps which buildings have heating and which have broken windows. “It’s how we stay a neighbourhood rather than a list of victims.”

Nets on the motorway: improvisation against a new threat

On the outskirts of Kharkiv, beyond the rows of Soviet-era tenements and newly spruced shopfronts, construction crews are attaching something that looks like fishing net to poles above a major motorway. The nets are not ornamental; they are a crude but effective countermeasure to a more modern weapon.

Workers who have been on this job for weeks say they have already mounted some 18 kilometres of anti-drone netting on approaches to the city, inching their way closer to the centre. The goal: to snare fibre-optic tethered FPVs (first-person view drones), which travel along a long cable to evade electronic jamming and can carry explosives or act as guided munitions.

What the nets do: catch or deflect the drone’s flight path, entangle the tethering cable, and prevent detonation on critical infrastructure.
Who uses them: municipal construction teams, often working through curfew windows.
How far the threat reaches: FPVs can travel up to around 40km, placing Kharkiv within range if launched from across the border.

“We are building a physical web across the roads,” said Oleg, a foreman with a liner’s tan and the bluntness of someone who measures danger in bolts and knots. “It’s slow, dirty work. It doesn’t stop everything. But it makes the enemy adjust, and every minute they adjust gives someone a chance to live another day.”

Weapons of a new era — Shaheds, FPVs, and urban life

The attack on the Saltivskyi block is a small thread in a larger tapestry: Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities have endured waves of drone and missile strikes since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. The Shahed — an Iranian-designed loitering munition — has been used in swarms to saturate air defenses. FPVs, often homemade or improvised, are a newer challenge: cheap, hard to jam when tethered, and lethal in their unpredictability.

“What we’re seeing is a democratization of aerial strike capability,” explained Dr. Kateryna Hrytsenko, a drone warfare specialist at a university in Lviv. “You no longer need a billion-dollar bomber to threaten a city street. You need a few hundred dollars’ worth of components and a plan. Asymmetric technologies redistribute risk but increase civilian vulnerability.”

Kharkiv, a city of roughly 1.2 million people that sits some 30 kilometres from the frontline and the Russian border, has paid this price. The geography that once made it a hub of industry and culture also makes it reachable by relatively low-cost weapons.

What does home mean now?

Walking down Saltivskyi’s avenues later that day, I saw a child on a scooter wobble past a window boarded with fresh plywood. A neighbour waved and shouted that there would be a community meeting to discuss repairs and who could take shifts at the basement shelter. A cafe owner had put out thermoses of coffee for volunteers and for anyone trying to fill out forms for state compensation.

These small civic acts — the plywood nailed at sunrise, the volunteer shifting a blanket, the chat group that asks “Is everyone alive?” in the middle of the night — are the threads by which a community stitches itself together in wartime. They are also the human answers to a question that will haunt readers far from Ukraine: what does it mean to rebuild while bombs still hang in the air?

Would you go back if it were your home? Would you risk the evenings when the sky, once taken for granted, can no longer be trusted? These are not theoretical queries for Margarita or the volunteers in Kharkiv. They are daily decisions wrapped in the ordinary business of life: pensions, hot water, a son’s worried call.

Beyond the block: what this moment says about our world

This strike, these nets, this elderly woman on a chipped-cup life — they are a microcosm of global shifts. The proliferation of drones puts cities at a new kind of risk. Aging populations, low pensions, and disrupted supply chains make recovery slower. Yet the improvised, often community-led responses show an enormous, often unreported human resilience.

On a practical level, Kharkiv’s experiment with nets, community messaging, and rapid volunteer response offers lessons to other cities learning to live under the shadow of remote warfare. On a moral level, it forces a question that should sit uncomfortably with all of us: as technology lowers the barrier to violence, who protects the places we call home?

Back in Saltivskyi, Margarita swept glass from her windowsill with trembling hands. “I cannot be ashamed of being afraid,” she said. “But fear does not get to own what I love.” She smiled, and in that small, fierce smile was the answer she had already chosen: to stay, to stitch, and to carry on.

U.S. Justice Department Faces Allegations of Withholding Jeffrey Epstein Files

hanad

February 27, 2026

US justice dept accused of withholding Epstein documents — Donald Trump has said the release of the 'Epstein Files' exonerated him

What’s Missing From the Epstein Files: A Quiet Roar of Papers, Pain and Politics

There is a particular hush that falls over archival rooms and courthouse basements when millions of pages are catalogued, digitised and handed to the public. It is the silence of inked names, the quiet breath between redactions, the pause where a victim’s life is reduced to a sentence. This hush has been stirring into a storm. In recent days, lawmakers, reporters and survivors have converged on one question: why do more than three million Epstein-related documents—released under a congressional order—appear to omit crucial interview materials tied to an allegation that would touch the life of a former president?

The headline is blunt. Representative Robert Garcia, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says the Justice Department has withheld more than 50 pages of FBI interview material relating to a woman who alleges she was sexually abused as a minor and who has accused Donald Trump of assault. According to NPR and independent reporting confirmed by Garcia, FBI records indicate four interviews were conducted with the woman; in the public database, only one summary appears—one that focuses on Epstein and largely omits her allegations concerning Mr. Trump.

The paper trail that didn’t make the cut

We are not talking about stray briefs or clerical missteps. We are talking about a trove: more than three million documents generated during probes into Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking network. Within that mass of paper are indexes and serial numbers—breadcrumb trails that suggest the FBI produced at least four interview summaries. Yet the public-facing “Epstein Files” database contains only one of those summaries, and it does not contain the fuller allegations that the interview notes reportedly captured.

“The fact that DOJ is suppressing documents alleging President Trump’s commission of sexual abuse of an underage victim only heightens my genuine concerns about a White House cover-up,” Garcia wrote in a letter to the Justice Department—words that have turned murmurs into parliamentary demands.

