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The war inaugurated a terrible new global order in which armed drones kill civilians who are neither named nor counted.
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There were nights full of terror. Our village was bombed constantly,” says Zalmay Khan. Afterward, he goes to pray. Because of his wounds, he cannot kneel, so he prays sitting down.
Khan is in his early twenties and now works as a Taliban intelligence officer. As a boy, he says, he learned to read the sky before he learned to read words. His village in Wardak province, near Kabul, was bombed, then bombed again. First came American planes, then NATO’s, then those of the Afghan army the West had built. By night it got worse, when jets and armed foreign contractors hit villages and killed civilians seemingly at random.
“I became a Mujahed [a Taliban fighter] naturally,” Khan tells me.
He is not an outlier. In village after village on my most recent trip to Afghanistan a few weeks ago, I met men who grew up as the so-called war on terror’s raw material. Some wear the Taliban’s turbans, and some do not. Almost all of them say the same thing, with remarkable calm: The American narrative of this war belongs to the past. After two decades of war and destruction, it is their turn to control narratives and to rule the country.
October 7, 2026, marks exactly 25 years since the United States began bombing Afghanistan. The anniversary will pass in Washington with little reflection. In Afghanistan, the reality of it is lived daily.
Drones and Ghosts
The war on terror made history in a way few people remember. In its opening weeks, the United States used an armed drone against a target in Afghanistan, one of the first such attacks ever, in an attempt to kill the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in Kandahar. Omar was not hit on October 7, 2001. He survived and reportedly died of natural causes a decade later, which the Taliban kept secret for years.
Who died instead? The record offers almost nothing: no definitive or officially confirmed names, ages, villages. One news report cites unnamed Kandahar residents suggesting the raid killed Omar’s 10-year-old son and the child’s stepfather, but the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan declined to confirm or deny this report.
In other words, the first known attempt to kill a man with an armed drone killed people no one has ever definitively identified, and it set the template for the type of warfare that would dominate over the next decades. No one can say who the victims were. But if the pattern of the following years is any guide, many were likely civilians, like the thousands of victims who came after them. During the Obama years, Afghanistan officially became the world’s most drone-bombed country.
That template repeated itself so often that Afghans developed names for the many men who were declared dead after supposed “surgical strikes,” but who then reappeared alive: mord-e zinda (the living dead) in Farsi and khyali marr (the not truly dead) in Pashto. I call them “Taliban ghosts.”
It continued across successive U.S. administrations, even across the bureaucratic, supposedly methodical “kill lists” infamously used by the Obama administration used to mark people for death from the skies.
The obvious question was almost never asked: If Omar was not the victim, who was killed instead? In the logic of the drone war, a body is a statistic, and a body in a targeted area becomes a militant by default. The dead were not counted, and the stories of their families, who were left to count for themselves, largely continued to go unknown.
Strikes did not only create ghosts. They also created recruits. Researchers, journalists, and Afghan elders have long described the same pattern: A village is hit, a family is destroyed, and the Taliban offer the survivors the only form of justice made available to them. By the end of the war, entire districts had made that choice, not out of ideological conviction but out of grief.
Democratic Torture
One of the people I talked to on my recent trip was a Taliban official who had been held at Bagram, the American prison north of Kabul, for several years. He told me what the Americans wanted from him. “Accept our democracy or get tortured and rot here. That’s what they told me,” he recalled.
The aim, as he described it, was reeducation by coercion: Accept our system, our ideology, and the pain stops. He refused. By his account, he left more committed than when he arrived. He was freed in 2020 under the prisoner exchange the United States negotiated with the Taliban, part of the same Doha process that handed the country back to the movement the war was purportedly meant to destroy.
Consider the sequence. A man is imprisoned and tortured to make him embrace a political order. He then walks out of the prison and eventually helps govern. The war’s own methods created much of its failure.
I make no argument here that the Taliban’s rule is benign. Women and girls have been shut out of education and public life, and dissent is severely punished. These facts belong in any honest account. But an honest account also includes what the war did, who did it, and whom they harmed; the powers that waged it have shown little interest in reckoning with that part.
A War Passed On
Here is the part that does not fit the story that the war on terror ended in August 2021: someone else is still fighting it.
Pakistan is currently bombing Afghanistan. Just a few days ago, Pakistani airstrikes killed at least 10 civilians, most of them children, in the provinces of Helmand and Kunar.
