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Africa
Nigeria
(Saturday), 22 Nov 2025 Nigerian gunmen abducted a total of 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from St Mary's Catholic primary and aecondary school in Papiri, in north-central Nigeria’s Niger State yesterday. The attackers are still moving with the children into the bush. The school kidnappings come after an attack on a church earlier this week and after armed men stormed a secondary school in northwestern Nigeria, abducting 25 schoolgirls in similar circumstances in neighbouring Kebbi State’s Maga town, early on Monday morning. United States President Trump threatened military action over what he described as targeted killings of Nigeria’s Christians. Trump’s assertions echo claims that have gained traction among right-wing and Christian evangelical circles in recent months. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)
South Africa
November 23, 2025 The White House has mounted a new verbal attack on South Africa over the G-20 Leaders' Summit in Johannesburg this weekend after South African President Ramaphosa refused to allow a U.S. embassy delegation to take part in the summit’s closing ceremony. The U.S. takes over the G-20’s presidency next year. Trump withdrew all U.S. participation in the summit over his claims that some White South Africans were being racially discriminated against. Now South Africa’s chief rabbi, Dr. Goldstein, has also lashed out at the G-20, saying, "How can it be that in the long wish list of items that make up the G-20 Leaders Declaration, there wasn’t space to condemn one of the greatest human rights crises in Africa – the continent wide jihadi war on Christians?' He continued: 'How can it be that the first G-20 hosted in Africa by an African government ignores how Africa – from Mozambique to Mali, the DRC, Nigeria, Sudan and so many other countries – has become the central front of Islamist terrorism?' (Source: Fox News - U.S.)
Europe
European Commission
(Saturday ), Nov 22, 2025 ’The EU has responded to Trump’s 28-point peace plan, with der Leyen reiterating’ that there can be no agreement on Ukraine without Ukraine. European Council President Costa and European Commission President der Leyen have already held a call with Zelenskyy, as well as with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Macron. The leaders of the UK, France, and Germany also met earlier today to discuss a joint response to a unilateral US plan for Ukraine, the French presidency said. ’The European Union’ will hold a meeting later today with leaders in South Africa on the margins of the G20 gathering in Johannesburg to discuss the peace plan proposed to Ukraine by US President Trump. The countries participating in discussions are Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. 'Costa will also invite all 27 EU leaders to a meeting on Ukraine on the margins of the EU–African Union Summit in Luanda (24-25 November)'. Ukraine and the US are launching consultations in Switzerland on ways to end the war, the Secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, Umerov, who is on Ukraine’s negotiating team, wrote on social media today. Zelenskyy had minutes earlier approved the Ukrainian delegation for the talks, which will be led by his top aide Yermak. (Source: Euractiv - Brussels, Belgium)
Ukraine
(Sunday), 23/11/2025 US Secretary of State Rubio and head of Ukraine's delegation Yermak both hailed good progress in talks underway in Geneva today to discuss a proposal to halt the Ukraine war. The new document proposes that 'Ukraine's military be capped at 800,000 in peacetime' rather than a blanket cap of 600,000 proposed by the US plan. It also says negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact rather than pre-determining that certain areas should be recognised as de facto Russian as the US plan suggests. The counter-proposal was drafted by the so-called European E3 powers – Britain, France and Germany. The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Yermak, wrote on social media that the first meetings were held with national security advisers from the E3. (Source: France 24 "with AFP /France/, Reuters /United Kingdom/ and AP' /U.S./)
North America
United States
(Sunday), November 23, 2025 Secretary of State Rubio on Saturday night was writing in a social media post that "The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine. "As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians, State Department spokesperson Pigott posted on social media. (Source: CBS News - U.S.)
(23 November 2025) US President Trump, who has championed the 28-point plan, said on Sunday that Ukraine had not been grateful for American efforts over the war, even as US weapons continue to flow to Kyiv via NATO and Europe keeps buying Russian oil. (Source: Irish Independent - Ireland)
(November 23, 2025 War Secretary Hegseth met with Nigerian National Security Adviser Ribadu last week amid threats from Trump to cut off aid to Nigeria if it 'continues to allow the killing of Christians.' Nigerian officials have pushed back on the accusation. "Hegseth emphasized the need for Nigeria to demonstrate commitment and take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians and conveyed the Department’s desire to work by, with, and through Nigeria to deter and degrade terrorists that threaten the United States," the Pentagon said in a statement. (Source: Fox News - U.S.)
