Former Swedish PM, Carl Bildt: Since Alaska, Trump has essentially endorsed the Russian demand.

He wants Ukraine to give up territory Putin failed to conquer despite throwing his entire might against it for three and a half years. 1/ Carl Bildt: I don't think there are any paper security guarantees that can replace what we need to do.

Real security is not documents, but Ukraine's own defensive capabilities supported by European finance. 2/

“Just ten metres — but f*ck, the pain. I thought I might die there.”

Ania, a 34-year-old Ukrainian marine born with one leg, remembers dragging herself through mud toward help after her Jeep slammed into a tree near the front line — The Times. 1/ Russian drones had shut the skies. No air ambulance. The nearest hospital was almost an hour away — an eternity in a war where minutes decide survival.

What saved her was an 8-foot-wide metal box on wheels, hidden under camouflage: a Stabnet. 2/

What’s new after peace talks in Berlin?

Ukraine and the U.S. moved close to NATO Article 5–style security guarantees, but they fight over territory — especially Donbas, write Axios and Reuters.

1/ Security guarantees moved. Territory issues didn’t.

U.S. officials say talks made “clear progress” on guarantees and claim “90%” of issues are done.

Zelenskyy says the sides still hold “different positions on territory.”

2/

Kaja Kallas: Europe pressures Moscow and boosts support for Kyiv: €27B in military aid this year and 2M artillery rounds.

We can’t slow down. Any peace deal needs strong security guarantees, since Ukraine is pushed to drop NATO.

1/ Kaja Kallas: Donbas is not Putin’s endgame — if he gets it, he will take more. Only Ukraine can set the terms of any deal.

Concessions must come from the aggressor, not the victim. There is no moral equivalence between the two sides.

2/

Russia has blown off every US-led peace proposal since 2022. Kyiv agreed to ceasefires and talks. Moscow answered with missiles and new territorial demands.

In 2025 alone, Washington put forward 6 ceasefire initiatives. Russia refused all six. Here's a timeline — United24. 1/ March 2025: The US proposed a 30-day ceasefire. Zelenskyy agreed and publicly backed the plan. Putin refused to sign and kept Russian strikes going. 2/

“She was very, very thin. Barely able to stand.”

That is how a Ukrainian soldier remembers the last days of journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna in Russian captivity — a witness account that finally puts a human face on how she died, The Guardian. 1/ Roshchyna was 27 when she disappeared in the summer of 2022, reporting from occupied Ukraine.

She became one of an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian civilians detained by Russia. For 2 years, her fate was unknown. Now, a fellow prisoner has described her final journey. 2/

Zelenskyy is not rejecting Trump’s peace plan — he’s rewriting it from the inside.

Kyiv’s strategy is “yes, but”: stay constructive with Washington while stripping out political landmines that would destroy domestic legitimacy — WSJ. 1/ Zelenskyy is open to elections, but only after a ceasefire guaranteed by partners.

He accepts a cap on the army, but only at current force levels — 800k. He allows discussion on Zaporizhzhia, but rejects Russian control — insisting on US-Ukraine oversight. 2/

Russia has killed at least 167 Ukrainian scientists — professors, engineers, PhD students, museum researchers as of November 2025, writes Moya Nauka.

Russia kills the people who teach Ukraine how to exist as a modern country.

1/ Among the first victims of the full-scale invasion was Vasyl Kladko — physicist, State Prize laureate, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Russian troops executed him in occupied Vorzel in March 2022.

2/

Ukraine cannot just give up Donetsk.

It is the most heavily fortified region in Europe and the core of Ukraine’s new kill-zone defense system.

Handing it over would mean giving Russia operational depth it failed to seize by force — Untited24. 1/ Russia’s strategy: trade diplomacy for what it could not conquer militarily.

In three years, Moscow lost close to 1 million soldiers killed and wounded to capture just 1.45% of Ukrainian territory. During this time, Donetsk turned into a fortress belt 2/

Merz: We push for a Christmas pause in hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. If Moscow shows even minimal humanity, a short pause could open the door to real talks.

With the US and Ukraine, we prepared proposals and sent them to Russia — now the decision is theirs.

1/ Merz: Russian state assets will stay frozen in Europe for a long time, and Moscow won’t touch them.

This week we discuss how to use these assets to support Ukraine. I expect a political agreement. Article 122 gives us the legal basis to approve it by majority vote.

2/

Stubb: We’re closer to a Ukraine's peace agreement than ever before. Now we're working on 3 documents:

One is a framework document of a 20-point peace plan.

The second one is security guarantees for Ukraine.

The third one is the reconstruction of Ukraine.

1/ Q: Why this moment [that we are close to a peace deal] is different?