Pakistani authorities say they are targeting militants of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, often known as the Pakistani Taliban. Afghans on the ground, and independent reports, repeatedly describe civilians as being among the dead. Islamabad has also forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many of them born there, out of Pakistan.
The phrasing used to justify these attacks is familiar: “Terrorists were eliminated.” Anyone who covered the American war has heard that sentence before, and the same pattern follows. The claims are hard to verify, the dead are hard to identify, and the people left behind are not asked.
Pakistan has run this game before, and it has historically done well for itself out of it. In the first days of the war on terror, Islamabad aligned itself with Washington while, according to critics and many former officials, hedging its bets with the Taliban. The United States poured billions into Pakistan in military aid and reimbursements. A double game paid for itself.
For a military establishment that benefits from a war to fight, an enemy is an asset. That helps explain why the army has so little tolerance for those who challenge its role. This pattern goes beyond the foreign policy of one country alone. It is a system — one created by the U.S. but now adopted globally — that requires a threat to warrant its continued expansion and removes the people who question its logic.
If Pakistan again needs an Afghan threat to justify its budgets, its alliances, and its hold on power at home, the logic is the same as in 2001. The war on terror, seen from Islamabad, is a renewable resource.
The Violence That Made the TTP
The TTP itself is not a mystery. It did not appear from nowhere, and it cannot be blamed on Kabul alone. It grew out of Pakistan’s own tribal areas, where decades of military operations, drone strikes with Islamabad’s tacit consent, and brutality under former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf shattered communities. Many of these massacres have been forgotten outside the region. In the tribal belt they are not.
The result was a generation radicalized by state violence, in much the same process I heard described in Afghan villages. The TTP is, in significant part, a product of the very policies now used to justify the continued bombing of Afghanistan. Without Pakistan’s violence in the tribal areas, the group would not look as it does. Accountability for that history will not come from the same army that carried it out.
The war on terror in Afghanistan was sold as a campaign against a specific enemy. What it produced was a country scarred by airstrikes, night raids, and detention, and an enemy that outlasted the world’s strongest military. It also produced a new precedent: That a state can kill from the sky, in secret, and rarely be asked who died, much less held accountable for its deathmaking.
That precedent traveled. Drones have gone from being an innovation in killing, one shrouded in secrecy, to a mainstay of battlefields on multiple continents.. The language of “surgical” strikes and “militants eliminated” has become standard, notably throughout the genocide in Gaza. And in Afghanistan, the war continues in new hands, with the same justifications and the same result.
On October 7, if this anniversary is marked in the U.S. at all, there will be speeches about sacrifice and lessons supposedly learned. The real lessons are available to anyone who asks the people who lived under the sky, and the most critical question is still the one nobody answered in 2001: Who was killed instead?
Já se conhece a proposta do Orçamento do Estado para 2027 (OE2027), que foi apresentada pelo ministro das Finanças, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, na quinta-feira e sobre o que vai mudar.
O Economia ao Minuto publica uma análise na qual destaca seis medidas que podem ter impacto na carteira do cidadão contribuinte e que se considera importante veicular.
1) Escalões do IRS vão ser atualizados
A atualização dos limites dos nove escalões de IRS em 3,88%, bem como uma revisão do mínimo de existência é a proposta do Governo.
O Governo mantém as taxas dos escalões iguais às que inscreveu na proposta de lei que prevê uma descida adicional do IRS para 2026, ainda não votada em sede de Parlamento.
Segundo o Economia ao Minuto, além de atualizar os valores dos nove escalões, o OE2027 sobe o patamar de rendimentos a partir do qual incide a taxa de solidariedade de IRS que desde a ‘troika’ tributa os rendimentos mais altos, alinhando-a com o 9.º escalão.
2) Salário mínimo nacional sobe para 970 euros
De acordo com o previsto no acordo assinado em Concertação Social, segundo o relatório que acompanha a proposta do OE2027, o Governo assume que o salário mínimo nacionalpassará para 970 euros em 2027.
“Em 2027, o Governo da AD elevará o salário mínimo (RMMG) para os 970 euros, concretizando o terceiro aumento consecutivo desde que tomou posse o XXIV Governo Constitucional, em 2024, ano em que a RMMG se cifrava nos 820 euros”, refere o documento.
