U.S. Signals Deal to End Ukraine War Is Very Close

December 7, 2025

US says deal to end Ukraine war 'really close' — Ukrainian rescuers walk past a heavily damaged train station building in the town of Fastiv, Kyiv yesterday

On the edge of a deal: how two sites stand between peace and more war

There are moments in diplomacy that feel less like negotiations and more like the final, breathless minutes of a marathon. Last week, in an auditorium beneath the California sun, a veteran of American interventionist wars — a man who once led troops across continents — told an audience that the effort to stop the fighting in Ukraine had reached “the last 10 metres.” His shorthand was ordinary; the consequences are anything but.

Keith Kellogg, the outgoing U.S. special envoy on Ukraine, told attendees at the Reagan National Defense Forum that only two issues remained truly thorny: the territorial fate of the Donbas and the status of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Settle those, he argued, and “the rest of the things will work out fairly well.” It was the kind of line that excites negotiators and terrifies civilians.

A quiet but explosive geography

The Donbas — a patchwork of mined fields, shattered factories and stubborn towns — has been the epicentre of this long, grinding contest since 2014. Russia formally annexed Crimea that year, and the region of Donetsk and Luhansk has been contested even longer. When a full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the fighting metastasized: today, Russia holds roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and large swathes of eastern and southern regions.

That reality is central to every conversation about surrender, compromise or a frozen line on a map. “If you cede Donetsk without proper consent, you don’t so much solve the war as invite a later, deeper one,” says a Ukrainian legal adviser in Kyiv who has followed negotiations closely. “A handover without a legitimate referendum is a legal abyss.”

Across the line in towns that have known only warfare for a decade, opinions are not monolithic. “My mother remembers Soviet times fondly,” says Olena, a teacher from a small Donbas village now under Ukrainian control, nursing a thermos of black tea in a Kyiv flat. “But she also remembers the shelling. People are tired. We want peace. But not at the cost of our freedom.”

The heart of the matter: Zaporizhzhia

More than any headline-grabbing clause about troop positions, however, it is the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that haunts negotiators. The plant — the largest in Europe by capacity — sits under Russian control and has been a recurrent flashpoint for months. A power plant is not merely an industrial asset; it is a potential disaster in a conflict zone.

“You can bargain territory, you can bargain ceasefires,” says Dr. Marie Koumbis, a nuclear safety expert and former IAEA inspector. “You cannot afford to gamble with a reactor’s safety culture. Any ambiguity about operational responsibility is dangerous.”

Kellogg’s assessment that resolving these two nodes could unlock broader progress is not naïve. But Russian officials have signalled they expect significant rewrites to the U.S. drafts. Yuri Ushakov, a longtime Kremlin aide, said Moscow wants “serious, radical changes” — though he did not specify them. That vagueness is, in itself, a negotiating tactic.

Intermediaries in the Kremlin corridors

Diplomacy took an unusual detour last week when two figures from the private sector — along with a high-profile presidential son-in-law — met with President Vladimir Putin. Long nights of Kremlin hospitality followed; public comment was thin but pointed. Moscow’s readout said “territorial problems” were discussed. Washington’s readouts were, until now, cautious and measured.

“Back-channel talks are necessary; they’re also risky,” notes Andriy Petrov, a retired European diplomat who has watched many rounds of peace talks in his career. “They can move the needle, but they can also create the illusion of progress without guarantees.”

Casualties, calculations and leaked drafts

Amid all the negotiating theatre, the human ledger is grim. Kellogg described the toll as “horrific,” citing — controversially — more than two million dead and wounded on both sides. Independent verification of such totals is elusive; both Moscow and Kyiv guard their figures closely. Yet even conservative tallies speak to a conflict that has left cities, families and livelihoods shattered.

Complicating the diplomatic picture was the emergence of a leaked document of U.S. draft proposals. The 28-point outline alarmed many in Kyiv and across Europe because, critics argued, it seemed to accommodate some of Moscow’s central demands — including limits on Kyiv’s military posture and the effective recognition of Russian control over substantial swathes of land. That leak illustrated an inescapable truth: once a draft enters the public realm, it shapes perceptions and politics as much as it shapes negotiations.

New U.S. framing, and Moscow’s cautious welcome

In parallel with the back-and-forth over a settlement, Washington shifted language in its latest national security strategy, removing a clause that had described Russia as a “direct threat.” The Kremlin, predictable in its relief, called the change “a positive step” and said Moscow would study the document closely. The move signals possible openings for limited cooperation on issues like strategic stability — arms control, nuclear risk reduction — even as fighting continues on the ground.

