Cover-Up Is an Indispensable Chronicle of American Overreach
A new documentary about the journalist Seymour Hersh uncovers the pathologies of U.S. imperialism
By Leon Hadar | The American Conservative | January 2, 2026
Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s new film Cover-Up is more than a documentary about the legendary journalist Seymour Hersh—it is an inadvertent chronicle of the pathologies of American empire. As a foreign policy analyst who has long advocated for realist restraint in U.S. international engagement, I find this film both vindicating and deeply troubling. It documents, through one journalist’s extraordinary career, the pattern of deception, overreach, and institutional rot that has characterized American power projection for over half a century.
What makes Hersh’s reporting invaluable from a realist perspective is that it consistently exposed the gap between stated intentions and actual policy outcomes. CIA domestic surveillance, the My Lai massacre, the secret bombing of Cambodia, Abu Ghraib—each revelation demonstrated what realists have long understood: that idealistic rhetoric about spreading democracy and protecting human rights often masks cruder calculations of power, and that unchecked executive authority in foreign affairs inevitably leads to abuse.
The documentary’s treatment of Hersh’s Cambodia reporting is particularly instructive. Here was a case where the American government conducted a massive bombing campaign against a neutral country, killing tens of thousands of civilians, while lying to Congress and the public. This wasn’t an aberration, but the logical consequence of what happens when a superpower faces no effective constraints on its use of force abroad. In exposing the scandal, Hersh also documented how empire actually functions when stripped of its legitimating myths.
Where Cover-Up excels is in revealing the architecture of official deception. Watching archival footage of government officials denying what later became undeniable, one sees the machinery of the national security state at work. These weren’t rogue actors—they were operating within institutional incentives that reward secrecy, punish dissent, and systematically mislead democratic oversight.
From a realist standpoint, this raises fundamental questions about American foreign policy. If our interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere were justified through systematic deception, what does this tell us about the nature of these enterprises? Realism suggests that states act according to their interests, but when those interests must be concealed from the public through elaborate cover-ups, we must question whether these policies serve genuine national interests or merely the institutional imperatives of the national security bureaucracy.
The film’s examination of Hersh’s Abu Ghraib investigation is devastating. What began as a story about individual soldiers torturing prisoners became, through Hersh’s reporting, an indictment of a policy apparatus that had systematically authorized abuse. The documentary shows how torture wasn’t an accident of war. Rather, it was deliberate policy, approved at the highest levels and then denied when exposed.
This validates a core realist insight: hegemonic projects, particularly those involving regime change and nation-building, create perverse incentives that corrupt institutions and individuals. The George W. Bush administration’s Iraq war, launched on false pretenses and executed with imperial hubris, produced precisely the kind of moral catastrophes that realists warned against.
The documentary is less successful in addressing the legitimate controversies surrounding Hersh’s later work, particularly his reporting on Syria and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. As someone who believes the U.S. should be far less involved in Middle Eastern affairs, I’m sympathetic to questioning official narratives. However, the epistemological challenges of relying on anonymous sources while contradicting extensive documented evidence deserve more rigorous examination than this film provides.
This isn’t to dismiss Hersh’s skepticism toward official accounts—realists should always question the state’s narratives about its foreign adventures. But the documentary would have been strengthened by a more thorough engagement with these critiques. Even iconoclasts must be subject to scrutiny, especially when their reporting has significant geopolitical implications.
What Cover-Up illuminates, perhaps unintentionally, is the deterioration of the institutional ecosystem that made Hersh’s journalism possible. The New Yorker’s willingness to support lengthy investigations, to back reporters against government pressure, and to publish material that angered powerful interests—these conditions were products of a specific historical moment. Today’s fragmented media landscape, where institutional backing has weakened and partisan sorting has intensified, makes such work increasingly difficult.
This matters because realist foreign policy critique depends on investigative journalism to pierce official narratives. Without reporters like Hersh, the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes easier to maintain. The decline of this form of journalism coincides with—and perhaps enables—the persistence of failed policies in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and beyond.
The most powerful moments in Cover-Up are the intimate ones: Hersh describing meetings with sources who risked their careers and freedom to expose wrongdoing, the personal toll of challenging the national security establishment, the isolation that comes with being proven right in ways the powerful never forgive. These moments humanize what could otherwise be an abstract discussion of policy failures.
