Russian assets push EU and Belgium to a breaking point

December 21, 2025

Russian assets: A bridge too far for EU and Belgium — Volodymyr Zelensky said the debt deal 'truly strengthens our resilience'

Brussels at Dawn: When Money Became a Battleground for Europe’s Future

The hallways of the European Council in Brussels felt like the lounge of a warship—tense, dry, full of maps and the sound of many clocks. Outside, winter pressed its face against the windows; inside, leaders were wrestling over a different kind of cold asset: billions of euros frozen in the chaotic aftermath of an invasion.

For weeks, the debate had been framed as a technical fix—how to unlock cash to keep Ukraine alive. At its heart, however, were questions much bigger than finance: who decides the limits of sovereignty in wartime, what risks is a union of 27 willing to shoulder for a neighbour, and when does law bend to necessity?

Three Ways to Keep Ukraine Afloat

By mid-December, EU officials were quietly circulating three options to channel support to Kyiv.

Joint EU debt: Brussels borrows on capital markets, backed by remaining EU budget headroom.
Direct bilateral loans: Member states individually lend to Ukraine.
The “Reparations Loan”: Use immobilised Russian central bank assets as a guarantee to underwrite lending.

Each option carried its own legal tangle and political poison. Each would define Europe’s appetite for collective risk.

Frozen Funds, Fiery Politics

When Russia invaded in February 2022, EU sanctions froze roughly €210 billion in Russian central-bank assets. About €185 billion of that pot sat in Euroclear’s securities depository in Belgium—a symbol now of both leverage and liability.

“This is money that’s not merely numbers on a balance sheet,” said an EU diplomat who asked not to be named. “It has become leverage in negotiations, but it’s also a tinderbox. If you touch it wrong, it explodes in your face.”

Some capitals, notably Dublin and Berlin, saw a moral case for converting these immobilised reserves into a tool for Ukraine’s reconstruction and defense. Others—Belgium above all—warned of legal and political blowback. “You cannot make a rule today that legitimises seizing another state’s central-bank holdings and expect no consequences,” Belgium’s prime minister told colleagues, according to people in the room.

Legal Lines and Courtroom Shadows

Legal advisers were split, but one theme emerged: there is no neat international court that will deliver an unequivocal answer about the legality of turning frozen central-bank reserves into a quasi-reparations fund.

“In theory, Russia could sue, and in practice, enforcing a favourable judgment against a state that refuses to recognise a court is exceedingly difficult,” said an international-law scholar at a major European university. “At the same time, you cannot pretend the risk is zero—companies, banks, and politicians may face pressure points that are hard to quantify.”

That uncertainty was sharpened when Russia’s central bank filed a claim in Moscow seeking roughly €190 billion in damages from Euroclear. The filing was theatrical—and strategically aimed at countries that might be receptive to Russian jurisdiction. The legal paper trail multiplied the anxiety inside capitals that had already lost businesses and investments because of the war.

A Fracture Line Runs Through the Union

What could have been an orderly, technocratic choice morphed into a referendum on solidarity. Hungary and Slovakia—both with leaders who have kept warmer ties to Moscow—were reluctant to endorse anything that might financially bind them for Ukraine’s debt. Ireland and several northern states pushed for bold action. Belgium insisted on ironclad guarantees that any legal-claims fallout would be mutualised across the Union.

“We’re asking our citizens to accept a risk we don’t fully control,” said a Belgian finance official. “If a Belgian company loses property abroad as retaliation, who pays? That’s not a theoretical exercise. That’s a family that loses a pension.”

On the other side of the argument, voices of urgency grew louder. “It is money today, or blood tomorrow,” said an Eastern European leader at the summit, echoing a sentiment that was part moral calculus, part plea. The phrase—brisk, stark—captured how some saw the debt decision as a short-term financial trade for longer-term life-and-death consequences.

A Summit Stretched Into the Small Hours

Negotiations pushed into the night. Technical teams rewrote legal texts, lawyers debated Article 122 of the Lisbon Treaty, and suddenly familiar rules looked optional—if you could find a legal pathway to justify them.

Belgium’s demand for a blanket indemnity—covering corporate losses, legal claims, even retaliation—proved the deal-breaker for the plan that would have leveraged Russian assets directly. Modified draft language that appeared shortly before dinner essentially made Belgium’s indemnity unlimited. It was a non-starter for nations that had asked businesses to exit Russia and had already accepted the pain of lost market share and assets.

“We were asked to guarantee other people’s risks without a clear cap,” said a finance minister from a southern member state. “It subverts the principle of proportionality; it’s not sustainable.”

When the Deadline Is 3 a.m.

At around 3 a.m., exhaustion and pragmatism found common ground. Leaders abandoned the novel reparations construct and instead resurrected a more traditional route: joint EU borrowing. The compromise would raise roughly €90 billion over two years, using an enhanced-cooperation mechanism to sidestep unanimity rules that would have allowed a single member state to veto the initiative.

Under the deal, Russia’s assets remain frozen and could later be used to service the debt if reparations are ever enforced. For Ukraine, the result was a guarantee of funding for the coming years, an insurance policy against immediate economic collapse.

Faces at the Table, Voices on the Street

After the vote, Kyiv’s president posted gratitude on social media; European leaders praised unity. EU officials framed the result as a sober, realistic response—one that preserved legal safeguards and secured short-term financing.

In Brussels cafés the next morning, the conversation felt like a Greek chorus: relief threaded with worry. “It’s a victory, but a cautious one,” said Elena, a Ukrainian café owner who fled Kharkiv and now runs a small bakery near the EU quarter. “We still live day to day. The money helps, but the war continues.”

