Ireland adds voice to global condemnation of Israeli settlements

December 25, 2025

Ireland joins countries condemning Israeli settlements — A truck near an abandoned Jewish settlement in the West Bank, in preparation for the return of Jewish settlers following the Israeli government's approval of their return

A Line Drawn in the Olive Grove: How 19 New Settlements Reopened an Age‑Old Wound

On a cold December morning, the world received a terse but seismic announcement: Israel’s security cabinet had moved to back the creation of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. For diplomats, activists and families living within sight of dusty hills and twisted olive trees, the decision was not a bureaucratic footnote — it was a provocation with human consequences.

Ireland was among 14 nations to publicly condemn the move. In a joint statement chaired by the Irish foreign ministry and affirmed by counterparts in Western capitals, the governments warned that the step “violates international law” and risks inflaming an already tense region. Signatories included the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain.

Not just lines on a map

Maps and legal briefs make the settlements look like neat shapes on a screen. Walk the roads around Ramallah or Hebron and the reality is rougher: a world of checkpoints, private fields divided by rock walls, and families adapting to a geography that changes according to political decisions far from their villages.

“When they put up another outpost, it doesn’t just change the map,” said Sami, a middle‑aged olive farmer from a West Bank village who asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons. “It changes where my children can roam, where we can harvest. It changes the color of the sky — there are more watchtowers, more cars, more tension.”

Nearby, Miriam — a teacher and mother of three from a small Israeli town — framed the issue differently. “We want to feel safe and to build a life,” she said. “People are frightened by the headlines. But for many of us, this land is where our grandparents lived.” Her voice had the weary cadence of someone who has learned to hold both conviction and sorrow in the same breath.

What the diplomats said — and what it means

The joint statement signed by the 14 nations stressed support for Palestinian self‑determination and reaffirmed commitment to a two‑state solution. “Unilateral steps that intensify settlement activity undermine prospects for long‑term peace and security,” the statement warned, adding that such moves complicate efforts to negotiate an end to the broader conflict.

Ambassador Claire DuPont, who has served in the region for more than a decade, described the settlement expansion as “a geopolitical accelerant.” “It’s not only a legal issue,” she told me. “It is about the coherence of a future Palestinian state and about belief in a negotiated path forward. Each new settlement chips away at that belief.”

Those words echo broader concerns from international bodies: United Nations agencies and many foreign governments have long regarded Israeli settlements in territories captured in 1967 as illegal under international law. At the same time, more than half a million Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, making any policy changes intensely consequential and politically fraught.

Voices on the ground: fear, resolve, fatigue

To understand how these policies land in ordinary lives, you must listen to the everyday stories — the teacher upending her curriculum because of security measures, the grocer who lost business when checkpoints became stricter, the group of teenagers who meet at dusk to play football in a courtyard that once felt open and safe.

“Settlements change everything from our water access to the routes our children take to school,” said Dr. Lina Haddad, a sociologist at a Palestinian university. “They create fragmented communities that are easier to control politically. The long‑term effect is a population that grows up with normalized occupation, which reduces the space for political imagination on both sides.”

Local anecdotes can be sharp and precise. An elderly woman in a West Bank village told me how her family had harvested olives from the same grove for generations. “Last year, we were stopped at a new checkpoint,” she said. “They told us we must have a permit. We are the ones who planted the trees.” Her laugh — thin and incredulous — held decades of grievance.

Security, law and competing narratives

Israeli officials defending the decision frame settlements as a matter of security, historical connection and national identity. “Every nation has a right to secure its people and to preserve its heritage,” a senior Israeli security official told a private briefing. “Our policy seeks to reconcile those needs with an evolving threat environment.”

But for many international observers, security arguments do not erase the legal complications. United Nations resolutions, as well as opinions from international jurists, have found the settlements to be inconsistent with the Fourth Geneva Convention. For Palestinians and many of their international supporters, settlement expansion is the chief obstacle to a viable, contiguous state.

Numbers that matter

Context helps to clarify stakes. International estimates suggest that well over half a million Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. The cumulative footprint of settlements has grown over decades, creating a patchwork of jurisdictional control that complicates travel, commerce and governance.

In practical terms, adding 19 new settlements may mean the reclassification of land, new infrastructure projects, and the arrival of new state funding for housing and roads — all of which can accelerate demographic and geographic shifts. For communities already under strain, such changes are not abstract; they affect livelihoods and futures.

What comes next — fragile diplomacy and the long view

After the joint statement, several signatories signaled they would intensify diplomatic engagement. Ireland’s foreign minister, who co‑authored the declaration, told reporters she believed international pressure could still nudge parties back to negotiations. “We are not spectators,” she said. “We will use every diplomatic tool available to protect the possibility of a two‑state solution.”

But the political realities on the ground complicate quick fixes. Israeli domestic politics often reward leaders who take a hard line on settlement policy; Palestinian politics are fragmented and deeply skeptical of divided land. For neutral observers, the task can look Sisyphean: rolling a boulder of diplomacy up a hill that keeps re‑forming beneath it.

What can readers do — and what should they feel?

As you read about another chapter in this long conflict, you might ask: where do empathy and justice meet? How can one honor the deep narratives of security and belonging while affirming the rights of another people to land and self‑determination?