O salário mínimo nacional, que se encontra atualmente em 920 euros, será definido por portaria do Governo, após auscultação dos parceiros sociais e será então homologado.
3) Maior despesa com a Prestação Social Única
O Governo prevê mais de 730 milhões de euros no Orçamento do Estado para 2027 para a Prestação Social Única (PSU), que reúne 13 apoios sociais [Rendimento Social de Inserção (RSI), pensões sociais (velhice, invalidez especial, viuvez e orfandade), o Complemento Extraordinário de Solidariedade (CES), o subsídio social de desemprego e vários subsídios sociais no âmbito da parentalidade e riscos clínicos], sofre um aumento de 10,1% face à previsão de execução de 2026.
De acordo com o documento entregue na Assembleia da República, refere a Economia ao Minuto que a PSU “foi orçamentada em 734,3 milhões de euros, em 2027, mais 10,1% face à previsão de execução em 2026, com as 13 prestações sociais do regime não contributivo que vão ser substituídas pela PSU”.
“Este aumento é justificado essencialmente pela fixação do valor de referência em 50% do indexante dos apoios sociais e pela componente de incentivo ao trabalho”, lê-se no documento.
4) Previsão é o Governo gastar mais 100 milhões no Complemento para Idosos
O Governo estima que o Complemento Solidário para Idosos custará mais 100 milhões de euros em 2027, ultrapassando os 700 milhões de euros, com o valor mensal a subir para 720 euros, segundo a proposta do Executivo.
Assim, a despesa com o CSI deverá atingir o montante de 709,7 milhões de euros, uma variação anual de 15,6% face a 2026″.
A explicação está no “aumento do valor de referência em 50 euros/mês em 2027, para 720 euros, no âmbito da sua trajetória de convergência para 870 euros em 2029″.
5) Garantia de neutralidade fiscal para aumentos até 4,5%
O ministro das Finanças assegurou que existe neutralidade fiscal para quem tenha aumentos salariais de até 4,5%, em virtude da atualização dos escalões de IRS, do mínimo de existência, da dedução específica e da baixa das taxas.
O ministro Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, questionado em conferência de imprensa sobre o desfasamento entre a atualização dos escalões de IRS e o referencial para o aumento global dos salários de 4,5% previsto no acordo assinado entre UGT, confederações empresariais e Governo em 2024, reiterou que existe um nível de neutralidade fiscal.
6) Isenções de IMT e Imposto de Selo mantêm-se para jovens comprarem casa
A garantia pública e as isenções de IMT e de Imposto de Selo concedidas aos jovens de até 35 anos na aquisição da primeira habitação própria e permanente devem manter-se no próximo ano, de acordo com a proposta orçamental do Governo.
No relatório da proposta de OE2027 é mencionado que estas medidas “já beneficiaram quase 120 mil jovens, para um valor médio de aquisição de imóvel de 200 mil euros”. O OE2027 reforçará também o programa Porta 65, dirigido ao arrendamento para habitação permanente dos jovens.
OE2027: O que se segue?
Importa salientar ainda que o Parlamento vai debater na generalidade a proposta do Governo de OE2027 nos dias 27 e 28 de outubro, ocorrendo a votação final global (prevista) em 24 de novembro.
Depois do debate na generalidade, a proposta de OE2027 será ainda discutida na especialidade entre 29 de outubro e 24 de novembro. O prazo para a entrada de propostas de alteração por parte dos diferentes partidos termina em 6 de novembro, data em que ocorrerá uma nova audição com o ministro de Estado e das Finanças.
AEP coloca reservas nas ‘virtudes’ do OE2027
Na publicação a que tivemos acesso da Associação Empresarial de Portugal (AEP) a exigência é de que o Orçamento do Estado para 2027 (OE2027) coloque o crescimento económico e a competitividade empresarial no centro da política económica.
Com base nesses objetivos, a AEP enviou ao Governo 16 propostas, que incluem “redução da carga fiscal sobre empresas e trabalho, mais investimento, maior escala empresarial, reforço da internacionalização e um Estado mais eficiente“.
“Portugal está a crescer, mas não cresce o suficiente para convergir com a União Europeia. O próximo Orçamento deve, por isso, criar condições para que a economia cresça a ritmos superiores, assente em mais investimento, produtividade, exportações e valor acrescentado”, diz a associação liderada por Luís Miguel Ribeiro, conforme publicação no DN a que tivemos acesso.