But they also highlight something crucial: Individual courage, while necessary, isn’t sufficient. Hersh exposed My Lai, yet the war continued for years. He revealed CIA abuses, yet the agency faced minimal accountability. He documented Abu Ghraib, yet the architects of the Iraq war faced no consequences. This pattern suggests systemic dysfunction that transcends individual malfeasance.
From a realist perspective, Cover-Up offers a sobering lesson: American foreign policy has been consistently characterized by overreach justified through deception. Whether in Vietnam, Iraq, or countless covert operations, U.S. policymakers have systematically misled the public about the nature, costs, and outcomes of military interventions.
This isn’t a partisan critique—the pattern spans administrations of both parties. It reflects structural features of how American power operates: an imperial presidency with minimal congressional oversight, a national security bureaucracy with institutional interests in threat inflation, and a foreign policy establishment committed to global primacy regardless of costs or consequences.
Hersh’s greatest contribution, documented powerfully in this film, was in providing the empirical record that supports a realist critique of American foreign policy. His reporting demonstrated that idealistic justifications for intervention—spreading democracy, protecting human rights, combating terrorism—often mask more cynical calculations and catastrophic failures.
Cover-Up is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand American foreign policy in the post-World War II era. It’s not a perfect documentary—the pacing occasionally lags, and it’s insufficiently critical of some of Hersh’s more controversial recent work—but its core achievement is significant: It documents how one journalist, through dogged investigation and institutional support, repeatedly exposed truths that powerful interests desperately wanted hidden.
For realists who have long argued for restraint in American foreign policy, this film provides historical validation. The pattern Hersh documented—overreach, deception, failure, cover-up—has repeated itself with depressing regularity. The question is whether contemporary institutions still possess the capacity to hold power accountable in the way that Hersh’s reporting once did.
In an era when American foreign policy debates remain dominated by interventionist assumptions, Cover-Up serves as a crucial reminder of where such thinking leads. It deserves the widest possible audience, particularly among those who shape and influence U.S. foreign policy. The lessons it documents remain urgent and, tragically, largely unlearned.
Decrypted Data From UAV Shot Down in Novgorod Region Handed Over to US Side
Sputnik | January 1, 2026
Russian intelligence services were able to retrieve a flight mission file from one of the Ukrainian drones that attacked Putin’s residence.
Decrypted data from one of the Ukrainian drones that attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence have been handed over to the US mission in Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that overnight from December 28 to 29, Kiev had launched an attack on the Russian presidential residence in Russia’s Novgorod Region using 91 drones.
“Materials containing decrypted routing data and the flight controller of the Ukrainian drone that was shot down by Russian air defense systems on the night of December 29, 2025, over the Novgorod Region during a terrorist attack on the Russian presidential residence were handed over to a representative of the military attache’s office at the US Embassy in Moscow,” the ministry said in a statement.
The obtained data unequivocally confirm that the drones were on their way to attack Putin’s residence, the head of the Russian General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate, Igor Kostyukov, who delivered the files to the US Embassy, said.
“We believe that this step will remove all questions and will contribute to establishing the truth,” Kostyukov added.
Two dozen killed in Ukrainian strike on Russian New Year’s celebration – governor
RT | January 1, 2026
At least 24 people were killed and more than 50 injured in a Ukrainian drone strike on a café and a hotel during New Year’s Eve celebrations in the Black Sea coastal village of Khorly, the governor of Russia’s Kherson Region has said.
The attack took place shortly before midnight after a reconnaissance drone surveyed the area, Kherson Region Governor Vladimir Saldo said in a post on Telegram on Thursday. Three unmanned aerial vehicles then hit the crowded venue, triggering a massive fire that burned through the premises. One of the drones reportedly carried an incendiary mixture.
A child was among those killed, Saldo said. The medics are currently fighting for the lives of the wounded, he added.
The governor said that the attack can only be compared to the May 2014 Odessa massacre. At the time, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had supported the then-recent Western-backed coup in Kiev chased 42 anti-government protesters into the city’s Trade Unions House before setting the building on fire and burning all of them alive. “This is what the ‘peace’ that Zelensky claims to strive for looks like,” he wrote.
Kherson Region, together with Zaporozhye Region and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, joined Russia in the fall of 2022 as a result of local referendums.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said earlier that at least nine Ukrainian drones targeting the Russian capital had been shot down overnight. The mayor reported the first interception at 11:55pm local time just as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s traditional New Year’s address began.
The latest drone raids follow a failed drone attack by Kiev on Putin’s residence in Novgorod Region on December 28-29, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has condemned as an act of “state terrorism.”