At a factory in Poland that had begun producing drones for Ukraine’s front lines, an engineer wiped his hands and conceded, “This will buy us time. But time alone won’t win this. We need strategy, not just loans.”

Bigger Questions Remain

What did the summit truly settle? A short-term funding gap, yes. But also a larger question about Europe’s geopolitical maturity: can a union with diverse histories and interests translate moral commitments into collective risk-taking without fraying under pressure?

The episode exposes the growing phenomenon of financial statecraft—where reserves, sanctions, and legal instruments are as much weapons as tanks and missiles. It also underscores how fragile alliances can be when domestic politics and legal realities collide.

So what should you watch next? Look to court dockets, corporate boardrooms, and the unusual legal theories that emerge when politics and money intersect. Watch how enhanced cooperation will be used—or weaponised—going forward. Observe which firms bear losses, and how governments balance the cost of standing with what they say they defend.

In the end, Brussels produced an imperfect solution—messy, human, necessary. It was a reminder that in geopolitics there is rarely a clean answer. There are choices. There are trade-offs. And there are people—bakers, engineers, lawyers, and leaders—who must live with them.

Australian Lifeguards Honour Bondi Beach Victims in Moving Ceremony

hanad

December 20, 2025

Lifeguards in Australia honour Bondi Beach victims

When Bondi Fell Silent: A Shoreline Ritual of Grief and Resolve

There are moments when a place you think you know—its light, its smells, the rhythm of its tides—suddenly shifts and feels unfamiliar. On an early Sydney morning, the iconic stretch of sand at Bondi lost its usual soundtrack: no surf boards clacking, no buskers, no laughter carried on salt-thick wind. Instead, hundreds of red-and-yellow uniforms stood motionless, facing the ocean, and the world felt a fraction quieter for it.

For three minutes, surf lifesavers—men and women who usually patrol the break and joke with swimmers—held a vigil. Some bowed their heads. Some clutched one another. A helicopter hovered low, its rotor wash a distant drum, like breath being held across the city. It was a public act of mourning for the 15 people killed when gunmen opened fire at a seaside celebration of Hanukkah last week—one of the deadliest mass shootings in Australia’s history.

The faces behind the uniforms

“We don’t wear the red and yellow for show,” said Ella, a volunteer who started training in junior surf club at ten. “We wear it because someone might need help at any moment. Today that meant we needed to stand still and remember, even though every instinct is to run back into the water and do something.”

Among them were career lifeguards, teenagers in training, and grandparents who still volunteer patrols. Their silence was not a media moment; it was a heartbeat of collective grief. Across the continent, lifesaving clubs matched the homage—small, somber gestures before their morning patrols began.

What happened at the celebration

On 14 December, a seaside gathering to mark Hanukkah turned to horror when two men opened fire into the crowd. Nationals and visitors alike now know the names associated with the attack: Sajid Akram, 50, who was later killed during a police shootout, and his son Naveed, 24, who survived and has since been charged with terrorism-related offenses and 15 counts of murder. Families are grieving. A community bound by ritual and welcome has been wounded.

“We are heartbroken,” said Rabbi Miriam Katz, standing near a table of flowers and candles set up by local residents. “This was an attack on our celebration, on our sense of safety. The support from strangers—people who came up to us with a sandwich or a blanket—reminds us that love can be louder than fear.”

Everyday heroes at the water’s edge

It’s impossible to tell the story of that night without the lifeguards. They were among the first people on the scene—pulling people out of panic-swollen waves, applying dressings, performing CPR on unfamiliar bodies under the flicker of streetlights. An image that spread around the world captured one of those moments: a young lifeguard, Jackson Doolan, sprinting barefoot down the road from Tamarama to Bondi carrying a defibrillator, intent on saving lives.

“That photo says it all,” Waverley Council Mayor Will Nemesh told reporters. “Our lifeguards show selflessness every day in keeping our world-famous beaches safe for surfers and swimmers, but what we saw on Sunday night should be commended and celebrated.”

Across Australia, volunteer surf lifesaving clubs trace their roots back to the early 20th century—born of local communities coming together to tame a dangerous coastline. Today they are a national institution.

More than 200,000 people are members of surf lifesaving clubs across Australia.
In the past year those volunteers carried out over 8,000 rescues.

Numbers like that are not abstract; they are a ledger of lives watched over. “We train for waves, but we also train for the moment a person needs immediate care,” said Marcus Chen, a senior lifeguard who has patrolled Bondi for 12 summers. “That night tested every part of our training—and our hearts.”

A nation asked to pause

On the week mark of the attack, the country was asked to stop. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for a national day of reflection and urged Australians to light candles at 6.47pm on 21 December—exactly one week after the assault began.

“Light a candle, remember those lost, and stand with the Jewish community and with the bravery of those who tried to save others,” a government spokesperson said, echoing the prime minister’s appeal. The precise time—6.47pm—has acquired ritual significance; a small, synchronized act of remembrance in homes, synagogues, town halls, and on balconies.

It is a fragile form of solidarity, but an important one. In a world where grief can be privatized by scrolling feeds and algorithmic news cycles, synchronized gestures invite shared sorrow and say: we are paying attention.

Local color and small kindnesses

Around Bondi, ordinary acts of care cropped up like small beacons: café owners making free coffee for stunned lifeguards, surfers leaving bouquets on the lifeguard tower, a retired nurse setting up a quiet place for people who needed to sit. “We had people come in shaking, asking if they could just sit and be,” said Rosa Martinez, who runs a corner bakery. “We made them a croissant and wrapped their hands around a mug. It’s what you do. You keep each other warm.”