Friday), November 21, 2025 The White House is pressuring Ukraine to sign on to its new peace proposal by Thanksgiving or lose U.S. support to the country, even as Driscoll took a lighter tone in Thursday’s meeting. U.S. Army Secretary Driscoll presented Zelensky on Thursday „with a version of the 28-point plan President Trump’s special envoy Witkoff recently drafted with Russian envoy Dmitriev”. Zelensky requested changes to the document on Thursday and Driscoll’s team agreed some changes could be made. The document would initially be signed by Zelensky and Trump before being presented to the Russians. The U.S. appears to have divided the teams between Witkoff and Driscoll to play good cop and bad cop - one presses, the other tries to say: let’s work together to change the plan. Following the Thursday meeting in Kyiv, U.S. officials including Davis, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, said the timeline for signing is aggressive. This deal is between the U.S., Ukraine, Russia and Europe so I think it will be more like 12 months to negotiate. "I think this is the beginning of the peace process, not the end,” one person familiar with the contents of the plan said. The Kremlin has yet to signal its backing for the plan. Kremlin spokesman Peskov on Friday said that Moscow officially had not received any new peace proposals, and added that Russia and the U.S. had made virtually no progress on issues that are irritants in bilateral relations. “The effective work of the Russian Armed Forces should convince Zelensky and his regime that it is better to negotiate and do so now, better to do so now than later,” Peskov said. Zelensky has been weakened in recent weeks by a major corruption scandal that has ensnared several of his close associates, and which - coupled with the exhausting pace of Russian military strikes and slow advances on the ground - could leave the Ukrainian leader with diminishing options as U.S. officials exert greater pressure on him to accept a deal to end the war. (Source: The Washington Post - U.S.)
(November 21, 2025) Senior foreign policy correspondent reports on President Trump's 28-point peace plan for Ukraine and Russia and the reactions from Putin and Zelenskyy. (Source: Fox News - U.S.)
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South America
Brazil
(22 November 2025) There is a bitter dispute over whether to include any reference to fossil fuels in the COP30 final text. Fears grow of collapsed summit as fossil fuel row threatens to derail it. The draft released by Brazil yesterday omitted both the phrase "fossil fuels" and the word "roadmap". European Union calls host nation Brazil's proposed COP30 agreement unacceptable. EU climate commissioner Hoekstra warned the summit risked ending with no agreement. Consensus is required for a deal among nearly 200 nations. The summit is held without the United States after President Trump shunned the event. Thirty-six countries - a group including wealthy states, emerging economies and small island nations - had written to Brazil warning they would reject any outcome that failed to include a clear plan to move away from oil, coal and gas. The rejected draft called for a manyfold increase in financial support for developing countries and urged efforts to triple adaptation finance by 2030. But divisions remained, including over the inclusion of trade measures - particularly Europe’s new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism - which developing nations say could damage their export revenues. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)
Venezuela
November 22, 2025 According to a recent report in The Warzone, a senior Russian general, Makarevich, has been deployed to Venezuela to head what is described as a rotational advisory mission of roughly 120 Russian troops. The report details how these Russian troops have been placed in advisory roles for the Venezuelan Armed Forces, specifically in infantry, drone operations, special forces, military intelligence/signals intelligence, armor, aircraft, artillery, even dogs and domestic surveillance. General Makarevich’s unit is part of a larger movement of Russian forces into Venezuela. The Russians have been flying planeloads of military equipment into the country since the start of the geopolitical crisis. Russians have allegedly been getting moved into Venezuela from the Russian Africa Corps - indicating the need for Russian troops with expertise in jungle warfare. It is likely that these Russian advisers will play a similar role for Venezuela as American advisers are embedded in nominally non-combat roles in Ukraine. It has been speculated that the Wagner Group mercenaries in the country will be working directly with elite Venezuelan units, preparing to build an insurgency against the invading American forces. The Russians are attempting to project power into America’s strategic backyard, which complicates American freedom of action. It signals Moscow’s willingness to hedge geographically far from Ukraine. There could even be a scenario wherein Moscow basically trades its position in Venezuela for America’s role in Ukraine. The training of Venezuelan forces in drones, special forces, signals intelligence, and even domestic surveillance hints that asymmetric warfare is afoot. A US mission in the Caribbean might face higher stakes if Russia provides not only advisory support but actual weapons (air-defense, standoff missiles) to Venezuela. For regional actors the Russian presence becomes a signal: Russia is well inside of America’s. That could influence regional alignments, arms purchases, or intelligence cooperation. In all, the United States needs to seriously understand that the Russians are not leaving Venezuela, and are placing their forces there for a specific reason. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Weichert, who has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine.
