Moscow Weighs Response After Zelensky Unveils Fresh Peace Plan

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.

Putin Receives U.S. Briefing on Proposed Ukraine Peace Plan

hanad

December 24, 2025

Putin briefed on US proposals for Ukraine peace plan — A heavily damaged residential building following a Russian drone strike on one of Kyiv's residential districts in Ukraine yesterday

When Backroom Peace Talks Meet Frontline Dirt: Inside the Latest Push to End the Ukraine War

There is a curious, uneasy quiet after stormy headlines—a pause when diplomats whisper and generals hold their breath. This time the whispers crossed oceans: envoys connected to former US President Donald Trump met with a Russian delegation in Miami. Moscow says its leader, Vladimir Putin, has now been briefed and that the Kremlin will “formulate its position.” But on the ground in Ukraine, the sound is different: the scraping of earth where trenches are dug, the distant creak of electricity pylons, and the slow, stubborn work of clearing explosive remnants of war.

When politicians talk about “peace plans,” citizens think about doors that will stay closed or schools that might reopen. Who gives up what? Who gets to decide? And who pays for the reconstruction when the dust finally settles?

The Miami Thread and a Kremlin in Waiting

At the center of the recent diplomatic thread is Kirill Dmitriev, a well-known Russian businessman who has in recent months been acting as an informal channel between Moscow and the United States. Kremlin spokespeople confirmed Dmitriev briefed President Putin after talks in Miami with envoys linked to Mr. Trump. The Kremlin’s tone was cautious—no public thumbs-up, no outright rejection.

“We received the information and now we will study it,” a Kremlin aide told reporters in a clipped, formal register. “All main parameters of the Russian position are already known to our American colleagues. We will continue contacts through established channels.”

Translation: Moscow isn’t showing its cards in public yet. And for Kyiv, every moment of diplomatic opacity comes at a price.

What’s in the Latest Plan — and Why It Matters

In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky laid out a version of a 20-point plan that sounds, at once, like a pragmatic roadmap and an uneasy compromise. Key elements include a freeze of the front line—essentially recognizing where troops sit now as the “line of contact”—and provisions that could allow for Ukrainian withdrawals and the creation of demilitarized zones. Some previously proposed concessions, like a formal renunciation of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, have reportedly been dropped.

Front line freeze: the current deployment lines would be accepted as the starting point for any negotiations.
Withdrawals and demilitarized zones: mechanisms to pull back troops and create buffer areas are on the table.
Joint management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant: an idea that raises as many alarms as it does hopes.
A referendum: any territorial concessions would have to be put to a public vote in Ukraine.

“This plan opens windows rather than shutters,” Zelensky told reporters. “It could delay choices, but it cannot substitute for sovereignty.” He emphasized that any referendum and presidential elections would only come after an agreement was signed—an attempt, perhaps, to preempt accusations that Kyiv would be forced into hasty decisions under pressure.

Numbers That Stain the Map

Putin has publicly suggested Ukraine should cede roughly 5,000 square kilometers of territory in the Donbas region—ground that Kyiv still controls. For context, that area is larger than Luxembourg. Meanwhile, independent observers have documented a grinding attrition on the battlefield: in 2025, Russian forces were estimated to have taken roughly 12–17 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory per day at some points—an unforgiving arithmetic of loss.

Local Voices: Fear, Hope, and the Daily Work of Survival

To understand what these diplomatic exchanges mean, listen to people who return to broken streets every morning. In Kyiv’s Podil district, a café owner named Oksana sips tea and watches young men load crates of rescue gear into vans.

“We hear talk about peace,” she said. “But peace means my sister can go home to Donetsk without fear. It means schools open and that the man who fixes the clock at Saint Michael’s can breathe. Words on a paper don’t fix the pipes under our streets.”

In a village outside Zaporizhzhia, an elderly man named Anatoliy remembers when Energodar—near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant—was quiet, populated by nuclear engineers and sunflower fields. Now the town’s name pulses with geopolitical significance.