The Justice Department counters that it is still reviewing flagged documents and that, if anything has been improperly tagged, it will be published consistent with the law. The department notes that some materials are withheld to protect the identities of victims or to avoid compromising ongoing investigations. The White House, meanwhile, has leaned on a familiar refrain: a spokeswoman asserting that Mr. Trump has been “totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”

Why a missing 50 pages matters

Fifty pages in a pile of three million can be dismissed as minutiae. But to survivors, investigators and historians, each page is a life threaded into evidence. Interviews are not neutral documents; they are where pain is recorded, context is given, dates are stamped, and potential suspects are named. If the FBI did indeed interview the woman four times, the absent summaries could contain clarifying details—chronologies, locations, corroborating witnesses—that change the texture of the public record.

“Every page matters,” said Erin Matthews, director of the Survivors’ Advocacy Network. “For survivors, it’s not about political theater. It’s about being seen. If there are interviews that were done and we can’t access them, the integrity of the entire process is undermined.”

Legal scholars also fret about the implications. “Transparency is the only armor the public has when powerful institutions are involved,” said Professor Linda Chen, a constitutional law scholar. “When large swathes of a production are redacted or appear to be missing, it erodes trust—not only in the Department of Justice, but in the rule of law itself.”

Voices on the street

In Palm Beach, where Epstein’s social orbit once turned through the manicured lawns of Mar-a-Lago, locals describe a community oddly habituated to scandal and spectacle. “You never imagined it would land like this,” said Maria Alvarez, who runs a small gallery not far from the club. “We saw the photos, the parties. But the human cost? That’s something else entirely.”

On the other side of the country, in a Washington café near the Capitol, a legislative aide who asked not to be named leaned over a cup of coffee and observed, “There’s a kind of institutional defensiveness right now. Agencies are terrified of releasing something that could harm an ongoing case or reveal sources. But there’s also a political calendar that makes secrecy convenient.”

Context and consequences

Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a federal lockup in 2019 left a legal vacuum; criminal prosecutions slowed, while civil suits, congressional inquiries and journalism rushed to fill the space. Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction in 2021 brought further testimony into the light, but the ledger is far from complete. The bipartisan bill passed by Congress last year ordered the executive branch to release its Epstein-related materials; the DOJ set out to do that, but missed the tight deadline, citing the overwhelming volume and the need to protect victims.

To date, the documents that have surfaced publicly include photographs—some with faces redacted—emails, and a suggestive note that, according to the archive, bears a signature resembling Mr. Trump’s. The records also contain notes that one powerful associate “knew about the girls,” an ambiguous line that has fed both speculation and defense counters. Trump himself has denied wrongdoing, called the note a forgery, and stated that he never flew on Epstein’s plane—a claim that conflicts with evidence suggesting multiple flights.

What do we do with uncertainty?

When records are incomplete, the public is left with two unsatisfying options: believe the absence of evidence as evidence of innocence, or suspect the absence of evidence as evidence of suppression. Neither is a responsible default.

“Transparency isn’t an on-off switch,” said Maya Desai, a fellow at the Center for Public Integrity. “It’s a process. Agencies have to balance privacy, operational security and the public’s right to know. But that balancing act must be explained. Right now, the explanation is thin.”

That thinness fuels conspiracy and corrodes trust. It sets off a cascade: journalists demand more, lawmakers threaten oversight, survivors ask for dignity, and the public watches, sometimes aghast, often confused. It is worth asking: what kind of democracy tolerates a permanent fog around allegations of sexual violence—especially allegations that touch high places?

Looking forward: accountability, not applause

We are living through a test of institutions. Will the Justice Department finish the review it promised? Will Congress insist on a verifiable audit trail of the document production? Will survivors be given a meaningful voice in decisions about redactions that affect them?

“Accountability is not automatic,” notes Professor Chen. “It must be demanded, documented and legislated when necessary. Millions of documents should not be a shield for inaction.”

For the woman whose interviews are now the alleged missing pages, for the dozens of survivors who have waited years for public acknowledgment, and for a public hungry for clarity, the stakes are immediate and human. The missing pages are not just blanks in an archive; they are potential corroboration, denials, the shape of memory itself.

So I leave you with this: how do we, as a society, reconcile our appetite for accountability with the messy reality of legal procedure and victim protection? When power meets secrecy, who is the referee? The answers will require patience, persistence, and, above all, the courage to keep turning pages—even when what they reveal is uncomfortable.

Clinton Testifies About Epstein, Urges Investigators to Question Trump

hanad

February 27, 2026

Clinton testifies over Epstein, urges Trump be questioned — Democrats say the investigation is being weaponised to attack political opponents of Donald Trump

In the hush of Chappaqua: a small town thrust into a national reckoning

On an October morning that felt more like a scene from a political novel than the peaceful suburb it usually is, the Hudson Valley town of Chappaqua woke to an unusual kind of attention. News vans lined the maples, hot coffee steamed from insulated cups, and a procession of reporters threaded their way along narrow streets toward the unassuming address where a former secretary of state quietly sat for hours of questioning.

Hillary Clinton’s testimony, given behind closed doors to the House Oversight Committee, landed like a stone in a still pond — ripples that reached Washington power brokers, survivors’ advocates, and ordinary neighbors who have tilled the same soil for decades. The subject: Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting federal sex-trafficking charges, and the long, tangled web of connections that stitched him to a constellation of the powerful.

The testimony and the theatre

Clinton’s opening statement, shared publicly ahead of the secret session, was direct. “I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein,” she wrote. That line — simple, declarative — was the fulcrum of an afternoon of probing. Republicans on the Oversight Committee said they were trying to get at the facts: any ties between the Clintons and Epstein, whether Epstein’s wealth and access intersected with philanthropic work, and if Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator — ever served as a bridge between them.