There are no tidy answers, but there are small steps. Support for humanitarian efforts, attention to independent journalism, and pressure on elected representatives to pursue balanced, law‑based diplomacy can all matter. “Silence is complicity,” said Fatima, a student activist in Ramallah. “But so is cynicism. If you care, learn. If you learn, speak with facts.”

A shared horizon — or more fractured ground?

The approval of 19 settlements is both a discrete policy choice and a symbol: proof that old habits of territorial expansion persist, and a reminder that the two‑state vision remains precarious. That fragility should make us impatient and humble at once. Impatient enough to demand better policies; humble enough to remember the human faces behind every headline.

Walking past an olive grove at dusk, I watched a child swing from a low branch and a woman sweep the dust from her doorstep. Each gesture held a story of endurance. The question for the world is whether those stories will be allowed to grow into futures worth defending — together — or whether the ground will continue to crack beneath them.

Russia sets sights on establishing a lunar nuclear power plant within a decade

hanad

December 25, 2025

Russia plans nuclear power plant on moon within decade — Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, said in a statement that it planned to build a lunar power plant by 2036 (stock image)

How a Quiet Power Struggle Is Turning the Moon Into an Energy Frontier

Imagine standing on a windswept steppe outside Moscow at dawn, the air thin and metallic, and hearing a retired engineer laugh as she stirs her tea. “They used to say the sky was Russia’s backyard,” she muses. “Now the backyard has a fence and everyone wants the moon key.”

That fence is invisible, but its posts are being driven deeper every year. In recent months, Moscow’s space agency—Roscosmos—announced plans to place a nuclear power plant on the lunar surface by the mid-2030s to fuel a permanent research station. The project, according to the agency, will involve Rosatom, the Kurchatov Institute and the Lavochkin design bureau—names that conjure an old guard of Soviet-era pride remixed with a 21st-century scramble for influence beyond Earth.

The idea of building a power plant on the moon reads like science fiction, but its logic is stark and pragmatic. The moon is 384,400 kilometres away; sunlight lasts barely half the lunar day, and nights stretch for two solid Earth weeks. To sustain habitats, scientific labs and heavy-duty rovers—and potentially mine rare resources—you need reliable, continuous energy.

The New Lunar Map: Bases, Reactors and Rivalries

We are not witnessing a single nation’s dream. Washington has signalled parallel ambitions: NASA has stated its intent to demonstrate a fission reactor on the lunar surface by the first quarter of fiscal year 2030, part of a broader push to make the moon a staging ground for human missions to Mars and beyond.

“Energy is the currency of permanence,” says Dr. Amrita Singh, an international space policy fellow based in London. “If you want a base, you need power that doesn’t sleep. Solar is great, but it is intermittent on the moon. That gap is precisely where compact nuclear systems show up.”

This competition is not only about flags and prestige. It intersects with science, commerce and geopolitics. Lunar regolith hides elements that are scarce or strategically important on Earth: estimates suggest there could be up to a million tonnes of helium-3, a potential fuel for future fusion reactors, scattered on the maria. Boeing and other researchers have pointed to traces of rare earths—scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides—that underpin everything from smartphones to fighter jets.

Helium-3: often cited in popular accounts as abundant on the moon—estimates run into the hundreds of thousands to millions of tonnes.
Rare earth elements: present in lunar soil in varying concentrations; valuable for modern electronics and defense industries.

Whether those deposits are economically exploitable, and under what legal or environmental constraints, remains hotly debated. But the mere presence of such materials has added another dimension to the geopolitical tug-of-war.

From Gagarin to a Crash Landing: Russia’s Long, Bumpy Ride

For Russians the story is particularly bittersweet. The nation that sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961 wants to reclaim a narrative of technological glory, yet reality has been humbling. The failed Luna-25 landing in August 2023—when an unmanned probe was lost during descent—was a painful reminder of the risks and complexity of lunar work. Meanwhile, private companies like SpaceX have redefined launch economics, taking business once dominated by Russian rockets.

“We’re rebuilding confidence,” a senior engineer at Lavochkin told me over carrot cake and strong coffee in a cramped cafeteria. “We made mistakes—big ones. But humility is not defeat. It’s the starting point for better design.”

Power, Law and the Ethics of Putting Reactors in Space

Nuclear power in space is not unlawful. International treaties ban nuclear weapons in orbit and on celestial bodies, but they do not outlaw energy-generating nuclear systems. There are strict safety protocols and oversight mechanisms intended to protect Earth and space from contamination. Still, the prospect of fission reactors on a foreign body raises fresh concerns.

“There’s a difference between an ICBM and a power plant, but optics matter,” says Professor Luis Mendéz, an expert in space law. “Countries will need to demonstrate transparency, emergency response plans, and long-term stewardship. Otherwise, strategic suspicion will grow faster than any reactor’s coolant.”

And then there is the practical calculus: transporting modular reactors, shielding them, establishing cooling systems in the lunar vacuum—all of this requires technology, funding and a tolerance for risk. Russia’s timeline—building by 2036—is ambitious but not impossible if budgets are maintained and partnerships hold.

Local Voices: Why People Care, Far From the Launch Pads

Out beyond the labs and launch complexes, ordinary people feel the ripple effects. In the port city of Kaliningrad, a former flight controller now running a bakery worries about what the new space push means for her pension and community. “When the country spends on big dreams, my bus route gets delayed,” she says gently. “But I also wake up proud. My son studies engineering because of the rockets. That is something.”