The Kremlin noted that the raid was aimed not only against the Russian leader, but also “against [US] President [Donald] Trump’s efforts to facilitate a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict.”
As Israel bans aid orgs in Gaza, notorious mercenary firm seeks “Targeter”
Are Israel and US planning to revive the dystopian GHF scheme that spawned famine and death under cover of humanitarian aid?
By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | December 31, 2025
In its bid to continue the genocide in Gaza, Israel has banned 37 international aid organizations from entering the decimated, militarily occupied coastal enclave. This leaves only five humanitarian groups still able to operate inside Gaza.
At the same time, one of the US mercenary firms responsible for securing the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites which were present during the worst periods of famine in Gaza, when at least 3000 Palestinian civilians were gunned down while seeking aid, has posted an ad soliciting former special forces soldiers for offensive operations.
UG Solutions, the scandal-stained private mercenary firm, announced this December that it was hiring an “experienced Targeter to support intelligence-driven operations through the identification, development, validation, and maintenance of operational targets.” The targeter will be expected to “Develop, validate, and maintain operational target packages in accordance with approved targeting processes.”
Anthony Aguilar, the retired United States Army Lt. Col and former Green Beret who blew the whistle on UG Solutions’ human rights abuses in Gaza, told me he believes that Israel’s ban on the 37 international aid organizations signals the return of UG Solutions as part of a restructured version of the Israeli-controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation scheme.
While it’s unclear where the UG Solutions targeter position will be deployed, if they are being hired for upcoming operations in Gaza, Aguilar says “this shows that the US, through paramilitary contractors, is now going to either directly target, or feed target data to the IDF.”
To set the stage for its blanket ban on international aid organizations, Israel’s intel-tied Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has demanded that all staffers of aid NGOs prove they do not support calls to boycott Israel, that they do not support armed struggle or oppose Israel’s existence as an exclusivist Jewish state, and that they do not “actively advance delegitimization activities against the State of Israel.”
Aid staffers must also demonstrate that they have never questioned the established history of the Holocaust or challenged official Israeli narratives about October 7 – including, presumably, that Palestinians committed “mass rape” or beheaded babies.
Israel has also demanded that Doctors Without Borders provide COGAT occupation administrators with the personal data of its staff and donors, an unprecedented move by a belligerent in a conflict which few, if any, aid groups could ever honor.
It seems obvious that the Israeli government is using the absurdly onerous new registration standards as cover to ban virtually every credible international aid organization from entering Gaza. In doing so, the apartheid entity seemingly seeks to deprive Palestinians living inside the yellow occupation line of sustenance, forcing them to leave Gaza, or to move into one of the high-tech, concentration camp-like “smart cities” mapped out in the dystopian new “Project Sunrise” proposal marketed by Trump cronies Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
And it is there that they would be “secured” by a mercenary outfit like UG Solutions – and targeted if they dared to resist.
Below is a list of all the aid orgs banned by Israel from operating in Gaza:
1. Accion contra el Hambre – Action Against Hunger
2. Action Aid
3. Alianza por la Solidaridad
4. Artsen zonder Grenzen (Medecins Sans Frontieres Nederland)
5. Campaign for the Children of Palestine (CCP Japan)
6. CARE
7. DanChurchAid
8. Danish Refugee Council
9. Handicap International – Humanity and Inclusion
10. Japan International Volunteer center
11. Medecins Du Monde (FRANCE)
12. Medecins du Monde Switzerland
13. Medecins Sans Frontières Belgium
14. Medecins Sans Frontieres France
15. Medicos del Mundo (Spain)
16. Mercy Corps
17. MSF Spain – Doctors Without Borders Spain
18. NORWEGIAN REFUGEE COUNCIL
19. Oxfam Novib
20. Premiere Urgence Internationale
21. Terre des hommes Lausanne
22. The International Rescue Committee (IRC)
23. WeWorld-GVC
24. World Vision International
25. Relief International
26. Fondazione AVSI
27. Movement for Peace – MPDL
28. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
29. Medico International
30. PSAS – The Palestine Solidarity Association in Sweden
31. Defense for Children International
32. Medical Aid for Palestinians – UK
33. Caritas Internationalis
34. Caritas Jerusalem
35. Near East council churches
36. OXFAM Quebec
37. War Child holland
Gaza races to preserve what remains of its 5,000-year-old archaeological legacy
Under constant Israeli bombardment, Palestinians dig through rubble to prevent the erasure of a history thousands of years in the making.