“No one is accusing at this moment the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky told reporters before the deposition. His goal, he said, is to “understand many things about Epstein” — a phrase that has become shorthand for a sprawling, months-long inquiry into alliances and allegations that crossed continents and decades.

The hearing itself was punctuated by moments that felt almost theatrical. A photograph of Clinton at the table — captured, leaked, and circulated on social media — briefly halted proceedings and raised questions about committee protocol and the intoxicating role of online influencers in real-time political news. Conservative influencer Benny Johnson posted the image; he later said it had been taken by Republican Representative Lauren Boebert. The episode underscored how modern congressional oversight is performed on a stage built of smartphones and followers.

What’s next: a former president takes the stand

Bill Clinton is slated to testify the following day, a development that would mark the first time a former U.S. president has been compelled to give evidence before Congress. That historical weight has not been lost on locals, who woke to television lights and an influx of cable networks but also to the surreal idea that their quiet streets had become a locus for constitutional drama.

“I walked out to get my dry cleaning and thought, ‘What is happening to our little town?’” said Mary Lou Hernandez, who has lived across from the train station for 34 years. “You can’t help but feel the gravity of it all — and the exhaustion. This subject has consumed a lot of people’s lives.”

The facts the committee is pursuing

The committee’s line of inquiry is relatively straightforward on paper: trace contact, financial ties, and potential facilitation. Chairman Comer has pointed to evidence that Epstein visited the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was in office. The former president has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private plane several times in the early 2000s and has said he regrets those associations.

Donald Trump’s name also figures prominently in the background. Trump socialized with Epstein in the 1990s and 2000s, and has said he severed ties before Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. In recent months, the Justice Department has released more than three million pages of Epstein-related documents — a trove meant to bring transparency to victims, researchers, and journalists alike. Those filings have linked Epstein to a long list of business and political leaders around the globe and have spurred criminal inquiries abroad, including high-profile probes into members of European royalty.

What the law and history tell us

Ghislaine Maxwell remains the only person convicted in connection with Epstein. In December 2021 she was found guilty of sex trafficking and related charges and, in June 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Maxwell invoked her Fifth Amendment rights before the Oversight Committee when she appeared via videolink earlier this month. Her decision to remain silent has left a satisfier of legal closure dangling for many survivors and investigators.

“Legal closure is never neat,” said Dr. Aisha Rahman, a law professor who studies institutional accountability. “What witnesses and documents can do is fill in the texture of how networks of privilege enable abuse. That matters to survivors and to democracy.”

Voices in the town and beyond

Reactions in Chappaqua ran the gamut. A diner-owner, Tom Kline, shrugged and said, “I’m more worried about the economy than who hung out with who in the 90s,” while a teacher, Mei Lin, pointed to a deeper unease. “For survivors, this is not nostalgia,” she said. “They want answers, and they want systems to change so this doesn’t happen again.”

Some Democrats on the committee say Republicans’ fixation on the Clintons smacks of partisan theater. Representative Robert Garcia of California argued publicly that President Trump and others with ties to Epstein — including business figures whose names have surfaced in the document releases — should also testify. The tug-of-war across party lines has turned the investigation into a mirror reflecting larger trends: the national appetite for accountability, the weaponization of oversight, and the fast, often messy confluence of politics and public conscience.

Why this still matters

Why do these hearings matter beyond spectacle? Because they force a reckoning about power. Epstein’s crimes were brutal and systemic, involving recruitment, coercion, and networks that blurred private and public life. The documents released to date — millions of pages — are both a record and a warning. They show how wealth and access can be used to shield wrongdoing, and how difficult it is for victims to break through institutional defenses.

“We have to ask the hard questions,” said survivor advocate Lauren McKay. “Not just who sat in the same room, or flew on the same plane, but how institutions enabled impunity. That’s where policy change must come.”

Questions for the reader

As you read this, consider: what does accountability look like in an era where power can be invisible, money can buy access, and social media can both reveal and obscure truth? How should democracies balance transparency with the rights of individuals? And perhaps most importantly, how do we center survivors in conversations that so often default to the interests of the powerful?

Chappaqua will go back to its regular rhythms — the commuter trains, the school buses, the corner bakery — but the shadow from these depositions will likely linger. Not because of the headlines, but because each disclosure, each testimony, nudges a public conversation forward about responsibility, privilege, and the structures that allow abuse to persist. That, more than the spectacle, is the real story.

Cuban Coast Guard Fatally Shoots Four Aboard Florida-Registered Vessel

hanad

February 26, 2026

Cuban coast guard kills four on Florida-registered boat — The confrontation comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Cuba

Gunfire at Dawn: A Speedboat, a Coast Guard, and the Fragile Line Between Two Americas

Out on the Gulf stream, where the ocean rides like a bright, restless ribbon between two very different worlds, a short, violent exchange has again turned a long-standing tension into headlines. Cuba’s interior ministry says its coast guard intercepted a US-registered speedboat near Falcones Cay in Villa Clara province and that the encounter ended with four people dead and six wounded. The Cuban vessel’s commander was reported wounded as well.

The sparse facts are already freighted with history: one nautical mile from shore, a small gray boat, shots fired, bodies pulled aboard, and a cascade of urgent calls between Havana and U.S. officials. Who was on that boat? Were they smugglers? Migrants? Mercenaries? The Cuban government labeled the vessel “illegal”; U.S. authorities have said they are not aware of any U.S. government personnel aboard and are trying to verify the nationalities and the sequence of events.

A fisherman’s morning turned into a headline

“We heard the gunshots like cannons,” said Raúl Martínez, 46, a fisherman from Caibarién, the nearest coastal town. “I thought it was a storm at first, then the light boats came buzzing back and I saw smoke and men being carried. It’s not the sea I know.”

