US and Ukraine unveil 20-point plan to stop Russian invasion

December 25, 2025

New 20-point US-Ukraine plan to end Russian invasion — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky outlined the plan's contents point-by-point in a briefing with journalists in Kyiv (file image)

A blueprint on a Kyiv table: hope, scepticism and the heavy arithmetic of peace

It was a pale winter light that fell across the table where President Volodymyr Zelensky outlined what he called a “comprehensive pathway” to end a war that has scarred a generation. Outside, Kiev’s streets hummed with the ordinary — tram bells, a woman sweeping snow from a bakery doorway, a boy with a bright red scarf racing a friend to the metro — and yet inside the room, the map on the wall seemed to hold the world’s attention.

Zelensky did not produce a polished treaty to hand over to waiting cameras. Instead, he spoke in deliberate, granular terms about a 20-point plan crafted with U.S. negotiators and sent to Moscow for reaction. What he offered was as much a political architecture as it was a peace proposal: security guarantees backed by Western powers, rules for the new lines on the ground, sweeping reconstruction promises, and oddly specific governance and cultural commitments. “We put everything on the table,” he told reporters. “This is not the end of bargaining — it is the start of deciding if we can finally stop the killing and start rebuilding lives.”

What’s in the package — the bones of a bargain

At the core are three pillars: security, territory and reconstruction. On security, Zelensky said the United States, NATO and European signatory states would provide guarantees resembling NATO’s Article 5 — a promise that an attack on Ukraine would trigger coordinated military and economic responses. The plan envisions a peacetime Ukrainian armed forces of 800,000 personnel and contingencies to reinstate global sanctions against Russia should it breach the deal.

Territorial arrangements are blunt and pragmatic. The current line of deployment in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson would be recognized as the de facto contact line, with international monitors — including space-based unmanned systems — watching for violations. A working group would map out troop redeployments and consider special economic zones; crucially, Russia would be required to withdraw forces from a list of regions (including Sumy, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk) for the agreement to take effect.

Economic rebuilding is perhaps the most unapologetically ambitious effort. Zelensky said the United States and European partners would spearhead a development package, and that an initial capital-and-grants fund would target $200 billion to jump-start reconstruction, attract investment, and fund modernisation in energy, data centres, AI, and civic infrastructure. He spoke of a “Ukraine Development Fund” and a global financial coordinator — a “prosperity administrator” — to marshal international capital and ensure transparent disbursal.

Points likely to draw heat

There are items in the plan that will please some and alarm others. One clause foresees the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant being jointly operated by Ukraine, the United States and Russia — an arrangement that, if enacted, would mark an unprecedented multinational stewardship of a nuclear facility in a post-conflict setting. Another surprises by name: Zelensky said the oversight mechanism would be a Peace Council chaired by President Donald Trump, a detail that will provoke immediate geopolitical debate.

Then there are social and legal stipulations: Ukraine would accelerate EU membership within a specified timetable, adopt EU rules guaranteeing religious tolerance and minority-language protections, and commit to remaining a non-nuclear state under the NPT. The plan calls for all remaining prisoners of war to be exchanged, the release of hostages, and an immediate, legally binding ceasefire once all parties agree — but those are promises that have failed before without ironclad enforcement.

Voices from the streets of Kyiv

“I want my son to go back to school without sirens,” said Olena, a kindergarten teacher who helped pour tea in a canteen near Independence Square. Her husband fought in the early months of the war; she watches the news with a habit of flinching. “If guarantees are real and not just words on a page, then we take them. But we have learned to be careful with promises.”

At a corner café, Mikhail, a veteran who lost a leg in 2022, thumbed a scar and said bluntly: “Security guarantees need teeth. Paper won’t stop tanks.” He wants to see international troops on the ground and an unequivocal mechanism that triggers sanctions automatically if the deal is violated.

“Rebuilding will take more than money — it will take trust,” said Dr. Marta Hrytsenko, an urban planner who has been working on postwar reconstruction models. “Estimates from multilateral institutions suggest hundreds of billions will be needed. The World Bank and IMF have said public and private money must combine. The proposal for a $200bn target is a starting signal; implementation will be the real test.”

Levers, red lines and the international stage

Why does the plan matter beyond Kyiv? Because it exposes the central dilemmas of modern peace-making: how to balance sovereignty and security, how to de-escalate without rewarding aggression, and how to finance recovery while keeping corruption at bay. It also shows the limits of diplomacy in a moment when rival great powers still pursue very different objectives.

“We see in this document an attempt to thread the needle between territorial realities on the ground and the political demands of Ukrainian sovereignty and European integration,” said Ilan Berger, a European security expert. “But any agreement depends on trust — and trust is the one currency this war has spent most recklessly.”

