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The Tragic Transformation of the Hong Kong High-Rise Fire into a Deadly Disaster

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While the exact cause of the inferno is still unclear, footage of the fire offers some clues to how it became so deadly. Experts point to the lethal mix of combustible materials, like substandard scaffolding netting and polystyrene foam boards installed on windows.

The fire tore through the Wang Fuk Court housing estate with astonishing speed, leaping from building to building, each of which was 32 stories high.

Flames not only raced up the sides of the high-rises but sped through the interiors, consuming multiple floors. That was particularly deadly because it trapped residents inside and made it harder for firefighters to slow the blaze and reach survivors.

The fire burned for more than 40 hours, ultimately killing more than 150 people. It burned with such ferocity that some bodies were charred beyond recognition or even reduced to ashes. The disaster has led to public anger about unsafe construction practices and why the government failed to prevent this.

Here is how the design of the buildings and the construction materials used may have contributed to the fire’s spread:

The Upward Race

Wang Fuk Court, a dense housing estate in northern Hong Kong, was home to more than 4,000 people, most of them older and of modest means, according to census data. The Nov. 26 blaze started at Block F.

Officials say netting on a lower floor caught fire first, a moment that a passerby apparently captured on video.

Around 2:51 p.m., Nov. 26

@striking_biking, via Thread

The video shows the fire at an alcove between two wings of the cross-shaped building and in front of a staircase.

That semi-enclosed space may have created a “stack” or “chimney effect” of vertical air flow that pushed the fire quickly upward, experts say. The gap between the scaffolding and the exterior wall could also have caused that effect.

The fire raced rapidly upward within minutes.

@striking_biking, via Thread

“That exterior gap chimney effect is real and is the key to what happened,” says Jonathan Barnett, managing director of Basic Expert, a fire engineering consulting firm.

“Something that would normally not burn very quickly will burn very quickly because of the radiant heat feedback inside this chimney,” he said, referring to how the heat from the fire would have bounced back and forth between the walls of the alcove.

Every tower in Wang Fuk Court featured these recessed alcoves. During the fire they became vertical express lanes for heat and smoke, fire experts say.

“The recessed corner acts like a vertical channel that rapidly draws hot smoke upward,” said Lung-ken Tsai, the chairman of the Taipei Civil Engineering and Architectural Society.

Similar columns of fire were visible in the other buildings, too.

Flammable Construction Material

The eight apartment towers at Wang Fuk Court, under renovation since last summer, were sheathed in bamboo scaffolding and plastic netting to prevent construction material from falling to the ground.

Investigators said that after a summer typhoon, contractors had replaced some of the netting with cheaper material that did not meet fire-safety standards.

So many windows were covered with the flammable foam panels that in the one unaffected building, the police found them on windows in the elevator lobby on every floor.

As the panels caught fire, they helped spread the fire vertically. And as the boards melted into liquid, the material likely became like gasoline, spreading fire downward as well, according to Mr. Barnett.

They also caused the windows to overheat, breaking the glass and allowing the fire to enter the buildings, officials said.

Source: Hong Kong Housing Authority

The foam boards meant that many residents could not see what was going on outside even after the fire had started. Photos taken from inside apartment units before the fire show how the foam boards completely blocked the view.

Note: A small area of the second photo was blurred by the person who provided it to hide identifiable personal items.

Others have blamed the bamboo scaffolding, which is not highly flammable but can still ignite at high temperatures. Temperatures within the building reached as high as 930 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

As pieces of bamboo caught fire and broke off, they blocked fire exits and made it dangerous for firefighters to enter. The scaffolding also made it hard for firefighters to position rescue ladders.

In a city where most buildings are made of reinforced concrete, making such exterior fires rare, the firefighters struggled.

“We never imagined there would be this kind of situation,” said Chan Man, a civil engineer in Hong Kong who has worked on government projects. Mr. Chan said most of the city’s safety regulations are geared toward interior fires, such as those caused by faulty appliances.

The windows of the elevator lobby and stairwell of each building posed another problem: As they shattered in the heat, smoke and fire entered the corridors, cutting off residents’ escape routes.

The fires on multiple floors prevented firefighters from moving to the higher levels, and narrow corridors limited the number of firefighters that could be on a given floor, officials said. It was so hot that apartment units kept reigniting, slowing the firefighters even more.

A fire climbing the side of a high-rise and igniting multiple floors at once can undermine some of the most basic strategies used to slow the fire and rescue survivors, said Charles Blaich, a former deputy chief of the New York City Fire Department.