A father who had been at the celebration, his voice still thin with disbelief, told me, “You’re supposed to come here and feel the sea clean your lungs. That night, the water couldn’t wash it away. But when the lifeguards came—when strangers picked up strangers—that gave us something to hold on to.”

Beyond the sand: larger questions

Grief here is local and global at once. Bondi is a postcard for millions, but this incident reverberates beyond Australia’s sandy arc. It raises questions about targeted violence against minorities, the responsibilities of communities to protect public spaces, and the emotional labor volunteers carry during crises.

What happens when the people we trust to keep us safe—volunteer and professional—become the ones who must extract our neighbors from harm? How do communities heal when the site of celebration becomes a crime scene?

We won’t find simple answers in ritual alone. But small rituals—candles, silence, the presence of a volunteer with a defibrillator—are not nothing. They are the halting, human scaffolding we build when we don’t yet know how to stand again.

How to respond

If you live in Australia, consider the practical: show up to vigils, offer blood if there are calls for donation, show support to local Jewish organizations and mental health services. If you’re abroad, light a candle in solidarity, speak out against antisemitism and violence, and remember that the impulse to help is not confined by borders.

As I left Bondi that morning, the tide slowly swallowing footprints, a teenage surf patrol member tucked a single tea light into his pocket. “For tonight,” he said. “We’ll light it at 6.47.”

Will you join him? Will you let a moment of silence and a single flame move you toward renewed care for strangers, toward building communities that can both celebrate and protect? The shore remembers. The sea keeps its own counsel. But it is the people—rescuers, neighbours, strangers—who stitch the coastline back together, one small act at a time.

Photo Gallery: 25 Striking Images Capturing 2025’s Defining Moments

hanad

December 20, 2025

A year stitched together by storms, sorrow and stubborn hope

As the calendar slips its last page, I find myself carrying fragments: a foam-wrapped high-rise burning in the dark, a palm-sized island swallowed by the sea, a lone survivor stepping from the wreckage of an airliner and a crowd outside St Peter’s that felt like a small continent mourning. 2025 did not offer a single narrative. It handed us a dozen, all of them loud, messy and insistently human.

Think of this as a walk through that year — not an inventory of headlines, but a street-level tour of how the world looked, smelled and felt. How did a year that began with politics and ended with a water-splashed ceremony in Cameroon teach us to see the fragile threads that bind us?

Where the sea took what was once home

On Pugad Island in Hagonoy, Philippines, the sea has a memory now. It remembers the rows of nipa huts and the laughter of children running to the rice paddies; it remembers being kept at bay. Today it keeps what used to be a village.

“There used to be a coconut grove here,” William Gregorio told me, standing at the muddy edge of what is now a tidal inlet. “My father taught me the rhythm of the tides. Now the rhythm is different — faster, hungrier.” Behind him, his son Yamry squinted at the horizon where a lone roofline bobbed like an island’s last vertebra.

The drivers are familiar: melting ice in Antarctica, the warming ocean, land subsidence from decades of pumping groundwater. But locals point an accusing finger at something closer to home — large-scale reclamation and coastal engineering that altered currents and pulled the tide inland. The result is zenithal: even a gentle high tide can now transform streets into rivers within minutes.

Is this climate change in the abstract or a hand on your shoulder? Ask the rice farmer whose second harvest has vanished into salt. Ask the child who has never known a dry shoreline.

Fire and the questions it leaves behind

On a grim November night in Hong Kong, seven of eight 32-storey residential blocks at Wang Fuk Court became an apocalyptic skyline of orange and ash. At least 160 people perished. The towers had been shrouded in bamboo scaffolding and green mesh as workers installed foam insulation — a combination that turned renovation into a furnace.

“It was like standing on a cooking pot,” recalled a neighbor who lost a sister inside. “We heard shouting, then a wall of heat. There was no time.”

Authorities arrested several people as they probed the use of substandard materials and possible corruption in contracting. For a city that once prided itself on meticulous regulation, the blaze raised a ferocious question: how many safety margins can we shrink before tragedy finds the seam?

Famine, hostage deals and a wounded land

War textures this year’s memory in the grainy grayscale of displacement, hunger and bargaining. In Gaza, the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification confirmed a famine affecting some 500,000 people in the governorate — a fifth of the territory. Aid convoys, choked at times, became the locus of geopolitics and human suffering.

“You ration hope as you ration rice,” said Rania, an aid coordinator, as she ladled a modest portion of cooked food to a line of people in Gaza City. “We can bring food. We cannot bring back what the blockade took.”

By October 10, a US-mediated ceasefire negotiated the release of almost all hostages, with Israel returning the bodies of many Palestinians and freeing nearly 2,000 prisoners. It was an uneasy, transactional peace. It was also a reminder that between political calculus and human life there is always a cost; sometimes it is measured in liberty, sometimes in lives lost.

Meanwhile, the longer war in Ukraine continued to cast its massive shadow. Front-line strikes, nightly missile and drone assaults and a grim count from the US Special Envoy for Ukraine that together the combatants had suffered more than two million dead and wounded underscored a terrible arithmetic: prolonged conflict exacts exponential human tolls.

When machines fail and one man lives

One story cut through the numbness: the crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 near Ahmedabad. Two hundred and forty-two souls were aboard. One man, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, survived. He had been near an emergency exit and — witnesses and the preliminary investigative report say — jumped from the burning fuselage.

“I wake up and the first thing I remember is blue sky,” Mr Ramesh told reporters later, his voice still ragged. “I wake up every day and I remember my brother.”