Volunteers carry an antique pillar from the ruins of the Guerrara Museum after it was damaged in Israeli bombing [TRT World] / TRT World
By Doaa Shaheen | TRT World | December 29, 2025
For more than five millennia, Gaza has stood at the crossroads of civilisations, an ancient port on the Mediterranean linking Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia.
Long before it became synonymous with siege and war, the narrow coastal strip was a passageway for empires, armies, pilgrims, and traders, each leaving traces still buried beneath its soil.
Today, as Gaza’s cities are reduced to rubble from Israel’s brutal assault, another, quieter destruction is unfolding: the systematic loss of cultural memory embedded in museums, artefacts, textiles, and archives that document thousands of years of human history.
Across the devastated enclave, historians, volunteers, and museum founders are risking their lives to rescue what remains, often with bare hands and improvised tools, believing that preserving heritage is inseparable from preserving identity.
Amid the rubble of bombardment and beneath the ominous hum of drones in the so-called Zero Line area east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Mohammed Abu Lahia and his companions risk their lives.
Their mission is to rescue archaeological and heritage artefacts from the ruins of the Al-Qarara Cultural Heritage Museum, in a desperate attempt to prevent the erasure of Palestinian cultural memory after Israeli forces destroyed the museum during the war.
![Historical artefacts displayed at a Gaza museum before Israel launched its war on the enclave in October 2023 [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/7a5d28d8c8a428a2c55e5e7b306ce95fd39c83a17770c17f4280cfc7150d3ff0.webp)
Historical artefacts displayed at a Gaza museum before Israel launched its war on the enclave in October 2023 [TRT World]
The urgency reflects Gaza’s extraordinary historical density. Over centuries, Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mamluks, and Ottomans all ruled or passed through the territory.
Legendary figures such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte once stood on its soil. Each era left behind material traces – pottery, mosaics, inscriptions, textiles – many of which ended up in local museums like Al-Qarara.
“The Al-Qarara Cultural Heritage Museum was founded in 2016 in response to the community’s need for a cultural institution to preserve Palestinian heritage from being lost,” says Abu Lahia, the 30-year-old founder.
From its inception, the museum relied on donations from local families who entrusted it with heirlooms and antiquities meant to testify to Palestine’s long history and everyday life across generations.
Before its destruction, “the museum housed about 3,500 pieces narrating 5,000 years of Palestinian history, from Roman, Byzantine, and Mamluk eras to traditional jewellery,” Abu Lahia adds.
“Only about 1,000 pieces have been saved from the destruction through arduous manual search, due to the lack of specialised excavation machinery.”
Gaza’s antiquities are dispersed across public institutions and private museums established by enthusiasts driven by a desire to protect what they see as shared inheritance.
The Israeli war machine has impacted all museums, causing varying degrees of damage and the loss or theft of parts of their collections.
UNESCO has verified damage to at least 110 sites of cultural, historical, and religious significance across Gaza since the war began, including mosques, churches, archaeological sites, museums, and historic buildings, figures that continue to rise as access remains limited.
Abu Lahia explains the rudimentary salvage operation: “We are racing against time to pull out archaeological pieces. Every passing moment is from the lifespan of Palestinian history and these antiquities. We don’t want to lose what remains.”
With no access to modern tools, the team wraps artefacts in cloth and blankets, pads them with plastic and sponge, and stores them in vegetable crates, fruit boxes, or discarded humanitarian aid cartons. Heavy stone columns are dragged out using strong ropes and moved to safer locations.
Twenty-five volunteers, young men and women trained in history, archaeology, architecture, and fine arts, are participating in the effort. They view their work not as cultural preservation alone, but as resistance to erasure.
Alongside physical rescue efforts, the team is building a digital archive, recognising that memory must survive even when objects cannot.
Using a makeshift mobile studio, salvaged items are photographed, catalogued, assigned serial numbers, and uploaded under the museum’s name, ensuring that even if the artefacts are lost, their documentation endures.
![Mohammed Abu Lahia sorting artefacts after they were retrieved from under the rubble of Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/09d39a5f38a4bb205b72586e60c012ee03e9e3259922a7283c4d3f1189d39fe4.webp)
Mohammed Abu Lahia sorting artefacts after they were retrieved from under the rubble of Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]
Abu Lahia emphasises, “The museum has not ended despite the destruction. What survived under the rubble and what was documented digitally confirms that Palestinian memory is still alive.”
