‘Main reason for optimism’ is a belief that war in Ukraine will end in 2026 with Moscow’s ‘objectives’ achieved,’ pollster says.
Published On 25 Dec 202525 Dec 2025
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A majority of Russians expect the war in Ukraine to end in 2026, a state-owned research centre said, as Russian forces make advances on the battlefield and efforts intensify to reach a ceasefire deal between Kyiv and Moscow.
VTsIOM, Russia’s leading public opinion research centre, said on Wednesday that its annual survey of sentiment around the outgoing year and expectations for the coming year found Russians are viewing 2026 with “growing optimism”.
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“Expectations for next year traditionally look much more optimistic … In other words, while the negative perception of the current situation persists, Russians have become more likely to accept (or believe, hope?) future improvements this year, but they still do so with caution,” the organisation said in a review of its survey findings released online.
In a year-end presentation, VTsIOM deputy head Mikhail Mamonov said 70 percent of 1,600 people surveyed viewed 2026 as being a more “successful” year for Russia than this year, with 55 percent of respondents linking hope for a better year to a possible end to what Russia officially calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
“The main reason for optimism is the possible completion of the special military operation and the achievement of the stated objectives, in line with the national interests outlined by the president,” Mamonov said at the presentation.
Mamonov pointed to the Russian military’s ongoing offensive in Ukraine, Washington’s reluctance to finance the Ukraine war and the European Union’s inability to fully replace the United States’ role in Ukraine – financially and militarily – as key factors behind the prospects for an eventual deal to end the fighting.
At the conclusion of the conflict, reintegration of Russian military veterans into society and the reconstruction of Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine, as well as Russian border areas, will be the main priorities, Mamonov added.
While the actual level of Russian public fatigue with the war is difficult to measure due to strict state controls on the media, expressions of public dissent as well as the prosecution of those who criticise Moscow’s war on its neighbour, approximately two-thirds of Russians support peace talks, according to independent pollster Levada, the highest number since the start of the war in 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in comments released on Wednesday that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Moscow reciprocated by also pulling back its forces and allowed the area to become a demilitarised zone monitored by international forces.
In comments to reporters about an overarching 20-point plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the US had hammered out in Florida in recent days, Zelenskyy also said that a similar arrangement could be possible for the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control.
Russia has given no indication that it will agree to any kind of withdrawal from land it has seized in Ukraine and has long insisted that Kyiv must give up the remaining territory it still holds in the Donbas industrial area before any discussions on the cessation of fighting.
Russia has captured most of Luhansk and about 70 percent of Donetsk – the two regions that make up the Donbas.
Zelenskyy also said that figuring out the future control of the Donbas as part of the plan was “the most difficult point”, and creating a demilitarised economic zone in the region would require difficult discussions on how far troops would be required to move back and where international forces would be stationed.
Such discussions should be held at the leaders’ level, he said.
MILWAUKEE — A jury found a Wisconsin judge accused of helping a Mexican immigrant dodge federal authorities guilty of obstruction Thursday, marking a victory for President Trump as he continues his sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.
Federal prosecutors charged Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan with obstruction, a felony, and concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, in April. The jury acquitted her on the concealment count, but she still faces up to five years in prison on the obstruction count.
The jury returned the verdicts after deliberating for six hours. Dugan faces up to five years in prison when she’s sentenced, but no date had been set as of late Thursday evening.
The case inflamed tensions over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with his administration branding Dugan an activist judge and Democrats countering that the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.
Dugan and her attorneys left the courtroom, ducked into a side conference room and closed the door without speaking to reporters. Steve Biskupic, her lead attorney, later told reporters that he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same.
U.S. Atty. Brad Schimel denied the case was political and urged people to accept the verdict peacefully. He said courthouse arrests are safer because people are screened for weapons and it isn’t unfair for law enforcement to arrest wanted people in courthouses.
“Some have sought to make this about a larger political battle,” Schimel said. “While this case is serious for all involved, it is ultimately about a single day, a single bad day, in a public courthouse. The defendant is certainly not evil. Nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.”
U.S. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche praised the verdict on X, saying nobody is above the law, even judges.