“Words matter in international diplomacy,” says Emily Rourke, an analyst at a strategic think-tank. “Labeling a state a ‘threat’ locks you into certain policies. A sliding scale of language gives diplomats more flexibility, at least on paper.”

Winter, power and the grind of strategy

Winter is never just a season in this conflict; it is a weapon and a test. Russian forces have broadened long-range strikes on power, heating and water infrastructure in recent months, a campaign designed to sap morale and disrupt civilian life as temperatures fall. Overnight strikes hit central cities, including Kremenchuk, leaving neighborhoods without heat and water and local officials scrambling to assess damage.

“We will restore everything,” the mayor of Kremenchuk posted on social media after a strike that blacked out parts of the city. His pledge, sincere and defiant, echoes from municipal halls across Ukraine: repair, restart, survive.

On the ground, people improvise. A baker in Kharkiv swaps ovens on his route to serve communal bread. An electrician in a Black Sea port works 16-hour days to link backup generators as diplomats debate clauses in conference halls thousands of miles away. These are the small acts that stitch life back together while states haggle over maps.

Where do we go from here?

So what should we expect next? Negotiators, intermediaries and weary residents all hope for de-escalation. But hope will not hold a line on a map. Peace, if it is to be durable, will require more than signatures and press conferences: enforceable mechanisms, credible local buy-in, and safeguards for nuclear facilities.

Would you trade land for peace? Would you accept a frozen conflict if it spared another winter of blackout-strewn nights? These are not academic questions for the families whose windows show a streetlight blown out by the last strike.

For now, the deal — if deal there will be — rests on two stubborn fulcrums: the contested earth of Donbas and the reactors of Zaporizhzhia. Resolve those poorly, and the rest could unravel. Resolve them well, and a weary region might finally begin the slow work of rebuilding, remembering, and returning home.

Whatever comes next, the human stories will remain: teachers serving tea, mayors counting the cost, diplomats pacing corridors, and civilians asking the simplest of questions — when will it end?

Gunmen open fire at South African bar, 12 people killed

hanad

December 7, 2025

Mass shooting at South African bar leaves 12 dead — The shooting took place at an illegal bar in Saulsville township, 18km west of Pretoria

At Dawn’s Edge: A Small Township, a Shebeen, and a Massacre That Left a Community Shaken

When the sun had barely found the rooftops of Saulsville, the township west of Pretoria, the air still hung with the last traces of night—cooked maize, diesel from the taxis, the faint hum of distant radio. And beneath it all, a silence that felt wrong. Plastic chairs lay overturned. Beer bottles glinted like glassy teeth in the dust. Blood had already been swept into rainwater drains where it would go, for now, unnoticed.

By the time police and ambulances arrived, the numbers made the silence a headline: 25 people shot, 12 dead. Among them, three children—the youngest only three years old—were pulled from the chaos. Ten people died at the scene in Saulsville; two more succumbed later in hospital. Fourteen others survived but were wounded, some critically. The assault, authorities say, involved three gunmen who stormed the illegal liquor outlet—locally called a shebeen—at about 4:30am and opened fire on a group of people drinking inside and around the premises.

Scenes from the Aftermath

“I saw men running, others trying to pick up children while bullets kept coming,” said Miriam, 34, who lives two streets away from the shebeen. “We run to help—what else can we do? But there were babies and blood and crying, and when the police came, they started sealing everything like it was something that belonged to someone else.”

Residents described a surreal early morning: neighbours spill out in nightshirts, cigarettes dangling, faces streaked with tears and dust. A local pastor set up blankets in a taxi rank and began offering comfort and water. Shopkeepers were late to open, staring at the cordon tape. “This place is where people come to forget, even if only for a little while,” said Sipho, a 27-year-old mechanic. “Now people are asking: forget what?”

Shebeens, Shadow Economies, and Social Fault Lines

Shebeens are a fixture in South African townships—informal, often unlicensed bars that serve as social hubs, safety valves, and sometimes economic necessities. For many, they are more than places to drink: they are living rooms, community noticeboards, stages for local music. For law enforcement, however, illegal liquor outlets present a recurring hotspot for violence, an observation police have repeatedly made.

“We are having a serious challenge when it comes to these illegal and unlicensed liquor premises,” police told local media after the attack, noting that many mass shootings occur at such locations and that innocent bystanders frequently become collateral victims. Authorities launched a manhunt for three suspects, but as of the latest reports no arrests had been made and the motive remained unclear.

Why the Violence Keeps Coming

This massacre is the latest in a string of mass shootings that have left South Africa reeling. The country of roughly 63 million people is grappling with entrenched violent crime that experts link to a complex mixture of poverty, deeply unequal opportunity, entrenched organized-crime networks, and a proliferation of illegal firearms. Police data released for a recent six-month period showed that some 63 people were killed each day between April and September—an alarm bell for a society still wrestling with the legacy of apartheid’s spatial and economic injustices.