On the Cuban side, the incident landed in a landscape already worn thin. Villages along the northern coast are accustomed to the clatter of outboard engines at night — the dark economy of small-scale smuggling, of desperate crossings, of traffickers and families trying to escape a failing economy. But the lethality reported this time has punched a new wound.

What we know — and what we don’t

Authorities in Havana say the Cuban coast guard approached the Florida-registered boat about a nautical mile from Falcones Cay. According to the Cuban statement, shots were fired from the speedboat as the coast guard neared, wounding the commander of the Cuban vessel. The coast guard returned fire; four people aboard the speedboat were killed and six were wounded, and the injured were evacuated and treated.

U.S. officials have been cautious. A U.S. administration spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters the United States was not carrying out an operation and had no government personnel aboard the vessel. “We have been made aware of the reports from Havana and are seeking to independently verify what happened,” the spokesperson said.

Florida authorities, alarmed that a U.S.-registered craft had been involved, announced an inquiry. “We will work with our federal partners to determine whether American citizens were involved and to ensure accountability,” a statement from the attorney general’s office read. The moment has set off a flurry of diplomatic checking and careful rhetoric.

History in a small craft

This is not an isolated kind of incident in the region. The Cuban coast guard has long reported encounters with speedboats crossing the Florida Straits — the narrow stretch of sea that at its nearest point is only about 160 kilometers (roughly 100 miles) from Florida. Havana frequently describes these craft as involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, or arms runs. Between January and June 2022, Cuban authorities said their coast guard intercepted 13 speedboats coming from the United States; many were described by officials as linked to migrant smuggling or “human trafficking operations.”

Those numbers only hint at the human currents beneath them. After Cuba’s largest migration wave in six decades in 2022, thousands of small craft became part of a dangerous calculus — people risking the sea for the promise of a different life, or criminal networks vying for profit.

Voices from the island

“We have friends who leave in speedboats,” said Ana Delgado, a nurse in Santa Clara. “Some get across; many don’t. If it’s true that Americans were among the dead, it will send shockwaves here and in Florida.”

In Havana’s central plazas and on the stone malecon where neighborhoods meet the sea, conversations have a particular cadence — equal parts resignation and outrage. “We see more patrols, more checkpoints,” said Luis Ortega, a Havana-based analyst. “For ordinary Cubans, this is another chapter in a long story that mixes state control, scarcity, and illegal economies. For outsiders it’s a diplomatic flashpoint.”

Geopolitics on the water

The incident occurs against a backdrop of tense U.S.–Cuban relations and renewed scrutiny of sanctions that have oscillated between tightening and thaw. U.S. policies restricting fuel and economic ties have put pressure on an island economy that has long leaned on external partners for energy and trade. Cuba’s reliance on oil imports — historically bolstered by Venezuela — has left it vulnerable to geopolitical shifts.

In recent months, there have been diplomatic efforts in the Caribbean to avoid escalation. Several regional governments have urged de-escalation and humanitarian assistance, fearful that a blockade or sudden collapse of essential supplies could spark mass displacement across the region. Mexico has sent ships carrying aid to Cuba in recent weeks, and Canada announced monetary assistance to help cushion the humanitarian impact.

Experts weigh in

“We are watching the sea as much as the messaging,” said Dr. Emily Carter, a maritime security analyst with the Atlantic Institute. “The tactical reality of small, fast boats in littoral waters produces chaos. At night, identification is difficult; engagements can escalate in seconds. But that does not absolve any actor from responsibility to avoid unnecessary lethal force and to allow impartial investigation.”

Law-of-the-sea questions hang in the air like coastal mist: What counts as territorial waters in this instance? Who was in control of the craft’s navigational data? And crucially, how will the international community verify competing claims when access is limited?

Why this matters beyond Cuba and Florida

Consider the broader patterns: migration driven by economic collapse; the porousness of maritime borders; the ways in which sanctions and diplomatic isolation can push people into the hands of smugglers. Consider too how quickly a local maritime interdiction can metastasize into an international incident, pushing capitals to posture and publics to fear.

Ask yourself: how do we balance sovereignty and security? How should democratic states respond when their vessels — registered under their flags — become embroiled in deadly exchanges far from home? And what protections exist for the many who flee not out of criminal intent but because they see no future at home?

What comes next

Official channels are busy. Havana has informed U.S. counterparts of the incident; U.S. agencies have promised independent verification. Florida is investigating the registration trail of the speedboat. International humanitarian organizations are watching for potential displacement or escalation.

For families on both sides of the Straits, the immediate questions are smaller and sharper: who were the dead? who was wounded? who will answer for this night on the water? For policymakers, the questions are broader: how to avoid another such encounter; how to manage migration and smuggling without stoking violence; how to ensure that geopolitics does not wash away human life.

Back in Caibarién, Raúl stands at the dock, hands in his pockets, watching the sea like someone waiting for the return of a lost friend. “The sea takes and gives,” he said softly. “Tonight it gave sorrow.”

What will we as a region — and as neighbors — do differently next time the night hums with outboard motors? The answer will determine whether this episode becomes a cautionary tale or a catalyst for change.

Kharkiv ballet dancers defy invasion with courageous, ongoing performances

hanad

February 26, 2026

Kharkiv's ballet dancers perform in defiance of invasion — Performers rehearse for the French ballet 'Giselle'

When Ballet Became an Underground Beacon: Kharkiv’s Dancers Defy War with Grace

The lights went out over Kharkiv the night the world tilted. On 23 February 2022, a full house leaned forward for the final bow of a beloved ballet. Hours later, explosions wrote a new timetable across the skyline as Russia’s full-scale invasion began in the early hours of 24 February.

What followed was not only a military assault but a reckoning for a city whose identity has long been shaped by steel, universities and an old-world cultural life. Kharkiv’s grand opera and ballet theatre—its marble and glass façade, its creaky velvet seats—took a hit. More than 2,000 square metres of glass were shattered. The great stage went quiet, and many of the company’s dancers scattered to safety or to work with touring troupes across Europe.