On the other side of the world, a university student in Beijing scrolls through photos of lunar simulations and says, “Whether we mine it or just study it, the moon will tell us who we are. It’s exciting and scary at once.”

Bigger Questions: What Kind of Future Are We Building?

Beyond the hardware and headlines, deploying power stations on the moon forces us to confront larger ethical and practical questions. Who governs a lunar economy? How do we protect a pristine environment that has witnessed four billion years of solar system history? What happens when commercial incentives collide with scientific conservation?

“We need international frameworks as robust as the physics we hope to harness,” Dr. Singh says. “Otherwise we risk turning the moon into a mirror of terrestrial conflicts—a place where scarcity births competition instead of cooperation.”

So ask yourself: do you see these lunar ambitions as an inspiring chapter in human exploration, or a replay of old rivalries under new stars? Perhaps it will be both. Perhaps the moon, like any frontier, will reflect our better angels and our worst instincts in equal measure.

What Comes Next

Expect more announcements, more partnerships and, inevitably, more setbacks. The next decade will tell whether lunar reactors become the backbone of sustained presence or a costly experiment in national prestige. Meanwhile, the moon will keep doing what it has always done—tugging at our tides and at the untidy human heart.

“We are small players on a big stage,” the Lavochkin engineer says as our conversation winds down. “But the rules are new, and so are the players. If we do this right, maybe we can show the world how to build without burning the very thing that lets us look up in wonder.”

That sentence hangs between us like lunar dust—soft, persistent, impossible to sweep away. What would you put on the moon if you had the choice: a telescope, a lab, a reactor—or something else entirely?

Deadly blast in Moscow kills two police officers

hanad

December 25, 2025

Two police officers killed in Moscow explosion — A general view of Moscow

A night split by a bang: two officers killed near the city’s hush

It was the kind of hour when Moscow slows to a sibilant whisper: late, cold, streetlights throwing pale pools onto wet pavement. Then, just after 1.30am, a sound that does not belong to the night — a sharp concussion, a scatter of glass, a sudden flurry of feet — and the city remembered how raw things have become.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said two police officers died when an explosive device detonated as they approached a suspicious person near their service vehicle. The blast happened close to where Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov was killed earlier this week, the same general who headed the General Staff’s training department and whose death has already shaken corridors of power.

Images shown on state television that morning felt cinematic in their grim familiarity: a cordon of blue tape, riot vans clustered like metal sentinels, forensic technicians in white suits moving with the clinical choreography of someone trying to stitch together a story from dust and blood. “They were doing what officers do — checking, asking,” said one witness speaking under the strain of shock. “And then everything went white.”

What investigators are saying — and what they aren’t

The official line has been terse. “An explosive device was triggered” near a police vehicle, the Investigative Committee said, confirming forensic and medical examinations are under way. Telegram channels aligned with mainstream outlets carried the committee’s statement and pictures of investigators combing the scene. Authorities cordoned off the area and called in specialists for “medical and explosive examinations.”

There are few hard answers yet about motive, the origin of the device, or the person who drew the officers’ attention. State media have been careful with conjecture; Kyiv, which has acknowledged responsibility for some previous attacks on figures it deems complicit in Moscow’s war policy, has not commented on this particular incident.

On the streets: fear and weary resolve

Outside the cordon, the city’s normal late-night rhythms interrupted abruptly. A kiosk owner, Maria, who has run the same tea and cigarette stall for 28 years, stood with a cup clutched in both hands. “You learn to live with the sirens,” she said, voice low. “But you never get used to feeling like you could be the next person who looks out the window and wishes they hadn’t.” Her hands trembled not only from cold.

A neighbor who declined to give his name muttered about the way the city used to be: quieter, less watched, less militarized. “You used to be able to argue politics over borscht without thinking about someone listening,” he said. “Now you check the locks twice and keep your voice down. Fear is the loudest thing in Moscow.”

And yet there is a different, quieter strain of defiance, too. An older man in a wool cap, standing by the metro steps, shrugged and said, “We will keep living. That’s what people here do. We drink our tea, we quarrel, we go to work. Terror won’t turn this into a ghost town.” His tone was stubborn, like the iron handles on the city’s tram doors.

Local color: a city at the intersection of ordinary life and geopolitics

Moscow’s neighborhoods are stitched together from the everyday and the extraordinary. One block will hold a monastery whose bells peel out like timbrels, the next a government building menaced by concrete barricades and cameras. On a night like this, you can feel how tight that seam is — how domestic routines and high-stakes geopolitical conflict are now neighbors.

Residents speak of the oddities that have bled into daily life: more checkpoints, police cars parked at metro exits, a heightened presence of military badges in supermarkets and trains. Grandmothers carrying grocery bags pass soldiers on patrol; teenagers scroll news feeds that keep rewriting what they thought was stable. When a blast occurs, the city does not merely respond — it remembers, cataloguing the new event into a long ledger of unease.

Context: a blurred border between battlefield and home

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the line separating the battlefield from the homefront has been eroded. Attacks that might once have been concentrated in a war zone now reverberate in city streets, in parked cars, in residential drives. Russian authorities have regularly blamed Kyiv for strikes on officials and pro-Kremlin figures both inside Russia and in occupied territories. Kyiv has at times taken responsibility for specific operations, but not for all incidents that Moscow attributes to it.

Those dynamics have a ripple effect. For state security services, every explosion is both a criminal case and a potential political crisis. For citizens, each incident is a reminder that the war is not a distant headline but a force that can rearrange the furniture of ordinary lives without warning.