A AEP no que se refere ao trabalho, diz que o país apresenta um quadro de “escassez de trabalhadores” e “dificuldade em atrair e reter talento”, por isso a AEP “propõe uma redução da progressividade do IRS, através da redução do número de escalões e da sua atualização anual”.
Defende também a majoração de 50% em IRC dos custos suportados pelas empresas com o alojamento dos trabalhadores; majoração de 50% dos gastos com pessoal jovem altamente qualificado; e a contabilização da formação modular financiada por fundos europeus, quando integrada nos planos de formação das associações empresariais, para efeitos das 40 horas de formação contínua obrigatória, lê-se no DN.
Concluindo !…
Não há qualquer dúvida que as famílias sentem o aumento do custo de vida, as empresas, principalmnete as PME’s, enfrentam encargos elevadissimos, a habitação para muitos jovens está fora de hipótese e o Estado continua a arrecadar muito sem que os portugueses sintam benefícios, ou sequer esperança que eles possam surgir a curto prazo.
A votação final global da proposta do Governo deOE2027vai ocorrer na véspera da sessão solene evocativa do 25 de Novembro de 1975.
Russian prosecutors have asked the Netherlands to surrender Tomoko Akane and eight other International Criminal Court officials convicted in absentia by a Moscow court, extending the Kremlin’s retaliation against those investigating alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
Russia has demanded the extradition of International Criminal Court (ICC) President Tomoko Akane from the Netherlands, seeking to enforce criminal sentences against judges and prosecutors involved in issuing arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and senior Russian military officials.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Thursday, 8 October, that it had submitted requests to several governments for the extradition of nine current and former ICC officials, including Karim Khan, who served as the court’s chief prosecutor when the arrest warrant against Putin was issued in March 2023.
The requests follow a ruling by Moscow City Court on 12 December 2025, when nine ICC officials were convicted in absentia and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three and a half to 15 years. Their alleged offences arose from their participation in investigations and judicial decisions concerning Russian officials suspected of international crimes.
Moscow’s latest move is unlikely to secure Akane’s extradition from the Netherlands, which hosts the ICC and is among its principal supporters. Russian authorities are nevertheless seeking cooperation from several countries, potentially exposing court officials to arrest when travelling to jurisdictions maintaining close relations with Moscow.
Japan Protests Against Russian Demands
Japan has condemned the proceedings against Akane, a Japanese national who became ICC president in March 2024.
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said Tokyo had repeatedly protested to Moscow over its treatment of ICC personnel and regarded the latest measures as unjustified and unacceptable.
He indicated that Japan would consider further diplomatic action in consultation with the court and other states parties to the Rome Statute.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reaffirmed Japan’s support for the ICC during a parliamentary session on Friday, 9 October, saying Tokyo would continue to defend the institution as part of its commitment to international law.
Akane, who was elected president for a three-year term in March 2024, served on the judicial panel responsible for the arrest warrants against Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
Russian investigators opened criminal proceedings against the judges shortly after those warrants were announced, subsequently adding other ICC officials to their wanted lists as investigations concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine progressed.
Moscow’s Retaliation Against the Court
The confrontation began on 17 March 2023, when the ICC issued arrest warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova over the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas to Russia.
The judges found reasonable grounds to believe that both officials bore individual criminal responsibility for the alleged offences. The warrants remain in force, although neither suspect has been brought before the court.
The investigation concerns the removal of children from Ukrainian territory following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukrainian authorities have documented cases involving children transferred to Russia, placed with Russian families or subjected to measures intended to integrate them into Russian society.
Russia maintains that the transfers were humanitarian evacuations. The ICC’s investigation concerns whether children were unlawfully deported or transferred from occupied territory, conduct prohibited under international humanitarian law.
Russian prosecutors responded by expanding their criminal cases against ICC personnel. The charges included knowingly prosecuting innocent individuals and attacking representatives of a foreign state.
The December 2025 convictions provided Moscow with the domestic judgments it is now attempting to enforce through extradition requests.
Extradition Requests Raise Questions Over Travel
The Netherlands has not indicated any intention to surrender Akane. Dutch authorities have consistently supported the ICC’s independence, and the Russian convictions concern actions undertaken by officials in the exercise of their judicial responsibilities.
