World roundup: August 23-24 2025
Stories from Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
August 23, 1595: An outnumbered Wallachian army under Prince Michael “the Brave” defeats an Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Koca Sinan Pasha at the Battle of Călugăreni, today located in southern Romania. Michael had to retreat afterward due to the Ottomans’ decisive advantage in numbers, but the victory became an important symbolic event in Romanian national history. This battle was part of the 1593-1606 Long War between the Ottomans and Habsburgs, which ended inconclusively but did stabilize the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier for several decades.
August 23, 1939: The Nazi German and Soviet governments sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression treaty that included an agreement to divvy up parts of Eastern Europe. The accord grew out of negotiations on an economic cooperation agreement and Soviet concerns about a potential war with Germany (and the reliability of France and the UK as possible allies). The pact paved the way for the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, which sparked World War II, but relations between the two countries broke down over the next several months and the Nazis terminated it when they invaded the USSR in June 1941.
August 24, 410: A Visigothic army under Alaric sacks Rome. This was the first time the city had been sacked by a foreign army since the Gauls did so around 800 years earlier and is considered one of the milestones in the collapse of the Roman Empire in the western Mediterranean. Rome was no longer a political capital but its prestige (and wealth) as the mother city of the empire and the center of Christianity in the west was still immense. Alaric continued plundering south through Italy, but his plans to invade Sicily and North Africa were interrupted first by weather and then by his death. The Visigoths moved into what is now southern France, where they established a kingdom within what was ostensibly Roman territory.
August 24, 1516: The Ottomans decisively defeat the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate’s army at the Battle of Marj Dabiq in what is today northern Syria’s Aleppo province. The Ottomans and Mamluks found themselves on opposite sides of a relatively lopsided rivalry as the former expanded into eastern Anatolia and began to absorb principalities that had been Mamluk vassals. After Ottoman Sultan Selim I defeated the Safavids in the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran and eliminated their threat to his empire, he turned his attention to the Mamluks and made short work of them. The virtual annihilation of the Mamluk army at Dabiq allowed Selim to take Egypt easily the following year. The Ottoman conquest of the former Mamluk domains was a massive boost to the empire both in size and wealth. It also brought Islam’s three holiest cities—Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem—under Ottoman control, which had significant benefits for the empire from a political and ideological point of view.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Syria’s transitional government has decided to postpone next month’s selection of its interim parliament in three provinces—Suwaydah in the south and Hasakah and Raqqa in the east—due to continued tensions between Damascus and the local Druze and Kurdish communities, respectively. Syrian authorities contend that they cannot conduct the selection process in those regions due to “security concerns,” specifically that none of those provinces can really be said to be under central control.
I say “selection” because although the Damascus administration refers to this process as an election it’s really not—of the 210 members of the body, 70 will be appointed directly by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the other 140 will be chosen by local commissions overseen by a committee whose members are also appointed by Sharaa. That structure seems to be part of the reason the Kurds are balking—the Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria issued a statement on Sunday contending that “these elections are not democratic and do not express the will of the Syrians in any way. They represent nothing but a continuation of the approach of marginalization and exclusion.”
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Amid another weekend of intense Israeli military (IDF) bombardment of northern Gaza, civil defense officials in the territory estimated that the Israelis have destroyed some 1000 buildings in just two Gaza City neighborhoods, Sabra and Zaytun, since they began ramping up to their eventual reconquest of the city on August 6. That figure seemingly removes any question as to what the IDF is planning—it’s aiming to fully flatten the entirety of Gaza City, whatever hasn’t already been destroyed approaching two years after this carnage began. In fairness, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz made the objective pretty clear on Friday. But according to Haaretz the IDF has warned Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is already reportedly irritated at the slowness with which the military is moving, that the destruction of Gaza City could take over a year to complete.