What could go wrong — and where the deal might yet be strong

There are several failure points. Moscow’s reaction will be decisive: will it accept the de facto contact lines and the withdrawal demands? Will it agree to an international role at Zaporizhzhia and to a binding non-aggression policy toward Europe? Within Ukraine, calls for justice and criminal accountability for wartime acts could clash with quick-for-peace compromises on territory.

On the flip side, the proposal’s explicit economic levers — investment funds, a transparency framework, and linkage to EU access — could offer a viable pathway to transform the country’s economy. The inclusion of AI, data centres, and energy modernization in the recovery plan points to a future-focused recovery that seeks to make Ukraine a competitive, high-tech economy rather than a basket-case of war ruins.

Questions to sit with

As readers, ask yourselves: can peace be engineered from the outside without the consent of the communities most affected? Is it possible to guarantee security without keeping foreign troops indefinitely, and who will enforce those guarantees if they are breached? How much sovereignty can a nation cede — in the form of international oversight or security assurances — in order to achieve a lasting ceasefire?

These are not hypothetical queries for Ukrainians alone. They touch on global themes: the fragility of international law, the role of alliances in deterring aggression, and the moral calculus of reconstruction. A successful pact here could set precedents for post-conflict reconstruction elsewhere; a failed one would echo as a cautionary tale.

Back in Kyiv, as evening settled and the city lights stitched new constellations onto streets still pocked by war, people returned to their routines. “We are ready to negotiate,” said Olena, the teacher. “But we will not trade our language, our schools, or our children’s future for a piece of paper unless it truly keeps us safe.”

Whether the 20-point plan becomes a live roadmap or another chapter in a painful, interrupted story depends on responses that are not yet public. For now, the document has performed a crucial work: it has given citizens and leaders a concrete frame to argue over — and in politics, articulation can be a precondition to action.

Where do you stand? Would you accept compromises for security now, or hold out for a fuller restoration of territory later? The answers will shape not just Ukraine’s future, but perhaps how the world thinks about peace in an era of uneasy power balances.

Pope Leo to Urge Peace in His First Christmas Blessing

hanad

December 25, 2025

Pope Leo to call for peace in first Christmas blessing — Pope Leo presided over his first Christmas Eve mass at St Peter's Basilica last night

Under the Wet Marble: A Pope’s Blessing and a World of Uneasy Joy

Rain tapped a slow tempo on the travertine steps of St Peter’s Basilica as people huddled under umbrellas and plastic ponchos, their breath visible in the cold Roman evening air. The lights on the façade blurred into halos. The pope — his white cassock a bright, small flame against the stone — stepped forward and spoke of peace, of charity, of hope in a year that has been stubbornly stubborn in its pain.

“We come tonight to light the candles that the world has tried to snuff out,” a Vatican aide later told me, trying to translate the hush into something I could carry home. The crowd, estimated at about 5,000, applauded not because they had faith in easy answers, but because ritual offers a place to stand when the ground is shaking.

The Urbi et Orbi and a Call for Truce

On Christmas morning the pontiff prepared to deliver his traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing — the “to the city and the world” address that has for centuries been a forum for moral appeals aimed at the globe’s troubles. This year’s refrain was familiar: urgent pleas for ceasefires, for corridors of aid, for the protection of civilians in zones of conflict. He renewed a call, earlier this week, for a one‑day global truce, a symbolic pause meant to honor the very notion of peace.

It is a humane request, if at times aspirational. Conflict persisted elsewhere even as Rome prayed: in eastern Europe, gunfire continued despite appeals to lay down arms; humanitarian workers in the Middle East warned that a fragile pause in fighting could crumble as quickly as it was negotiated. The pontiff’s words landed like a seed, small and vulnerable, on soil that has been trampled by years of political and military upheaval.

Bethlehem: The Nativity’s Fragile Resilience

Travel east and you find a different but no less potent scene. In Bethlehem — the town whose very name has been invoked across religions for millennia — light returned to Manger Square in the way a breath returns to lungs after a fever breaks. For the first time in more than two years, the streets filled with the music of festivals, with parades and the bright, impudent cheer of vendors selling toffee apples and toy Santas.

Inside the Church of the Nativity, built atop a grotto revered as the birthplace of Jesus, pews were full long before midnight. Some stood. Some sat on the cold stone floor. A procession of clergymen made its way past the altar to the sound of a single organ, the notes swelling like an answer to all that had been lost. The Latin Patriarch addressed the congregation, speaking not in platitudes but in blunt compassion: suffering remained raw in Gaza, he said, yet he had encountered in refugee shelters and ruined neighborhoods a stubborn hunger for life’s ordinary future.