“When communities lack formal economic opportunities, informal economies thrive,” explained a criminologist at a South African university who asked to remain anonymous. “Those spaces—like shebeens—become nodes where social life and criminal opportunity intersect. Add illegal firearms into the mix, and the potential for mass harm escalates.”

South Africans are permitted to own licensed firearms for personal protection—many do—but the number of illegal guns on the streets is widely believed to be far larger, fed by past smuggling networks, raids, and illicit trade. In townships where poverty bites hardest and policing is often uneven, this creates a powder keg: conflicts that might have been contained in other settings erupt into deadly violence because of the easy availability of high-powered weapons.

Voices from Saulsville: Anger, Grief, and Resilience

Grief here is public and raw. Neighbours gathered, speaking in low tones, some in Zulu, some in English, some switching mid-sentence. “We bury one another too soon,” said Thandi, a 58-year-old grandmother. “I have lost cousins to this kind of shooting. You think your child is safe in his small yard, but the bullets don’t read addresses.”

Others called for practical steps. “Shutting down shebeens might seem like a quick fix,” said Morena, a young community organizer, “but you must remember people work there, small traders sell food nearby, and sometimes it’s the only heated room in winter. We need policing that is smarter, not just tougher. We need outreach, youth programs, real economic investment.”

In the wake of the killings, community leaders demanded more presence from police—not just sirens and statements, but sustained engagement, patrols, and resources for trauma counseling. Local volunteers started making lists of the wounded and offering transport to distant hospitals, because the nearest clinics in the township are small and already overburdened.

What This Means for South Africa—and the World

When a country’s streets are punctuated by shootings like this, the consequences ripple outward. Families left with the sudden absence of breadwinners, children who now absorb another layer of trauma, businesses that lose customers and employees—these are slow-moving impacts that deepen inequality and undermine trust in institutions.

But there is also a political dimension. South Africa’s struggle with crime plays into debates around policing, gun control, corruption, and social policy. It forces policymakers to reckon with the uncomfortable truth that legal restrictions on firearms will only go so far if illegal markets remain unchecked and social grievances unaddressed.

Globally, the story speaks to a pattern seen in many unequal societies: when economic marginalization coincides with weak state capacity and entrenched networks of illicit trade, ordinary life becomes more dangerous. It is a reminder that development isn’t only about GDP growth; it is also about safe public spaces and accessible social services.

After the Screams: Questions We Have to Ask

How do you dismantle a network of illegal arms without first cutting the demand? How do you regulate informal economies without destroying livelihoods? How do you offer justice when the motive is unknown and suspects remain at large?

These are the hard questions policymakers, police, and communities must answer together. For residents of Saulsville the questions are immediate: who will watch the children now, how will funerals be paid for, who will clean the stains from the chairs and floors and carry on as if nothing happened? For the nation, the urgency is different but no less pressing: reduce the daily toll of violence, rebuild trust, and create alternatives so that late-night conversations and laughter in shebeens do not end in tragedy.

“We are not asking for miracles, only for safety and dignity,” Miriam said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “If we can’t sit somewhere without fear, what kind of country are we building?”

As the town mourns, investigators continue to piece together the timeline: surveillance footage, witness statements, forensic evidence. The manhunt for the three suspects is under way. Meanwhile, in living rooms and on stoops, people tend to one another in practical ways—preparing food, organizing transport, nursing wounds that are not just physical. The headlines will move on in time. The people of Saulsville will not.

Drone Strikes on Sudanese Kindergarten and Hospital Leave Dozens Dead

hanad

December 7, 2025

Drone strikes on Sudan kindergarten, hospital kill dozens — Sudanese women who fled El-Fasher wait to receive humanitarian aid at camp for displaced people (file image)

Bombed Playground: A Kindergarten, a Hospital — and a Country Unraveling

There are sights that refuse to leave you: a tiny shoe on scorched earth, crayons melted into the dirt, a stroller turned on its side like a blown-over toy. In Kalogi, a town in Sudan’s South Kordofan, those images are now seared into the memories of people who once woke to the call to prayer and the clatter of market life, not the whine of paramilitary drones.

On a dry Thursday, according to local officials reachable only through a fragile Starlink link, three strikes ripped through Kalogi. First the kindergarten, then the hospital, and then — mercilessly — a third strike as family members and neighbours rushed in to pull children from the rubble. The head of the local administrative unit, Essam al-Din al-Sayed, told reporters the pattern bore the mark of an attack meant to inflict maximum human suffering.