Voices from the security and academic worlds

“This pattern indicates an expansion of tactics by actors who want to make the costs of the war palpable inside Russia,” said Dr. Elena Morozova, a defense analyst at a European security think tank. “Whether that is an intentional strategic policy of Kyiv, freelance militants, or something else, remains to be established. But the psychological impact is clear.”

“The use of IEDs in urban settings carries a high risk of collateral damage and creates a climate of pervasive insecurity,” said Captain Viktor Petrov, a retired police instructor. “Our officers are trained for many things, but approaching a suspicious person in the middle of the night is one of the hardest moments — limited visibility, ambiguity, the pressure to act.”

Questions we’re left holding

When I walked the perimeter later in the day, residents asked the same questions I suspect many readers will now ask: How many more such incidents before the city changes in ways that will not be reversible? Who is responsible, and how will justice be served? How does a society balance security and liberties when fear stalks even routine interactions?

We should also ask what it means when places long considered safe domestic spaces become contested zones in a wider conflict. When a general is killed and then, days later, two police officers die in the same vicinity, patterns begin to form — or at least to appear. They prod us to think about escalation, about how wars seep across front lines, and about the human costs that are not neatly counted by military statistics.

Looking forward: investigations, grief, and the hush that follows

Investigators will continue their work: collecting fragments, analyzing residues, interviewing witnesses. For the families of the two officers, that forensic attention will be no comfort at all. For a city, it is the hope of answers. For the wider world, it is another unfolded layer in a conflict that refuses to stay in distant fields.

As the sun rose the next morning and the scene cleared, there was a quiet that felt less like relief and more like a collective inhalation. People resumed their routes to work, to shops, to school. Life, stubbornly, insisted on continuing. But the echo of the blast lingered in conversations, in the way neighbors checked in with each other, in the extra pause when a passerby noticed a uniform.

What will you imagine when you hear of another blast somewhere far away? How close does a distant war need to come before it reshapes the way you think about safety at home? In Moscow tonight, those questions are not abstract. They are the breath between one siren and the next.

Venezuela calls U.S. sanctions the biggest extortion in history

hanad

December 24, 2025

Venezuela accuses US of 'greatest extortion in history' — A crude oil tanker is anchored on Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, earlier this month

At the Security Council: A Stage Set for a New Cold-Weather Drama

It was the kind of United Nations meeting that tastes of old rivalries: polished shoes, whispered consultations, and a chamber full of cameras waiting to catch the moment a word becomes a cudgel. Delegates traded not only statements but the kind of theatrical moral outrage that plays well on television and worse at the negotiating table.

Russia and China stood shoulder to shoulder with Venezuela on one side of the room, accusing Washington of “cowboy behaviour” and “intimidation.” On the other, the American delegate spoke in blunt, protective tones: the United States, he said, would do everything to defend its hemisphere. The exchange was sharp, public — and emblematic of something broader than a single dispute.

Voices from the Podium: Sovereignty vs. Security

“The acts by the US side run counter to all key norms of international law,” Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s UN ambassador, told the council, his voice even but unyielding. “This blockade is an act of aggression,” he said, drawing nods from the Venezuelan table.

China’s representative answered in measured Mandarin before the interpreter’s cadence softened it into English: “China opposes all acts of unilateralism and bullying and supports all countries in defending their sovereignty and national dignity,” said Sun Lei, framing the debate as one about principle as much as power.

From Caracas, Ambassador Samuel Moncada spoke with the desperation of a government under pressure. “We are in the presence of a power that acts outside of international law, demanding that Venezuelans vacate our country and hand it over,” he said. “This is the greatest extortion known in our history.”

And from the U.S. corner, Ambassador Mike Waltz did not flinch. “The United States will do everything in its power to protect our hemisphere, our borders, and the American people,” he declared, reiterating accusations that Venezuela’s leadership is complicit in criminal networks that traffic drugs and people.

On the Water and in the Streets: Two Different Realities

These are not abstract words for those living in the Caribbean and along Venezuela’s coast. In recent months Washington has increased its naval presence in the region and intercepted vessels it said were breaching sanctions. Some of those interdictions have turned lethal: independent monitors and local reports say dozens of people have died in encounters at sea, with some tallies pushing past 100 since the intensified operations began.

On the ground in Caracas, the scenes are quieter but just as vivid. “There’s a fear more than anger,” said María Rojas, a 46-year-old arepa vendor whose stall sits beneath the watchful statue of Simón Bolívar. “People still talk about oil as a blessing and a curse. We hear that it keeps our country important — but it has not paid the bills for our lives.”

For many Venezuelans the debate at the United Nations is personal. An estimated 7 million people have left the country in the past decade, making Venezuela one of the largest displacement crises in the Western Hemisphere. Shortages of medicine, repeated power outages, and runaway inflation are not just policy talking points; they are the texture of everyday existence for millions.

Oil, Power, and the Limits of Sanctions

Venezuela’s oil reserves are central to this story. The country is widely estimated to possess the world’s largest proven reserves — on the order of hundreds of billions of barrels — yet extracting value from those reserves has been hamstrung by investment shortfalls, corruption, and sanctions that have throttled exports.