One standard practice is to connect hoses to standpipes, or water supplies in the building, two floors below the fire, Mr. Blaich said. Then firefighters climb the stairs, pulling the hoses with them.

“Usually it’s a burning apartment,” Mr. Blaich said. “You go down the hall, you enter the apartment, and you extinguish the fire.”

But none of that works if the fire is burning on floors above and below the firefighters.

A Cascade of Other Failures

Experts say the fire jumped from one high-rise to another in a “domino effect” as falling embers and burning debris reached the scaffolding netting or polystyrene foam of other buildings — similar to how wildfires spread.

The intense heat from the fire may also have “preheated” neighboring buildings, between 100 and 30 feet away, making it easier for those burning embers to start new fires.

“The mesh, the polystyrene, all the outside of the building are heated up because they are facing the flames in the adjacent building,” said Albert Simeoni, a professor and department head in fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, outside Boston. “That makes the threshold of ignition lower.”

There were other failures. Investigators found that fire alarms in all of the buildings were not working properly. Residents described being notified of the fire by family members outside the building who saw news of the blaze.

Within three hours, seven of the eight buildings were ablaze.

In the aftermath, residents are demanding to know how a blaze of such magnitude could have ripped through a housing estate for some of the city’s most vulnerable, and whether warnings had been ignored. More than a year before the fire, residents had raised questions about the safety of the netting and foam that were being used for renovations.

The disaster also poses a challenge to the Hong Kong authorities, who, under tighter control by Beijing, must prove they can prevent it from turning into a political crisis. The police have arrested at least two people who demanded more government accountability as officials pledged to pursue anyone who “maliciously smears” the government.

Some experts warn that the shrinking space for dissent could itself be a safety risk. With open demands for government accountability now far more constrained, the problems that enabled this disaster may be harder to spot in the future.

“There’s no dissent in Hong Kong,” said Mr. Chan, the engineer, referring to the silencing of critical voices. “I think it will affect the safety of buildings.”

Gensler’s Ray Yuen suggests designing the office as an ‘experience’

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The corporate world’s return to the office is in full swing. Employees across global companies like Amazon, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have been called back to the office five days a week. In early December, Instagram became the latest firm to announce a return-to-office mandate, with CEO Adam Mosseri justifying the move to boost employee “cooperation” and “creativity”.

Yet, many workers have dreaded the return to physical offices, and argued that hybrid work allows for flexibility without losing productivity. This presents a new post-pandemic challenge for workplace designers, who must now build attractive spaces to draw employees back to the office, said Ray Yuen, the office managing director at architectural firm Gensler.

“We’re no longer just designing workplaces, we’re actually designing experiences,” said Yuen, at the Fortune Brainstorm Design forum in Macau on Dec. 2. “You’ve really got to make the campus or the workplace more than work, and that’s the fun part of it.”

Citing results from a 2025 survey by his firm, Yuen said that when asked what makes for good workplaces, employees increasingly named factors such as food and wellness. 

“They didn’t even mention anything about work—everybody just picked the stuff that we really want as human beings,” he added.

As such, workplace designers like Yuen need to think about how to reimagine modern offices. He pointed to a project Gensler worked on in Tokyo, Japan, for a company where 50% of its staff members had been working from home.

“We designed it [their office] with 15 different food offerings, including trying to bring Blue Bottle in. We ended up [also] designing a secret [vinyl] bar,” said Yuen.

Companies have also been seeking more transformable workspaces, Yuen added, and interior designers have responded by replacing built-in spaces with modular, removable furniture. “[This way,] you can transform a space when you need to, from an F&B [space] for the staff, to an events space or a happy hour space for your clients.”

The user needs for spaces are also becoming more complex, Yuen said. Airports, for instance, no longer serve as meagre transit hubs but are also places where travelers can work or rest.

Now, airports have “a lot more outdoor-indoor space [and] natural light, past the actual check-in area. Airport [experiences] used to be just you checking in, and sitting there, waiting,” the designer said. “It’s a destination, it’s no longer just a [place of] transit.”

As with other fields, artificial intelligence is also rewriting the playbook for designers.

Yuen recounted how some clients have pulled up visuals on AI image generators like Google’s Nano Banana Pro, before asking: “If they can do it in a second, why can’t design firms do it quicker?”

Many designers traditionally regard time and craftsmanship as core tenets of design, but AI is pushing them to change the way they work, Yuen said. Clients now want “immediate response, immediate gratification,” he continued.