(Thursday), Nov. 20, 2025 For more than two decades, a loose-knit group of Venezuelan generals and senior officials has enabled the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine to Europe, the Caribbean and the U.S, American and Colombian officials say. Venezuela hardly grows any coca, the leaf from which cocaine is made, and has few laboratories. Nearly all cocaine is produced in neighboring Colombia. Venezuela plays an important role in allowing the drug to move through its territory and then onto ships and planes that traffic it. Most cocaine bound to the U.S. is shipped from Colombia’s Pacific coast and next door Ecuador. Venezuela’s military permits Colombian guerrillas and cocaine gangs who pay millions of dollars in bribes to move cocaine through the country. It does facilitate the security, the logistics by the National Guard and the Army. The cocaine is then shipped by air to Central America or by sea to Caribbean islands and Europe. This Venezuelan network, known as the Cartel of the Suns, is in the Trump administration’s sights. The Cartel of the Suns isn’t a hierarchical cartel but rather a diffuse network, a loose and sometimes fractious group mostly made up of military officers who facilitate drug shipments, getting payoffs along the way. The group’s name, “Suns” refers to the gold insignia, equivalent to a U.S. general’s stars, worn on the epaulets of Venezuelan generals’ uniforms. Venezuela denies that it facilitates the shipment of drugs to the U.S. But a 2020 indictment accused President Maduro and his associates of enriching themselves and using cocaine as a weapon that flooded the U.S. with the drug and inflicted damage on Americans. Maduro denies the charges in a September letter to Trump, urging dialogue over conflict. U.S. prosecutors trace the drug-trafficking connections to the presidency of the late Chávez, who took power in 1999 and ordered generals to provide weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which fought the Colombian state until a 2016 peace accord. Maduro, then the country’s vice president, succeeded Chavez as president in 2013. Since then, Maduro has presided over Venezuela’s economic meltdown, exacerbated by U.S. economic sanctions imposed in 2019. Venezuela’s GDP has contracted by 80%, forcing eight million Venezuelans, a quarter of the population, to flee. The U.S. accuses other senior Venezuelan leaders in the alleged conspiracy, placing a $25 million bounty on Venezuelan Interior Minister Cabello and $15 million for Gen. Padrino, Venezuela’s defense minister. Cabello recently denied the existence of the Cartel of the Suns, which he calls an imperialist narrative. The involvement of military officers in the drug trade is central to Maduro’s staying power. Permitting them to benefit from the drug trade binds them to Maduro, building regime cohesion. Two of the alleged members of the Cartel of the Suns are already in American prisons. Both Gen. Carvajal, a former head of Venezuelan military intelligence known as The Chicken for his long neck, and Gen. Alcalá, have pleaded guilty to helping to smuggle tons of cocaine to the U.S., and providing weapons to the FARC. In 2006, senior officials sent 5.6 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine in a DC-9 jet from the Caracas airport to Mexico, the Maduro indictment says. They created an air bridge which in 2010 alone sent 75 cocaine-laden flights from Venezuela to Honduras. In 2013, Venezuelan officials sent another planeload with 1.3 tons of cocaine to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The arrest in Colombia of Makled, then Venezuela’s top drug boss on a U.S. warrant in 2010 shed a light on the links between senior government officials and drug traffickers. At the height of his powers he exported 10 tons of cocaine to the U.S. a month and allegedly controlled Puerto Cabello, Venezuela’s most important port. ’All my business associates are generals,’ Makled said, claiming to have 40 generals on his payroll, in correspondence with an associate. In one incident, Makled bought about eight tons of cocaine from Venezuelan generals and law enforcement sources the officials had themselves stolen from major drug traffickers. Drug trafficking even reached deep into Maduro’s own family, the Maduro indictment says. In 2015, two of his wife’s nephews were arrested in a sting in Haiti after they offered to get hundreds of kilos of cocaine to DEA undercover agents. The two told agents they were at war with the U.S. and bragged about their connection to a top FARC commander. Convicted in 2016 in New York, the pair was set free in exchange for seven U.S. prisoners in 2022. Maduro is accused of stealing two presidential elections. Last year’s candidate González, now is living in exile in Spain. The State Department says it will designate the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign-terrorist organization on Monday. (Source: The Wall Street Journal - U.S.)
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