On Budanov’s desk sits notebook labeled “List of Assholes 2026.”

He is a Hero of Ukraine, former head of military intelligence, now head of the Presidential Office. Babel tells his story. 1/ Born in Darnytsia, raised in an ordinary family. His father engineered parts for the Soviet space program at the Kyiv Radio Plant. He studied at a school with Jewish classes funded by the Jewish community. He learned Hebrew and still keeps ties with Ukraine’s chief rabbi. 2/

Stubb: Russia gained under 1% of Ukrainian territory in 2025 at a cost of 400,000 killed or wounded.

At this pace, taking Donetsk could cost another 800,000. Militarily, this is failure. Putin’s goal remains all of Ukraine; only a threat to his regime may change that.

1/ Stubb: Putin’s war has been a strategic failure. He wanted to take Ukraine, but pushed it deeper into Europe and NATO.

He wanted to stop NATO expansion, but got Finland and Sweden instead. He wanted global power — yet Russia’s influence is fading from Syria to Iran.

2/

Kasparov: Wars end when the cause that produced them is removed. In Ukraine, that cause is Putin’s regime and the imperial policy of Putin’s Russia.

As long as that regime survives, the war will not end. That is the whole answer. 1/ Kasparov: Trump is about Trump, and about money for Trump and his entourage. No real peace talks are possible there.

Witkoff and Kushner are not diplomats. Ukraine was right to refuse territorial concessions, because those concessions could have been catastrophic. 2/

Kasparov: “Russian Taiwan” is a metaphor, but the split is already real.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians have broken with Putin’s Russia, including legally, yet got no new status. Their documents expire every day. Europe needs one cardinal solution: recognize that we exist. 1/ Kasparov: “Russian Taiwan” is not about moving everyone to some island. Territory is secondary

The point is legal recognition for people who cut ties with Putin’s Russia and are stuck in limbo, instead of begging country by country for visas, exemptions, and documents. 2/

Ukrainian robots charged a Russian position through a valley — little green wagons, each carrying 66 pounds of explosives. One blew itself up.

A sheet of cardboard appeared above the trench: "We want to surrender." — NYT.

1/ Last month Ukraine carried out 9,000+ frontline missions using armed ground robots. In November 2025 — 2,900. A year ago they were rare and experimental.

Each robot typically lasts 24 hours before its battery dies or it is destroyed.

2/

Trump follows only the attack half of Machiavelli. He knows how to strike first, but not how to survive the counterstrike.

Iran shows it: he launched the war fast, but eight weeks later he faces higher oil prices, a shaky truce, and falling polls. — Jason Willick for WP.

1/ Machiavelli praised bold moves when timing matters.

Trump followed that rule in June, betting a short war with Iran would show strength, break Tehran, and boost him at home. 2/

In the Iran war, the US was burning $1M interceptor missiles to kill $50,000 drones.

That math is killing Lockheed, RTX, and Northrop — and handing the Pentagon to Palantir, SpaceX, and Anduril. — The Economist. 1/ Three "neo-primes" are leading the shift. Palantir runs AI intelligence, SpaceX operates the Starshield satellite network, and Anduril builds drones and counter-drone weapons.

Together they are worth more than three times Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Northrop Grumman combined. 2/

McFaul: It is extremely dangerous for Trump to make escalatory threats unless he is prepared to follow through.

Threats you do not deliver do not help negotiations. And if he does deliver them, that could be catastrophic for getting any deal with Iran in the future. 1/ McFaul: A better strategy is to start lower-level talks with experts, including on Iran’s nuclear program.

Build something technical and build momentum. Right now we are toggling between immediate breakthrough and nothing, and that impatience is undermining negotiation. 2/

A $20,000 Russian drone punched a 15 sq m hole in Chernobyl’s $2.5B safe confinement built to contain Reactor 4’s ruins.

Repairs must finish within 4 years, or the structure’s 100 year life fails, — The Guardian. 1/ A dosimeter ticks faster when you step off the clean path. That is how the site enforces discipline — by invisible boundaries.

Russia is now testing those boundaries with cheap drones and repeat flight paths near the plant. 2/

America has been running a global security system with 1990s assumptions and 2020s constraints.

Trump can change it only by forcing tradeoffs: focus on China, cut peripheral wars, and rebuild industrial power at home — A. Wess Mitchell, Foreign Affairs. 1/ The model was to be strong everywhere, all the time.

After 9/11 the US added 30 years of expeditionary warfare and let shipbuilding, ammo, and nuclear recapitalization decay. 2/

Britain explores a "defence bank" for northern Europe.

The JEF — Joint Expeditionary Force — pools borrowing from 10 NATO nations to fund weapons purchases and military aid to Ukraine at lower interest rates. — The Telegraph.