“With AI, we’re now almost like a creator [of] all these art pieces, and we try to select what is suitable—that’s the only way we can manage that need from clients on speed and time,” said Yuen.

Tony Bellew gives his candid opinion on Anthony Joshua vs Jake Paul: “I stand by what I said”

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With just two weeks to go until Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua go toe-to-toe, Tony Bellew has cast doubt on the clash which is set to be one of the most viewed of the year.

The announcement of Paul-Joshua surprised the boxing world, but the bigger shock was the ruleset – as Paul has agreed to near-standard terms for a professional bout.

Paul and Joshua will fight eight three-minute rounds in 10-ounce gloves, which are customary for a heavyweight contest, with the only real stipulation being that ‘AJ’ cannot weigh more than 245lbs at the Thursday weigh-in.

Speaking to IFL TV, former cruiserweight world champion Bellew predicted that the event will not go ahead, doubting whether ‘The Problem Child’ truly has the nerve to face the two-time heavyweight ruler.

“I still don’t believe it. How can you believe that it’s going to happen?

“It’s insane. It’s madness, but no one can knock Joshua because it’s just madness. I can’t get my head around it. I just don’t believe that he [Paul] is going to be in the ring, facing Joshua, with 10-ounce gloves on.

“You heard me the first time. I don’t believe that he is going to get in that ring with 10-ounce gloves on, I don’t. I’m just being honest, what do you want me to say, ‘yeah he is, he’s going to give him a hell of a fight’? No, he’s not.”

However, should the scrap take place, Bellew anticipates a one-sided encounter, believing that Paul is in for a shock if he has underestimated the punch power of 36-year-old Joshua.

“When he [AJ] touches him for the first time, with 10-ounce gloves on, he is going to get the fright of his life.”

Paul-Joshua takes place on Friday, December 19, and will be available to watch live on Netflix.

Potential DNA Repair Drug Could Heal Tissue Damage, a Groundbreaking Discovery

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After two decades in the making, scientists have cracked the code on a drug that can repair DNA, setting the scene for a new class of therapeutics that can fix tissue damage that occurs through heart attack, inflammatory disease and other conditions.

Researchers at Cedars-Sinai made the breakthrough after first developing a technique to isolate progenitor cells from the heart. These cells, much like stem cells, can form new healthy tissue but in a more targeted way. In other words, these cells taken from the heart can help restore function to that organ.

Medical scientist Eduardo Marbán – then at Johns Hopkins and now Cedars-Sinai – found that heart progenitor cells also have a special mechanism where they send out sacs, known as exosomes, which carry molecules of DNA, RNA and protein between cells and can repair and regenerate damaged tissue.

“Exosomes are like envelopes with important information,” said first author Ahmed Ibrahim, PhD, MPH, an associate professor in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute. “We wanted to take apart these coded messages and figure out which molecules were, themselves, therapeutic.”

The team worked to unpack what was in those healing sacs, sequencing the exosomal RNA material and finally landeing on one molecule that was more prominent than others. Focusing on this one RNA molecule, animal studies confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that it played a key role in facilitating tissue repair.

Fast-forward two decades and the scientists have finally fabricated this naturally occurring RNA molecule in the lab – the synthetic healer known as TY1.

“By probing the mechanisms of stem cell therapy, we discovered a way to heal the body without using stem cells,” said senior author Marbán, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. “TY1 is the first exomer – a new class of drugs that address tissue damage in unexpected ways.”

TY1 has the structure of existing RNA drugs, and works like its natural version – amplifying the activity of the Trex1 gene, which increases the activity of immune cells that rally around damaged DNA and clear out the junk, allowing for the repair and regeneration to take place. This process is critical in the wake of a heart attack to minimize cellular scarring left from the event.

Studies have demonstrated that DNA damage plays a critical role in the development of pressure overload–induced heart failure, dilated cardiomyopathy and aging-related cardiac conditions, and this damage to myocardial tissue is a large factor in how well someone recovers from a heart attack. Essentially, the less damage you have the better your long-term prognosis. Stimulating the cellular “recovery team,” through this novel experimental drug, boosts the body’s ability to repair itself.

And it doesn’t stop at heart tissue damage repair.

“By enhancing DNA repair, we can heal tissue damage that occurs during a heart attack,” Ibrahim said. “We are particularly excited because TY1 also works in other conditions, including autoimmune diseases that cause the body to mistakenly attack healthy tissue. This is an entirely new mechanism for tissue healing, opening up new options for a variety of disorders.”