“If they make the plant a zone run together by Russians and someone else—who knows?—maybe it calms the risk of disaster,” he said. “But do I trust those who occupied my town to keep the lights on for my grandchildren? It’s not a yes; it’s a question.”

Zaporizhzhia: A Nuclear Red Line

The idea of joint US-Ukrainian-Russian oversight of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is both pragmatic and perilous. The plant is Europe’s largest nuclear facility and has been occupied by Russian troops during the conflict, drawing repeated warnings from international nuclear watchdogs. Kyiv insists on no Russian oversight—understandable, given accusations of militarization around the site and fears about safety protocols.

Experts warn that any misstep at Zaporizhzhia would reverberate far beyond Ukraine’s borders. “Nuclear safety cannot be collateral bargaining,” said Elena Markova, a nuclear energy analyst. “Even the perception of politicized control over reactors damages global confidence in complex safety systems.”

How the World Watches—and Worries

Across Europe, capitals are watching with something like dread: what if the United States pursues a pragmatic, rapid deal that leaves European nations with the long, expensive task of reconstruction and security? There are whispers that Trump-era envoys seek a “peace as a political trophy” approach—quick, visible results that might be packaged for domestic audiences.

“If Washington makes concessions that look like a sellout, Europeans will be left not only carrying the bill but bearing the political fallout,” said an EU diplomat in Brussels, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s not just about money; it’s about credibility.”

And credibility matters. After years of sanctions, humanitarian aid, weapons deliveries, and a continent re-arming, any abrupt shift in the US posture could force a strategic reckoning in NATO and the EU: Can Europe shoulder the cost of rebuilding a battered neighbor? Should it have to?

So What Happens Next?

We are at a hinge moment. The Kremlin says it will formulate a response; Kyiv insists any concessions must be validated by its people. In the middle are millions of lives—farmers, nurses, teachers—whose daily chores have become acts of resistance.

Expect more backchannel diplomacy, more envoys and memos exchanged in hotel suites and embassy basements.
Expect the Kremlin to calibrate language carefully, keeping public options open while listening for guarantees it finds acceptable.
And expect Kyiv to demand legal and popular legitimacy for any territorial compromise—hence the insistence on referendums and delayed elections.

Questions to Sit With

What is the price of peace? Who decides it? If peace requires territorial concessions, who pays for reconciliation—and how do you restore trust once land has been ceded under duress?

These are not merely diplomatic abstractions. They are decisions that will echo in schoolrooms and marketplaces for generations. They will shape borders, but also identity, memory, and how future leaders learn to negotiate under fire.

As you read this, imagine sitting on a bench in a Kyiv park where cherry trees once blossomed and now stand stripped; imagine being a parent in Zaporizhzhia worried about radioactivity and ballots; imagine a policy adviser in Brussels running the numbers for decades of reconstruction. Which questions would you put first?

Peace is more than a document. It is the sum of small, stubborn acts of everyday life—and the wisdom of negotiators who remember that.

Irish peacekeepers spend Christmas on duty, calling it “just another day”

hanad

December 24, 2025

'Just a normal day' - Irish peacekeepers at Christmas

A Quiet Christmas Under Olive Skies: Ireland’s Peacekeepers at Camp Shamrock

The sun falls quickly in southern Lebanon. By late afternoon, the hills around Camp Shamrock are a wash of rose and dry grass, the air carrying the faint scents of citrus and diesel, cedar and dust. For more than 300 Irish soldiers stationed there, Christmas will arrive wrapped in a different kind of silence — not the hush of home churches or family living rooms, but the careful, watchful stillness of a peacekeeping post.

I visited the camp over the weekend. It is a place of tidy routines and improvisation, of laminated notices on mess-hall doors and hastily strung fairy lights over sandbagged parapets. Inside the tents and prefab buildings, people are busy — the very busyness that keeps the mood steady when the calendar says it should be festive and hearts say otherwise.