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s early findings suggested fuel switches had moved to “cut-off” immediately after takeoff, extinguishing the engines. Whether by human error or mechanical anomaly, the crash became a corridor into anxieties about aging fleets, oversight and the thin thread between routine and catastrophe.

Storms that rearranged landscapes — and lives

January’s Storm Éowyn shaved the west coast of Ireland with gusts up to 183 km/h, leaving 790,000 homes and businesses without power. In Conamara, a 120-year-old roof gave way; in Altadena, California, Santa Ana winds gusting as high as 160 km/h drove a wildfire that razed hundreds of properties and sent more than 100,000 people fleeing.

“We have been waiting for the next big one,” said a volunteer firefighter in Los Angeles County. “But waiting doesn’t make it easier when the wind becomes a weapon.”

In Switzerland, a landslide buried 90% of the village of Blatten after thawing permafrost loosened its hold on the mountain’s gravel and ice. One life was lost. Three hundred residents had been evacuated days earlier. The Alpine retreat of frozen ground is no longer an abstraction — it is a reshaping of how alpine communities perceive their future.

Small salvations — spacewalks, moonlight and music

Not all of 2025 was rupture. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, after a nine-month odyssey prompted by a failed Boeing Starliner mission, returned to Earth in a gentle SpaceX splashdown — a technical hiccup woven into the longer story of human spaceflight’s messy, iterative progress.

There were also softer scenes: a “flower moon” rising behind the Temple of Poseidon in Greece, surfers riding behemoth waves in Nazaré, an Australian farmer directing his dogs among a sea of sheep outside Gunnedah. These images were small shelters against the storm.

Politics, protest and the precariousness of public life

America kept serving dramatic headlines: raids by ICE in Democratic-run cities provoked protests and debate; the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah transfixed a polarized nation; Elon Musk’s every move — from White House advisory roles to a potential trillion-dollar shareholder payoff — remained a Rorschach test of modern capitalism and celebrity.

In Jakarta, women confronting parliament about lavish allowances chanted and waved flags, a reminder that discontent marches in many tongues. In Dublin, Citywest became shorthand for how allegations of crime can ignite unrest and erupt into violence.

What to carry forward?

So what stitches these events into a pattern? Perhaps this: that our world is simultaneously more connected and more fragile than we often admit. A coastal heap of sand in the Philippines, a faulty fuel switch in India, an insulation foam in Hong Kong — all are local tragedies that nevertheless tell a global story. They are fault lines of governance, climate, safety standards and political will.

As readers, what should we do with this catalog? Turn it into pity that fades with the holidays, or let it be a call to curiosity and action?

“We cannot legislate away grief,” a humanitarian I spoke to in Beirut told me, “but we can make grief less predictable. We can build systems that keep people safer.”

In the end, the year’s images linger because they are not only about endings. They are about people — farmers, sailors, firefighters, mothers — who keep finding ways to begin again. If 2025 taught us anything, it is that resilience is not a slogan. It is a daily practice, often feeble, sometimes heroic, and always profoundly human.

Ukraine Says It Hit Russian ‘Shadow Fleet’ Tanker in Strike

hanad

December 20, 2025

Ukraine says it has struck Russian 'shadow fleet' tanker

When a Drone Crossed the Mediterranean: A New Chapter in a War That Keeps Finding New Fronts

The Mediterranean at dusk is usually forgiving: fishermen haul in nets, cargo ships cut slow, and cafés on the waterfront fill with the low hum of conversation. This week, the same blue expanse carried a different kind of sound—one that will be remembered not for the lilt of waves but for the echo of geopolitics. Ukrainian officials say their security service struck a Russian-linked tanker in neutral Mediterranean waters using aerial drones, marking what Kyiv calls its first maritime strike so far from the front lines.

“We wanted the world to understand that distance is no shield,” an SBU source told a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity. “The enemy must realize Ukraine can act where it needs to, when it needs to.”

The shadow fleet and the oil trail

What Ukrainian officials described as a “shadow fleet” reads like the practical plotline of a spy novel: an estimated armada of as many as 1,000 vessels, changing flags, owners, and paperwork so fluidly that tracking them becomes an exercise in tracing fog.

For Moscow, that opacity has been profitable. Despite sanctions, Russia has found ways to keep crude flowing and cash coming in through complex ship-to-ship transfers, opaque ownership structures and frequent reflags. Western estimates vary, but analysts put the fleet at hundreds, if not close to a thousand, vessels that have enabled energy sales and the resilience of Russian revenues—revenues that, Kyiv argues, pay for this war.

“These aren’t innocent freighters,” said Elena Markov, a maritime analyst who has spent years tracking vessels that sail under “flags of convenience.” “They’re part of a network that exploits legal grey areas. When a tanker vanishes into a chain of shell companies and then reappears under a different flag, you’re witnessing the modern contours of economic warfare.”

What happened — and what Kyiv says it achieved

The struck vessel, named in Kyiv’s briefings as QENDIL, was reportedly empty at the time of the attack. Ukrainian officials insisted there was no environmental catastrophe and that the tanker sustained “critical damage” rendering it unusable. They framed the operation as targeted and lawful, aimed at choking a revenue artery rather than sinking a ship and spilling oil into the Mediterranean.

“This was a precise operation,” a senior SBU official said. “We identified an asset directly complicit in sanctions circumvention and took it out of service. We do not seek escalation for its own sake; we seek to protect our country.”

The strike reportedly took place some 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine’s borders, a detail that underscores a shift: the war is no longer confined to trenches and cities in Eastern Europe. Technology—drones, cyber tools, illicit maritime logistics—allows a conflict to be projectionary, to punch far beyond traditional front lines.