Following on from animal models, TY1 will next be studied in a clinical trial. If the drug performs as expected in humans, it paves the way for a new class of therapeutics that can help mitigate a broad range of cellular damage caused by both sudden adverse events and chronic inflammatory conditions.

The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source: Cesars-Sinai

Putin’s aggression grows as ceasefire negotiations stall and conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate | Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine war

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Russia this week rejected the latest United States peace proposal for Ukraine and declared victory in battles over key Ukrainian cities – claims Ukraine has dismissed as propaganda.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Monday night said it had seized the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk it has been besieging for a year. Defence Minister Andrei Belousov later repeated the claim personally.

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Russia also said it had pushed Ukrainian defenders out of Vovchansk and Kupiansk, cities in the northern Kharkiv region.

“Most of the city of Kupiansk is under the control of Ukrainian troops,” said Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, a command structure responsible for the defence of Kharkiv, rebutting Russia’s claim.

(Al Jazeera)

The reported Russian advances came on the eve of US envoy Steve Witkoff’s arrival in Moscow for peace talks with Yury Ushakov, a key aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the timing of the claims was designed to make an impression on the US delegation.

“The brazen statements of the leadership of the aggressor country about the ‘seizure’ of these settlements by the Russian army are not valid,” the General Staff said, decrying them as “propaganda” to influence participants of “international negotiations”.

The General Staff said its forces were still fighting in Pokrovsk, Vovchansk and Kupiansk.

In Pokrovsk, “the Defence Forces hold the northern part of the city along the railway line,” it said.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii went further, saying Ukraine had blocked Russian infiltration into Kupiansk, and was “working on gradually pushing the enemy out of their bridgehead north of the city”.

But as Ukraine’s military commanders denied claims of further losses, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government was rocked again by the latest dismissal of a high-profile political figure over corruption allegations. Observers have debated how the sacking of Zelenskyy’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermak, a week ago, could affect Kyiv’s standing in peace talks.

INTERACTIVE-WHO CONTROLS WHAT IN EASTERN UKRAINE copy-1764671280
(Al Jazeera)

The documents Witkoff took to Moscow were the result of intense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in Florida on Sunday and Monday.

Those talks followed a first round of US-Ukrainian talks in Geneva a week earlier on the basis of a 28-point peace plan presented by Washington.

Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have said that the original plan was the outcome of talks between US President Donald Trump and Putin at a summit in Alaska last August. The forum was considered controversial since it left out Ukraine and its European allies.

Putin’s aide Ushakov told journalists the US-Ukrainian talks had reduced the points to 20, and broken up the list into four separate documents, but that Russia had agreed to nothing.

“We didn’t discuss specific wording or specific American proposals,” Ushakov said about his five-hour meeting with Witkoff. “We specifically discussed territorial issues … we also discussed the enormous prospects for future economic cooperation between the two countries,” he said, referring to the US and Russia.

Russia has occupied just under a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, about a third less than it held in 2022 when it launched the full-scale invasion. Although Moscow’s forces have conquered less than 2 percent of Ukraine in the past two years at an estimated cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties, Putin appears to believe time is on his side.

Capture of Pokrovsk ‘good base’ for war aims: Putin

The conquest of Pokrovsk, Putin told journalists on Tuesday, was “a good base for achieving all the objectives set at the beginning of the special military operation”, suggesting Russia’s war goals remained unchanged.

He threatened to “cut Ukraine off from the sea,” a clear reference to Odesa and Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s only remaining littoral territory, the seizure of which appears to have been part of the original Russian invasion plan.

INTERACTIVE-WHO CONTROLS WHAT IN SOUTHERN UKRAINE-1764671283
(Al Jazeera)

Asked about peace last week, Putin told journalists, “We still have proposals coming in about ceasing hostilities. When the Ukrainian troops leave the areas they are now occupying, then the hostilities will cease. And if they don’t, we will make them leave using our firepower.”

Putin also threatened Europe, playing into fears of a broadened war.

“We have no intention of going to war with Europe,” he said. “But if Europe suddenly wants to fight us and does, we’re ready right now.”

He suggested the Russian military was pacing itself in Ukraine to give peace talks a chance.

“We’re dealing with Ukraine surgically, carefully. Understandable, right?” Putin said. “This isn’t war in the literal, modern sense of the word.”