Saving the Palestinian Thobe
In another corner of Gaza, Suhaila Shaheen is fighting a parallel battle to preserve a different form of heritage: embroidered Palestinian dress.
The Palestinian thobe, known for its colourful stitches, encodes geography, social history, and identity—distinguishing villages, cities, and even family lineages.
For many Palestinians, it functions as a textile archive passed from one generation to the next.
Founded in December 2022, the Palestinian Thobe Museum in Rafah was both a personal dream and a cultural statement for Dr Shaheen. The university professor specialising in art and technology views safeguarding embroidered dress as preserving stories often excluded from official archives.
The museum, funded entirely by Shaheen and her fundraising efforts, became the first Palestinian museum dedicated to embroidered thobes founded by a woman.
Its collection grew to more than 5,600 heritage items, including around 340 hand-embroidered Palestinian thobes representing villages of the Gaza district, alongside original historical documents, rare photographs, agricultural tools, and a Bedouin tent.
Israeli bombardment on October 10, 2023, erased the museum entirely.
From beneath the rubble, Shaheen was able to recover only 64 thobes, some intact, others torn or eroded by the bombing.
“These are what remain of the museum’s memory,” she says. “I carry them with me wherever I go.”
Unable to save most of the collection physically, Shaheen turned to digital preservation, compiling photographs and records taken by herself, journalists and visitors.
“I’m working on gathering everything available digitally, so the story isn’t completely lost,” she explains.
Looting Gaza’s antiquities
Gaza-based Palestinian heritage expert Hammoud Al-Dahdhar describes the current situation as catastrophic.
In Gaza City’s Old Quarter, the iconic Great Omari Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in the Strip, has been left partially destroyed, its distinctive minaret reduced to a broken stump.
Nearby, the 700-year-old Qasr al-Basha, once a Mamluk palace and later the National Museum, has been struck and bulldozed. Thousands of artefacts it housed are now missing or unaccounted for.
![A broken plaque is all that remains of the Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/f7395cc9d21597d1f1cbc9436ef97861991255a41a2a97f9eec0f63a3d7baf02.webp)
A broken plaque is all that remains of the Al-Qarara Museum [TRT World]
Al-Dahdhar points an accusatory finger at the Israeli occupation for looting thousands of archaeological pieces from Gaza’s historical sites, citing the disappearance of more than 17,000 artefacts from Qasr al-Basha alone.
Manual rescue efforts, he says, are carried out amid unexploded ordnance, shortages of equipment, and ongoing bombardment. Digital documentation faces its own risks, including cyberattacks aimed at erasing records.
“These are emergency first-aid operations. We document what is missing, what is looted, and what is destroyed, under impossible conditions,” Al-Dahdhar tells TRT World.
International institutions have also sounded the alarm.
During the war, the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem reported that tens of thousands of archaeological artefacts from Gaza, including material excavated from the UNESCO-listed Byzantine monastery of Saint Hilarion, had been stored in a facility in Gaza City for safekeeping.
The site was managed and secured by Premiere Urgence Internationale, a humanitarian organisation that has worked for years on the protection of Gaza’s historical heritage while providing vocational training and livelihoods for young Palestinians.
Despite the facility’s protected status under the UN’s deconfliction system, the Israeli military ordered its evacuation ahead of an air strike.
![A mannequin on display at the Palestinian Dress Museum before its destruction [TRT World]](https://d2udx5iz3h7s4h.cloudfront.net/2025/12/29/673300eacfcbfe8e438b6a7c/image/ae1e5b20d835c73edd4acb9aaed3aa1913cbfd4c24c1db9b8cfbd1b21812a978.webp)
A mannequin on display at the Palestinian Dress Museum before its destruction [TRT World]
Under sustained risk of bombardment and amid severe shortages of time and resources, 70 percent of the collection, representing more than 25 years of archaeological research, was moved before the Israeli attack. The rest, destroyed.
Scholars and heritage experts have warned that the destruction of such material constitutes an irreparable loss, not only to Palestinians but to global understanding of early Christian and ancient Middle Eastern history.
Al-Dahdhar stresses that the stakes extend beyond preservation for its own sake.
“This is about protecting collective memory. Without it, identity itself is endangered.”