Voices from the Mediterranean

On the docks of a small port town in southern Turkey, a fisherman named Hasan lit his cigarette and shook his head. “We’ve seen different ships overnight,” he said. “One day they’re Greek, the next Panama. For us, the sea is work and worry. If they start hitting ships, what will insurance do? Who will bring fuel to the market?”

In Valletta, a port security official spoke on background: “Every time a big ship is struck, everyone recalculates routes and rates. It’s not just a military statement; it’s an economic tremor.”

Diplomacy on one hand, strikes on the other

The Mediterranean incident arrives as Ukrainian negotiators were in talks with U.S. envoys over a framework to end the war. Kyiv’s delegation chief, Rustem Umerov, described the discussions as “constructive” and said European partners would be involved. The talks are layered in complexity: security guarantees, territorial questions, reconstruction plans. Kyiv says it has agreed on elements—a 20-point framework among them—but acknowledges stickers remain across the final map.

Meanwhile, representatives dispatched by the U.S. administration—figures who have emerged as intermediaries in recent months—are maneuvering from Berlin to Miami, shuttling between diplomats and delegations. “Diplomacy is alive,” one Western official told me. “But alive doesn’t mean easy.”

Another year-end pressure cooker

On the other side of the table, in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin used his annual year-end briefing to frame the conflict as a test Western powers must answer. “We did not start this war,” he said, reiterating the Kremlin’s long-standing narrative. He also threatened further gains on the battlefield should talks falter, and warned of consequences if frozen Russian assets in Europe were repurposed to help Ukraine.

Analysts note that recent Russian advances—described by the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War as the largest in a year during November—provide context to Putin’s tone. “This is negotiation from a position of force,” says Igor Petrov, a retired military analyst. “But position of force is volatile.”

Why this matters beyond one tanker

When a drone strikes a vessel in international waters, it raises questions that ripple outward: the limits of maritime law, the safety of global trade, and the ethics of extraterritorial military action. It’s an escalation of the sort that doesn’t always involve loud explosions on the evening news, but that silently reorders economies and alliances.

Maritime commerce: The Mediterranean is a key artery connecting Europe, Africa and Asia. Shipping disruptions raise freight rates and insurance premiums.
Sanctions enforcement: If shadow fleets can be struck, does that become a new tool for sanction-busting? Or a new flashpoint for wider conflict?
Diplomatic balance: Kyiv’s move shows the lengths a nation will go to preserve leverage. Is this compatibility with negotiation, or a step toward hardening positions?

Ask yourself: if a war can reach across seas, how should the global community respond without normalizing cross-border strikes as routine? And if sanctions can be bypassed by clever corporate shells, what new international architecture will bind the oceans to law and accountability?

Human cost, local color, and the long view

Beyond the geopolitics are the human textures: ship crews with overtime unpaid, sailors who have become wary of changing ports for fear of paperwork delays; coastal café owners watching fewer truck drivers stop for dinner; fishermen noticing changes in currents and shipping lanes. These are small, daily fractures that add up.

“We don’t want to be part of a headline,” said Maria, a café owner on the Aegean coast. “We want customers, we want to laugh and plan holidays. But everything is heavy now. You feel it in conversations.”

As Kyiv pursues both prayer and precision—the diplomatic table and the drone operator’s console—the world watches. Not just for the immediate consequences of one ship disabled in an expanse of blue. But for what it says about a new era of conflict, where legal gray zones are weapons, where commerce is a battlefield, and where diplomacy must contend with innovations that allow states to project force with surgical stealth.

Does the single strike mark a turning point or a footnote? Perhaps it is both: a symbol of Ukraine’s reach, and a warning shot to a system struggling to govern a globalized, militarized economy. For those watching the Mediterranean’s horizon, the question is not whether the sea will remain central—it is whether the world will adapt its rules before the next drone launches into dusk.

US Airstrikes Hit More Than 70 Islamic State Sites in Syria

hanad

December 20, 2025

Duqeymo cirka ah oo Mareykanku ka geystay Suuriya ayaa lagu weeraray in ka badan 70 goobood

Night Over Palmyra: A Desert Echo of Retaliation

The stars above Palmyra watched, indifferent and unblinking, as warplanes and helicopters marked a different kind of night — one of thunder and ordnance rather than the quiet that usually settles over marble ruins and sand. What began as the grief of three deaths rippled outward into a barrage: more than 70 targets struck across central Syria in a sweep the Pentagon described as precise, swift and punitive.

“We struck known ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites with more than 100 precision munitions,” US Central Command said, naming fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery among the instruments of the strike. The language was surgical; the spectacle was raw. For residents in and around this ancient city — once a jewel of antiquity and a reluctant battlefield — the sound of retaliatory force was a reminder that the past and present are stubbornly entwined.

Why the Strikes Came: A Brutal Spark

The immediate cause was the December 13 attack near Palmyra that killed two Iowa National Guard sergeants, William Howard and Edgar Torres Tovar, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, a civilian interpreter from Michigan. US officials, mourning the loss, characterized the assailant as a lone gunman tied to the Islamic State group.

President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform to frame the response in blunt terms: “We are inflicting very serious retaliation, just as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible,” he wrote, adding that those who attack Americans “WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE.” Hard words and harder actions followed.

Operations and Outcomes

CENTCOM’s tally did not stop at the airstrikes. In the wake of Palmyra, US and allied forces said they had conducted 10 operations across Syria and Iraq, resulting in the death or detention of 23 suspected extremist operatives. For commanders, the goal is clear: disrupt networks, deny safe havens, and deter future attacks.

