"I am standing here in this exquisite Chapel of St George at Windsor Castle, so close to where my beloved mother, the late Queen, is laid to rest with my dear father.

"I am reminded of the deeply touching letters, cards and messages which so many of you have sent my wife and myself and I cannot thank you enough for the love and sympathy you have shown our whole family.

"Christmas is a particularly poignant time for all of us who have lost loved ones.

"We feel their absence at every familiar turn of the season and remember them in each cherished tradition.

"In the much-loved carol O Little Town Of Bethlehem we sing of how 'in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light'.

"My mother's belief in the power of that light was an essential part of her faith in God, but also her faith in people and it is one which I share with my whole heart.

A recent article in the establishment security journal Foreign Affairs makes the case for nuclear proliferation among America’s allies. Not only are its arguments unsound, but they also understate the willingness of the US’s rivals to respond in kind.

The Return of Nuclear Proliferation

BY EMMA CLAIRE FOLEY

President Donald Trump has announced that the US will keep or sell oil confiscated from Venezuela – what precedent does it set?

"Thus far in 2025, governments are experiencing the Trump-Vance administration announcing, crafting, and implementing decisions perceived by the White House as within the confines of international law," John Kavulich, an American political scientist and expert in international politics, tells Sputnik.

Grabbing is in Fashion: US Seizure of Venezuelan Oil Mirrors Global Trend

BY Ekaterina Blinova

A city reveals itself only in motion; to stand still is to know nothing essential of it.

Nowhere is this truth more palpable than in Moscow during the Christmas season, when the city discloses not only the solemn beauty and spiritual gravity of the holy days, ordered by the Orthodox calendar, but also the quiet discipline of masterful urban leadership that allows creative yet ordered transformation to manifest itself.

PROF. SCHLEVOGT’S COMPASS NO. 37: MOSCOW’S POLYCENTRIC CHRISTMAS – RADIATING TRUE SPIRIT CITYWIDE

Europe has repeatedly rejected peace with Russia at moments when a negotiated settlement was available, and those rejections have proven profoundly self-defeating. From the nineteenth century to the present, Russia’s security concerns have been treated not as legitimate interests to be negotiated within a broader European order, but as moral transgressions to be resisted, contained, or overridden.

This pattern has persisted across radically different Russian regimes—Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet—suggesting that the problem lies not primarily in Russian ideology, but in Europe’s enduring refusal to recognize Russia as a legitimate and equal security actor.

For the past 35 years, Carmelo Lombardo has never missed a Christmas working in the same stand at the Sydney Fish Market.

But this year, the last Christmas at the cornflower blue concrete structure before the new fish market opens next year, the 36-hour trading blitz feels bittersweet.

Last prawns for Christmas shoppers at the old Sydney Fish Market

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has unveiled a 20-point draft peace framework which he claims Kiev has been discussing with the US, presenting the document as a proposed basis for ending the conflict with Russia.

Zelensky disclosed the details during a briefing with journalists on Wednesday, claiming the draft largely reflects a joint Ukrainian-American position, while several key issues remain unresolved.

Among the most contentious provisions is the proposal regarding the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which is currently fully controlled by Russian forces. Kiev wants the plant to be jointly operated by Ukraine and the US on a 50-50 basis instead of Washington’s proposed trilateral management involving Russia.

Ursula von der Leyen’s perma-smile is morphing into a rictus grin.

2025 could have been the year the six-year Commission president made her long-held ambition to make the EU a geopolitical powerhouse a reality.

Instead, as this week’s failure to tap Russian assets for Ukraine showed, the EU will enter the new year cowed by big powers, and more divided than ever by its own internal far-right forces, who have been needlessly emboldened.

It could have been different.

Von der Leyen took her pliant commissioners to India in February, declaring an ambition to strike a trade deal by the year’s end. She planned to close the historic Mercosur agreement in Brazil on Saturday. In the end, both ended up postponed.

WE ARE GOING TO EXPLORE THE VANISHING/RESURGENT PUSH FOR WOKEISM... FROM THE ONSET WE SHOULD STATE THAT THE LGBTi MOVEMENT DESERVES RESPECT AND ACCEPTANCE — AS WE HAVE DONE MANY TIMES ON THIS HONEST SITE... BUT THE MOVEMENT — A SMALL LOUD MINORITY — DOES NOT DESERVE TO RULE EVERYONE AS IT HAS TRIED TO DO.

PROTECT TRANS KIDS? HERE THE SLOPE OF INFLUENCE IS FAST INCLINING TOWARDS SOCIAL CONFUSED DEGRADATION. AS KIDS ARE BLANK CANVASSES READY TO LEARN ANYTHING — GENDERISATION OF CHILDREN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MORALS OR EVEN NATURAL TRENDS, BUT PEER PRESSURE FROM THE LGBTi COMMUNITY THAT WANTS TO GROW ITS NUMBERS.

The air smells [stinks] of after Christmas

Decaying prawn shells and mouldy turkey breast

Ham rotting under the sun and a shower of rain

Stale bread, fruit-fly salad quietly abuzz from Jane

Extended families have gone back home to the west

Street-sleepers braseros have extinguished

This long joyous exuberant feast has just finished 

Empty bottles of intoxication emptied in the garbo truck

Rubbish piles more than thrice as much the usual muck

Soiled crackers bonbons wrappers and a little useless yuck

The awful jokes that made us smile 

As we placed the crown jagged style

Thin paper on our light-headed head

Now make us feel sick and morose

Life hangs only by a thinning thread

Fading petal of a whitish failing rose

Falling in the stinking mud of after Christmas

The governments and media elites of the West pride themselves on providing and promoting freedom of thought, opinion, and debate.

Together with a selective feminism that easily sacrifices the women of, say, Libya, Iraq, and Palestine, and a very odd understanding of “democracy” that includes the use of miscounts and lawfare to shape elections, their claim to a superior public sphere features among those “values” routinely invoked to justify Western regime change aggression.

Who are the deluded ‘experts’ trying to send Germans to war with Russia?
The price of stifling dissent is not only dishonesty, it’s self-harming incompetence

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

Washington, DC [US], December 23 (ANI): President Donald Trump said that it would be a "smart" move for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to relinquish power, as the United States continues to ramp up military and economic pressure on the South American nation.

Responding to questions about whether his administration's current strategy is designed to force Maduro from office, Trump remained noncommittal about the specific endgame but was clear about his advice to the Venezuelan leader.

"Well, I think it probably would," Trump said when asked if the goal was to force Maduro out.

"Can't tell. That's up to him what he wants to do. I think it would be smart for him to do that. Again, we're going to find out."

How to make ‘Iran like Gaza’ and describing the genocide in Palestine as a weapons testing laboratory. Michael West and Stephanie Tran with the inside story of a weapons expo.

Inside a conference hall at Tel Aviv University, executives, generals and venture capitalists took turns boasting about “combat-proven” Israeli weapons and surveillance systems.

“Make Iran like Gaza”: Chilling insider view from Israel weapons expo

by Stephanie Tran and Michael West