Washington argues the measures are aimed at curbing networks that use oil revenue to bankroll criminal activity. “We have credible evidence,” Ambassador Waltz said in the council, “that the regime funnels resources into narcoterrorism, human trafficking, murders, and kidnappings.” Caracas flatly denies such charges, and international experts caution that the evidence presented publicly has not established a clean, hierarchical criminal enterprise under the label so often invoked in political rhetoric.

What the Experts Say

“Sanctions are a blunt tool,” said Dr. Ana Campos, a maritime law scholar who has advised several Latin American governments. “They can constrain state revenue streams, but they also push activity into murky channels. When interdictions at sea turn violent, the state of law — and humanitarian oversight — matters. Who is counting the dead?”

Former diplomat James Carter (not the former U.S. president), now at an international think tank, urged caution. “The pressing question isn’t which country is to blame in poetic terms,” he said. “It’s how do we secure human safety while ensuring that legal mechanisms and transparent evidence guide any punitive action?”

Beyond the Bluster: Lives in the Balance

Outside the marble halls and televised denunciations, Venezuelans are making choices that will shape the region for years to come. Young people join the steady migration to Colombia, Peru, or further afield in search of work. Relatives debate whether to keep a small business running amid power cuts. Fishermen along the Caribbean coast whisper about routes to avoid and ships to trust.

“I used to fish with my father off La Guaira,” said Luis Gómez, a 28-year-old whose family boat was seized last year. “Now I teach English. Sometimes I dream of the sea. It’s like waking up in a different story you never asked to be in.”

Questions for the World

What does it mean for global governance when great powers use the Security Council as a theater rather than a forum for mediation? How do we weigh the rights of a sovereign state against allegations of criminality that implicate its leadership? And ultimately, who pays the price when economic leverage and naval power collide?

Venezuela: estimated largest proven oil reserves (hundreds of billions of barrels)
Migration: roughly 7 million Venezuelans have left the country in recent years
Casualties: independent reports place the death toll from recent interdictions at sea in the dozens to over 100

Where Things Might Head

This conflict at the Security Council is more than an episode; it is a signal flare. It raises questions about the future of multilateralism, of regional security arrangements, and of how energy geopolitics intersect with human rights. If the next turn is escalation, the human cost will rise — and fast.

For readers watching from cities that never see the Caribbean sun, consider this: decisions made in faraway halls ripple into lives shaped by daily shortages, long migrations, and the sound of the sea crashing against shores where men and women still dream about a future unbound by oil and by geopolitics.

What would you do if the resources under your feet were coveted by world powers? Who do you trust to adjudicate the claim: a distant council chamber, a naval blockade, or an impartial court with the power to compel evidence? The answers will determine not just policy, but the shape of millions of lives—and of a region trying to heal.

Moscow Weighs Response After Zelensky Unveils Fresh Peace Plan

hanad

December 24, 2025

Moscow mulls position as Zelensky reveals new peace plan — Volodymyr Zelensky revealed details of the updated plan, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has been briefed on

A Summer of Fragile Promises: Peace Talks, Bombed Buildings and the Heavy Cost of Compromise

The smoke still clings to the facades of a Kyiv apartment block where a drone struck last night. Neighbors sift through a pile of rubble and laundry, looking for anything that once made their life ordinary: a chipped enamel mug, a school photograph, a winter scarf. Outside, a tram clanks past a storefront boarded up months ago. Inside a bright, air‑conditioned conference room in Miami, a very different sound is heard: the hum of translation headsets and the rustle of papers bearing the contours of a new peace proposal.

These two images—one of ruined domestic life and the other of diplomatic choreography—tell the same story in different tongues. For more than three years now, the war that began with Russia’s 2022 invasion has been writing itself across the lives of ordinary people in eastern Ukraine. Tens of thousands have died, cities have been shattered, and millions have fled their homes. And now, in a turn that feels at once hopeful and perilous, a U.S.‑led draft to end the fighting has been shuffled between presidential envoys, Russian intermediaries, and Kyiv’s leadership.

What’s actually in the draft—and why it matters

At the center of the storm is a 20‑point U.S. initiative—an effort whose stated aim is to halt the bloodshed without producing a victory for either side. According to summaries released by Kiev, the latest iteration removes several immediate demands that had been non‑starters for Ukraine: there is no requirement for Ukraine to legally renounce its NATO aspirations, and the plan does not force an instant withdrawal from the parts of Donetsk Kyiv still controls. Instead, it appears to open the door to phased troop redeployments, demilitarized zones, and the creation of special economic zones—concepts that sound technical on paper but translate to vast human consequences on the ground.

“This draft might let us breathe for a while—but breathing cannot mean giving up our dignity,” said one Ukrainian municipal official in Donetsk, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You don’t hand over your childhood playgrounds and expect to come back to the same life.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a carefully staged briefing, read from a marked‑up copy of the document and said Kyiv had managed to excise some of the most punitive demands. He framed the plan as one that could allow certain pullbacks—alongside guarantees for elections and economic arrangements—only if Ukrainians themselves approved them via referendum. That insistence on popular consent is more than a procedural detail: it is an attempt to anchor any agreement in democratic legitimacy.

Key features that carried through

Recognition—de facto rather than de jure—of current lines of troop deployment as a basis for negotiations.
Creation of demilitarized zones and workgroups to map redeployments.
No immediate legal renunciation of NATO accession by Ukraine.
Proposals for joint oversight of strategically sensitive sites, notably the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Reference to holding national elections after a peace agreement is signed—an insistence both Moscow and some mediators have been making.