“Every strike we carry out is aimed at degrading the group’s ability to plan and execute attacks,” one US defense official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity because of operational sensitivities. “This is about buying time and space for local partners and preventing more American bloodshed.”

Palmyra’s People: Between Ruins and Retaliation

Walk through Palmyra’s dusty lanes and you feel the peculiar intimacy of a place that knows endurance. The colonnaded avenues, scarred and eroded, are reminders that cities survive long after empires fall. Yet the modern city that surrounds those ruins bears fresh wounds: checkpoints, the wary eyes of security forces, and civilians who keep small shops selling tea, phone credits and dried figs.

“We hear the planes, we hear the blasts,” said Samiya, a 46-year-old shopkeeper who has lived here all her life. “But we also bury our dead and open our shops the next day. Life continues because it must. The ruins are older than all of us.”

A local teacher, who asked not to be named, offered a different note. “We don’t want to be a battlefield between outsiders,” she said. “But we also don’t want extremists walking freely. We are tired of both.” Her voice threaded the complex truth: many Syrians want security, yet fear the endless cycle of violence that outside powers and local armed groups perpetuate.

The Broader Geography of Conflict

The strikes unfolded against a wider, tangled backdrop. ISIS — which swept across parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and declared a caliphate — was battered by a combination of local ground forces and international air power. By the late 2010s, the group had lost its territorial holdings, but it never disappeared. The vast deserts east of Palmyra remain hospitable to outlaw bands and sleeper cells.

Syria’s foreign ministry posted on X that Damascus remains committed to fighting the extremist organization and “ensuring it has no safe havens on Syrian territory,” language that dovetails with its own security narrative. The Syrian interior ministry also told state broadcasters that the Palmyra attacker was a member of the security forces allegedly facing dismissal for “extremist Islamist ideas” — an internal explanation that raises questions about loyalty, vetting and the strain within state institutions.

Where the US Still Stands

American forces are not monolithic in Syria. Troops remain in the Kurdish-controlled northeast and at Al-Tanf near the Jordanian border, a remnant posture that has at various times numbered in the hundreds. Washington’s policy toward Syria has been uneven: President Trump has oscillated between calls for withdrawal and commitments to keep forces in place. In April, the Pentagon announced plans to reduce US personnel in Syria — a decision that reflected broader fatigue with prolonged deployments.

“The calculus here is complicated,” explained Dr. Laila Mansour, a Middle East analyst at a policy think tank. “On one hand, a small footprint allows the US to pressure ISIS remnants. On the other, reduced presence risks emboldening other actors — local militias, Iranian-backed groups, and even the Syrian regime — to fill vacuums.”

Human Cost and Rituals of Return

The human dimension was writ plainly in a solemn ceremony marking the repatriation of the three Americans. Uniforms, folded flags, and tightly controlled protocol framed the emotional choreography. Family members, military leaders and civilian officials stood shoulder to shoulder, each bearing grief in their own manner.

“They served their country,” a grieving relative said, clutching a photograph. “We want them remembered as more than headlines.” That impulse — to fix a life to a name — is a powerful counterweight against the abstraction of strategic statements and operational statistics.

For residents across Syria, the strikes are another chapter in a story that stretches back more than a decade: the 2011 uprising, the brutal civil war, the rise and fall of extremist enclaves, and the geopolitics of foreign powers. Each external intervention reverberates locally, remaking alliances and resentments.

Questions to Carry Forward

What does deterrence mean in a landscape where fighters melt into deserts and towns? How do you balance the immediate demand for retribution with the long-term goal of stability and reconstruction? And who gets to define security in a place where so many narratives collide?

These are not theoretical queries; they guide policy, shape lives and determine whether, in the months ahead, Palmyra’s nights will be marked by planes or by the soft, ancient winds that have always crossed its ruins.

Closing Reflection

As dawn eventually returned to Palmyra, the city woke to a changed skyline — but the same desert light. The US strikes were framed as justice and deterrence by some, as escalation by others. For a town stitched to its monuments and its memories, those distinctions are less tidy than the briefs in Washington.

In the end, the story here is not only about ordnance and targets; it is about people who breathe the same air as the ghosts of emperors and the footprints of displaced families. It is about the cost of security, the weight of grief, and the fragile hope that, this time, retribution will make room for something steadier. Will it? That is the question Palmyra — and the wider region — will answer in the months and years to come.

Martin to press for accountability and answers over Seán Rooney’s death

hanad

December 20, 2025

Martin to insist on accountability over Seán Rooney death — Private Seán Rooney who was killed in an armoured vehicle which came under fire while travelling to Beirut on 14 December 2022

A Mission, a Mourning, and a Message: Why Ireland’s Leader Has Traveled to Beirut

Beirut greets visitors with a particular kind of weathered grace — balconies hung with laundry, cafes pulsing with Arabic pop and the sea yawning toward a horizon that has seen too many of the world’s lines and redrafts. It is into this layered city that Ireland’s Taoiseach, Michéal Martin, has come with a heavy purpose: to press for answers about the killing of Private Seán Rooney and to thank the Irish troops who will spend this Christmas far from home.

“He gave his life in the cause of peace,” Mr Martin said ahead of meetings with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. “There must be accountability for Private Rooney’s killing.”

More than diplomacy: grief that won’t be allowed to fade

The Rooney case has been a raw, persistent ache in Ireland’s public life. Private Seán Rooney, a young man in an armoured vehicle on patrol, was killed when his unit came under fire on 14 December 2022. Earlier this year a Lebanese military court found six people guilty of involvement; one, a man named Mohammad Ayyad, was sentenced to death but was not in custody, leaving families and officials alike frustrated and unsettled.