The position may be less predictable in countries maintaining extradition arrangements with Moscow. Although Russian convictions would not automatically require another state to surrender an ICC official, the existence of arrest warrants could complicate international travel and expose those named to detention pending legal proceedings.
The situation recalls the difficulties surrounding Putin’s own international movements since March 2023. His arrest warrant has restricted travel to ICC member states, which are generally required to cooperate with the court’s requests for arrest and surrender.
Russia’s withdrawal of its signature from the Rome Statute in 2016 did not prevent the ICC from investigating alleged crimes committed on Ukrainian territory. Ukraine had already accepted the court’s jurisdiction and became a full member on 1 January 2025.
The ICC investigation into Ukraine continues, covering alleged offences committed since 21 November 2013 within the scope of Ukraine’s acceptance of jurisdiction.
US Sanctions Add to Difficulties Facing ICC
The Russian extradition demands coincide with a separate dispute between the ICC and the United States, whose government has sanctioned several members of the court.
On 18 August 2026, President Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Akane and senior ICC trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye. Washington has objected to investigations involving American personnel and Israeli officials, arguing that the court has exceeded its jurisdiction.
The American measures primarily involve financial restrictions, while Russia has pursued criminal convictions and extradition requests. Both have placed ICC personnel under pressure for their involvement in proceedings opposed by governments outside the Rome Statute system.
The European Union has repeatedly defended the ICC against attempts to interfere with its investigations. The Netherlands, as host country, has particular responsibilities concerning the court’s operations and the security of its personnel.
Moscow’s latest requests are therefore expected to meet resistance from European governments. Their possible consequences elsewhere will depend on the countries approached and whether local authorities are prepared to act on Russian arrest warrants.
The Kremlin has so far failed to halt the ICC’s proceedings against Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov. Its response has been to pursue the judges and prosecutors responsible, seeking prison sentences against international judicial officials while the allegations against Russia’s own leadership remain before the court.
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Those killed include a woman, a teen, a volunteer medic, and a man in his 60s.. Many others, including a number of children, were injured by the Israeli strikes.
Russian forces struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on the morning of 8 October, hitting two route buses carrying residents and killing dozens of civilians. The Donetsk Oblast prosecutor's office opened a war-crimes investigation.
Russia has turned everyday movement in frontline Donetsk Oblast into a lethal risk, striking city buses, ambulances, and cars in places its army has not been able to capture.
A route bus run turned deadly
The attack came at around 10:00, catching two route buses in the impact zone. The prosecutor's office said the attackers likely used a UMPB D-30SN. HUR, Ukraine's military intelligence, describes it as a guided glide bomb that can fly up to 100 km when released from an altitude of 12–15 km and carries a warhead equal to a FAB-250 aerial bomb.
30 people were killed and 18 injured after a Russian bomb hit two passenger buses carrying civilians in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast.
The buses caught fire, and the force of the attack also damaged nearby homes and cars. Some victims were so badly burned that police had to recover… pic.twitter.com/FqLdM0HN1B
The toll rose through the day, from 12 dead in the first reports to 30 killed and 20 wounded by 14:55, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Across Donetsk Oblast, Russian attacks killed 33 people that day, including the 30 in Kramatorsk and three in nearby Bilenke, the State Emergency Service said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strike would not go unanswered.
Buses pulled off the roads
Filashkin ordered the Kramatorsk and Sloviansk city military administrations to suspend public transport, citing the sharp deterioration in security. Buses had become an attractive target for Russian forces, he said, and the authorities could not risk the lives of passengers and drivers. He also urged everyone still in Donetsk Oblast to leave for safer parts of Ukraine. Kramatorsk is a frequent target of Russian attacks. Russia had not commented on the strike as of publication.
Aftermath of the shelling of Kramatorsk on 8 October 2026. Photo: Illia Andreiev/Kramatorsk Post
The city has been under daily fire. On 5 October, Russian FPV drones hit ambulances and an apartment block in Kramatorsk, killing a woman and wounding four, the prosecutor's office reported. Over the previous day, Russian forces shelled Donetsk Oblast settlements 31 times and 256 people left the front line, Filashkin said.