From Orchestra Pit to Metro Platform

But silence proved impossible. Within weeks, as missiles carved arcs through the winter sky, a small, stubborn group of artists refused to surrender the language they had spent a lifetime learning: movement. They rehearsed below ground—within the theatre’s lower levels and in the city’s metro stations—places where tile and concrete offered shelter from the air raids above.

“We could have folded the program and left the keys on the desk,” says Olena Moroz, a former principal now helping coordinate underground shows. “Instead we decided to translate hope into steps. When you watch people clap in a station, while a train rushes by, you understand art can be both fragile and fierce.”

Imagine a winter platform in Kharkiv: the rumble of trains, the cold seeping into bones, and a cluster of dancers in rehearsal tights and coats, warming up with electric heaters humming nearby. Children press their faces to mosaic pillars. Soldiers—camouflage still dusted with soot—stand in the back, eyes momentarily far away from the front lines. For those forty minutes, the city keeps its breath.

Numbers that Tell a Story

The scale of the upheaval is hard to overstate. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced since 2022; entire neighborhoods were shelled repeatedly, and Kharkiv’s population plunged as people fled the uncertainty. Before the invasion the company boasted more than 90 dancers. Today, the regular ensemble numbers around 35, supported by a chamber orchestra of local musicians who remained.

“We are fewer, yes,” says Artem Kovalenko, the theatre’s rehearsal master. “But fewer does not mean less powerful. It means every arabesque, every lift, carries more intention. We move heavier in spirit and lighter in hope.”

Why Ballet, in the Middle of War?

Ask a passerby why they stood in a cold station to watch Tchaikovsky on a Tuesday morning and they will shrug with a wet smile. “It’s not about beauty alone,” says Halyna, a schoolteacher who now volunteers to help distribute blankets after performances. “It is a reminder that there is something worth protecting. Culture is a compass.”

Psychologists and trauma specialists nod at that instinct. “Shared rituals — music, dance, theatre — are anchors during crises,” explains Dr. Marta Lysenkova, a psychologist who has worked with displaced families. “They restore a sense of normalcy, provide collective breathing space, and sometimes help reduce symptoms of anxiety and hypervigilance. Cultural continuity is a public health intervention as much as an artistic one.”

There is another, more tactical reason for the performances: morale. Veterans, reservists and active-duty soldiers have been known to attend shows whenever possible. “When a man who has seen combat sits in a crowd and cries at a pas de deux, it tells us something about human resilience,” says Sergii, a 28-year-old conscript who has been to several metro shows. “For ninety minutes you are not in a foxhole.”

Practice Under Pressure

Rehearsals are grueling. The troupe works six days a week, their regimen unchanged even if the circumstances are not. Pointe shoes are repaired by hand, costumes stitched in dim corners, choreography adapted for low ceilings and uneven floors. Electric heaters struggle against winter. Power cuts are routine, and air-raid sirens interrupt runs—sometimes mid-adagio, sometimes as dancers are exiting stage left.

“You learn to keep your balance no matter what the sky does,” says Anya Kovach, a lead soloist. “We train like athletes and act like caregivers. When someone in the audience is crying, we say quietly afterwards: you are allowed to feel. It’s part of the healing.”

Local Color: Tea, Tape, and a Shared Samovar

There is a small, domestic poetry to how life carries on. Backstage, volunteer grandmothers ferry cups of black tea wrapped in newspaper. A seamstress uses military tape to temporarily reinforce a torn bodice. A volunteer brings a thermos of borscht for the orchestra. After shows, people linger to exchange news, to swap battery packs and to trade information about where the next aid convoy will pass.

“Our theatre has always been a social crossroads,” says Mykola Petrenko, an elderly patron who returned under a gas mask. “Now more than ever, it is a community clinic for the soul.”

What This Means for the World

Kharkiv’s story is not an isolated anecdote. Across the globe, in conflicts old and new, communities have turned to art to survive. During World War II, musicians played on bombed stages; in refugee camps today, poets and storytellers maintain languages that belligerents try to erase. The Kharkiv ballet is a reminder that cultural life is not merely ornamental—it is a lifeline.

International cultural organizations have taken note. Grants, tours, and collaborative projects are helping some artists continue their work abroad, but many choose to remain. “Leaving was necessary for safety,” says dancer Marina Lisova, who toured with a partner company last year. “Coming back, even underground, felt like returning to a duty.”

What Will the Future Look Like?

There is no neat ending yet. The performers speak of returning to a restored main stage, of powdering noses under crystal chandeliers. They dream, aloud, of reopening the theatre to children who have never sat in the stalls. But they are equally clear-eyed about the long haul: reconstruction of buildings takes years; reconstruction of trust takes longer.

“When the guns stop, the work will deepen,” says Olena. “We must teach new students, fix the roof, and repair the glass. We must also listen to those who have suffered and find ways to rebuild community. That is the real choreography.”

So I ask you, reading this from wherever you are: what do we owe the keepers of beauty in a broken place? Is art a luxury or a necessity when the world is burning? In Kharkiv they answer by taking the stage—not because the bombs have stopped, but because some things are worth carrying into the dark.

Convicted double killer Ian Huntley allegedly assaulted behind bars

hanad

February 26, 2026

Double killer Ian Huntley reportedly attacked in prison — Ian Huntley was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman (File image)

Blood on Cold Concrete: The Night a Notorious Inmate Was Beaten at HMP Frankland

Early on a grey County Durham morning, sirens cut through the damp air and an ambulance threaded its way toward HMP Frankland, one of England’s most fortified prisons. Inside, the prison’s austere corridors — concrete, steel, the soft echo of footsteps — were punctured by a violence that has reignited old wounds across the country.