“It feels like they sentenced the shadow and let the hand walk free,” says Aoife Brennan, a schoolteacher from County Cork who has organized vigils for the peacekeepers. “You can’t have a verdict and not a consequence. Accountability matters.”

Mr Martin has said he will raise the case directly with Prime Minister Salam, and he will not only voice Ireland’s concern but also seek clarity on the status of investigations. The issue has become more than a legal matter; it is about trust between states, protections for soldiers on international missions, and the grief of a country that sent young men and women thousands of miles from home with the promise they would be safe under a UN flag.

On the ground: Irish soldiers, Lebanese neighborhoods

More than 300 members of the Irish Defence Forces are currently deployed with UNIFIL — the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon — where their tasks include monitoring activity across the Blue Line, assisting the Lebanese armed forces, and supporting local communities. UNIFIL was first established in 1978 and the UN-drawn Blue Line, the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon, has defined this strip of the world since 2000.

“We try to be a steadying presence,” said Sergeant Conor O’Sullivan as he passed a cup of sweet black coffee in a makeshift base. “You sit on a ridge and you see life carrying on below you: kids playing football, fishermen hauling nets. That normality is what we’re here to protect.”

But normality can be fragile. Earlier this month, Irish peacekeepers came under fire while on patrol in South Lebanon; six people were arrested in connection with that attack. Armed tension, checkpoints, and spikes of violence are never far away in a region where geopolitical rivalries are often fought through local skirmishes. Since last year’s Israeli incursion into parts of Lebanon, the Israeli Defence Forces have maintained positions inside Lebanese territory, occasionally close to Irish outposts on high ground.

“There’s a difference between the mission on paper and the reality here,” said Rami Khalil, a shopkeeper in a village near the Blue Line. “When you hear shooting at night, it changes everything. You stop planning, you stop trusting the word ‘peace.’”

Legal battles and lingering questions

The Rooney case has produced both a conviction and a sense of incompletion. Six people were convicted in July by a Lebanese military court. Ayyad’s absence from the dock and the perceived leniency toward some defendants has left many feeling that justice has been only partially done.

“From a legal standpoint, the sentence is a sentence,” said Dr. Leila Haddad, an international law scholar in Beirut. “But when a key defendant is at large, you face a gap between verdict and enforcement. It is not unusual in conflict zones, yet it undermines the rule of law and the legitimacy of outcomes.”

Back in Ireland, Mrs. Rooney — Seán’s mother — has been pursuing avenues for accountability, including permission to sue the United Nations. Documents have been sent to Dublin’s coroner and the case has become emblematic of larger questions about how multinational peacekeeping forces are protected and how states respond when peacekeepers are harmed.

UNIFIL’s looming deadline and a fragile future

UNIFIL’s mission in South Lebanon is scheduled to wind down in December next year. What that will mean for the region remains unclear. Will local authorities be able to fill the gap? Will hostilities between Israel and Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah resume in full? The answers are as uncertain as the boundary lines drawn on maps and the trenches etched into hillsides.

“Who will hold the line if UNIFIL leaves?” asked Major Hannah O’Connell, who has served multiple tours in Lebanon. “The mission isn’t just about military monitoring. It’s about mitigating risk, supporting civilians, and having a neutral third party when tensions flare. The vacuum after withdrawal is a real concern.”

UNIFIL: Established 1978 to confirm Israeli withdrawal and restore peacekeeping presence.
Blue Line: De-facto boundary between Israel and Lebanon since 2000.
Irish deployment: More than 300 troops currently serving with UNIFIL.
Key dates: Private Seán Rooney killed on 14 December 2022; six convicted in July; UNIFIL mission scheduled to end in December next year.

Beyond the headlines: people, ritual, and memory

In a small Beirut café, an elderly man named Karim paused while folding a cigarette and reflected on the paradox of peacekeeping: “You travel here to keep peace, but sometimes you become a part of the story. People in uniforms are not statues. They are sons, daughters, memories. When something happens to them, it ripples.”

Across the Mediterranean, families in Ireland light candles on windowsills at night, sending a quiet signal to those abroad: we remember you. The Rooney family’s campaign — its vigils, its legal steps — has kept the story in the national conversation, reframing a foreign deployment as something intimate and local.

What does accountability look like?

That question is at the heart of Mr Martin’s visit. Is it a captured suspect in a Lebanese cell? Is it a full, transparent investigation shared with the families and foreign authorities? Is it international pressure, legal recourse, or a diplomatic bargain struck behind closed doors?

“Justice is not a one-size-fits-all,” Dr. Haddad said. “It’s procedural rigor, yes, but it’s also public confidence. When either is absent, you don’t have justice — you have a verdict.”

As the Taoiseach meets Lebanon’s leaders and as he walks among Irish troops camping on the edge of the Blue Line, one thing seems clear: this trip is not a ceremonial checkbox. It is an insistence that questions be answered before grief cools into a footnote.

Invitation to reflect

What do we owe those who risk their lives so that others can live in peace? When a multinational peacekeeping force withdraws, who measures the cost? And when a single death provokes a small nation into international debate, what does that tell us about memory, responsibility, and the fragile architectures of peace?

Across Beirut, from the smells of roasted chestnuts in the souks to the rumble of generators near forward positions, these questions travel with the wind. They flip open like pages in the public ledger and demand answers, not just from politicians in meeting rooms but from each of us who imagine a world where those in uniform return home intact.

