Ukraine

Born out of battlefield necessity and sharpened by constant pressure, Ukraine’s Trident laser system shows how a nation at war can compress decades of weapons development into months and put cutting edge energy weapons to work where they matter most, over cities, infrastructure, and the front lines.

Delta Force with DEVGRU support removed Nicolás Maduro as the U.S. moves toward prosecution and a short stabilization plan, Iran threatened U.S. forces after Trump warned Tehran over killing protesters, and Russia claimed Huliaipole while Ukraine and independent mappers describe a heavily contested gray zone in Zaporizhzhia.

Iran escalated its rhetoric to “total war,” Russian forces drew outrage by using horses in frontline assaults, the Department of War flagged hazardous operating zones north of Venezuela amid rising regional pressure, and a gunman attacked a sheriff’s office in Wallace, Idaho, wounding three before police killed him.

Russia battered Kyiv with a winter missile-and-drone strike as Canada announced new Ukraine aid ahead of Florida talks, Thailand and Cambodia moved to lock in a ceasefire, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sparked a regional flare-up, and Yemen’s south shifted as the STC expanded while the Houthis held the north.

China sanctioned 20 U.S. defense firms and 10 executives over a record Taiwan arms package, Russian “hillbilly armor” got chewed up by Ukrainian drones near Pokrovsk, and the Department of War had to tell troops in Bahrain to stop ordering sexual wellness products that local customs keeps seizing.

Armed with amphibious rifles, Russian Spetsnaz turn the waterline into a kill zone instead of a transition point.

Flying at treetop height with cold-war iron and nerves of steel, Ukraine’s Mi-24 crews have turned an aging “Flying Tank” into a blunt instrument of precision and audacity, proving that in this war, skill and nerve still matter more than the calendar on the airframe.

Under an almost-moonless Crimean sky, SBU Alpha sent heavy-warhead drones into Belbek and punched holes through Russia’s layered defenses, torching a Foxhound and the radars and missile systems meant to keep the whole peninsula under lock and key.

After a deadly ambush near Palmyra, US forces hit more than 70 ISIS targets across central Syria in a heavy retaliation strike meant to keep ISIS cells from regrouping. Russia is pounding Odesa while massing forces near Pokrovsk, and back home a Bellevue officer-involved shooting is under review by King County’s independent investigators as both the officer and suspect recover.

Floods in Washington, a brutal drone-and-missile strike in Ukraine, and a new UK intel superstructure all point to the same truth: when things go sideways, it’s the quiet professionals on watch, on shift, and on the ground who keep people alive. And on the Army National Guard’s 388th birthday, the message is simple: everyone loves the Guard the moment the mission gets real, because these citizen-soldiers show up, do the unsexy work, and hold the line.

Grey Bull Rescue founder Bryan Stern exfiltrated Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in a donor-backed operation that treated high risk like routine. Meanwhile, Peru is buying K2 tanks and K808 armored vehicles from South Korea, and Ukraine’s SBU Alpha is linked in open-source reporting to a long-range drone strike claim against Russia’s Filanovsky Caspian oil infrastructure.

Zelensky’s refusal to trade away a single inch of Ukrainian soil is not stubbornness but the last solid line between a world of rules and a world where every dictator thinks they can redraw the map at gunpoint.