Ukraine

• Sergei Lavrov - Russia's foreign minister - called the "special military operation" in Ukraine a war for the first time in a very pointed quote: "We didn't just get up and go to war against Ukraine [just because] we didn't like Zelensky...It was for a reason; we warned [Ukraine] for many, many, many years."
• Lavrov also said Russia's strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are merely intended to hamper the delivery of foreign weapons to Ukraine: "The infrastructure that is now under attack is the infrastructure that provides the combat potential of the Ukrainian armed forces." The Ukrainian civilians shivering in the cold without power - up to 50% of the population at times, per Ukraine - probably see it differently.

• Israeli forces killed two senior terrorists during a pre-dawn arrest raid in the West Bank yesterday, and Israeli officials are worried about reprisals: both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have threatened to retaliate.

• Rwandan president Kagame accused his DRC counterpart, Felix Tshisekedi, of using violence in eastern DRC as an excuse to delay elections - which are now slated for Dec. 2023. DRC has a history of postponing elections at the last minute, so we'll see if this timeline sticks.
• Despite Kagame calling out Tshisekedi over elections, the tenuous ceasefire in eastern DRC appears to remain intact: neither DRC forces nor M23 rebels (who DRC accuses Kagame of supporting) have broken it yet, and it's been almost a week.

Iran

• Iranian security forces in Bandar Anzali shot a man dead on Tuesday after he reportedly honked his car horn in celebration of Iran's soccer loss to the U.S., which knocked Iran out of the World Cup. Now it's emerged that the deceased happened to be a childhood friend of one of Iran's midfielders, Saeid Ezatolahi.
• Ezatolahi posted a tribute to his friend on Instagram with an unusually blunt (for Iran) critique: "Be sure that some day when the masks fall and the truth appears, they'll pay for your family's mournful hearts and your mother's grief."

• Someone sent a series of letter bombs to five high-profile targets in Spain: the prime minister, the defense minister, the Ukrainian and U.S. ambassadors, and a weapons factory in Zaragoza that reportedly makes grenade launchers for Ukrainian forces. Investigators believe the bombs are connected to Spain's support for Ukraine.