Keeping the peace, keeping busy

Camp Shamrock is part of UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a multinational mission originally formed to restore peace in the wake of conflict. The force today is tasked with monitoring a tense ceasefire line between Israel and Hezbollah, supporting the Lebanese Armed Forces, and helping to create the conditions for lasting calm.

“We try to make it as normal a day as possible,” a battalion sergeant major told me, speaking with the blunt, steady humour you get from people who have learned to keep perspective. “For the soldiers, the work itself — the patrols, the radio checks, the logistics — that structure keeps the weight light. It’s harder, often, for the families back home.”

Indeed, while more than 300 of Ireland’s soldiers will be on duty at Camp Shamrock this Christmas, thousands of peacekeepers from more than 40 nations serve across different sectors of UNIFIL. For those who trade their kitchen tables for rations and radars each year, the holidays are less a holiday than a different kind of service.

Small rituals, big meaning

Holiday in a military camp is not one thing. It is a stitched-together mosaic of gestures: a makeshift tree squashed into a transit container, a pot of stew simmered on a camp stove, a Christmas Mass celebrated beneath a corrugated roof. These are the things that make a place feel like home, even when the lights of Dublin are a world away.

At dawn, some will go on patrol — a frozen landscape of checkpoints and watchtowers that nonetheless sees a lot of ordinary life: shepherds moving flocks, children playing in olive groves.
In the late morning, hot food is served. Men and women in uniform carve up turkey or chicken, share slices of Christmas cake sent from families, or tuck into something as simple as stew and soda bread.
In the evening, there will be video calls, folded letters, and the quiet exchange of photographs — portraits of smiling nieces, screenshots of living-room trees, the little particulars of a life paused at home and continued here.

“You miss the smell of your mum’s cooking,” one corporal admitted, the corner of his mouth lifting into a rueful smile. “But there’s also a sense of being part of something bigger. The lads from Argentina and Ghana — they’ll put on carols in Spanish and in Ewe. We’ll sing along. It sounds different here, but it’s still Christmas.”

Voices from two worlds

Back in County Cork, a mother I spoke with said it was “strange and quiet” without her son around the dinner table. “We Skype and he sends pictures of the decorations,” she said. “But you can’t hug over a screen. There’s a trade-off — proud and worried at the same time.”

Locals near the Blue Line — the buffer zone monitored by UNIFIL — offered their own perspective. A fruit seller in a small town south of the camp shrugged and said, “They are our neighbours in uniform. We see them on patrol, and sometimes they help fix things. For us, Christmas is about family. For them, maybe it is too.”

And a UN liaison officer noted the fragility that hangs over the region. “The ceasefire is more than an absence of bullets,” she said. “It’s a set of agreements, a network of trust between forces and communities that must be nurtured every day. These soldiers are not only watching borders; they’re watching the fragile threads that keep peace possible.”

Why these small sacrifices matter

Why should we care about a hundred or three hundred soldiers spending Christmas abroad? Because peacekeeping is the quiet seam of international order—often invisible, sometimes thankless, but crucial. Tensions along Israel’s northern border flare regularly; every patrol that reports a safe village, every supply convoy that arrives on time, every tense conversation defused before it becomes violent, helps keep that thin line intact.

Ireland has a long tradition of contributing to UN missions. While numbers ebb and flow, the symbolic weight of a small nation sending personnel to stand in dangerous places is significant, reminding the world that stability is a collective responsibility.

Comforts, and the cost of distance

There are comforts. There are extra blankets, a warm mess hall, chaplains who lead Christmas services, and care packages from home. There are also the kinds of things no kit can fix: the empty chair at a kitchen table, the child who will unwrap a present and turn to find their parent absent, the partner who must make do with messages and memories.

“We tell them to call home,” a senior NCO said. “We set up the tech, we hand out the timezones, and we make sure they get a hot meal. But mostly, we listen. That matters.”