According to court filings that include an FBI affidavit and a federal grand jury indictment, immigration authorities traveled to the Milwaukee County courthouse on April 18 after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.
Dugan learned that agents were in the corridor outside her courtroom waiting for Flores-Ruiz. She left the courtroom to confront them, falsely telling them their administrative warrant for Flores-Ruiz wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest him and directing them to go to the chief judge’s office.
While the agents were gone, she addressed Flores-Ruiz’s case off the record, told his attorney that he could attend his next hearing via Zoom and led Flores-Ruiz and the attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.
Prosecutors worked during Dugan’s trial to show that she directed agents to the chief judge’s office to create an opening for Flores-Ruiz to escape.
An FBI agent who led the investigation testified that after agents left the corridor, she immediately moved Flores-Ruiz’s case to the top of her docket, told him that he could appear for his next hearing via Zoom and led him out the private door.
Prosecutors also played audio recordings from her courtroom in which she can be heard telling her court reporter that she’d take “the heat” for leading Flores-Ruiz out the back.
Her attorneys countered that she was trying to follow courthouse protocols that called for court employees to report any immigration agents to their supervisors and she didn’t intentionally try to obstruct the arrest team.
Outlook for next year’s business operations among South Korean small business owners, Dec. 16, 2025. Graphic by Asia Today and translated by UPI.
Dec. 16 (Asia Today) — Nearly half of South Korea’s small business owners say policies to boost domestic demand and consumer spending are the most urgently needed form of support, according to a new survey released Tuesday.
The Korea Federation of SMEs said 49.5% of respondents cited domestic demand and consumption stimulus as their top policy priority, according to its “Survey Results on Small Business Owners’ Management Status and Policy Tasks.”
The survey was conducted from Nov. 4 to 21 among 800 small businesses in daily life-related sectors, including wholesale and retail trade, lodging and food services, and manufacturing.
The results showed a largely pessimistic outlook for next year. About 89.3% of respondents said they expect business conditions to remain similar to this year (51.3%) or worsen (38.0%), while only 10.8% reported a positive outlook.
Asked about the biggest management burdens this year, respondents most frequently cited rising prices, including higher raw material and supply costs (56.3%), followed by declining sales due to weak domestic demand (48.0%), rising labor costs and labor shortages (28.5%), and loan repayment burdens (20.4%). Despite these pressures, 97.4% said they are not considering closing their businesses, which the federation attributed to the high share of livelihood-based startups, accounting for 91.4% of respondents.
The survey also found increased reliance on online platforms. The share of small business owners using online platforms rose 3.5 percentage points from a year earlier to 28.1%. Platform use was highest in the lodging and food service sector (44.3%), compared with wholesale and retail trade (20.3%) and manufacturing (15.5%). Among platform users, platform-based sales accounted for an average of 41.7% of total revenue, up 6.3 percentage points from a year earlier.
About 25.7% of respondents said their loan balances increased compared with the previous year, with the average interest rate on current loans at 4.4%. Among small business owners with loans, 90.4% said interest and principal repayments were burdensome.
Assessing the effectiveness of domestic demand stimulus policies implemented this year, 52.3% of respondents in the lodging and food service sector said they felt policy effects, compared with 18.0% in wholesale and retail trade and 8.5% in manufacturing. Among those who reported effects, 65.4% said the impact was temporary, while 19.7% cited short-term sales increases.
Looking ahead, respondents said future consumption-promotion policies should focus on concentrating spending in local commercial districts (41.8%), expanding the scale and duration of support (31.8%), and strengthening policy promotion (24.5%).
When asked about the most urgent tasks for the National Assembly or government, respondents cited stimulating consumption and reviving local economies (52.1%), addressing rising labor costs and labor shortages (45.0%), easing loan burdens caused by high interest rates (42.8%), and reducing energy costs (26.3%).
Choo Moon-gap, head of the Economic Policy Division at the Korea Federation of SMEs, said persistent inflation, weak domestic demand and a high exchange rate have worsened business conditions for small business owners. While consumption-stimulating measures such as livelihood recovery coupons have had some effect, he said, mid- to long-term growth policies that small business owners can clearly feel are also needed.
Scientists say up to 4,000 glaciers could melt annually if global warming is not curbed.