Drone Attack on Putin’s Residence Could Have Triggered a Nuclear War: Here’s Why
Sputnik – 30.12.2025
The 91-drone attack on the presidential residence in Novgorod region was an extremely dangerous provocation. And one that “could not have been carried out without the participation of European hawks” because “Zelensky would not have dared to plan or carry out such an operation on his own,” military expert Alexey Leonkov told Sputnik.
Intricate planning was required, and the timing – while Zelensky was in the US for talks with Trump, was designed to give him an alibi, “which he is now using, claiming Ukraine had nothing to do with it,” Leonkov said.
The provocation “wasn’t simply an attack on the president,” the observer emphasized. “It was a strike on a nuclear weapons control center, as each such residence contains communications nodes through which the head of state can issue the command to use the country’s nuclear forces.”
“It was intended to provoke a conflict between the US and Russia,” Leonkov said. “This was precisely the calculation: at worst, provoking a global conflict; at a minimum, disrupting the negotiation process between the US and Russia. And it’s clear that European hawks favor only this scenario,” particularly Britain.
While he issues denials now, Zelensky essentially blabbed about the attack ahead of time twice in the past two weeks: a press conference on December 18, when he said “politicians change, somebody lives, somebody dies,” and on Christmas eve, when he openly called on Ukrainians to wish for Putin’s death.
“All this suggests Zelensky was aware of the impending attack, but was playing his assigned role – pretending he had nothing to do with it and ‘advocating for peace’,” Leonkov emphasized.
Analyzing Moscow’s public reaction carefully, Leonkov said two things are certain: first, Russia will respond appropriately, and the targets and time of the response have already been determined; second, the response will be carried out in such a way as not to affect the negotiation process between Russia and the US.
Ukraine’s Escalation May Be Aimed at Prolonging Conflict as Talks Advance — Ex-Pentagon Analyst
Sputnik – 30.12.2025
Someone in Ukraine’s command structure is escalating “at any phase where a step towards peace is being made,” with responsibility unclear — from Zelensky and commanders to Western intelligence, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, retired US Air Force and former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik.
Kwiatkowski argued the attacks complicate negotiations and that Ukraine is fighting “from a position of great weakness.”
On Russia’s likely reaction, she said Moscow “does not need to tolerate Ukrainian assassination attempts and drone barrages,” arguing that those who want the conflict to continue may be seeking “a Russian over-reaction… as a way of continuing the war.” She also said Russia has “so far preserved the moral high ground by focusing on military targets” and the stated objectives of the special military operation.
“In a very basic sense, none or very few US or other weapons should be transferred to Ukraine, based on our own laws governing foreign military sales to unelected dictators without a mutual defense treaty, and the recent track record of Ukrainian corruption and lack of accountability,” Kwiatkowski emphasized, arguing that sending more weapons with a “collapsing and poorly trained Army” amounts to wasting them.
The analyst also said US intelligence and targeting support has been “a major aspect” of assistance, and argued that removing it would end the conflict sooner.
“This sharing of US intelligence, targeting coordination, and even selection of targets has been a major aspect of US aid to Ukraine, and while Trump stopped some and slowed other aid to Ukraine, it appears he never stopped this crucial aspect. This assistance is, in my opinion, the sole reason this war has continued over the past few years, when it could have been ended long ago,” Kwiatkowski stressed.
Drone Attack on Putin’s Residence Planned by Forces Trying to Torpedo Ukraine Peace Push: Expert
Sputnik – 29.12.2025
“They do not consider it possible to step back and allow the situation on our border region to be stabilized. Therefore, they are making gradual attempts to torpedo the negotiation process,” military analyst Alexander Stepanov told Sputnik, commenting on the attack on Putin’s residence in Novgorod region by 91 drones Sunday night.
“We’ve seen this attitude in the openly-stated positions of key EU leaders. Now, we’re seeing it in the intentions of intelligence agencies, mostly likely British, who are clearly continuing to develop plans to launch terrorist strikes on strategically significant targets, to carry out targeted terrorist attacks against high-ranking Russian military personnel, de facto transforming the war into permanent proxy-hybrid mode using the tools of state terrorism,” Stepanov, an expert from the Institute of Law and National Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, explained.
Naturally, these efforts serve to further “delegitimize” the Kiev regime, Stepanov said. They make it clear that Ukraine’s authorities are “war criminals and, more broadly speaking, international terrorists, who have neither the right to govern this territory nor the right to control the lives of its citizens.”
Negotiating with such actors is “impossible, and does not fit into any normative framework of international relations,” the observer stressed.