INTERACTIVE Ukraine Refugees-1764671276
(Al Jazeera)

At the 22nd annual Valdai Discussion Club, an annual academic conference in Moscow, Putin said the war in Ukraine had effectively created a multipolar world he described as “a much more open, one might even say creative, space for foreign policy behaviour. Virtually nothing is predetermined; everything can unfold in any direction.”

Despite claims of seeking peace, Putin has not eased the campaign against Ukraine.

During the week from November 27 until December 3, Russian forces launched just under 1,100 drones and 39 missiles. Ukraine said it intercepted 1,000 drones and half the missiles.

At least four people were killed in Dnipro on Monday, while 40 were injured.

Throughout November, Ukraine’s cities and energy infrastructure were on the receiving end of 119 missiles and just under 3,000 long-range Shahed drones, the Ukrainian Air Force said.

Ukraine has retaliated against Russian energy infrastructure.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, hailed attacks on the Saratov refinery and the Engels airbase on November 28. He also said Ukraine struck the Alabuga drone-manufacturing factory.

On Saturday, Kovalenko said Ukraine had used surface drones to destroy three Russian oil offloading docks at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s General Staff said it struck “several” oil storage tanks in the Tambov region used by the Russian army.

In addition to direct strikes to choke off fuel supplies to Russia’s army, Ukraine has supported stiffer energy sanctions to choke off Russia’s cash flow.

Zelenskyy’s adviser for sanctions policy, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, said Russian crude oil production was expected to decrease by 5 percent by the end of the year, and that exports had fallen by 15 to 20 percent.

Chris Granger officially appointed as CEO of Oak View Group after serving as interim CEO for five months

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Oak View Group (OVG) has named Chris Granger as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.

The move follows Granger’s five-month tenure as Interim CEO and marks a significant leadership transition for the company, which has rapidly expanded its global live entertainment footprint in recent years.

Granger previously served as President of OVG360 where he oversaw substantial growth before being elevated to interim CEO in July 2025.

In his new role, he will lead all aspects of OVG’s worldwide operations, including venue development, hospitality, and sponsorship.

“Chris’s performance during his tenure as Interim CEO has been exceptional,” said Lee Wittlinger, Chairman of the OVG Board of Directors.

“He seamlessly stepped into the role during a pivotal time and demonstrated tremendous leadership.”

Lee Wittlinger, OVG Board

He added: “He seamlessly stepped into the role during a pivotal time and demonstrated tremendous leadership. Chris understands the entire ecosystem of sports and live entertainment and the Board is confident that he is the right executive to lead OVG into its next phase of global growth.”

OVG senior partner Irving Azoff commented: “I have known and worked with Chris for nearly 20 years. No one is better for the CEO job.  He is uniquely qualified to lead OVG as we continue to build it bigger and better. He shares our passion to deliver for all our clients, fans and artists.”

“We will work tirelessly on behalf of our partners, we will root for one another, and we will lift the communities in which we operate.”

Chris Granger

Granger said he was “honored” to take on the role, noting: “I’d like to thank the Board for their confidence. I am honored to serve in this role and build upon an incredible foundation.”

“I look forward to working with our deep roster of entrepreneurial leaders and talented teammates, across North America and around the world, as we continue to deliver on our mission to disrupt positively and with purpose. We will work tirelessly on behalf of our partners, we will root for one another, and we will lift the communities in which we operate. Let’s go.”

Granger brings more than three decades of experience in sports and entertainment. Before joining OVG in 2021, he was Group President, Sports and Entertainment of the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings and served as President and COO of the Sacramento Kings.

He previously spent 14 years at the NBA, most recently as Executive Vice President of Team Marketing and Business Operations.

“He is uniquely qualified to lead OVG as we continue to build it bigger and better. He shares our passion to deliver for all our clients, fans and artists.”

Irving Azoff, OVG 

Granger holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Cornell University and an MBA from Yale University.

The company’s leadership transition followed the departure of former CEO Tim Leiweke, who stepped down earlier this year after being indicted by the US Department of Justice for allegedly rigging the bidding process for an arena at the University of Texas.

US President Donald Trump pardoned Leiweke this week.

Following Trump’s pardon, a spokesperson for Oak View told CNN: “We are happy for Tim that he can now put this matter behind him. OVG has remained steadfastly focused on delivering exceptional outcomes for our clients under the leadership of our CEO Chris Granger.”Music Business Worldwide

Putin declares Russia will seize Donbas through military action unless Ukrainian troops retreat

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President Vladimir Putin has warned again that Ukrainian troops must withdraw from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region or Russia will seize it, rejecting any compromise over how to end the war in Ukraine.