Published On 16 Dec 202516 Dec 2025
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The world could lose thousands of glaciers each year over the coming decades unless global warming is curbed, leaving only a fraction remaining by the end of the century, scientists warn.
A scientific study published on Monday in Nature Climate Change warned that unless governments take action now, the planet could reach a stage of “peak glacier extinction” by midcentury with up to 4,000 melting each year.
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About 200,000 glaciers remain in the world, and about 750 disappear each year. That rate could rise more than fivefold if global temperatures soar by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels and accelerate global warming, according to the report, which predicted only 18,288 glaciers would remain by the end of the century.
Even if governments meet their pledges to limit warming to 1.5C (2.7F) under the Paris Agreement, the world could still end up losing 2,000 glaciers a year by 2041. At that pace, a little more than half of the planet’s glaciers would be gone by 2100.
That best case scenario appears unlikely. The United Nations Environment Programme already warned last month that warming is on track to exceed 1.5C in the next few years. It predicted that even if countries meet promises they have made in their climate action plans, the planet will warm 2.3C to 2.5C (4.1F to 4.5F) by the end of the century.
Monday’s study was published at the close of the UN’s International Year of Glacier Preservation with the findings intended to “underscore the urgency of ambitious climate policy”.
“The difference between losing 2,000 and 4,000 glaciers per year by the middle of the century is determined by near-term policies and societal decisions taken today,” the study said.
Coauthor Matthias Huss, a glacier expert at ETH Zurich university, took part in 2019 in a symbolic funeral for the Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps.
“The loss of glaciers that we are speaking about here is more than just a scientific concern. It really touches our hearts,” he said.
Epstein took dozens more flights to the UK than were previously known
Almost 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein arrived at and departed from UK airports, some with British women on board who say they were abused by the billionaire, a BBC investigation has found.
We have established that three British women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein’s records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the convicted sex offender.
US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein victims told the BBC it was “shocking” that there has never been a “full-scale UK investigation” into his activities on the other side of the Atlantic.
The UK was one of the “centrepieces” of Epstein’s operations, one said.
Testimony from one of these British victims helped convict Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex-trafficking in the US in 2021. But the victim has never been contacted by UK police, her Florida-based lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC.
The woman, given the name Kate in the trial, was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.
The BBC is not publishing further details about the women in the documents because of the risk this might identify them.
US lawyer Sigrid McCawley said the British authorities have “not taken a closer look at those flights, at where he was at, who he was seeing at those moments, and who was with him on those planes, and conducted a full investigation”.
US Attorney’s Office SDNY
More information has emerged about Epstein, pictured here with Maxwell, and his UK links
Under the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act, the deadline to release all US government files on the sex-offender financier is Friday.
But the flight logs were among thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein’s estate which have been already made public over the past year, revealing more about his time in the UK, such as trips to royal residences.
The BBC examined these documents as part of an investigation trying to piece together Epstein’s activities in the UK.
It revealed that:
The incomplete flight logs and manifests record 87 flights linked to Epstein – dozens more than were previously known – arriving or departing from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018
Unidentified “females” were listed among the passengers travelling into and out of the UK in the logs
Fifteen of the UK flights took place after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, which should have raised questions from immigration officials
Although Epstein died in jail in 2019, before his trial on charges of trafficking minors for sex, legal experts have told the BBC a UK investigation could reveal whether British-based people enabled his crimes.
Two months ago the BBC sent the Metropolitan Police, which has previously examined allegations about Epstein’s activities in Britain, publicly available information about the UK flights with suspected trafficking victims on board.
Later, we sent the Met a detailed list of questions about whether it would investigate evidence of possible British victims of Epstein trafficked in and out of the UK.
The Met did not respond to our questions. On Saturday, it released a broader statement saying that it had “not received any additional evidence that would support reopening the investigation” into Epstein and Maxwell’s trafficking activities in the UK.
“Should new and relevant information be brought to our attention”, including any resulting from the release of material in the US, “we will assess it”, the Met said.
Sigrid McCawley, who represents hundreds of Epstein victims, criticised the Met for declining to investigate
US lawyer Brad Edwards, who has been representing Epstein victims since 2008, told us “three or four” of his clients are British women “who were abused on British soil both by Jeffrey Epstein and others”.