Numbers that don’t add up — and the silence that grows between them

In the fog of war, figures become battlegrounds of their own. UNICEF’s office in Sudan reported that more than 10 children between the ages of five and seven were killed. The foreign ministry aligned with the army released a much higher toll: 79 dead, including 43 children. Independent verification remains agonizingly difficult — communications are sporadic, humanitarian access is tightly restricted, and security is far from assured.

“Killing children in their school is a horrific violation of children’s rights,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s Representative for Sudan, in a statement that echoed around humanitarian circles. “All parties must stop attacks on civilians and allow unfettered access for aid.”

There is a grim arithmetic at play: since the conflict erupted in April 2023, tens of thousands have died and nearly 12 million people — roughly a quarter of Sudan’s population — have been forced from their homes. In just the past month, the United Nations says more than 40,000 people fled Kordofan alone as fighting intensified. These are not abstract statistics. They are children who no longer go to school, farmers who no longer sow, markets that lie empty at dawn.

Who attacked Kalogi — and why this region?

Local officials blamed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful paramilitary group that has been at the centre of Sudan’s catastrophe, and its ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) faction led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu. The RSF, which has been waging an offensive across western Sudan in recent months, seized El-Fasher in October — the army’s last big foothold in Darfur — and appears to be pushing eastward into the oil-bearing Kordofan states.

Military analysts say the RSF’s strategy is to sever the army’s defensive arc around central Sudan and to position itself to contest major cities, including Khartoum. “Control of these towns chokes off supply lines,” said one regional analyst who monitors military movements in Sudan. “It’s about logistics, but also symbolism: seize the towns and you seize legitimacy in the eyes of some locals.”

Oil, alliances, and the geopolitics of a collapsed state

Kordofan’s soil is not just sand and seed; it is economically strategic. Oil fields dot the wider region, and whoever controls transport routes and pumping stations wields leverage far beyond the town square. International mediators — the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt — offered a truce plan that the RSF said it would accept in November. Yet even with diplomatic manoeuvring, there has been little on-the-ground de-escalation.

“There is no sign of de-escalation,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned, noting “clear preparations for intensified hostilities” that threaten an already long-suffering people. The lament is not merely about broken ceasefires. It is about a broader failure of international systems to protect civilians when formal governance collapses and irregular forces carve up territory.

At the heart of Kalogi: faces, voices, and the ragged courage of survival

Amina, who taught at the kindergarten hit in the first strike, speaks in a voice threaded with disbelief and raw grief. “They were coloring,” she says. “One little boy asked me if the planes were angels. I told him they were not. The next minute the roof came down.” She pauses, and a long silence fills the line. “We have no hospitals left that we trust.”

Dr. Mustafa — a surgeon who asked to be identified by his first name only — recounted hauling children into a tent outside a shattered hospital ward. “We had four stretchers and a bucket of antiseptic,” he said. “We worked until our hands trembled. We tried to stop the bleeding, to stop the sound of crying. What we couldn’t stop was the fear in the mothers’ eyes.”

These are the testimonies that anchor the wider geopolitical narrative in human terms. They remind us that war is not a chess game of generals, but a daily grind of survival, where civilians watch passports burn and recipes are shared to stretch a bag of grain over a family of seven.

What this means for humanitarian aid — and for the wider region

Humanitarian agencies are sounding the alarm. Blocked roads, denied visas, and insecurity make it near impossible to reach many enclaves around Sudan. Aid workers say the destruction of medical facilities and schools multiplies suffering in ways that will last for generations: untreated injuries lead to disability; missed education becomes a permanent scar.

“Once a school is bombed, children stop learning — and the social fabric frays,” said a humanitarian coordinator who has worked in Sudan for nearly a decade. “You don’t just rebuild walls. You try to rebuild trust.”

Nearly 12 million people internally displaced or forced to flee since April 2023 (UN estimates)
More than 40,000 people fled Kordofan in the past month alone (UN)
Tens of thousands killed since the conflict began (various humanitarian sources)

Beyond Kalogi: a warning from history

When violence repeatedly strikes schools and hospitals, it is not accidental. Targeting civilian infrastructure has become a hallmark of some modern conflicts. It is strategic cruelty: break the social institutions and you break the community. The international community’s attempts at mediation, fragile and halting, face the harder task of not just stopping guns but restoring institutions.

Is that even possible when entire cities have been reshaped by displacement and trauma? How do you reconstruct a classroom where a child died clutching a math book? These are questions that transcend Kalogi and speak to conflicts from Syria to Ethiopia, from Yemen to parts of the Sahel.