1/ JEF includes Britain, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands.

Britain, Finland and the Netherlands already pledged to start work on the mechanism last month.

2/

Defense analyst Michael Clarke: This is not really a ceasefire. It is just a reduction in violence so Lebanon does not spoil the bigger US-Iran deal.

Israel may keep its response down for a couple of weeks, but at some point it will take the brakes off. 1/ Clarke: Israel is fighting a war within a war. Its aim in southern Lebanon is to push up to the Litani River and create a zone free of Hezbollah fighters.

It will not empty northern Israel again. If that means moving into Lebanon to create that zone, it will do it. 2/

Keane: If kinetic operations resume, everyone influencing them is target one.

The [Hormuz] blockade is holding, the US now has twice the power in the region it had when the war started, and Israel is replenished. That is why the blow available now is absolutely significant. 1/ Keane: Tehran thinks it made progress by forcing the US into a pause and ceasefire after closing Hormuz.

That only encourages it to drag the talks out. In its mind, the longer this runs, the more pressure builds on Trump to make concessions he never wanted to make. 2/

Ukraine Def. Minister Mykhailo Fedorov: cut Russia’s Starlink access, signed a record Patriot missile contract, bought more drones in one quarter than in all of last year, launched an AI center, reorganized the MoD and started an audit of the defense-industrial complex. 1/ Three months of new leadership — Fedorov for United24. First move: together with SpaceX, they cut Russia’s access to Starlink terminals. The Russian army lost communications for managing Shahed drones. 2/

Surrendering Donetsk Oblast without a fight means strategic suicide for Ukraine.

If Ukraine withdraws, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts become immediately vulnerable with no urban areas to anchor defenses, writes Mykola Bielieskov in Kyiv Independent. 1/ The Kremlin framed withdrawal from northwest Donetsk Oblast as a minor concession for peace. Trump largely accepted this framing.

The result: the White House now casts Zelenskyy’s defense of Ukrainian territory as the main obstacle to a ceasefire. 2/

North Korea has 50 nuclear bombs and enough material to build 40-50 more. It has 20 delivery systems including ICBMs that reach the US. Denuclearization has failed across 7 US administrations, Time for a new strategy, writes Victor Cha in FA. 1/ In 2006 at the six-party talks in Beijing, a North Korean diplomat told Cha directly: “We will never give up our nuclear weapons.”

The US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq because they had no nuclear weapons. North Korea was not willing to tempt the same fate. 2/

“I am Ukrainian. If you [Russians] come here, I will have no choice but to kill every one of you who signs a contract.”

A Ukrainian soldier crashed a Russian university recruitment Zoom call in Krasnodar after posing as a Russian drone officer — The Telegraph. 1/ “The front line has barely moved in four years and Russia’s invasion created “a cemetery the size of two countries. Any Russian who steps onto Ukrainian soil will be killed.” 2/

Europe’s economy runs on American infrastructure.

iPhones powered by Apple and Google, cloud from Amazon and Microsoft, payments via Visa and Mastercard, LNG from the US replacing Russian gas — core systems are controlled by US firms, The Economist. 1/ European companies failed to compete at home.

Strict regulation slowed local firms, while US tech scaled globally and captured European markets — even governments rely on Palantir for data and SpaceX for satellites. 2/

Kasparov: Trump made the worst geopolitical mistake by separating Iran from Ukraine.

He openly sides with Putin against Ukraine while attacking Iran, even though the drones hitting US bases and Gulf allies were Iranian designs whose effectiveness was improved by Russia. 1/ Kasparov: At the UN, America no longer votes with Ukraine and Europe. It votes with Russia, Belarus, Nicaragua and North Korea.

That is shame beyond imagination. US reputation has been damaged so badly that I am not sure the next president will be able to restore it quickly. 2/

Kasparov: There is no diplomacy. Trump’s only priorities are glory and money.

That is why, instead of professional diplomats and experts, he relies on his son-in-law and Witkoff — a man with zero diplomatic experience and, I’m sure, plenty of experience soliciting bribes. 1/ Kasparov: There was no process behind the Iran war, because process implies strategy. We heard at least four different reasons for it: regime change, uranium, oil.

You do not start a war against a serious enemy like Iran with no plan. The objectives change every hour. 2/

China is expanding into Russian-occupied Ukraine. Its firms handle cash-yuan trade at 80 Donbas bank branches and ship mining equipment and heavy trucks across the occupied territory.

Beijing officially does not recognize the occupation — United24. 1/ Large state-owned Chinese corporations avoid the region to dodge secondary sanctions. Medium-sized private firms fill the gap.

Chinese students and community leaders based in Russia act as intermediaries, keeping ties with manufacturers back home. 2/