Durham Constabulary confirmed that police were called after a serious assault at the high-security facility. “Police were alerted to an assault which had taken place within HMP Frankland in Durham this morning,” a force spokesperson said. “A male prisoner suffered serious injuries during the incident and was transported to hospital. A police investigation is now under way into the circumstances of the incident and detectives are liaising with staff at the prison.”

The assaulted prisoner has been widely reported to be Ian Huntley, the man convicted over the 2002 murders of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire. Huntley is serving a life sentence. A source quoted by national tabloids said he had been attacked with a metal pole and that his condition was “touch and go.” These details remain unconfirmed by police.

The place and the prisoner

HMP Frankland sits in a low-lying bowl of land near Durham, its high walls and watchtowers looking as if they were carved from the sky. It was designed to hold some of the most dangerous and longest-serving offenders in the system — men who present ongoing risks to others and who are considered too volatile for conventional prisons.

“Frankland isn’t a country club,” observed a former prison officer who asked not to be named. “It’s where the state keeps those it cannot protect the public from, and, increasingly, those it struggles to protect itself from.”

In recent years, inspectors, politicians and campaigners have repeatedly raised alarms about the erosion of safety in England’s prisons. Staff shortages, aging infrastructure and rising levels of violence have stretched the system thin and created environments where fights can flare with alarming ferocity.

A country still carrying its grief

The murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in August 2002 shocked a nation. Two schoolgirls, friends who had gone to buy sweets after a barbecue, did not come home. Their deaths led to mass searches, a media frenzy, and, eventually, the arrest and conviction of Huntley. For many people, the case remains emblematic of a terrible vulnerability — the sudden, irrevocable loss of childhood.

“You never forget,” said a Soham resident, speaking quietly in the village where memorials still stand. “It’s on the mantelpiece, on the school bench, in our conversations. To hear what’s happened now, you feel something stirring all over again.”

That simmering public feeling — a potent mix of grief, anger and appetite for retribution — is one reason the story has drawn such attention. But beyond headlines, the attack at Frankland raises difficult questions about the role of prisons in modern society.

Vigilantism or systemic failure?

When a notorious prisoner is harmed, some are quick to cheer; others demand a sober accounting. “No one should be assaulted, even those who have committed the worst crimes,” said Dr. Aisha Rahman, a criminologist who has studied prison violence and rehabilitation. “Violence inside prisons is a symptom. It’s a symptom of overcrowding, understaffing, a lack of purposeful activity, and the wider neglect of mental health. If we only react with retribution, we ignore the systemic failures that allow this to happen.”

Prisoner-on-prisoner violence has become a recurring theme across the UK’s custodial estate. Official reports over recent years have pointed to increased assaults, with staff numbers down and the inmate population harboring higher levels of complex needs, including mental illness and substance misuse.

“You can’t isolate acts like this,” said a prison rights advocate. “Either the regime can keep people separated, protected, and engaged — or it can’t. If it can’t, then the consequences are predictable.”

What happens next?

Police detectives are treating the incident as an assault and the prison service has said a prisoner is receiving treatment in hospital. “It would be inappropriate to comment further while police investigate,” a Prison Service spokesperson said, adding that safety and security remain top priorities.

For families of victims and communities who have lived through high-profile crimes, such statements are not always satisfying. Emotions are raw, and the internet — where speculation multiplies and details are recycled — can turn a single event into a storm.

“We have to be careful with the way we talk about this,” a victim support worker told me. “There is a line between understanding what happened and using violence as a form of collective punishment. Healing doesn’t come from headlines.”

Beyond the prison walls: what this reveals

As readers, we are invited to confront uncomfortable choices: Do we demand ever-harsher punishment without asking if the institutions administering it are fit for purpose? Do we accept that some men should be held apart from society forever, even if that means accepting ever more violent internal ecosystems? Where does justice end and revenge begin?

Prisons are mirrors — they reflect not just the incarcerated, but the values and failures of the societies that build them. The assault at Frankland is not merely an incident in a fortified perimeter; it is a flashpoint in a larger conversation about public safety, rehabilitation, and the human cost of neglect.

As investigators follow leads and the injured man receives care, the people most affected will continue to live with the aftermath. For the families of Holly and Jessica, the scene may have scraped open wounds thought long closed. For prison staff and residents, it is another reminder that their work takes place on a knife-edge.

What do we want our prisons to be: warehouses of retribution, laboratories of rehabilitation, or something in between? How we answer that question will shape what the next headlines look like — and whether a system in strain can finally be remade.

Police inquiries continue. The raw facts are few and, for now, guarded. But the larger questions — about safety, accountability and the fragile boundary between justice and vengeance — remain very much alive. How should society manage the monsters it creates? And who will say what is right?

Russia launches missile barrage against Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure

hanad

February 26, 2026

Russia pounds Ukraine's energy sector with missiles — Workers clear debris next to a residential building which was damaged in a drone attack on Kharkiv

Night of iron and glass: Ukraine wakes to smoke, silence, and the math of loss

When dawn came over cities from Kharkiv to Zaporizhzhia, it revealed a strange, brutal geometry: holes punched through apartment blocks, charred shopfronts, power cables like shredded hair across pavements, and families wrapped in the same wool blankets they had used last winter. The sky was a pale, indifferent blue. The air smelled of burned insulation and the metallic tang of spent missiles.

“It sounded like the world was being rewritten outside our windows,” said Olena, a kindergarten teacher in Kryvyi Rih who spent the night sheltering children in a classroom after two missiles and scores of drones struck nearby. “We kept humming songs to keep the little ones from listening to the explosions. Singing is how you pretend the day will still be kind.”

Ukrainian authorities said the raid was enormous. President Volodymyr Zelensky posted figures that read like an oil painting in numbers: some 420 drones and 39 missiles, including 11 ballistic warheads, aimed at energy facilities, rail networks and other pieces of a country’s daily scaffolding. The air force said defence crews shot down 374 drones and 32 missiles, but that at least five ballistic missiles and roughly 46 drones nevertheless struck targets, damaging substations, gas installations and homes across multiple regions.