What we can watch for — and what we must demand

Keep an eye on three things: humanitarian access (are aid convoys allowed in?), independent verification (can reporters and watchdogs enter to confirm claims?), and the care of survivors (are hospitals resupplied, are children offered psychosocial support?). If these fail, then the numbers we are seeing today will be the quiet prelude to a deeper collapse of social life in affected regions.

We are watching lives being unmade in real time. The question for readers — and for the world — is whether we will let these events pass as distant tragedies or whether we will demand stronger protections for civilians, better mediation, and swift aid corridors so that no child dies alone under a sky once known for its morning call to prayer and the tender chaos of playground laughter.

In Kalogi, neighbors gather to bury the dead, to barter for disinfectant and to sort through what remains. They are telling the same story told across war zones: in rubble, small acts of compassion persist. As one local elder put it between sips of sweet tea, “We are broken, yes. But our hands still reach out to each other.” What will our hands reach out to do?

US lays out plan to redirect Europe’s trajectory

hanad

December 7, 2025

US sets out stall for correcting 'Europe's trajectory' — According to US President Trump's National Security Strategy, the main problem to be addressed by the US in Europe is 'civilisational erasure'

The New American Playbook for Europe: A Cultural Compass or a Cold Strategic Compass?

On a gray morning in Dublin, a bartender wipes a glass and shrugs at the headline on his phone: “U.S. Unveils New Security Strategy — Europe in the Crosshairs.” Around him, the pub smells of peat and wet coats, and patrons debate politics the way people breathe — without thinking, until a crisis requires the lungs to work harder.

This latest American strategy — which landed in policy circles like a thunderclap — does something different from the last several decades of U.S. foreign policy. It speaks less of hardware and alliances and more of histories, families, cultural inheritance and national character. It frames Europe’s most urgent vulnerabilities as cultural rather than merely military or economic. That shift has ripples, and they extend far beyond Brussels and Washington: into kitchen tables, university lecture halls, border checkpoints and voting booths.

What’s in the Document — and Why It Feels Different

The paper reads like part geopolitical roadmap and part civics sermon. Instead of a string of military deployments and trade initiatives, it foregrounds themes like identity, demographic trends and “cultural resilience.” It urges the United States to nudge — and sometimes pressure — European nations to “reclaim” a particular sense of themselves, to reverse migration flows, and to shore up what the authors call national “character.”

“This is not a minor course correction — it’s a reorientation of the terms we use,” said a senior analyst at a Washington-based strategy institute. “Foreign policy used to default to alliances and economics. This one defaults to civilization and culture.”

For many readers, the language is jarring. It carries with it echoes of debates that have roiled Europe’s politics for a decade: populist calls to restore national pride, anxieties about migration and identity, and the rise of political movements that insist culture must be central to statecraft. For others, it appears as an American attempt to shore up fragile allies and to preempt geopolitical shifts.

Scenes from the Continent: How Ordinary People See It

In central Warsaw, a baker named Anna K. glances up from the oven: “We want peace, and we want to care for our neighborhood,” she says. “But we don’t want strangers deciding how we remember our past.” Her words cut to the heart of the document’s proposal — that memory and tradition are strategic assets.

Siobhán Murphy, a history teacher in Galway, worries about external influence in domestic debates. “There’s a taste of patronizing paternalism,” she said. “If Washington starts telling Dublin which parts of its history to love, that’s worrying.”

Meanwhile, a Brussels policy aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, described an unusual combination of gratitude and unease in European capitals: “We welcome support against coercive forces, but we bristle at cultural prescriptions.”

Numbers That Ground the Conversation

Statistics make the stakes tangible. Europe is aging: the median age across the European Union is roughly in the early 40s and the fertility rate sits well below the replacement mark (the EU average hovers near 1.5 children per woman). Populations are shifting as migration reshapes cities and regions. At the same time, the transatlantic economy remains a giant: trade and investment flows between the United States and Europe represent significant portions of global commerce, and Europe still houses many of the world’s leading research institutions and cultural landmarks.

These demographic and economic facts are precisely why the strategy sees cultural and population trends as strategic concerns. The argument goes: if identity shifts, then political preferences, alliances and defence commitments might too.

Policy Priorities — A Shortlist with Big Consequences

Here are the main policy thrusts the paper advances — summarized from the document’s core arguments and the discussions it has provoked:

Encourage European nations to strengthen national identity and cultural institutions as a bulwark against outside influence.
Support policies that slow or reverse certain migration trends, described in the document as a matter of demographic and strategic risk.
Push Europe to assume greater responsibility for its own defense and reduce dependence on external guarantees.
Promote commercial and cultural ties with nations in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe to build aligned blocs.
Deter further expansion of alliance structures where expansion could draw the United States into conflicts peripheral to core American interests.