Stepanov expects a “maximum reduction” in US-Ukraine military-technical and intelligence cooperation, including for navigation and targeting systems, in the wake of Sunday’s attack.
If US statements “are backed by real will, it would be possible to remotely disable the control systems of virtually all weapons supplied through Western channels, including American ones, and to end the presence of US military specialists who, at certain stages, support the operation of both sophisticated Patriot air defense systems and long-range HIMARS tactical systems,” Stepanov said.
Same goes for Starlink, which could leave Ukraine’s military blind “within a few hours.”
As far as Russia is concerned, Sunday night’s attack on Putin’s residence will “likely entail reclassifying” those held responsible “as terrorists, subject to capture or elimination,” Stepanov believes.
Ukraine launched 91 kamikaze drones at Putin’s state residence – Lavrov
RT | December 29, 2025
The Ukrainian military fired a barrage of 91 long-range kamikaze drones overnight at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state residence in the Novgorod Region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed late on Monday.
The Kiev regime has fully switched to state terrorism policies, and Moscow will review its negotiating position accordingly, the top diplomat warned.
“All the unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed by air defense systems of Russia’s Armed Forces,” Lavrov confirmed.
The attack came amid “intensive negotiations between Russia and the US,” the top diplomat pointed out, adding that the “reckless actions” of Kiev will not remain unanswered.
Moscow has already designated targets and the timing of the impending retaliatory strikes, Lavrov warned.
The incident is bound to affect the Ukraine conflict settlement process, the foreign minister said without providing any exact details on the potential shifts in Russia’s positions.
“We do not intend to withdraw from the negotiation process with the US. However, given the complete degeneration of the criminal Kiev regime, which has shifted to a policy of state terrorism, Russia’s negotiating position will be revised,” Lavrov stated.
Ukraine’s leader Vladimir Zelensky, however, has strongly denied the attack on Putin’s state residence. Moscow is only seeking a pretext to jeopardize the “progress” made by the US and Ukraine, and attack the government quarter in Kiev, he claimed.
The architecture of extermination: Why the Gaza genocide is premeditated and repeatable
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 26, 2025
Suppose we accept the fiction that none of us expected Israel to launch a full-scale genocide in Gaza—a premeditated campaign to erase the Strip and exterminate a significant portion of its inhabitants. Let us pretend that nearly eighty years of relentless massacres were not a prelude to this moment, and that Israel had never before sought the physical destruction of the Palestinian people as outlined by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
If we go so far as to accept the sterile, ahistoric claim that the Nakba of 1948 was “merely” ethnic cleansing rather than genocide—ignoring the mass graves and the forced erasure of a civilisation—we are still left with a terrifying reality. Having witnessed the unmasked extermination that began on 7 October 2023, who can dare to argue that its perpetrators lack the intent to repeat it?
The question itself is an act of charity, as it assumes the genocide has actually stopped. In reality, the carnage has merely shifted tactics. Since the implementation of the fragile ceasefire on 10 October, Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. Others have perished in the frozen mud of their tents. They include infants like eight-month-old Fahar Abu Jazar, who, like others, froze to death. These are not mere tragedies; they are the inevitable results of a calculated Israeli policy of destruction targeting the most vulnerable.
During this two-year campaign of extermination, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were murdered, accounting for a staggering 30 per cent of the total victims. This blood-soaked tally ignores the thousands of souls entrapped beneath the concrete wasteland of Gaza, and those currently being consumed by the silent killers of famine and engineered epidemics.
The horrifying statistics aside, we bear witness to the final agonies of a people. We have watched their extermination in real-time, broadcast to every handheld screen on earth. No one can claim ignorance; no one can claim innocence. Even now, we watch as 1.3 million Palestinians endure a precarious existence in tents ravaged by winter floods. We share the screams of mothers, the hollowed-out faces of broken fathers, and the haunted stares of children, and yet, the world’s political and moral institutions remain paralyzed.
If Israel resumes the full, unrestrained intensity of this genocide, will we stop it? I fear the answer is no, because the world refuses to dismantle the circumstances that permitted this slaughter in the first place. Israeli officials never bothered to hide their intent. The systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians was a primary export of Israeli media, even as Western corporate outlets worked tirelessly to sanitise this criminal discourse.