Stubb: We have momentum, and it counts in diplomatic negotiations. And we have something on paper.

We rejected 28-point plan. But after the US and Ukraine worked on terms to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty.

2/

Q: Has Russia made any concessions?

Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Olga Stefanishyna for Fox News: No. Talks mention freezing front lines, but Russia keeps attacking civilians.

Odesa, has no water or electricity for five days. There’s no peace here. That’s a war. 1/ Q: How likely is a peace agreement from these talks?

Stefanishyna: The talks are about ending war in Ukraine, not signing a document

Ukraine, Europe, and the US are pushing for a real peace deal that stops the fighting and prevents new attacks. The only one stalling is Putin 2/

A Russian soldier smashed 75 y.o. Ludmyla’s face with a rifle, slashed her stomach, and raped her.

Diplomats discuss “blanket amnesty” in the new peace plan.

To them it's a compromise. To Ukraine, it means pardoning the man who sliced open a grandmother — The Times. 1/ Filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko sees Ludmyla’s broken face reading the new “peace plan.” Alisa knows this hell. In 2014, a Russian officer forced her to strip and bathe.

He cleaned his gun, watched her naked fear, then raped her. “They didn’t kill me, but they broke me.” 2/

Putin has lost over 1 million soldiers killed or wounded in Ukraine, but is winning something bigger.
FP columnist Michael Hirsh argues that after nearly four years of war, Putin has succeeded in his core goal: exposing deep fractures inside what used to be called “the West.” 1/ Militarily, Russia failed.

After nearly four years of war, Putin controls only 20% of Ukrainian territory, failed to erase Ukrainian statehood and triggered NATO’s expansion with Finland and Sweden joining the alliance.

This is not a battlefield victory. 2/

Zelenskyy: Russia says either Ukraine leaves Donbas, or Russia will occupy it anyway.

The US proposed a compromise: our troops withdraw and Russian ones don’t enter, but we won’t accept this without mutual withdrawal - Babel. 1/ Zelenskyy: If Ukrainian troops withdraw 5-10 km, why shouldn’t Russian troops withdraw the same distance? There’s no answer yet, and it’s very sensitive. 2/

Russia failed to take Ukrainian land by force and now pressures US to make Kyiv give it up politically.

Syrskyi: Russian manuals call 1.5-3 km per day a breakthrough, but troops move 1.5-4.5 km per month. At this pace, Russia needs years to take the land it wants, Bloomberg. 1/ Putin is trying to sell a narrative to Trump's circle that Ukraine is losing, using small territorial gains to force a settlement.

He seeks a deal that weakens Ukraine militarily and leaves the option to resume the invasion later. 2/

Suffocation with plastic bags, electric shocks to the genitals, broken fingers, needles driven under fingernails and forced removal of pro-Ukrainian tattoos.

In Russian detention centers and prisons, this is called a “gentleman’s kit” — United24 cites a report by Memorial. 1/ Almost all Ukrainians released from Russian captivity report systematic torture, humiliation, and a complete lack of medical care.

These abuses are not isolated incidents but a routine part of detention. 2/

Trump sends Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Europe to meet Zelenskyy and leaders of Germany, France, and the U.K.

The goal: push Ukraine to approve the U.S. peace plan despite unresolved territorial issues, reports Axios. 1/ The U.S. plan includes Russia’s demand to control the entire Donbas, even though Ukraine still holds about 14% of it.

The proposal would turn the area into a demilitarized zone. Zelenskyy openly questions this idea. 2/

Ukraine could join the EU by Jan 1, 2027 under a US-backed peace plan.

The date is written into draft talks with Kyiv and Brussels.

One European diplomat called accession by 2027 “extremely difficult.” Several others said the date is “absolutely impossible” — FT, Reuters

1/ Ukraine has not completed a single accession chapter.

Fast-track accession would bypass the EU’s merit-based enlargement process and force changes to funding, voting, and agricultural policy.

2/

The most effective sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet right now are Ukrainian SBU drones.

In the past two weeks, they hit three oil tankers in the Black Sea. But The Atlantic writes this escalation also signals Ukrainian desperation ahead of talks. 1/ For more than two years, Ukraine avoided striking civilian vessels, even those carrying Russian oil that funds the war.

Oleksandr Kubrakov, then infrastructure minister, stopped an SBU strike in 2023: “That would be piracy. Those are not our methods.” 2/

“If you sit on your couch and wait for the war to end, nothing will change.”

That’s how 24-year-old Mykhailo explains why he volunteered for Ukraine’s army — even though men aged 18-24 are not required to serve — UNITED24. 1/ Ukraine launched Contract 18-24 in February 2025 after the first volunteer wave faded.

The state needed a sustainable way to refill the army — without forced mobilization of the youngest cohort. 2/