“The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine, U.S. and Russian officials tell Axios. A top Russian official told Axios he’s optimistic about the plan. It’s not yet clear how Ukraine and its European backers will feel about it.

Zoom in: The plan’s 28 points fall into four general buckets, sources tell Axios: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe, and future U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine.

It’s unclear how the plan approaches contentious issues such as territorial control in eastern Ukraine — where Russian forces have been inching forward, but still control far less land than the Kremlin has demanded.

Behind the scenes: Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is leading the drafting of the plan and has discussed it extensively with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a U.S. official said.

Dmitriev, who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and is also deeply involved in diplomacy over Ukraine, told Axios in an interview on Monday that he spent three days huddled with Witkoff and other members of Trump’s team when Dmitriev visited Miami from Oct. 24-26.

Dmitriev expressed optimism about the deal’s chances of success because, unlike past efforts, “we feel the Russian position is really being heard.”

The other side: Witkoff was expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday in Turkey but postponed his trip, Ukrainian and U.S. officials said.

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O tem bi morali v Sloveniji imeti referendum:

.@vonderleyen has once again asked the member states for additional funds to finance Ukraine and the war.

What exactly does this mean?

The President of the Commission is asking for nothing less than an additional €135 billion over 2 years. This is 65% of Hungary’s annual economic output, 7 years of pensions from all Hungarian pensioners, and nearly 3/4 of the EU’s annual budget.

An astronomical sum that does not exist today. It simply does not exist.

The Brusselian “magic trick” would once again be a joint European loan, a move that would ensure even our grandchildren would be burdened with repaying the costs of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

They’re asking us, Hungarians, to contribute to this. A country that’s fined €1 million/day because we do not let migrants in. A country that’s financially punished because it has its own position on the war and on gender ideology.

This is more than impossible. This is categorically absurd. Hungary’s response will come without delay.

When the exchange ratio is 24,000 Ukrainian dead to 1,300 Russian, and 161,000 Ukrainian soldiers desert in a single year, the story writes itself: this wasn’t a war. It was a cull. And the empire cheered as Ukraine’s men were fed into the grinder, one generation after another.

Desertion in this case isn’t cowardice. Desertion is the last act of a man who realizes his government has signed his and his country’s death certificate.

And when 161,461 Ukrainian soldiers desert in the first 10 months of 2025, a 43× increase from 2022 (official number, unofficial numbers are likely higher), you’re not looking at a morale problem.

You’re looking at the collapse of an army that knows it has been condemned.

Condemned by its own leadership.

Condemned by the handlers who whisper orders from Washington, London, Brussels.

Condemned by an empire that views Ukrainian men as expendable placeholders on a geopolitical chessboard.

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Druga interpretacija te napovedi Goldman Sachsa za Kitajsko in učinka na Evropo je: Welcome to China shock 2.0:

za vsako odstotno točko rasti kitajskega izvoza se evropski izvoz zmanjša za 0.3 odstotne točke.

Kitajska sistematično odžira trg za evropski izvoz. Vendar tega ni kriva Kitajska, pač pa mi sami. Kitajska ima izdelke, ki jih mi nimamo ali pa jih ponujamo po bistveno višjih cenah (tipičen primer so električni avtomobili). Za to ni kriva Kitajska, pač pa naše lastne evropske politike: popolna odsotnost vizije in strategije, zanemarjanje in odsotnost industrijskih politik in politik za spodbujanje tehnološkega razvoja, ogromne administrativne ovire za poslovanje, napačne energetske politike, napačen odziv na vojno v Ukrajini, napačna migrantska politika itd. Evropa uničuje samo sebe. Oziroma evropski politični razred ubija evropsko gospodarstvo in s tem posledično bodočo blaginjo v Evropi. Evropsko gospodarstvo razpada pri živem telesu, le da to vedo samo menedžerji, medtem ko so politiki še vedno na nekem svojem oblaku. Politiki živijo v nekem svojem domišljijskem paralelnem svetu.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.

In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.

…

Volcanic eruptions rarely inject much water into the stratosphere. In the 18 years that NASA has been taking measurements, only two other eruptions – the 2008 Kasatochi event in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile – sent appreciable amounts of water vapor to such high altitudes. But those were mere blips compared to the Tonga event, and the water vapor from both previous eruptions dissipated quickly. The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano, on the other hand, could remain in the stratosphere for several years.

This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures. Massive volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo typically cool Earth’s surface by ejecting gases, dust, and ash that reflect sunlight back into space. In contrast, the Tonga volcano didn’t inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and the huge amounts of water vapor from the eruption may have a small, temporary warming effect, since water vapor traps heat. The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere and would not be enough to noticeably exacerbate climate change effects.

Vir: NASA

The EU’s Russian asset sequestration scheme is the only device that is left for the EU to fund Ukraine for the next two years, now that Trump has taken the US out of the picture. At first sight, the European Commission’s special purpose vehicle sounds too good to be true, a bit like the repackaged subprime mortgage bonds in the early 2000s. What this episode taught us is that the purpose of structured finance, always and everywhere, is to hide risk and to circumvent laws. The EU’s Russian asset sequestration scheme is destined to blow up. The political reality in the EU is that the governments in Germany, France, Spain, Italy or the UK are not ready to make the political and financial sacrifes for Ukraine.

Stvari, ki bi jih radi danes pozabili, kot da se niso nikoli zgodile:

1. Ruski predsednik Vladimir Putin je leta 2007 svaril pred širjenjem Nata proti ruskim mejam v nasprotju z obljubami leta 1990:

10 Feb 2007: Vladimir Putin was invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference. He questioned NATO’s eastward expansion and its role in promoting tension and distrust between Russia and the West. Putin: “It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders…”

“I think it’s obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary,” Putin added, “it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”

Putin asked, “Against whom is this expansion intended? What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

Putin reminded the audience what German Diplomat Manfred Wörner, then serving as NATO General Secretary, said on 17 May 1990 in Brussels: “The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.” Where are these guarantees?

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V isto kategorijo vrhunske človeške neumnosti spada tudi spodnja novica. Ukrajina je prepredena z ruskimi plinovodi, skozi katere teče najcenejši plin na svetu. Toda zaprla je pipe in se odločila, da bo raje kupovala 4-krat dražji ameriški utekočinjen plin in ga prek Grčije po transbalkanskem plinovodu prek Bolgarije, Romunije in Moldavije prenašala do Ukrajine. Zelenski se ob tem veselo smehlja, kajti (tudi) račun za plin bodo na koncu plačevali evropski davkoplačevalci. Other peoples money.