BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF - Blackwater Worldwide

Posted by BW Actual on Dec 3rd 2025

Ukraine

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Pres. Putin for almost five hours yesterday to discuss the 19-point U.S. proposal for ending the war in Ukraine, which was watered down from the original, pro-Russia 28-point plan after several rounds of U.S.-Ukraine talks.
A senior Kremlin foreign policy aide reported that yesterday's marathon session ended as other recent rounds of U.S.-Russia talks had: without any big breakthroughs on the Kremlin's uncompromising demands.
The Kremlin was lukewarm about the 28-point plan before Ukraine pushed back on some of its most pro-Russian terms, so few expected Putin to embrace the more balanced proposal currently on the table.
Separately, Putin is clearly bothered by Ukraine's recent strikes on tankers linked to Russia. Putin called the strikes "piracy," and laid out a range of possible retaliatory measures he's considering, from intensifying Russian strikes on Ukrainian ports to targeting Ukraine's allies on the high seas.

India

India's government issued a new order last week requiring all smartphones to come bundled with a digital tracking app called Sanchar Saathi.
The app would ostensibly help prevent crimes like phone theft and call-center fraud, but opposition politicians and privacy advocates decried the app's potential for intruding on citizens' private lives.
The government heeded their concerns and walked back its bold order in two steps: first, it said users would be able to delete the app if they wanted to; now, it has fully repealed the order mandating the app's pre-installation on all smartphones used or sold in India.

DRC

The ceasefire deal that DRC and Rwanda are due to sign at the White House tomorrow is already looking shaky.
Both sides accused the other of violating their standing, half-hearted temporary truce and launching fresh attacks in South Kivu. Both also claimed to have successfully repelled the other's attacks.
In reality, they never stopped attacking each other, despite signing numerous temporary truces and ceasefire framework agreements since early August.
Few think tomorrow's truce will be any more likely to hold.

Guinea-Bissau

Guinea-Bissau's electoral commission announced that it - unfortunately - would not be able to publish results from last week's election due to attacks on election offices in which armed men destroyed ballots and servers storing digital results.
[It's worth noting that Guinea-Bissau is a militarized narco-state with strict civilian gun laws and low rates of civilian firearm ownership: any "armed men" there are almost certainly military personnel under the president's command.]
The destruction of election results is highly convenient for "ousted" president Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who observers and the opposition say was losing the vote before he claimed to have been overthrown in a coup and replaced by his close ally and former chief of staff.
Multiple credible reports accuse Embalo of faking the coup so he could rule by proxy from comfy exile, despite losing the election.