What are we willing to ask of those who ask to help keep the world safe?

As you read this, ask yourself: what would it mean to spend a holiday in the service of something larger than your own celebration? Would you want to? Would you pay the price of distance for the chance to stand between communities and conflict?

The men and women at Camp Shamrock answer that question in small, continuous ways. They trade home comforts for discipline, family dinners for shared ones, the certainty of their own traditions for the improvised, multinational tapestry of a peacekeeping camp.

Their Christmas will be quieter, different, and full of small, human moments that matter a great deal to people in a place that is trying to keep the peace. That simple fact — the ordinary heroism of a Thursday patrol on a holiday — is, perhaps, the most potent reminder that peace is maintained not by headline, but by habit.

May their lights burn bright tonight, and may the conversations they keep alive here lead to safer mornings for everyone who lives under these olive skies.

Senior Russian general killed in Moscow car bombing, officials report

hanad

December 24, 2025

Russian general killed in Moscow car bomb, say officials — Russia is investigating if the Moscow bomb was planted by ‍Ukrainian special services

When a Quiet Moscow Street Became a War Zone

It was supposed to be an ordinary morning in a quiet southern district of Moscow — a place of cherry trees, Soviet-era apartment blocks, and market stalls where grandmothers haggle over black bread. Instead, a single blast ripped through the calm, shredding metal, shattering glass and, according to Russian officials, ending the life of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, a senior military figure whose career had taken him from the mountains of the North Caucasus to the deserts of Syria.

The scene that greeted residents and investigators was cinematic and brutal. A white Kia SUV lay mangled, its doors flung open, its frame twisted and charred. Windows in nearby buildings trembled; a smell of burning and spent cordite hung in the air. Sirens wailed. For those who had called this corner of the city home for decades, the blast was a jolt back to the front lines of a conflict they had long been told took place far away.

Voices from the Street

“The windows rattled,” said Grigory, 70, a lifelong resident whose balcony looks onto the blast site. “You could tell it wasn’t a car backfiring. It was like a thunderclap. We all ran to see.” He paused, then added with a kind of weary pragmatism: “We need to treat it more calmly. It’s the cost of war.”

Others sounded less resigned. A young mother who had been pushing a stroller nearby clutched her child and whispered, “I heard the bang and I thought the world was ending.” Her name, she said, was Yelena. “You feel unsafe in your own city,” she said. “How can anyone sleep?”

Who Was Killed — and Why It Matters

Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, headed the Russian General Staff’s training department, and his service record — deployments to Chechnya in the 1990s and command responsibilities in Syria in 2015–16 — reads like a modern history of Russian military engagement. For Moscow, his death is a blow. For many observers abroad, it underlines a grim fact: the war in Ukraine is no longer confined to battlefield frontlines or occupied territories. It has begun to reach into the heart of Russia itself.

Russian investigators, including the Investigative Committee, announced they were pursuing multiple leads and explicitly said one avenue was whether Ukrainian special services had orchestrated the attack. Kyiv has not commented on the incident. The absence of a statement leaves a space filled by speculation, accusation and the politics of a war in which deniability and covert action are part of the toolbox.

The Pattern of High-Profile Attacks

This strike follows a string of high-profile killings and attempted assassinations that have punctured Russia’s sense of domestic security in recent years — from car bombs and booby-trapped devices in Moscow to explosive gifts delivered in cafés. Each incident is an echo of the asymmetric tactics that emerge when one side lacks the conventional advantage but seeks to destabilize or demoralize the other.

In April, a car blast near Moscow killed General Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy of the General Staff.
In December 2024, an explosive-laden electric scooter killed Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s radiological, chemical and biological defence forces — an attack claimed by Ukraine’s security service.
In April 2023, a Russian military blogger was killed when a statuette detonated in a Saint Petersburg café.
And in August 2022, a car bomb killed Daria Dugina, daughter of a prominent ultranationalist.