Moscow’s response: silence, calculation, and old demands

In Moscow the signals have been careful and codified. Kremlin spokespeople confirmed that President Vladimir Putin had been briefed after a Russian envoy met with emissaries from the former U.S. administration in Miami. But there was no immediate embrace of the compromise on offer. “All the main parameters of the Russian side’s position are well known,” a Kremlin representative said, adding that Moscow would take time to formulate a formal response and continue channels of contact.

That is not mere bureaucratic caution. Since 2022, Russian official demands have tilted toward sweeping territorial concessions, political guarantees and limits on Ukraine’s future alliances—conditions Kyiv and many of its partners have called unrealistic. Moscow’s annexation claims over Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—and its earlier seizure of Crimea in 2014—are still on the table as geopolitical facts that complicate any settlement.

On the ground: fear, pragmatism, and the cost of compromise

Walk through a village in Zaporizhzhia and you’ll see the ragged outline of sunflowers that once nodded in the breeze; now their heads are blackened, stunted by shelling. A farmer there, Mykola, shrugged his shoulders when asked about negotiation. “We plant, then we run,” he said. “If they tell us to leave, we will leave. If they tell us to come back, we’ll try. But who will pay for the seeds?”

That question—who pays to rebuild a nation—has been echoing through European capitals. There is growing anxiety among Kyiv’s allies that if a deal is brokered largely through U.S. diplomatic channels and tailored to secure a peace quickly, the long, costly task of reconstruction could be left to Europe while the United States claims the laurels of mediation. “We support Ukraine because we believe in sovereignty and deterrence,” a senior EU diplomat said. “But we are wary of being asked to foot the bill for a settlement that doesn’t secure the future.”

Dangerous sticking points

Territory: Any arrangement that changes who administers land—even temporarily—raises deep questions about the return of displaced people and property rights.
Nuclear safety: Proposals for joint management of the Zaporizhzhia plant are fraught with mistrust; Kyiv opposes Russian oversight of the site.
Referendums: Popular votes are democratic in theory, but held under the shadow of occupation or displacement they can become instruments of coercion.

What this means for the wider world

Beyond the immediate lives in Donetsk or Kherson, the negotiation has strategic implications. It is a litmus test for how the world balances the hunger for an end to violence with the imperative not to normalize conquest. It is a moment when populist ambitions—an American former president seeking to burnish a peacemaker legacy—intersect with cold geopolitical calculations. And it is a reminder that even well‑intended mediation can leave ordinary people feeling like they were the last to be consulted.

Consider the Zaporizhzhia plant. Global watchdogs have warned that any instability near nuclear facilities risks wider catastrophe. Who oversees such sites? Who verifies safety? These are not abstract technicalities. They are immediate matters of life and death—not only for Ukrainians but for neighboring states that share air currents and rivers.

Questions we should all be asking

As readers around the world, what do we think justice looks like after a crushing war? Is a pause in the shooting worth tradeoffs that may embed occupation into law? Can compensation and reconstruction be guaranteed in ways that restore dignity, not dependence? And finally, whose judgment should decide the fate of contested lands—the bargaining table of superpowers, or the people who live there?

In Kyiv a grandmother clutching a bag of bread paused when asked whether she would vote in any referendum about her neighborhood. “If it means no more rockets, I will think about it,” she said slowly. “But if it means my grandson cannot come home for school, what kind of peace is that?”

Where do we go from here?

The next days will be decisive. Moscow will answer through its channels; Kyiv must reconcile military realities with political imperatives; Western capitals will balance strategic solidarity with domestic politics. All the while, cities like Bakhmut and towns around Zaporizhzhia keep counting losses in the evenings, when the lights go out and the silence is the loudest thing.

Peace is not an object to be cut from a single draft and handed over. It is a living thing grown from justice, security, and the consent of the people it’s meant to protect. Any accord that does not acknowledge that will be, at best, a fragile ceasefire—and at worst, a pause before the next terrible chapter.

Thousands of newly unsealed documents linked to Jeffrey Epstein made public

hanad

December 24, 2025

Thousands of new Epstein-linked documents released — Jeffrey Epstein seen in one of the photographs released by the US Justice Department last week

When the Files Unfurl: A Morning the Internet Couldn’t Look Away From

The delivery arrived not by courier but by pixels — a vast, blinking download queue on the U.S. Justice Department’s website that made newsroom Slack channels light up and social feeds tilt for a few breathless hours.

At least 8,000 new documents, the department said. Roughly 30,000 pages in total, with hundreds of audio and video files tucked between redacted lines. Surveillance clips, flight logs, handwritten notes and emails that feel like relics of a scandal that refuses to die: Jeffrey Epstein’s name still drags the world in its wake, years after he was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019. His death was ruled a suicide; the questions and the political aftershocks did not stop there.

What’s in the Cache

What startled editors and political operatives alike was the texture of the release. This wasn’t just reams of legalese; there were human traces — a prosecutor’s shorthand observation about flight manifests, an image redacted after being found on a former administration associate’s phone, and emails that read like private notes between people who moved in powerful circles.

Among the revelations: flight records that appear to show Donald J. Trump travelled on Epstein’s private jet eight times in the 1990s. At least four of those journeys, the documents indicate, had Ghislaine Maxwell aboard. Maxwell, who helped run the social network that prosecutors say fed Epstein’s trafficking, is serving a 20-year federal sentence.