YEMEN
The IDF attacked Sanaa on Sunday, killing at least six people and wounding at least 86 more, in another round of retaliation for Houthi missile launches targeting Israel. There’s no indication as to damage beyond that though the attack did apparently target a compound that includes the presidential palace. The Houthis attacked Israel most recently on Friday, using what Israeli officials suggested was a cluster warhead of some sort. That’s the first recorded Houthi use of that type of munition. The IDF did not intercept the missile but even so the damage it caused appears to have been relatively minimal.
UPDATE: As of Monday evening the toll had risen to at least ten dead with at least 102 wounded according to Houthi officials.
IRAN
Iranian authorities say their security forces killed six unspecified gunmen in the country’s Sistan and Baluchistan province on Saturday. This operation took place a day after gunmen killed five police officers in the province though it’s unclear from the reporting whether the two incidents are connected. Officials alleged that Saturday’s militants were somehow connected to Israel, but they haven’t made any evidence to that effect public.
ASIA
GEORGIA
Eurasianet’s Irakli Machaidze reports that the glorious “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” project, if it actually comes to fruition (a massive “if” at this stage), could deal a major blow to the Georgian government’s foreign policy:
“Georgia should have been an active architect of this new regional reality, shaping peace, driving connectivity, and securing our shared future with allies, but the pro-Russian Georgian Dream [party] has left the country isolated from progress and prosperity,” wrote Giorgi Gakharia, a former Georgian Dream prime minister who is now in opposition.
Other government critics see irony in the fact that Georgian Dream officials are praising the deal as a way to improve regional trade when, in recent months, the government has faced criticism from Yerevan for deliberately disrupting Armenian trade, allegedly at Russia’s behest.
Until recently, Georgia was seen as a key link in the Middle Corridor, the Trans-Caspian trade route connecting Europe to Asia. But under the Trump peace plan, Armenia and Azerbaijan are expected to serve as the prime conduit for East-West trade in the Caucasus. The centerpiece of the plan is the creation of a new transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan proper to its Nakhchivan exclave via Armenian territory. If built out to its fullest potential, the corridor would likely leave Georgia on the outside of Middle Corridor trade expansion looking in, making it harder for Tbilisi to attract investment while significantly reducing the importance of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.
As the piece notes, Georgian Dream has been giving a relatively cold shoulder to the European Union of late under the assumption that the EU needs Georgia, as that Middle Corridor “key link,” more than it needs the EU. That calculus may no longer be applicable.
MYANMAR
Myanmar’s ruling junta is accusing the Ta’ang National Liberation Army rebel group of destroying the Goteik viaduct, a railway trestle in Myanmar’s Shan state that is the highest bridge in the country and one of the largest trestles in the world. Built during the British colonial period in 1901, it is still an important transportation link between the country’s commercial capital, Mandalay, and northern Shan state. The TNLA is denying involvement and claiming that it was a military airstrike that struck the bridge (possibly unintentionally) on Sunday morning.
AFRICA
SUDAN
AFP is reporting that the Rapid Support Forces militant group shelled a hospital in the besieged Sudanese city of Al-Fashir on Saturday, wounding at least seven people. On Sunday RSF fighters attacked the nearby Abu Shouk displaced persons camp, abducting eight people according to the camp’s Emergency Response Room activist group. The local resistance committee claims that RSF shelling killed five members of a single family in the camp on Thursday.
MALI
AFP reported on Saturday, citing “local and military sources,” that soldiers and civilians had fled the town of Farabougou in central Mali’s Ségou region after an attack by Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin fighters on Tuesday. Further details are unknown, including casualty figures, but one local official told the outlet that “the jihadists control the town.” A “military source” suggested that Malian forces are preparing a counterattack.
NIGERIA
The Nigerian military is claiming that it killed at least 35 jihadist fighters in multiple airstrikes near the Cameroonian border in Borno state on Saturday. The affiliation of the jihadists is unclear.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A Ukrainian drone strike appears to have damaged Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant on Sunday, causing what Reuters reported as “a 50% reduction in the operating capacity at reactor No. 3.” There’s no indication of a radiation spike but targeting civilian nuclear power plants is an extremely sensitive issue internationally for obvious reasons. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that it is aware of the incident and “stressed” the need to protect nuclear facilities. Another strike reportedly caused a fire at the important Ust-Luga fuel terminal in northwestern Russia, though the extent of the damage there is unclear.