The record of intent is undeniable. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly championed the “encouragement of migration” and demanded that “not an ounce of humanitarian aid” reach Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the starvation of two million people could be “just and moral” in the pursuit of military aims. From the halls of the Knesset to the pop charts, the refrain was the same: “erase Gaza,” “leave no one there.” When military leaders refer to an entire population as “human animals,” they are not using metaphors; they are issuing a license for extermination.
This was preceded by the hermetic siege — a decades-long experiment in human misery that began in 2006. Despite every Palestinian plea for the world to break this death grip, the blockade was allowed to persist. This was followed by successive wars targeting a besieged, impoverished population under the banner of ‘security,’ always shielded by the Western mantra of Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’
In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed, and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world’s ‘largest open-air prison‘. Whether they utilised armed resistance, threw rocks at tanks, or marched unarmed toward snipers, they were branded ‘terrorists’ and ‘militants’ whose very existence was framed as a threat to their occupier.
Years before the first bomb of this genocide fell, the United Nations declared Gaza “uninhabitable.” Its water was a toxin, its land a graveyard, and its people were dying of curable diseases. Yet, aside from the typical ritual of humanitarian reports, the international community did nothing to offer a political horizon, a just peace.
This criminal neglect provided the vacuum for the events of 7 October, allowing Israel to weaponize its victimhood to execute a genocide of sadistic proportions. Former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant explicitly stripped Palestinians of their humanity, launching a collective slaughter directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The stage is being set for the next phase of extermination. The siege is now absolute, the violence more concentrated, and the dehumanisation of Palestinians more widespread than ever. As the international media drifts toward other distractions, Israel’s image is being rehabilitated as if the genocide never happened.
Tragically, the conditions that fueled the first wave of genocide are being meticulously reconstructed. Indeed, another Israeli genocide is not a distant threat; it is an encroaching reality that will be finalised unless it is stopped.
The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was a legal vow to “liberate mankind from such an odious scourge.” If those words possess a shred of integrity, the world must act now to abort the next phase of extermination. This requires absolute accountability and a political process that finally severs the grip of Israeli colonialism and violence. The clock is ticking, and our collective voice—or our silence—will make the difference.
German journalist says she was sexually assaulted in Israeli custody
ILKA | December 26, 2025
A German journalist detained by Israeli forces following the interception of a Gaza-bound aid vessel has accused Israeli prison authorities of sexually assaulting her while in custody, triggering renewed outrage over Israel’s treatment of international activists and detainees.
Anna Liedtke, who was aboard the humanitarian ship Conscience as part of the Freedom Flotilla initiative, said she was raped during a strip search while being transferred between Israeli detention facilities. The flotilla was attempting to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, which human rights groups have long described as illegal and collectively punitive.
Liedtke was held for five days after Israeli forces seized the vessel in late 2025. In her first public testimony, she said the alleged assault did not occur in isolation but was part of repeated abuses during multiple prison transfers.
“We were transferred from one prison to another, and during the strip searches I was raped,” Liedtke said, describing the experience as deeply traumatic and humiliating.
Her account has sparked condemnation from prisoner rights organisations and human rights advocates, who say the allegations fit a long-established pattern of abuse, sexual violence, and mistreatment within Israel’s detention system. Advocacy groups argue that such practices have been systematically used to intimidate, degrade, and silence Palestinians and international solidarity activists alike.
Rights organisations stressed that while Palestinians have for years reported sexual violence, invasive searches, and torture in Israeli prisons, cases involving foreign nationals underscore that Israel’s abusive detention practices extend beyond occupied populations to anyone who challenges its policies.
“The testimony of Anna Liedtke reinforces what Palestinian prisoners, especially women, have been saying for decades,” one rights advocate said. “Israeli detention facilities operate with near-total impunity.”
Calls are now growing for an independent international investigation into the allegations, with activists urging the United Nations and international human rights bodies to intervene. They argue that Israel’s internal investigative mechanisms lack credibility and routinely fail to hold perpetrators accountable.
The Freedom Flotilla coalition said the assault allegation highlights the risks faced by activists attempting to break the siege on Gaza and accused Israel of using violence and sexual abuse as tools of repression. The coalition renewed its demand for an end to the blockade, which has devastated Gaza’s civilian population for more than a decade.
Human rights groups say the case exposes the broader reality of Israel’s detention regime, where activists, journalists, and Palestinians are subjected to violence with little oversight. They warn that without sustained international pressure, such abuses will continue unchecked, further eroding international law and basic human dignity.
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Major rabbi says non-Jews are donkeys, created to serve Jews
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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