Why This Matters: The Geopolitical Stakes

At first glance, this may seem like an intra-European argument amplified by American diplomats. But the document carefully links cultural trajectories to geopolitical outcomes: which way a country leans nationally could determine whether it views the U.S. as a partner or as an alien actor, whether it sees Russia or China as the primary threat, and whether it will commit to collective defense.

“We have to treat culture as infrastructure,” a European political scientist told me. “Infrastructure decays slowly but collapses quickly if neglected.” That metaphor explains why the strategy is pressing for proactive policies — cultural investments, education and media support — not just tanks and tariffs.

Critics, Allies, and the Risk of Misreading Intent

Not everyone accepts the premise. Civil society groups warn that framing migration as a civilizational threat fuels exclusion and xenophobia. Human rights advocates note that demographic change is a global phenomenon tied to economics and family policy more than to conspiracies. “If a strategy prescribes who counts as ‘European’,” said an NGO director in Berlin, “it’s skating on thin ice toward discrimination.”

Conversely, leaders of nationalist parties in several European countries have greeted the strategy with optimism, seeing validation of arguments they have long made: that nations should prioritize cultural cohesion and protect borders.

Where This Fits in a Bigger Picture

Ask yourself: what is the role of foreign policy? Is it to secure strategic advantage in a world of great-power rivalry, or to export particular ideas about what constitutes a nation? The answer is both — and therein lies the tension. After decades of debates about globalization, free trade and multilateral institutions, this document pivots the conversation back toward nationhood and cultural continuity.

That pivot is not confined to Europe. The strategy folds other regions into its logic: a renewed focus on the Americas’ sphere of influence, a tougher stance on China’s economic reach in Asia, and a shift in Africa toward investment rather than ideological reform. But it is Europe — with its dense history, powerful institutions and transatlantic ties — where the strategy’s cultural arguments feel most combustible.

Final Thought: A Continent Between History and Strategy

Standing in a museum in Paris last week, watching children sketch soldiers and saints, I couldn’t help but think about the strange alchemy of history and policy. Nations are made of stories as much as they are of arsenals. The new American strategy treats those stories as strategic assets to cultivate or defend.

That raises a question for readers everywhere: do we want geopolitics to be about material interests alone, or are our histories and identities legitimate objects of international strategy? The answer will shape not only diplomatic cables in Washington, but kitchens in Dublin, schools in Warsaw, and neighborhoods across Europe for decades to come.

Greek coastguard finds 17 migrants dead aboard boat off Crete

hanad

December 7, 2025

17 found dead in migrant vessel off Crete - coastguard — The Greek coastguard said two survivors are in a critical condition in hospital (stock image)

Nightmare at Sea: Seventeen Lives Found Aboard a Drifting Vessel Off Crete

There is a particular hush that falls over a harbour when something terrible has been found at sea — a quiet that asks the wind for answers and the waves for mercy. On a chill morning this past Saturday, that silence was broken 26 nautical miles southwest of Crete, where rescuers discovered a partially deflated vessel adrift with seventeen men dead inside and two survivors clinging to the thin edge between life and death.

A Turkish cargo ship first spotted the boat and raised the alarm. Within hours, two Greek coastguard vessels, a Frontex patrol ship, a Frontex aircraft and a Super Puma helicopter descended on the scene. But for a group of young men — many, local officials say, apparently in their twenties — the intervention came too late.

What rescuers found

“We found the vessel taking on water and deflated on both sides,” a coastguard spokeswoman told reporters. “Seventeen people were already deceased when we arrived. Two survivors were in critical condition and taken straight to hospital.” She added that coroners would carry out autopsies to establish the precise causes of death, but that dehydration and exposure were being considered.

The survivors, according to officials, described a cramped boat, violent weather and a shortage of food and water. “There was no shelter, no way to cover ourselves,” one survivor later told medical staff, his hands still shaking. “We tried to balance, but the wind and waves took everything.” Their faces were hidden from cameras; in the hospital corridor a nurse muttered, “They look exhausted beyond what words can tell.”

Faces and voices from a Cretan port

In Ierapetra, the small port town that would receive the news, the story landed like a stone tossed into a still pond. “They were all young men,” Manolis Frangoulis, the mayor of Ierapetra, told gathered reporters. “This is not a statistic for us. These were sons, brothers. When you see how they died — crowded into a deflated rubber boat — you feel helpless.”

On the quay, fishermen in oilskin jackets and weather-cracked faces pulled nets but watched the authorities’ boats with the same quiet horror as everyone else. “We sail these seas every day,” said Yannis, a fisherman who asked that his surname not be used. “Once the weather turns, you know how it can punish you. But you don’t expect to find youth turned to silence like that.” He spat, as is the habit among the old salt, and folded his thick hands. “It could be any of our boys,” he said.