The deliberate targeting of lifelines

This wasn’t a random bombardment of military sites. The pattern was clinical: power plants and distribution nodes, gas facilities in the Poltava region, substations supplying Kyiv and Dnipro, and rail arteries in frontline territories such as Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. The goal was to turn infrastructure into the front line—to make cold, darkness and immobility an instrument of war.

“When you hit electricity and transport, you don’t just blow up a transformer—you close hospitals, you strand workers, you stop trains carrying medicine,” said Ihor Melnyk, a retired electrical engineer who now advises utility crews. “This is strategic sabotage. It’s meant to multiply suffering.”

Across eight regions, officials reported dozens injured—among them children. Kharkiv’s governor counted at least 14 wounded, including a seven-year-old. In Zaporizhzhia, local authorities said ten people were hurt and 19 apartment blocks bore the scars of shrapnel and fire. In Kryvyi Rih, a kindergarten and several homes were damaged; across Kyiv, debris from intercepted missiles peppered roofs and streets.

What the numbers mean on the ground

420 drones and 39 missiles: the scale of the attack, as reported by Kyiv.
374 drones and 32 missiles shot down: Ukrainian air-defence tallies.
Dozens injured across eight regions, including children: the human toll.
Multiple substations and gas facilities hit: infrastructure damage with cascading effects.

Those are not abstract statistics. They are generators left idle, trains delayed or canceled, hospital wards that flicker into darkness, and people forced to boil water over camping stoves as temperatures dip back toward winter. “You lose power and suddenly you lose time,” said a nurse in Dnipro. “You have to decide which patient needs a heater, which medicine needs refrigeration. You make choices you never thought you’d have to make.”

Voices from the rubble

On the streets of Zaporizhzhia, a man named Serhiy stood staring at the gutted ground floor of a shop where he used to buy sunflower oil. He spoke slowly, the way people speak when they inventory the new, smaller world in their heads.

“We used to joke about blackouts in the summer,” he said. “This is different. It makes you think about the future of small things—my wife’s baking, the school band, a neighbor’s cat. War wants to erase kitchen tables.”

A paramedic in Kharkiv who asked not to be named described carrying children into makeshift shelters beneath metro stations, wrapping them in space blankets and handing out juice boxes. “You try to be ordinary—to hand them crackers and pretend everything is safe,” she said. “But your hands shake. And you know you’re working against machines made to frighten.”

Experts watching the conflict warn that attacks concentrated on energy and transport multiply the war’s humanitarian footprint. “This is an old tactic dressed in new technology,” said Dr. Marta Kühn, a European security analyst. “Drones and missiles are used to attack the systems that sustain civilian life. The result is prolonged displacement, disrupted healthcare and heightened winter vulnerability.”

Railways—more than steel tracks

Railway infrastructure bore a strategic brunt of the attack in frontline regions. For millions of Ukrainians, trains are a lifeline—moving goods, evacuating civilians, delivering fuel and materials for hospitals and shelters. Knock out the rail, and supply chains groan.

“My station is my community,” said Petro, a stationmaster on the outskirts of Donetsk. “You flood a line with damage and you don’t just stop a train; you stop the baker, the carpenters, the people who bring sugar to the market.”

Diplomacy under the shadow of the power cut

Even as Sirens wailed and repair crews raced to dormant substations, diplomatic efforts continued. Kyiv has been participating in trilateral discussions—meetings that include Ukrainian and U.S. officials and, indirectly, Russian representatives—held recently in Geneva. Officials say the talks have been preliminary, without a clear breakthrough on the most explosive topics: territory and security guarantees.

President Zelensky has indicated he seeks a sequenced approach to high-level negotiations—preparatory talks leading to a leaders’ meeting—but the elephant in the room remains the same territorial dispute that has simmered since 2014 and flared into full-scale war more recently. Russia’s demands and Ukraine’s red lines remain distant from any tidy compromise.

“You cannot negotiate away a homeland,” said a Ukrainian diplomat in Geneva. “But we must seek ways to stop the suffering, to protect civilians and to get repair crews working without fear.”

What this tells us about modern war—and the world beyond

There is something unsettling about technology being used to attack basic services. Drones—small, relatively cheap and increasingly autonomous—allow belligerents to press continuous pressure without exposing pilots or large numbers of troops. That tactical evolution forces new thinking in civil defense, urban planning and humanitarian law.

Internationally, the strikes raise questions about resilience: how do modern states protect power grids, keep railways running, and ensure that the fabric of daily life is not the first casualty? How should aid be structured to respond not just to immediate wounds but to the slow erosion of infrastructure that turns a country fragile?

For people living through these nights of fire and glass, the answers are immediate and human-sized: make sure there is food on the table, make room for children in the cellar, keep someone awake to monitor patients on battery-powered oxygen.

Looking ahead—repair, resistance, resilience

In the short term, crews will work to patch transformers, reroute trains, and clear streets. NGOs and neighbors will pull together blankets, hot meals and generators. Longer-term, reconstruction talks in places like Geneva will need to factor in hard lessons from attacks that aim at infrastructure: decentralize power, harden substations, diversify supply chains and, crucially, protect civilians as a matter of law and policy.

“Rebuilding is not just bricks and cables,” said an urban planner helping draft resilient-recovery plans. “It’s about restoring people’s ability to live a predictable life. It’s about trust.”

So we ask: what is a city without its lights, a hospital without a fridge, a season without warmth? And how much of our modern existence—our hospitals, schools, markets—do we accept as vulnerable until it is too late? These are not merely Ukrainian questions; they are global ones, posed in the quiet aftermath of another long night.