Other victims were recruited in the UK, trafficked to the United States and abused there, he said.
Mr Edwards said he is also representing women of other nationalities who say they were trafficked to the UK for abuse by Epstein and others.
Our analysis shows Epstein used commercial and chartered flights, as well as his private planes, to travel to the UK and to arrange transport for others, including alleged trafficking victims.
More than 50 of the flights involved his private jets, mostly flying to and from Luton Airport, with several flights at Birmingham International Airport, and one arrival and departure each at RAF Marham in west Norfolk and at Edinburgh Airport.
Limited records of commercial and chartered flights taken by Epstein, or paid for by him, show dozens more journeys, mainly via London Heathrow, but also Stansted and Gatwick.
In a number of the logs of Epstein’s private planes, including some detailing trips to the UK, women on the flight are identified only as unnamed “females”.
“He’s absolutely choosing airports where he feels it will be easier for him to get in and out with victims that he’s trafficking,” said Ms McCawley.
Private aircraft did not have to provide passenger details to UK authorities before departure in the same way as commercial aircraft during the period covered by the documents we examined. The Home Office told us they were “not subject to the same centralised record-keeping”.
That loophole was only closed in April last year.
Kate, the British woman who testified against Maxwell, was on some of the commercial flights in the records we examined. She described in court that she had been 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein – who then sexually abused her at Maxwell’s central London home.
In the 2021 trial, she described how Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl outfit to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein. As well as the dozen flights to and from the UK, Kate told the court she had been flown to Epstein’s island in the US Virgin Islands, New York and Palm Beach in Florida, where she says the abuse continued into her 30s.
Reuters
Kate, pictured on the right with her face blurred, testified at Maxwell’s trial
Mr Edwards, her lawyer, told BBC News that even after that testimony, Kate has “never been asked” by any UK authorities any questions about her experience – “not even a phone call”.
He said that if British police were to launch an investigation into Epstein’s activities and his enablers, Kate would be happy to help.
Prof Bridgette Carr, a human-trafficking expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said trafficking cases usually require many people working together.
“It’s never just one bad person,” she said. “You don’t think about the accountant and the lawyer and the banker – or all the bankers – and all these people that had to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, be OK with what was happening for it to continue.”
There are also questions about how Epstein was able to travel freely to the UK after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for sex, which meant he had to register as a sex offender in Florida, New York and the US Virgin Islands.
Epstein was released from prison in 2009 after serving 13 months. Documents suggest Epstein took a Virgin Atlantic flight from the US to London Heathrow in September 2010, just two months after he completed his probation on house arrest.
Home Office rules at the time said foreign nationals who received a prison sentence of 12 months or more should, in most cases, have been refused entry.
But immigration lawyer Miglena Ilieva, managing partner at ILEX Law Group, told us that US citizens did not usually require a UK visa for short stays, so there was no application process where they would be asked about criminal convictions.
“It was very much at the discretion of the individual immigration officer who would receive this person at the border,” she said.
The Home Office said it does not hold immigration and visa records beyond 10 years and added “it is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases”.
During the 1980s, Epstein also used a foreign passport – issued in Austria with his picture and a false name – to enter the UK as well as France, Spain and Saudi Arabia, according to US authorities.
Epstein also listed London as his place of residence in 1985, when he applied for a replacement passport, ABC News has previously reported.
Brad Edwards says his British client Kate has never been contacted by UK police
In its statement on Saturday, the Met said it had contacted “several other potential victims” when it examined 2015 allegations by Virginia Giuffre that she had been trafficked for sexual exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.
Ms Giuffre also said she was forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions, including when she was 17 at Maxwell’s home in London, in 2001. The former prince has consistently denied the allegations against him.
The Met said its examination of Ms Giuffre’s claims “did not result in any allegation of criminal conduct against any UK-based nationals” and it concluded that “other international authorities were best placed to progress these allegations”.
That decision was reviewed in August 2019 and again in 2021 and 2022 with the same result, it said.
But for lawyer Sigrid McCawley, the message the Met is sending to victims is “that if you come to law enforcement and this is a powerful person you’re reporting on… it will not get investigated.”