Local tavernas — the blue-and-white facades, the smell of grilled fish and lemon — were subdued. Where late-afternoon laughter typically bounces across the harbor, there were now whispered questions: where were they headed, who had arranged the crossing, what will happen next?

Routes, risks and the human calculus

For many migrants, Crete has become the gateway to the European Union. In recent months, more people crossing from Libya have targeted the island as an entry point. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 16,770 asylum seekers have arrived in Crete since the start of the year, a surge that tracks the shifting patterns of smugglers and the logic of risk that drives desperate people toward shorter sea legs and cheaper — and often deadly — vessels.

“Smugglers constantly recalibrate,” explained Dr. Elena Petrou, a migration researcher based in Athens. “When routes become more policed, or when sea conditions change, smugglers shift departure points and target different landing spots. Crete’s geography — remote stretches of coastline and a long, porous sea frontier — makes it both attractive and tragic as a pathway.”

It is easy to talk about numbers and routes until you meet the people making the crossings. The young men found off Crete were among tens of thousands this year alone who have chosen, or been forced, onto these rubber boats — each passenger carrying a complex mix of hope, fear and calculation.

Blaming the sea, or the system?

Weather clearly played a role in this case, rescuers said, but weather is only one of a constellation of factors that produce tragedies at sea. Austerity and conflict in origin countries, closed legal pathways to asylum, and the ruthless economics of smuggling create a market where overloaded dinghies and unseaworthy vessels are the norm.

“If we are to prevent more bodies washing up at our shores, we need both immediate rescue capacity and long-term political will,” said Maria Kanelopoulou, director of a Mediterranean relief NGO. “That means more search-and-rescue resources, safer legal routes for asylum, and international pressure to dismantle trafficking networks. Otherwise, the sea will keep delivering us tragedies like this.”

Frontex’s presence in the region — aircraft and vessels among them — is meant to bolster border control and search-and-rescue capacity. Yet agencies and governments wrestle with an uncomfortable duality: stronger controls can deter crossings but can also push migrants into even riskier channels. Who, then, bears responsibility when a boat drifts and harvesting lives?

Questions that won’t go away

What happens to those who die at sea — beyond the formalities of autopsies and paperwork? Which nations will examine the push factors behind these departures? And how many more early-morning alarms will sound before meaningful policy change reduces the human cost?

“Every time I hear of bodies at sea, I ask myself if we have learned anything at all from past tragedies,” said Anna, a teacher from Heraklion who volunteers with an integration group. “We rush to retrieve, we hold memorials, and then the headlines move on. But people don’t stop fleeing just because we’re tired of their stories.”

Beyond the headlines: a shared responsibility

The faces of the dead are likely to remain as anonymous names in coroner reports: young men, described as such by local officials. Yet their anonymity underscores a more profound issue — the ways in which global systems render certain lives expendable in the pursuit of borders and deterrence.

The sea where they perished is both boundary and bridge. It separates states and connects continents. It is indifferent to human law and yet often where international commitments come most sharply into focus. Will the discovery off Crete be another episode in a grim, recurring pattern — or a catalyst for change?

As the island returns to its ordinary rhythms — fishermen hauling nets, children playing near the harbor, restaurants filling for the evening — the questions linger like a salty fog. What will we do with these questions? Will we answer them with policy, compassion, and durable alternatives to perilous crossings, or with the quiet resignation of those who have watched too many tragedies unfold?

For the families who will now wait for autopsy reports and for names to be confirmed, headlines are cold comfort. For the rest of us, the challenge is simple and unnerving: to look, to remember, and to decide whether the next time a boat drifts in the Mediterranean we will be better prepared — not just to rescue, but to prevent.

Sarkozy to Publish Prison Diary Detailing His Time Behind Bars

hanad

December 7, 2025

Sarkozy to release diary from time spent in prison — Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was released from prison last month pending an appeal

Locked Behind Glass: Nicolas Sarkozy’s Short, Grey Stay and a Book That Wants to Explain It

Imagine a room the size of a small studio apartment where time is measured not in calendars but in the scraping of a tray at mealtimes and the slow, stubborn blink of a fluorescent light. That was the stage set in October for one of contemporary France’s most improbable scenes: a former president, 70 years old, learning how the world looks from the other side of a barred window.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s three-week imprisonment — brief, intense, and public — has become more than a legal footnote. It is now the spine of a 216-page memoir that he has titled Diary of a Prisoner, due on December 10. The book, portions of which have already made their way into French newsrooms, offers a close-up of a man who once strode across international summits and presidential palaces, reduced for a handful of days to the elemental rhythms of incarceration: food, light, silence, prayer.

