BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF - Blackwater Worldwide

Posted by BW Actual on Oct 8th 2025

Syria

Syrian government soldiers exchanged fire with Kurdish fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Aleppo yesterday, but the clashes quickly subsided with a ceasefire that Kurdish leader Mazoum Abdi negotiated with the central government in Damascus.
The ceasefire ended this round of clashes, but the episode highlighted the challenges that Interim President Ahmed Al Sharaa's government faces in uniting Syria's disparate minority groups, including the Kurds in the north, the Druze in the south, the Alawites in the west, and others. The Kurds, in particular, have resisted giving up their longstanding relative autonomy to join a central government whose leaders they don't fully trust.
Separately - but on a related note - Al Sharaa's government explicitly acknowledged that this week's indirect elections resulted in a People's Assembly with "significant shortcomings" in the share of women and minority appointees.
Al Sharaa has paid much lip service to his intent to foster an inclusive government, but his critics say he's done too little to actually include non-Sunnis. He now has a chance to rectify the People's Assembly "shortcomings" by allocating the one-third of Assembly seats under his control to more women and minority legislators.
A government spokesman suggested that Al Sharaa plans to do exactly that to "compensate" for the heavily Sunni choices that local councils picked for the other two-thirds of seats.

Gaza

Israel and Hamas continue indirect talks on Pres. Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan in Egypt today. They'll be joined by U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who will push both sides to accept Trump's proposal.

Ukraine and Russia

Russia's Pres. Putin celebrated his 73rd birthday yesterday with warm wishes from allies like North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Belarus's Pres. Lukashenko, and by holding a lengthy meeting with his top military comrades.
In his birthday military meeting, Putin boasted that Russian forces have seized (or rather, "liberated") 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) of Ukrainian territory - roughly 1% of Ukraine's total land area - during 2025, bringing the total share of Ukrainian land under Russian control to about 20%.

North Korea

UK-based crypto analysis firm Elliptic reported that North Korean hackers have made off with a record haul of over $2.0 billion in cryptocurrency heists in 2025, including $1.5 billion from the Pyongyang-based Lazarus Group's massive Bybit hack in February.
Western intelligence agencies believe the North Korean state is heavily involved in the hacking industry and uses stolen proceeds to fund its nuclear weapons and missile development programs.

U.S.

The White House issued a legal memo yesterday suggesting that some furloughed federal workers might not be entitled to back pay when the ongoing government shutdown ends, and blaming Democrats for jeopardizing workers' paychecks by failing to accede to Republican budget demands to end the shutdown.