Epstein court files: Thousands of heavily redacted documents publicly released

hanad

December 20, 2025

Epstein files: Thousands of redacted documents released — Bill Clinton has previously expressed regret for socialising with Epstein and said he was not aware of any criminal activity

Black Bars, Blurred Faces: What the Latest Epstein Release Actually Tells Us

It arrived in the deadpan language of bureaucracy: thousands of pages, “heavily redacted,” a legal compulsion to publish more of the files tied to Jeffrey Epstein. But what the Justice Department unveiled this week was less a dump of evidence than a theatrical act of omission—photos of familiar faces with large portions blacked out, long swathes of text turned to opaque rectangles, and a political sting that landed more on one former president than another.

If you were hoping the release would finally draw clean lines through a tangled web of abuse, commerce and privilege, you were likely disappointed. If you were watching for how the story bends American politics and public trust, you got a vivid demonstration of how scandals never die quietly; they get rerouted into the machinery of power.

What was actually released?

The packet included material from several investigations into Epstein’s network: photos, flight logs, documents previously held under seal, and a lot of pages that were essentially unreadable because of redaction. Among the images posted by Justice Department spokespeople were pictures that they said showed former president Bill Clinton in social contexts tied to Epstein; other images included public figures such as Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Mick Jagger.

But perhaps the most conspicuous absence in this release was a near lack of references to Donald Trump—an oddity given that Trump’s name has appeared in prior troves, including flight manifests and earlier records of social visits from the 1990s and 2000s.

“We’re complying with a congressional mandate to make these records available,” a Justice Department official told me, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of ongoing reviews. “But there are statutory limits: victim privacy and active investigations still constrain what we can publish.”

More than 1,200 victims or relatives reportedly had their names redacted.
Many documents were completely blacked out—some runs of 100 pages or more with no readable content.
The department acknowledged it is still examining “hundreds of thousands” of additional pages.

Why the Trump absence matters

Context is everything. For years Epstein’s files have been a source of speculation, rumor, and political ammunition—fodder for dark theories as much as legitimate inquiry. Pictures, flight manifests and email threads that surfaced after Epstein’s 2019 death have linked him to a constellation of powerful people. The lack of substantive mention of Trump in this latest batch prompts questions about selection, prioritization and influence.

“When an administration chooses what to release, it’s not just about transparency—it’s about framing,” said Dr. Mira Patel, a scholar of public ethics at a Washington policy institute. “What’s left out shapes public perception as much as what’s published.”

Some observers see fingerprints of political strategy. Last month, the president asked the Justice Department to examine Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein—an order critics argued was aimed less at seeking truth than at deflecting attention away from Trump’s own past relationship with Epstein. Whether that order influenced the content or prominence of certain images is the kind of question that breeds cynical headlines and deep distrust.

Voices at the edges: victims, voters and victims’ advocates

Beyond the claims and counters, there are people still living with the fallout. In Palm Beach, where Epstein once cultivated a social life among the rich and powerful, survivors and advocates reacted with weary frustration.

“We’ve been waiting for years for clarity,” said Ana, a survivors’ advocate who asked that her full name not be used. “Every release that feels like theater retraumatizes people. Redact us into silence, and the abuse continues to be invisible.”

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll underscored the political fragility of the moment: among American adults who identify as Republicans, only 44% approved of how the president has handled Epstein-related questions—starkly lower than the roughly 82% approval he enjoys on other issues. Those numbers hint at a fracture in a once-solid constituency, a reminder that scandal can be as corrosive to political coalitions as it is to reputations.

From the courtroom to the bank vault

The financial aftershocks have been real and costly. In 2023, JPMorgan settled claims with some of Epstein’s victims for roughly $290 million, admitting no wrongdoing but acknowledging the grave implications of having retained him as a client years after his 2008 conviction.

“This is a system failure,” said a former federal prosecutor who worked on trafficking cases. “Banks, lawyers, gatekeepers—they all have a role. Money didn’t just lubricate Epstein’s lifestyle; it insulated him for a long time.”

The politics of release and redaction

Lawmakers demanded the files be opened after years of sealed records and stalled investigations. The statute required the Justice Department to share information about how it handled the Epstein probes. Yet critics were quick to say the agency’s roll-out was a half-measure.

“This is a fraction of the whole body of evidence,” said one Democratic Senate leader in response to the release, echoing a widespread sentiment that much remains hidden.

Republicans who pushed for the disclosure also voiced frustration. “The release grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” said a conservative congressman who sponsored the disclosure legislation, reflecting bipartisan impatience with both the pace and the completeness of the disclosures.

Why this still matters beyond partisan headlines

It’s tempting to read these files purely as political theater, each reveal a proxy battle in the culture wars. But there’s a deeper, messier story here about accountability, institutional failure, and the long shadow of abuse.

What does it say about a society when victims must fight for recognition in courtrooms and in the court of public opinion? What does it say when names are hidden, not to protect perpetrators, but ostensibly to protect victims—yet the redactions prevent the public from seeing patterns that could spur meaningful reform?

“Transparency without context is performative,” said Dr. Patel. “If your goal is justice, then records should illuminate connections, timelines and institutional choices—not just scatter images across social feeds.”

What comes next?

The Justice Department has promised more reviews and more releases. Congress will continue to pry. Survivors will keep pushing for legal remedies and recognition. And the public, increasingly skeptical about what it’s told by institutions, will keep demanding better answers.

So where does that leave you, the reader? Perhaps you feel fatigue. Perhaps outrage. Or perhaps you’re left considering how we, as a global community, handle the intersection of wealth, power and harm. Will we let opaque pages and black bars become the symbol of our impotence? Or will the next round of disclosures—and the civic pressure that follows—produce not just more documents, but more accountability?

One thing is clear: these documents were never just paper. They are a mirror. How we look into it—and what we decide to do next—may tell the most important story of all.

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