Whether these strikes are the work of state-directed sabotage, freelance operatives, or an amalgam of actors remains contested. What is clear is the psychological reverberation: Moscow’s elite, and the neighborhoods where they live, are no longer insulated.

Diplomacy in Miami — and an Explosion at Home

The timing could not be more pointed. The blast occurred just hours after separate talks in Miami involving Russian and Ukrainian delegates and US envoys — part of a flurry of diplomacy aimed at ending a war that has now entered its fourth year. The meetings, mediated by envoys associated with former US President Donald Trump, were described by one US interlocutor as “constructive,” but Moscow called the progress “slow.”

“Slow progress is being observed,” quoted state media said, citing Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who also warned against European involvement in the talks. Moscow’s preference for a bilateral route through Washington reflects a larger geopolitical play: the contest not only over Ukraine, but over who gets to shape any post-war order.

Both sides, meanwhile, maintain public ambiguity. Kyiv’s negotiators have been cautious, and President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly questioned whether Moscow genuinely seeks peace or is engaged in a broader geopolitical project. Even as diplomats whisper and trade drafts in hotel rooms across the Atlantic, explosions in Russian neighborhoods are a sharp reminder that the human costs of the conflict reverberate back home.

Experts Weigh In

“This is a classic example of conflict bleed,” said Dr. Olga Markov, a security analyst based in Warsaw who studies irregular warfare in Eurasia. “When a conflict is prolonged, actors find ways to strike where their adversary feels most secure. Targeted killings have both tactical and symbolic value: they disrupt command, intimidate, and send a message.”

“But there are risks,” she added. “Escalation is not just a military calculation. Every such attack feeds a narrative that can harden public opinion and complicate diplomacy.”

What This Means for Civilians and the Idea of Peace

For ordinary people — market vendors, pensioners, parents — the political chessboard is of secondary importance next to the immediate question: am I safe? “You fear going to the supermarket, to the park,” said Dmitri, a shopkeeper who swept glass from his storefront sidewalk that afternoon. “This is not the kind of life one expects in Moscow.”

Beyond personal safety, there is a wider civic erosion. When violence becomes part of daily life, trust in institutions frays. Investigations may begin quickly, but answers rarely arrive with the speed or clarity that would soothe a frightened populace. Meanwhile, the international community watches: negotiations in Miami, the role of European states offering potential peacekeeping contingents, and the murky intelligence assessments about leaders’ ambitions — all are variables that could either temper or intensify the conflict.

Consider the human arithmetic: tens of thousands killed, millions displaced, cities reduced to smoldering ruins. Those figures — estimates from humanitarian agencies and independent analysts — represent real families, small towns emptied of their youth, and a generation whose prospects are reshaped by loss. How much more of this will the world tolerate before the urgency to find a durable settlement overcomes the political inertia?

Looking Ahead: Questions Without Easy Answers

What happens next is uncertain. Will the attack harden Moscow’s resolve and lead to further clampdowns and retaliatory operations? Will it spur negotiators to redouble efforts in Miami and beyond? Or will it deepen the shadow war, in which deniable operations and tit-for-tat violence replace transparent diplomacy?

The blast in southern Moscow forces us to confront an inconvenient truth: wars that begin across borders eventually seep into living rooms. They transform neighborhoods into theaters of geopolitics and turn courtyards into crime scenes. They leave behind questions that are not easily answered by statements from ministries or color-coded maps.

As you read this, ask yourself — what is the cost of peace, and who is willing to pay it? How do we measure security when an explosion can unsettle a city and alter the course of talks thousands of miles away? And finally, what does it say about our shared global condition that diplomacy and violence can so often be found operating on the same day, in different hemispheres, but all connected by the fragile promise of stability?

In the end, the charred metal and shattered glass on that quiet Moscow street are not just evidence of an attack. They are a mirror, reflecting a world where civilian life, military policy, and high-stakes diplomacy intersect — sometimes with deadly consequences.

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