“On one flight, the only three passengers listed were Epstein, Mr. Trump and a 20‑year‑old woman,” a January 2020 email from a New York prosecutor read, according to the files. Other notes flag flights with passengers who later became potential witnesses in Maxwell-related proceedings.

There are also messages with a distinctly British setting. An August 2001 email — signed simply “A” and sent from Balmoral — asked Ms. Maxwell for “inappropriate friends.” Another, from an account dubbed “The Invisible Man,” referred to a valet’s death and the writer’s recent departure from the Royal Navy. Those notes prompted a Metropolitan Police review into alleged attempts by Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor to obtain information about Virginia Giuffre, a central accuser in the Epstein network who died in April at 41.

Video, Audio, and the Atmosphere of Surveillance

Dozens of video clips accompany the pages — some of them purportedly shot inside a federal detention facility in August 2019, the month Epstein died. For privacy and legal reasons, much of this material arrives with heavy black bars and withheld names. Survivors’ advocates say the redactions have been excessive; some identities were left visible, they complain.

“We have been pleading for transparency for years, but transparency that exposes victims is not transparency at all,” said Mara Alvarez, director of a Brooklyn-based survivors’ collective. “We want the truth, and we also want dignity.”

Politics and the Push for Disclosure

The release comes on the heels of a new federal law — passed overwhelmingly in Congress and signed into law earlier this year — that requires broader publication of prosecution-related records in the Epstein case. For months, critics from both parties had assailed the Justice Department for what they called glacial, and selective, disclosure.

“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the DOJ wrote on X, in a statement accompanying the files. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponised against President Trump already.”

President Trump himself, speaking from Mar‑a‑Lago, played down the material’s importance. “This whole thing with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has,” he told reporters, adding that photo releases could ruin reputations of those who “innocently met” Epstein years ago.

Bill Clinton’s camp, meanwhile, urged immediate release of any documents mentioning the former president. “We need no such protection,” Clinton spokesman Angel Urena told reporters, arguing selective releases carry an implied slant.

A Rare Bipartisan Flashpoint

What is striking is the bipartisan heat. Conservative Representative Thomas Massie and liberal Representative Ro Khanna — normally on opposite corners of the aisle — signalled cooperation in a push to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt if the department does not produce more material in the coming weeks. They are talking fines of up to $5,000 per day if documents are withheld after a 30‑day grace period.

“This is not a political parlor trick,” Massie posted on social media. “People are being shielded by the government.”

Khanna agreed: “Transparency is a test of whether the rule of law applies equally to the connected and the ordinary.”

People in the Middle: Survivors, Journalists, and the Public

Walk into a diner in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and the conversation is edged with weary familiarity. “We saw the headlines in 2019 and thought it would be the end of the secrecy,” said June Patel, a retired paralegal picking at her eggs. “But documents like this are reminders that accountability is a long conversation, not just a single broadcast.”

Legal and privacy experts warn that the release is a necessary but incomplete piece of a larger reckoning. “Public files are a double-edged sword,” said Professor Laila Hassan, a specialist in victim rights at Columbia Law. “They can help historians and prosecutors see patterns, but careless disclosure risks retraumatizing people and compromising ongoing investigations.”

Estimates vary on the scale of Epstein’s alleged crimes; dozens of victims have come forward in court, and civil settlements with Epstein’s estate have paid out tens of millions of dollars. Maxwell’s conviction and 20‑year sentence stand as a rare criminal judgment in a case that has otherwise left many loose ends.

Why This Matters Beyond the Headlines

Files like these do more than stir political drama. They force a society to ask a few uncomfortable, essential questions: How do we protect the vulnerable from predatory networks when wealth and influence can bend institutions? How should archivists and courts balance the public’s right to know with survivors’ right to privacy?

And there is a cultural element, too. The emails from Balmoral, the flight manifests, the hand-scrawled notes — they are threaded through an era in which privilege and proximity to power could be displayed as social currency. That world’s artifacts are now public, and we must consider what they teach us about trust, complicity, and the cost of silence.

What Comes Next?

Congressional pressure will likely intensify, with possible contempt votes if the DOJ doesn’t accelerate releases.
Activists will continue to press for full, victim‑sensitive disclosure rather than selective leaks.
Journalists and historians will sift through tens of thousands of pages, trying to connect discreet notations to a broader pattern of abuse and enabling.

The release is only the latest chapter in a story that reads less like a closed book than an ongoing investigation of power. As the documents drip out, each small revelation reshapes the public’s understanding — not only of Epstein and his circle, but of the institutions that intersect with them.

Do we want a system where the well-connected live under a different set of rules than the rest of us? How much faith do we place in institutions to police themselves? The newly published files won’t answer those questions by themselves, but they will force us to keep asking.

And in the quiet aftermath of yet another headline, someone in a newsroom, a survivor support group, a courtroom or a kitchen will pick through the details and decide what to do with them next. That, perhaps, is the only certainty: the public archive has begun to grow, and with it the pressure to reckon — slowly, imperfectly, insistently — with the cost of concealment.

US refuses visa to former EU commissioner over digital regulations

hanad

December 24, 2025

US denies visa to EU ex-commissioner over tech rules — Thierry Breton was the most high-profile individual targeted by these bans

A New Front in the Digital Cold War: When Visas Became Weapons

Across a rain-slicked Parisian boulevard, a café owner wipes down a metal table and squints at his phone. “We used to talk about trade wars,” he says, stirring a small spoon with a practiced flick. “Now they’re arguing about who can tell whom what to say online. It feels like the world has gone inside-out.”