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military claimed on Sunday that its forces had retaken three villages in Donetsk oblast from the Russians. The Russian military, meanwhile, claimed the seizure of a village in Dnipropetrovsk oblast. There’s no confirmation on either side.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration has been restricting Ukraine’s use of long-range US munitions to attack Russia:
The Pentagon has for months been blocking Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, U.S. officials said, limiting Kyiv from employing a powerful weapon in its fight against Moscow’s invasion.
A high-level Defense Department approval procedure, which hasn’t been announced, has prevented Ukraine from firing any U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, against targets in Russia since late spring, the officials said. On at least one occasion, Ukraine sought to use Atacms against a target on Russian territory but was rejected, two officials said.
The U.S. veto of long-range strikes has restricted Ukraine’s military operations as the White House has sought to woo the Kremlin into beginning peace talks.
Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, developed the “review mechanism” to decide on Kyiv’s requests to fire long-range U.S.-made weapons as well as those provided to Ukraine by European allies that rely on American intelligence and components.
The review gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth final say over whether Ukraine can employ the Atacms, which have a range of nearly 190 miles, to strike Russia.
The Biden administration imposed a similar restriction that it only lifted in November of last year, during its lame-duck period. Donald Trump criticized that decision at the time so the revelation that his administration has reversed it is not a huge surprise. The timing of this report is interesting inasmuch as Trump took to social media on Thursday to argue that Ukraine can’t “win” this war without “attacking” Russia, while criticizing the Biden administration because it “would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND.” But the explanation from the Trump administration is that he was only offering his opinion and was not suggesting that Ukraine should attack Russia with US weapons—though he could, we’re told, change his mind about that.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, ProPublica reports on the case of Mohammad Halimi, a former Afghan official who briefly worked for the country’s Taliban-led government in the 1990s but became a strident critic of the group and eventually served as a minister in the US-installed government that replaced the Taliban. He fled Afghanistan in 2021, as the Taliban was regaining control of the country, and found a job at the US Institute of Peace while trying to keep a low profile for the sake of his family back in Afghanistan.
Then the fine folks at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) got involved and Halimi, because of his previous service in the Taliban-led government, became a case study in Elon Musk’s effort to do away with USIP—which, in his telling, was hiring Taliban members even though Halimi was not in any way a member of the Taliban. You can probably guess what happened then:
Multiple senior government officials at the State Department were warned about the danger that DOGE’s callout posed to Halimi’s family, according to two USIP staffers interviewed by ProPublica. They were trying to stop the damage from spreading. But Musk’s crew was then locked in a pitched battle for control of USIP. The misleading narrative about Halimi became central to DOGE’s argument; American foreign aid was corrupt and even, at times, funding America’s enemies — and that’s why DOGE had to take over.
Those battles were playing out across the government at the time. DOGE often won, but ultimately Musk’s tenure was short-lived. He resigned from DOGE at the end of May, shortly before a public falling-out with Trump. DOGE’s hard-charging takeovers of government agencies brought chaos and confusion and left many qualified bureaucrats jobless. But Halimi risked losing a lot more.
Shortly after Halimi spoke to his son, a flood of threatening messages began appearing on his phone. The most ominous came from members of the Taliban. Just as Halimi had worried, they accused him of being a thief and traitor, which could be like a death sentence for anyone connected to him back home. “My family was in great danger,” Halimi thought to himself.
About a week after DOGE outed him, Halimi’s worst fears were realized. Taliban intelligence agents in Kabul descended on the homes of his relatives and detained three of his family members. They were blindfolded, thrown into the backs of 4x4 pickup trucks and driven to a small remote prison. They were held incommunicado over several days and repeatedly beaten and questioned about Halimi and his recently publicized yet ambiguous work for the United States.