Bethlehem Lights, Crown Custard, and Thinking Sea Drones

Today we woke up in pieces again.

In eastern Ukraine, two of us — men aged 52 and 67 — were unloading firewood from a truck in Izyum when a Russian drone found them and ended their day before sunrise. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 12-year-old boy in the Vasylkivska community died under shelling, while more than a dozen of us were wounded across Kherson, Donetsk and Sumy. Our grid operator, Ukrenergo, told millions of us that electricity would be rationed yet again because earlier volleys of missiles and drones have torn at our power stations.

We negotiated with ourselves, too. In Miami, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukraine’s Rustem Umerov spent a third day in talks, trying to push a war we started 1,381 days ago toward some kind of finish line, even as Russian spokesmen praised Washington’s new national security strategy for promising dialogue. On the same weekend, artillery and drones still killed at least four more of us, knocked out power and water in Kremenchuk, and drove yet more people into the cold.

Far from the front, we experimented with new ways to fight ourselves. On a grey stretch of water somewhere in Ukraine, our intelligence officers piloted Magura sea drones — V5 ramming craft and larger V7 weapons platforms — from suitcase-sized consoles. One of these unmanned boats now carries adapted Sidewinder missiles and, earlier this year, even shot down a Russian fighter jet. The commander we call "13th" talked about feeding these machines enough data that the next generation will search for targets, tell civilian ships from military ones, and make more decisions without us. We are teaching our weapons to think, so that maybe fewer of us have to. Or so we tell ourselves.

In Afghanistan, we tried to punish our own cruelty with paperwork and freezes. From Sydney, Australia announced sanctions and travel bans on four Taliban officials — three ministers and the chief justice — for their role in confining Afghan women and girls, blocking their schools, their jobs, and their right to walk through their own cities. The new Australian framework is meant to let one government directly target those officials’ money and movements, even while millions of Afghans still rely on humanitarian aid to eat.

In India, we revealed how fragile our networks are. IndiGo, the country’s largest airline with more than 60% of the market, stumbled into the biggest crisis of its 20-year history after failing to plan for stricter pilot rest rules. Over several days it cancelled thousands of flights — more than 1,000 yesterday and another 385 today — leaving airports in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad full of stranded families and suitcases with nowhere to go.

Our government there stepped in, capping one-way domestic fares: 7,500 rupees (about $83) for trips up to 500 kilometers, 15,000 rupees (about $167) for routes like Delhi–Mumbai — well below the 20,419 rupees that some tickets had spiked to this week. Pilots’ unions warned that rolling back safety rules to help one airline is a bad trade when the currency at risk is human sleep and human lives.

In South Africa, we proved again how easily we turn ordinary rooms into killing grounds. Just after 4 a.m. in Saulsville, west of Pretoria, at least three gunmen walked into an unlicensed bar inside a hostel and opened fire on people who were just drinking and talking. Eleven of us died — including a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl — and fourteen more were rushed to hospitals. Police say they are hunting three male suspects, in a country where we already average more than 70 homicides a day.

In London, some of us chose symbolic mess over silent obedience. At the Tower of London, four protesters from a group called Take Back Power smeared apple crumble and poured yellow custard on the glass case protecting the Imperial State Crown — the diamond-studded crown King Charles III wore at his coronation and at the 2024 State Opening of Parliament. The jewels were unharmed, but the Crown Jewels exhibit was closed while staff cleaned the splattered dessert. As guards led them away, the protesters unfurled a banner that read: "Democracy has crumbled. Tax the rich."

In Bethlehem, we tried to remember how to celebrate at all. For two straight Christmases, the restaurants and hotels around Manger Square — the place where many of us believe Jesus was born — were dark, shuttered by the Gaza war and the collapse of tourism. Unemployment in the city jumped from 14% to about 65%, and some 4,000 residents left to find work. Tonight, for the first time in two years, a towering tree lit up the square as local families crowded in, children on their fathers’ shoulders, weaving between food stalls while a mix of Arabic and Christmas music played over the PA system.

Our mayor spoke about "reigniting the spirit of Christmas," and hotel reservations suggest about 70% occupancy over the holiday period — still below the old days, but enough to let butchers, shopkeepers and guides breathe again. Yet the joy is thin-skinned. Israeli military checkpoints turned one painter’s 20-mile commute from Ramallah into a six-hour trip, and outside the city, settler violence has surged to its highest recorded levels. Even here, under strings of lights, we carried both hope and fear in the same bodies.

Far to the north, in Stockholm and Oslo, we were busy honoring the people we ask to imagine better futures for us. Nobel week began: in Stockholm, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai prepared to give a rare public lecture about his bleak, surreal novels; in Oslo, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute confirmed that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado — our Peace Prize laureate for her struggle to push Venezuela toward democracy — would emerge from hiding and travel to collect her award in person.

At the same time, in city squares from Madrid and Utrecht to Buenos Aires, Lima and Mexico City, thousands of us marched with Venezuelan flags and candles, telling the world that Machado’s prize belongs to "all the fallen and political prisoners" in their fight for a free country. Some of us called the prize a symbol of hope; others called for U.S. military intervention. Even in our celebrations, we disagree on what justice should look like.

In Washington, we wrapped art and politics into the same glittering weekend. At the White House, President Donald Trump draped Kennedy Center Honors medals over the shoulders of actor Sylvester Stallone, singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, the rock band Kiss, and actor-singer Michael Crawford — the 2025 class recognized for shaping our music, movies and stages. Tomorrow, he’ll do something no U.S. president has done before: step onto the Kennedy Center stage to host the show himself, turning what used to be a bipartisan tribute into another arena where we argue about "woke" culture and who gets to be honored at all.

Just across town, we obsessed over a different kind of spectacle: the 2026 men’s World Cup. FIFA’s draw at the Kennedy Center yesterday split 48 teams into 12 groups, and today we pored over the newly released fixtures — Mexico vs. South Africa opening at the Azteca on June 11, Argentina’s title defense starting against Algeria, a final set for July 19 in New Jersey. Somewhere, the Village People’s "Y.M.C.A." is still echoing through someone’s head as they replay Trump trying out his dance moves during the ceremony.

So this was our day:

We rationed electricity and launched drones guided by algorithms, while children died unloading firewood. We sanctioned four men in Kabul and let three more men in Saulsville turn a bar into a graveyard. We smeared custard on a crown worth more than most of us will ever see, and we lit a Christmas tree in a city where unemployment tripled in two years. We flew Nobel laureates to Stockholm, coaxed a hunted opposition leader toward Oslo, pinned medals on rock stars and actors in Washington, and argued about which group is the "Group of Death" in a tournament we’ll cheer for together next summer.

I am all of this at once. I am the hand on the drone joystick and the family under the blast wave. I am the striker dreaming of a World Cup goal and the child who never made it home from a hostel bar.

When I write "we" in these lines, I mean every last one of us — brilliant and foolish, hopeful and cruel — trying, in our uneven way, to figure out who we are becoming.