For now, in kitchens and shelters and behind patched windows, people are making decisions again: who needs the heater? Which batteries to save? Who will teach the children to hum through the explosions? In the end, resilience will be built on small acts of care as much as on grand diplomatic plans. The rest of the world should listen—not only to the numbers, but to the people who clean up the glass and stitch their lives back together.

Israel Responsible for Two-Thirds of Journalist Killings in 2025

hanad

February 26, 2026

Israel committed two-thirds of press killings in 2025 — A protest was held in Gaza City following the killing of journalists in Khan Younis in August last year

A Year the World Lost Its Witnesses: 129 Journalists Killed in 2025

On a sunlit morning in Gaza, a battered camera bag sits where a man once stood. A photo—edges curled, face frozen in work-worn concentration—tells the rest. That photograph, one of too many, is a quiet accusation: someone was listening, someone bore witness, and someone paid with their life.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 2025 closed as the deadliest year on record for members of the press: 129 journalists and media workers killed worldwide. It is a staggering figure, not only because it marks the second straight year of record-high fatalities, but because the loss came at a historical moment when independent information has never mattered more.

Numbers that insist we take notice

“Journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever,” CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in response to the report, adding, “We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news.”

Those words summarize a single, urgent truth: attacks on reporters are attacks on the public’s right to know. CPJ’s tally places two-thirds of the deaths in 2025 in one geography—attributed to Israeli fire—with 86 media workers recorded as killed by such fire. More than 60% of those were Palestinians reporting from Gaza, according to the organization.

Total journalists and media workers killed in 2025: 129 (CPJ)
Killed by Israeli fire: 86 (CPJ)
Documented drone-related cases: 39 worldwide, including 28 attributed to Israeli strikes in Gaza (CPJ)

And the technology of death is changing. Drones, once an emblem of distant precision, are increasingly the weapon behind these deaths. CPJ documented 39 drone-related cases last year—28 in Gaza attributed to Israeli strikes, five killings by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, and four Ukrainian journalists killed by Russian military drones.

Voices from the ground

“We used to think the danger came from checkpoints or gunfire,” said Lina Mahmoud, a Palestinian photojournalist who managed to evacuate her family last fall. “Now you can be on your rooftop, at a makeshift hospital, or in an ambulance. The sky itself has become a threat.”

In Kyiv, an editor who wished to remain anonymous described a new, chilling normal. “We lost three colleagues to drone strikes this year,” she said quietly. “You never feel safe reporting the front lines. The lines move, and so do the weapons.”

In Mexico City, the mother of a slain investigative reporter wrapped her son’s notebooks in plastic and said, “He chased corrupt people who thought themselves untouchable. They made sure he was.” Mexico recorded six journalist killings in 2025, all unsolved—a grim echo of a long-running crisis of impunity in regions where organized crime, corruption, and local power blocs intertwine.

Not just warzones: threats from organized crime and states

Beyond battlefields, reporters continued to face mortal peril from criminals and, in some cases, from the state. In the Philippines, three journalists were shot dead. In Bangladesh, CPJ documented the brutal killing of a reporter—attacked with a machete by suspects allegedly linked to a fraud ring. Similar organized-crime-related murders were recorded in India and Peru.

Then there were cases that chillingly resembled state retribution. Saudi columnist Turki al-Jasser was executed after a conviction on charges CPJ described as “spurious national security and financial crime allegations.” It was Riyadh’s first documented killing of a journalist since the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi—an event that transformed global understanding of the risks facing exiled and domestic critics alike.

Impunity: the fertile ground for more killings

One of CPJ’s most damning findings is not only the number of deaths but the lack of transparent, accountable investigations that follow them. “When killers are never held to account, the message is clear: you can silence reporters without consequence,” said Dr. Mariana Cortez, a human-rights scholar who studies crimes against the press.

Across continents—from Gaza and Kyiv to Mexico’s provinces—families await answers. Local journalists tell stories of police files that go cold, of evidence that vanishes, of prosecutors who demur or politicians who deflect. “We bury someone and the world moves on,” a veteran Iraqi correspondent said. “But we are the ones left to tell our children what their parent did—and why they died.”

The broader currents: what these deaths say about our age

What does a spike in journalist killings signal about the world? First, it reveals the weaponization of information and the lengths to which actors—state and non-state—will go to control narratives. Second, it marks a technological shift: drones and remote munitions make it easier to strike observers while eroding the distinctions between combatants and those whose only weapon is a camera or a notebook.

Third, these deaths feed a larger erosion of civic space and truth. When local reporters are silenced, communities lose their ability to hold power to account, whether that power is governmental, corporate, or criminal. When a newsroom dissolves under threats, the public’s ability to make informed choices falters.

What can be done—and what we, as readers and citizens, must demand

There are concrete steps governments and institutions can take: independent investigations into journalist killings, stronger international pressure to enforce accountability, better protective resources for reporters in conflict zones, and stricter controls and transparency around drone strikes. Media organizations, too, must invest in safety training and support for journalists and their families.

But there is also a responsibility that rests with us—the global audience. How much do we value the work of those who risk everything to report? How loudly will citizens and civil-society groups demand justice, even when answers are inconvenient?

“If the world chooses silence,” Dr. Cortez warned, “then the cost of speaking will only rise.”

Remembering those who spoke for the rest of us

Photos like the one of Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif—eyes open in a moment of concentration, a camera strap around his neck—are more than mementos. They are reminders of a fragile bargain: in exchange for information, journalists put themselves between danger and the public. When that bargain breaks, everyone loses.

So I ask you, reader: when the story is someone else’s danger, will you look away, or will you insist on answers? Will you join the chorus calling for protection, for accountability, for a world where being a journalist does not carry an almost certain risk of death?

Because in the end, protecting journalists is not charity. It is preservation—of truth, of civic life, and of the right to know. The numbers in CPJ’s report are cold. The lives they represent are not. We must, urgently, remember both.

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