From Élysée to La Santé

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was convicted over allegations that his 2007 campaign benefited from funds channelled by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. The court handed him a five-year sentence. He served 20 days behind the walls of La Santé, the notorious Parisian prison that has housed names and secrets since the 19th century, before being released under restrictions after judicial reassurances that he posed no flight risk.

“La Santé is a place that makes everyone smaller,” a former prison nurse told me, speaking anonymously — partly out of habit, partly out of caution. “You enter a cell and your titles fall away. Not everyone survives that humbling.”

The prison experience was hardly cinematic in the cinematic sense. Sarkozy writes of a life reduced to sharp, mundane details: a diet of dairy, cereal bars, bottled water and occasional sweets; a daily confinement of twenty-three hours; the company of two security officers who shadowed him more as duty than as camaraderie. Days, he says, were “grey” — a word he returns to often — as if the color of the walls had seeped into his perception of everything.

Prayer, Reflection, and a Small Plywood Table

One image in the memoir feels strangely intimate: after watching a football match on television, he knelt to pray. That detail is raw because it is unexpectedly human. There is no pomp in the gesture, no audience. It’s a private appeal — a ritual grasping for meaning in a place where meaning is rationed.

“It was like learning a language I thought I had left behind,” Sarkozy writes in passages that read as notes from a man trying to translate public power into private endurance. He claims to have written most of the book by hand, at a tiny plywood table, a ballpoint pen scratching daily into pages that would later stitch together his account of isolation and introspection.

“There is a false glamour to the notion that power shields you from ordinary pain,” a political sociologist in Paris told me. “Prison exposes the fragility of institutions and, by extension, the people who once wielded them. When a leader goes to jail, the country watches more than the courtroom; it watches itself.”

Voices from the Street and the Cell

Outside the stone facades of neighborhoods near the prison, conversation took the shape of rumor, curiosity, and a strange mixture of schadenfreude and melancholy. A boulanger on a corner near Montparnasse poured croissants and offered a short verdict: “It’s good for democracy — everyone should feel the law, even the powerful.”

A middle-aged woman sipping coffee at a nearby café was less sanguine. “He’s a man with years of public weight. Prison is a spectacle. But I worry about the politics this will feed — those who use these moments to score points.”

Inside La Santé, inmates are a disparate chorus whose voices rarely reach newspapers. One of them, a man serving time for a non-political offense, said calmly, “I don’t care about his name. When you’re here, everyone has the same light. You eat when they tell you to, you sleep when they say it’s night. Titles mean nothing.”

What This Means for French Politics

That conversation ripples beyond caricatures and gossip. Sarkozy remains, despite legal troubles, a significant figure on France’s right. He still has sway over opinion-makers and party structures; his voice is not one that simply fades. The memoir — a personal justification, a moral ledger, or an attempt at historical framing depending on who you ask — will likely be read as a bid to shape that legacy.

“This book is politics of a particular kind,” said a veteran political commentator. “It is a narrative correction. He is saying: here is what happened to me, and here is what it means about justice and the country I served.”

The case itself is not finished. An appeal is set to open in March. For many, the legal process is as consequential as the prison stay. For others, the very image of a former head of state behind bars will be the enduring picture — a symbol of accountability, or of how the right can be wounded and yet remain influential.

Beyond One Man: Justice, Power, and the Public Imagination

There are broader questions here that tug at current global debates. What does it mean when leaders are held to account? How do democracies balance the spectacle of justice with fair trial rights? And what does a short, tightly policed period of incarceration do to the psyche of a man who once negotiated with presidents and prime ministers?

Consider these facts: France’s incarceration rate hovers around a hundred prisoners per 100,000 people — lower than places like the United States but still a reminder of the many lives shaped by confinement. Prisons in France, from the oldest maison centrale to urban jails like La Santé, are crowded with stories that rarely make headlines. When a public figure passes through those corridors, ordinary narratives and extraordinary ones collide.

“People want to see justice served, but they also want it to be just,” a criminal defense lawyer told me. “The law is not a tool for spectacle, and courts must resist the pressure to perform for the gallery.”

Closing Questions

As you read about these weeks of grey and prayer and plywood tables, what do you imagine justice should look like? Should a former president be treated with ordinary penal discipline or protected from it? And what responsibility does the media carry in shaping how we feel about such scenes — do we observe soberly, or do we turn it into theater?

Sarkozy’s Diary of a Prisoner is at once a personal chronicle and a public provocation. Whether it will soften critics, shore up supporters, or simply add another chapter to the long story of power and consequence in France remains to be seen. For now, the image lingers: a man who once reshaped the nation’s public square sitting in a narrow cell, pen in hand, trying to make sense of the small, grey hours.

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