Two continents away, in a sunlit office in Washington, the State Department announced a move that has already reverberated through the halls of Brussels and the backstreets of Berlin. The United States will deny visas to a small group of high-profile European regulators and civil-society actors — among them Thierry Breton, the French technocrat who helped shepherd the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and several leaders of nonprofit organisations described by Washington as having “coerced” American tech platforms into censoring viewpoints they opposed.

“These radical activists and weaponised NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states — in each case targeting American speakers and American companies,” the State Department said in the statement that set off a storm of protest across Europe. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the action in blunt geopolitical terms: “Extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech is no exception.”

Who is affected?

The visa restrictions target five people who have been prominent in the EU’s digital-policy universe:

Thierry Breton, former EU Commissioner and key architect of the DSA;
Imran Ahmed, head of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH);
Anna‑Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, associated with Germany’s HateAid;
Clare Melford, who leads the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

For Europeans, many of whom see the DSA and the UK’s Online Safety Act as efforts to shape a safer, more transparent internet, the decision landed like a diplomatic slap. “We strongly condemn these visa restrictions,” France’s foreign minister posted on social media. “Europe cannot let the rules governing our digital space be imposed by others upon us.” Breton himself called the move a “witch hunt,” invoking the McCarthy era as a warning about political persecution.

Why this matters: law, power and the architecture of speech

If you work in tech policy, the contours are familiar but the stakes are shifting. The DSA — negotiated in Brussels and agreed in the early 2020s — set a new standard for online accountability. It demands that very large online platforms (the so-called VLOPs, reaching roughly 45 million or more users in the EU) explain why they remove content, provide safeguards for researchers, and give users clearer routes for redress. For many European lawmakers, it was an effort to rebalance power between global platforms and the societies they serve.

But to the Trump-era US administration, and to influential conservatives who have loudly criticised the DSA, such rules look like a novel form of jurisdictional aggression. The fear they articulate is this: if Brussels can impose transparency rules and content moderation regimes, could it indirectly tilt public debate elsewhere? Could European regulation choke American voices — or at least make it easier to do so?

That question is not abstract. In recent months Brussels fined X (formerly Twitter) for breaches tied to ad transparency and account verification — a move that incensed some US political actors. The White House also paused a technology cooperation deal with the UK, citing incompatibilities between American priorities and Britain’s Online Safety Act. Taken together, these skirmishes signal a widening rift over who gets to govern speech online.

Voices on the ground

“It feels personal,” says Maya, a London-based content moderator who asked to use a pseudonym. “My work is to triage harm. But the rules keep changing depending on who is shouting loudest — governments, shareholders, activists. You wonder whether policy is serving people or political theater.”

At a university in Berlin, Dr. Luis Alvarez, a researcher who studies platform governance, offered perspective on the legal dynamics. “The DSA explicitly aimed for transparency and researcher access — that is, to understand algorithmic amplification and the exposure of children to harmful content,” he said. “What Washington calls ‘extraterritorial overreach’ is often described in Brussels as the EU exercising regulatory autonomy over companies that operate inside its single market.”

What’s at stake globally

Beyond personalities and headlines, this clash touches deeper questions about sovereignty, the reach of democracies, and the shape of public discourse in an age where code and law collide.

Some figures help frame the scale. More than half the human population now uses social media; internet platforms host billions of interactions daily. The companies targeted by EU and UK rules — giants with global networks of users and advertisers — often generate revenues that dwarf small nations. Regulators in Brussels and London argue that if a global platform serves European users, Europe has a right to insist on safeguards. Washington’s counterargument is straightforward: American speech and American companies must be defended from foreign pressure.

But is the conflict really binary — Europe vs America, regulation vs freedom? Or is it a more complex scramble to set global norms? “Every big tech regulation becomes a template,” Dr. Alvarez noted. “Once a standard is implemented in one market, companies often extend it globally for operational simplicity. That’s why everyone fights over the rulebooks.”

Cultural colors and human reverberations

Walk through the Marais in Paris or Kreuzberg in Berlin and you’ll hear debates tie themselves to daily life: a small bookstore owner worrying about algorithm-driven visibility; a schoolteacher fretting over the platforms her students consume; a pensioner in Marseille, who uses Facebook to follow grandchildren, confused by sudden content removals. These are not abstract policy contests; they shape how communities find one another, recall memory, and contest truth.

“We don’t want to be told what to think from Washington, nor from Brussels,” said a Parisian retiree, name withheld. “We want rules that protect our children and our neighbours, not rules that silence some voices because others are louder.”

Where do we go from here?

The visa ban may be a punitive stunt — or it could be an opening gambit in a broader strategy to keep the digital commons fragmented along national lines. Either way, the current episode raises questions we all ought to consider: who decides the rules of the global internet? How do we balance the protection of vulnerable users with the protection of political speech? And what happens when norms and markets collide across borders?

As you scroll through your feed tonight, pause to think about the invisible architectures shaping those pixels. Who built them? Who polices them? Whose voice gets amplified and whose is muffled?

Policy fights like this one are messy, human and consequential. They are fought not only in capitals and courtrooms, but in cafés, classroom chats, and the small civic acts that keep public life alive. If the internet is a public square, then debate over its rules is an argument about what a public square should be — and who gets to speak there.

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