December 08, 2025 – Short News

Moscow celebrates Trump’s course as a political hit!

Russia is celebrating Trump’s new security strategy as a political hit, while Ukraine once again faces attacks. Kremlin spokesman Peskov speaks of “dialogue” and “good relations”, yet during the night four people die from drones, rockets and artillery, and power and water fail in several cities. Washington declares it wants to improve relations with Russia to end the war, but Moscow reads this as an invitation. In Kyiv people see only that nothing about Russia’s practice is changing. Zelensky is briefed from Florida about the talks, but what has been stuck on the table for months remains stuck: the Donbas and the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Europe is pulling the heads of state and government together for a meeting in London, while Russia continues with the same methods it has used since the beginning of the war.

Four dead – and Moscow speaks of rapprochement

While the Kremlin benefits from Trump’s strategy, Ukraine is hit again. A man dies after a drone strike in the Chernihiv region, three more people are killed by shelling in the Kharkiv region. In Kremenchuk, electricity and water collapse because Russia again targets energy facilities – a method that for four winters has aimed at making survival difficult for millions. Zelensky reports a “substantive phone call” with American negotiators in Florida, but the unresolved issues do not change: the Donbas and control over Zaporizhzhia. Trump’s envoy Kellogg speaks of the “last ten meters”, yet is no longer even at the table. The United Kingdom, France and Germany invite Zelensky to London to solidify a common line, while Russia answers diplomacy with nightly attacks.

The man who questions himself – and still fails

At his speech at the Kennedy Center Honors Dinner, Trump stumbled into a moment of rare openness when he asked whether he was the better politician or the better construction and real estate man. The audience did not know whether to laugh or walk out, since everyone in the room remembered casinos that went bankrupt, towers that stood half empty, lawsuits he lost, and projects that imploded faster than his sentences. Still, he waited for applause as if he had just delivered a brilliant insight. And then came the sentence that said everything: he did not know how to answer the question himself. No wonder – someone who creates chaos in politics and leaves concrete ruins in business ends up with two careers competing for last place. The speech continued as if nothing had happened, yet the room knew: he had just outpaced himself and still lost.

Catahoula Crunch – surveillance instead of clarification

In New Orleans, the new deportation operation rolls on, and while the state speaks of “criminal illegal aliens”, research and internal documents show a different picture. Of 38 people arrested, only nine had more than traffic violations, yet the public receives no numbers. Instead, authorities monitor around the clock what people write online about the raids and compile sentiment reports that reveal more about distrust toward the population than about actual danger. Videos of crying children, chased citizens and masked officers spread quickly, and the city leadership complains it receives hardly any information. For many, the operation looks like a blow against people with brown skin, not like protection from violence. Authorities call it security, but the practice looks like control.

While human rights groups, lawyers and concerned residents take to the streets in New Orleans, the FBI, Border Patrol and the state’s Fusion Center sit in the background together, watching every comment, every video, every discussion on platforms like Reddit. Reports speak of “mixed opinions”, of citizens being urged to film officers, and of protests in front of ICE facilities. No threats were found, yet surveillance continues, even targeting parents posting about operations near an elementary school. Activists hand out whistles and training materials to document arrests, while the police warn they will arrest anyone who gets too close to an officer. For many, the operation feels like an attempt to create fear and intimidate criticism, not like a measure for safety.

Musk versus Brussels – and the facts remain outside

Elon Musk again declared that the European Union is not a democracy but a “BUREAUcracy” full of “unelected bureaucrats”. A sentence that sounds good if one never checks how the EU actually works: the Parliament is directly elected, the Commission must answer to this Parliament, and the Council is made up of elected governments. But Musk’s world does not need reality, only shareable slogans. The very person with no public mandate complains about alleged power without elections – while his platform turns democratic institutions into an enemy. It is the typical style: provoke first, then sell the outrage as proof. And while he calls for “rule of the people”, the question remains unanswered as to when Musk has ever won an election.

Venezuela’s military buildup

In Venezuela, thousands of new fighters are being inducted into the presidential guard and military counterintelligence, while the country’s leadership, under pressure from the United States, adopts increasingly harsh rhetoric and declares that the entire homeland must turn into a guerrilla, every territory into a rifle, every hill, every street, every city a potential battleground, accompanied by calls to fight underground, on the surface, in the mountains and in the cities, as if the country were transforming itself into a single military space that binds the population into a permanent state of emergency and reinforces the impression that this mobilization serves less as defense than as the political staging of a state loudly proclaiming an illusion of strength.

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The FBI warns – and Trump protects the offenders

FBI Director Kash Patel said that anyone who attacks the capital attacks the essence of the American way of life, and that the FBI as well as the Justice Department would always counter such attacks. At that exact moment, reality felt like a slap in the face to his own agency: Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol, while at the same time FBI agents involved in the January 6 investigations were suspended. The contrast could not be sharper – here the warning against an attack on democracy, there a president who protects the attackers and dismantles those who attempted to hold them accountable. Our earlier article on this: “Three fired FBI agents sue Patel – and paint a picture of political pressure from the White House” at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/endrei-entlassene-fbi-beamte-verklagen-patel-und-zeichnen-ein-bild-des-politischen-drucks-aus-dem-weissen-haus/

Trump’s peace from a parallel world

Trump declared on camera that he was “a little bit disappointed” because Zelensky allegedly had not yet read his proposal, while “his people love it” and Russia “is fine with it” – with the addition that Moscow “would probably prefer the whole country”. The appearance felt like a mix of self-talk and political bankruptcy filing: a president promoting a paper the key recipient supposedly has not even seen, while the war criminal is allegedly satisfied. That Zelensky, in the middle of a war, has other priorities than Trump’s notions did not receive a single word, more important was the impression that he alone had the solution, only unfortunately the Ukrainian president had not yet acknowledged it. It sounded like that familiar Trump logic in which approval always exists wherever he claims it, and reality only interferes when it does not fit into his own.