My submission for the 2026 "Word of the Year" is: ACCOUNTABILITY Holding rulers accountable is crucial for democracy and justice, but also for international peace and the protection of human rights. www.linkedin.com/posts/alexan...

New Year resolution: In 2026 I will unfollow, ignore or, at least, not “like” nor boost authors that rely on #AI to produce “their” content. AI-generated content has the soul of a machine. The author is not the one signing the post. I don't trust the source and so I don't buy the argument.

Berlin spricht von einer Zweistaatenlösung – und Israel schafft Fakten, die sie unmöglich machen. Mit dieser Realitätsverweigerung muss Schluss sein.

We are all so relieved that Musk’s affordability issue has been resolved and that #Musk may find a second doll under the Xmas 🎄 www.reuters.com/business/aut...

During his annual call-in program, Putin said no new “special operations” will happen if the West “treats Russia with respect,” claimed Europe “tricked” Moscow over NATO, and insisted the West is waging war on Russia. meduza.io/en/news/2025...

Worth noting this campaign produces dozens of videos a month and the only time I've seem them go viral in recent memory is when Elon Musk reshared one that falsely claimed USAID paid for celebrities to visit Ukraine, at a time he was gutting USAID. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Wer gewinnt den Wettbewerb um Warner Bros. Discovery? Ob Netflix oder Paramount zum Zug kommen, ist eine politische Frage – und Trump ist mitten drin.

⚡️Death toll in Russia's Nov. 19 attack on Ternopil rises to 38. The number of victims killed by a Russian missile strike on western Ukraine's Ternopil last month has risen to 38. Police said on Dec. 8 that the bodies of two people previously considered missing have been identified.

FIFA #football World Cup draw: which are the losers? For sure: #FIFA lost the rest of whatever dignity it may still have had.

The new National Security Strategy is a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.

The European Union, on 3 December 2025, added Russia to its list of high-risk countries with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks. This is overdue. Why has the FATF not done the same? open.substack.com/pub/alexande...

Putin ist sehr gerne zu Friedensverhandlungen bereit, wenn seine Maximalforderungen erfüllt werden. Kurzum: Die derzeitigen Bemühungen sind ein Witz.

If you receive legal threats from Nigel Farage for your reporting of Reform, please get in touch. We have employed a defamation lawyer specifically for this purpose and would love to help (and we do so on non-commercial terms). www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“I cannot call it a peace plan. It’s a reward to an aggressor, a reward to a dictator.” Pro-democracy activist Natalia Arno of the Free Russia Foundation weighs in on what Putin stands to gain from the latest peace proposal on the table. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

Compilations of 15 second Sora videos posted on accounts like this are already doing big numbers, along with Sora generated rage bait. Legislation should require AI detection tools to be an integral part of the posting process, and tag likely AI generated posts and lower their algorithmic ranking.

Russian Colonel Gen Makarevich, who blew up Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine in 2023, has been sent to Venezuela to lead Russia’s military advisory mission there. By blowing up the dam, he killed around 200 civilians. As I mentioned, Russia managed to use DJT to push Maduro closer to them.

Eternal memory to all the victims of the 1932–1933 Holodomor genocide and the mass artificial famines of 1921–1923 and 1946–1947.

This is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future. In the meantime, it benefits unnamed Russian and American investors, at the expense of everyone else. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

⚡️ 'Rewarding Russian butchery' — US lawmakers rail against Trump's Ukraine peace deal. "Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests," U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell said.

A quick run through of the Trump administration's proposal for a Ukraine security guarantee, which is a security guarantee in the same way that the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is a party committed to liberalism and democracy. 🧵 x.com/BarakRavid/s...

🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️It’s unbearable to even share such horrifying news. Look at their faces, world. Russia murdered them. Russia is a terrorist state!

Reform UK's former Wales leader Nathan Gill is being sentenced over pro-Russia bribes. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c8...

Finally, the Trump administration has turned the US into such an unreliable security partner that Russia is now treating it as a neutral arbiter between Russia and NATO (see above) so a Trump-era US guarantee modelled on Art. 5 would be entirely meaningless. www.axios.com/2025/11/21/u...

This research is important because it corroborates what we already knew - that when comparing the UK to peer economies, it has had a big slowdown since 2016. It does so with firm-level data and finds more EU-connected firms have sizeable shortfalls in productivity and investment compared to less.

Thank you Florian Weber of @fr-zeitung.bsky.social for this interview. Nice talking with you. www.fr.de/politik/stig...

Update: The bodies of three more people, including two children, have been recovered from the site of Russia’s strike on Ternopil on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 31. Another 13 people are still missing. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

In Sep 2017, Russia agreed to restrict oil product exports to North Korea, as part of a UN sanctions package in the wake of Pyongyang’s nuclear test. Yet last year Moscow allegedly exported more than a million barrels to North Korea over nine months, according to Open Source Center.

Update: According to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, 26 people have now been confirmed dead in yesterday’s Russian strike on the city of Ternopil. Another 26 people are reported missing. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

Kharkiv, Ukraine. Straight up targeting civilians.

A new 28-point plan is in the works, led by Donald Trump's U.S., to end Russia's war on Ukraine.

Four years ago today, I started my Substack newsletter The Good in Us. What a long, strange trip it continues to be! Everything is at stake in the next three years. Let's stick together and fight the good fight. www.marytrump.org/p/four-years...

26th anniversary today: 9 November 1989: the Wall of Berlin falling, the beginning of a new era of freedom, democracy and progress in Europe. 24 February 2022: Putin bringing this era to an end by starting a barbaric, medieval war against Ukraine.

Nach einem Veto des Präsidenten und Protesten stimmt das Parlament dafür, eine weitere Abstimmung über die Istanbul-Konvention zu verschieben.

Die von Abu Dhabi unterstützten RSF-Milizen schlachten nicht-arabische Menschen im sudanesischen Darfur ab. Europa schweigt währenddessen dazu.

Civil reactions to Latvia withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

⚡️Update: Russian attack on residential building in Dnipro kills 1, injures 10. Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported that one person was killed and 10 others injured, including two children, in Russia's overnight attack on a residential building in Dnipro.

Forte argues that the answer is to adapt by making clarity, honesty, and care communicatively performative. It is a pragmatic response to a system that rewards emotion over reason, but does it risk reinforcing the same broken system?

⚡️Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, 116 journalists have been killed and 26 remain in captivity, Ukraine’s Culture Ministry says

"Im April 2025 haben Leon Ritter und Jasmin Ritters Ex-Partner einen Mann mit Behinderung verprügelt und auf ihn eingetreten, als er am Boden lag. 'Wie man eine Tomate oder Melone zertritt, nämlich stampfend.' (...) Für Stern TV und RTL sind die Ritters ein Geschäftsmodell." taz.de/Familie-Ritt...

For those asking for background - I was in Sudan twice this year and wrote about it www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

“The end of the liberal world order” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in conference rooms and lecture halls. But in war-ravaged Sudan, it’s a reality. @anneapplebaum.bsky.social traveled there and spoke with those who are living in this post-American world: https://theatln.tc/y99eBkQu

Die rechte und prorussische Partei Nemuno Aušra gewinnt an Einfluss in dem baltischen Land, auch in der Kulturszene. Künst­le­r:in­nen haben einen Protestmonat initiiert.

Reform UK, the Russian spy and rolls of Kremlin cash: the inside story of Nathan Gill www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

A horrific mass murder is unfolding in Sudan, where no one can see it. The RSF are murdering civilians in El Fasher, having finally defeated the Sudanese army forces holding out in the city. The BBC has managed to speak to some who escaped www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7fC...