“Either we liberate these territories by force, or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories,” he told India Today. Moscow controls some 85% of Donbas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out ceding territory.

Putin’s comments come after Donald Trump said his negotiators discussing a US peace plan believed Russia’s leader “would like to end the war” after Tuesday’s talks in Moscow.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow, was due to meet Ukraine’s team in Florida.

Trump said Tuesday’s talks in the Kremlin were “reasonably good”, adding it was too soon to say what would happen as “it does take two to tango”.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Moscow was awaiting a response from Washington following the meeting in Russia.

“We are now waiting for the reaction of our American colleagues to the discussion we had on Tuesday,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying by RIA.

He added there were no plans for a call between Putin and Trump, and no date had been set for a new meeting with Witkoff.

The original iteration of the US peace plan proposed to hand over areas of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Putin – but the Witkoff team presented a modified version in Moscow.

In his India Today interview ahead of a state visit to Delhi, Putin said he had not seen the new version before his talks with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

“That’s why we had to go over every point, that’s why it took so long,” the Kremlin leader said.

He also said Moscow disagreed with parts of the US plan.

“At times we said that yes, we can discuss this, but to that we can’t agree,” Putin said.

He did not name the sticking points. At least two significant points of contention remain – the fate of Ukrainian territory seized by Russian forces and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser and key negotiator Yuri Ushakov earlier said straight after the talks that they produced “no compromise” on ending the war.

Ushakov also implied that the Russian negotiating position had been strengthened thanks to what Moscow said were its recent successes on the battlefield.

Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of stalling any ceasefire agreements, saying Moscow is seeking to seize more Ukrainian territory.

Commenting on the Kremlin talks, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybhia said Putin was “wasting the world’s time”.

Ukraine has long insisted on firm security guarantees for Ukraine in any deal.

On Wednesday, Zelensky said “the world clearly feels that there is a real opportunity to end the war” – but negotiations must be “backed by pressure on Russia”, which Kyiv and its European allies accuse of deliberately stalling any ceasefire agreements.

The Ukrainian president said last week his top negotiators had managed to make some key changes in the original US peace plan – seen as strongly favouring Moscow – during talks with an American delegation in Geneva on 23 November.

In a joint statement, US and Ukrainian negotiators said at the time that they had drawn up an “updated and refined peace framework” – but provided no further details.

Top negotiators from Europe – who had voiced concern over the original US plan – were also in the Swiss city last week, meeting separately with the Ukrainian and the US teams.

In a separate development on Thursday, Germany’s Der Spiegel news website said it had obtained a confidential transcript of a conference call in which European leaders expressed concern over the US negotiations.

“There is a possibility that the US will betray Ukraine on the issue of territory without clarity on security guarantees,” French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly said, according to an English transcript of Monday’s conference call.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was quoted as warning that Zelensky had to be “extremely careful in the coming days”.

“They are playing games, both with you and with us,” Merz reportedly said.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb was also quoted as saying: “We mustn’t leave Ukraine and Volodymyr alone with these guys.”

The BBC has not seen the reported transcript.

In response to a Der Spiegel inquiry, France’s Élysée Palace stated that “the president did not express himself in those terms”. The presidential office declined to provide details on how Macron expressed himself, citing confidentiality.

Stubb declined to comment to Der Spiegel, and Merz has not commented on the issue.

In a statement to the BBC, the White House said: “Secretary [Marco] Rubio, Special Envoy Witkoff, Mr Kushner, and the President’s entire national security team are working tirelessly to stop the killing between Russia and Ukraine.”

“They have held productive meetings to gather feedback from both sides on a plan that can foster a durable, enforceable peace,” the statement read.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.

In recent weeks, Russian troops have been slowly advancing in south-east Ukraine, despite reported heavy combat casualties.

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Israeli Attack Claims Lives at Gaza Encampment

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new video loaded: Israeli Strike Kills Several People at a Gaza Encampment

An Israeli attack on an encampment in Khan Younis killed several people and injured many more, a Palestinian health official said. The Israeli military said it killed a militant in retaliation for a Hamas attack that injured several of its soldiers.

By Axel Boada

December 4, 2025

Symbotic Announces Public Offering of 10 Million Shares Priced at $55 Each

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Symbotic prices public offering of 10 million shares at $55 each