“They still sing,” said a volunteer nurse from a Gaza aid group who had come to Bethlehem for Mass. “They still sing even when their hands are freezing.”

That singing matters. Aid agencies estimate that hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced across Gaza and neighboring territories, living in makeshift tents or crowded shelters, attempting to withstand winter without sufficient heat, clean water, or predictable medical care. A fragile truce has eased the immediate threat of daily bombardment in some areas, but the structural wounds — collapsed homes, severed supply chains, grief that gathers like snowfall — will take years to heal.

Star Street and the Everyday

Walk down Bethlehem’s Star Street and you catch the small, telling things: an old man arranging a nativity scene under a giant paper star, teenagers posing for photos in front of a glittering tree, the aroma of roasted chestnuts mixing with the smoke from a nearby bakery. “Today is full of joy because we haven’t been able to celebrate because of the war,” said a 17‑year‑old girl, her voice both bright and brittle. “We came to shout that we are still here.”

Damascus, Sydney, and the Uneven Glow of Celebration

Elsewhere, fragile rejoicing threaded through fear. In Damascus’s Old City, strings of lights draped the alleys; shopkeepers placed red baubles in windows, and vendors sold roasted chestnuts beneath the shadow of Roman-era arches. For Syrians, who have endured a decade of war and displacement, these lights were an act of defiance, a claim that joy could coexist alongside grief.

In Australia, the mood was more solemn. Following a deadly attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in mid‑December, national leaders urged calm and unity rather than triumphalism. “We hold the wounded in our thoughts,” a community organizer in Sydney told me, “and we light candles because it’s our way of refusing to let terror define us.”

Weather, Politics, and the Sharp Edges of a Global Holiday

Christmas this year illustrated a familiar truth: the season offers no single story. In California, severe weather forced officials to declare a state of emergency in parts of Los Angeles, ordering evacuations as rivers swelled and roads transformed into currents. Climate‑driven extremes have become an unwelcome holiday tradition in many places, complicating what should be peaceful domestic rhythms — a reminder that political instability is not the only global emergency demanding our attention.

At a very different register, political rhetoric in some countries turned the holiday into a stage for division rather than consolation. Across newsfeeds, voices amplified grievance as though the holiday provided licence for provocation. For many, the familiar rituals of peace and goodwill now contend with the reality that public discourse is deeply polarized; Christmas gatherings sometimes become arenas for clashing worldviews rather than shelters from them.

Voices from the Ground

“We needed this — not for show, but to remind ourselves we exist,” said George, a shop owner from nearby Beit Jala, watching families mill about Manger Square.
“Syria deserves joy,” said Loris, a university student in Damascus, who spoke of the quiet resilience of neighbors sharing small pleasures.
“Aid is not a headline. It’s a lifeline,” offered a U.N. field officer who has worked in the region for years, cautioning that temporary ceasefires must be paired with long-term planning if they are to mean anything beyond a breath.

Why This Christmas Feels Different

Perhaps the most striking thing about this year’s celebrations is their humility. The pageant of faith has been stripped of some ceremonial sureties; it is suddenly rawer, more human. People who came to St Peter’s or to Bethlehem were not just spectators of history — they were participants in a fragile experiment: can ritual, memory, and public witness still help repair a world that seems to be tearing at the seams?

Ask yourself: what would a truce mean in your life? Not a pause in headlines, but a quiet hour when grievances are set aside. Would we recognize it or would old wounds pull us right back into business as usual? If religion and civic ritual can be a scaffold for reconciliation, then the images of thousands standing together under rain or lights are not merely picturesque — they are practice.

Looking Ahead: From Symbol to Substance

The pope’s blessing, the Nativity procession, the strings of lights in Damascus — these are part of a larger, global conversation about how communities live with tragedy and how they try, imperfectly, to heal. Symbols are not solutions. Yet neither are they frivolous: they can lift morale, marshal aid, and keep the pressure on those with power to act.

In the coming months the questions remain urgent. Will temporary pauses in violence become the scaffolding for negotiations? Will aid flows be protected and expanded? Will communities forged in crisis receive the resources they need to rebuild?

None of this is simple. But on nights like this, when voices join across borders in a plea for peace, we glimpse the stubborn possibility that people — not just politicians — can shape the arc of the year to come. That is the modest miracle these gatherings offer: a renewal of attention, a return to shared life, a candle lit against the dark.

Ireland adds voice to global condemnation of Israeli settlements

hanad

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.

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