Benjamin Netanyahu likes to translate Israel’s grief into American. At the United Nations last month, he took the dead of October 7 and multiplied them by the ratio of America’s population to Israel’s. The 1,200 Israelis killed that day, he said, were “equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11.”
Per-capita comparisons are a perfectly legitimate tool. A small country feels a massacre more than a large one, and Americans should understand what October 7 meant to Israelis. But a method is only honest if you’re willing to apply it to everyone. So let’s apply Netanyahu’s method to the people his army has been killing for three years.
Gaza had about 2.2 million people before the war. The United States has about 341 million, roughly 155 times as many. Take a conservative figure of 75,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, slightly above the Gaza Health Ministry’s latest count of more than 73,000. Multiply it by Netanyahu’s own logic, and you get about 11.6 million Americans.
Eleven point six million. That is roughly the population of Ohio. It is more than ten times the number of Americans killed in every war the United States has ever fought, from the Revolution to Afghanistan. It is about 15 times America’s deaths in the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history.
Measured in the unit Netanyahu chose, it is about 3,900 September 11ths.
Run the numbers in Israel’s own terms and the result is the same. Seventy-five thousand dead in a population of 2.2 million is the equivalent of about 340,000 Israelis. Netanyahu built a speech, a war and a foreign policy on 1,200. Imagine what he would say about 340,000.
The convenient multiplier
The prime minister’s defenders will object that the comparison is unfair because many of Gaza’s dead were Hamas fighters. Fine. Subtract every combatant the Israeli military claims to have killed, and apply the multiplier to what remains. Even 50,000 dead becomes nearly 8 million Americans, about 2,600 9/11s. You can argue over every death in the ledger, and the result is still measured in millions.
Netanyahu’s arithmetic has problems even on its own terms. Forty thousand Americans divided by the 2,977 who died on September 11 comes to about 13.4 9/11s, not 16. When the rhetoric needs a bigger number, it seems, the calculator rounds up.
But the real problem isn’t the rounding. It’s the selectivity. Netanyahu’s multiplier is designed to work in one direction only. It enlarges Israeli dead into an American catastrophe so that American audiences will feel what Israelis felt. Applied to Palestinians, it produces numbers so large they would make any American audience ask what, exactly, it has been paying for. That is why he never applies it to them.
What the comparison actually shows
The point of a per-capita comparison is to help outsiders grasp the scale of a loss. Netanyahu wants Americans to imagine 40,000 of their countrymen murdered in a day, and to understand everything Israel has done since as the natural response. Very well. Ask Americans to imagine 11.6 million of their countrymen dead, in a territory sealed off from escape, and to call it self-defense.
No American president would describe 11.6 million American dead as a proportionate response to anything. No American would accept that the dead deserved it because some of them were armed. And no one who has run the numbers can accept the premise of Netanyahu’s arithmetic, which is that Israeli lives scale up and Palestinian lives do not.
The method is Netanyahu’s. So is the answer it produces: by his own measure, the catastrophe in Gaza is about 290 times larger than the one he asks the world to remember.
At least 30 people have been killed and 18 injured after Russian forces struck two passenger buses in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday morning, according to updated figures released by Ukrainian prosecutors. The attack comes amid continuing Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Russian forces attacked Kramatorsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, at approximately 10am local time on 8 October, hitting an area where two scheduled passenger buses were carrying civilians.
According to preliminary findings from Ukrainian investigators, Russian forces may have used a UMPB D-30SN guided aerial munition. The precise weapon and circumstances of the attack remain under investigation.
Passenger buses caught in Russian bombardment
The two buses were operating regular passenger services when the strike occurred. Ukrainian authorities said passengers were on board, although detailed information about the victims, including their ages and identities, has not yet been released.
Photographs published by the regional prosecutor’s office show the aftermath of the attack, including severely damaged passenger vehicles. Emergency personnel and law enforcement officers were dispatched to assist the wounded, recover victims and document evidence.
The strike raises questions about the selection of the target and precautions taken to protect civilians. Under international humanitarian law, civilian vehicles and their passengers are protected from deliberate attack unless a vehicle becomes a military objective under the applicable legal rules.
The circumstances of Thursday’s strike, including whether the buses were directly targeted or struck during an attack on another location, have not yet been independently established.
Kramatorsk under increasing pressure
Kramatorsk remains one of Ukraine’s principal administrative and logistical centres in the part of Donetsk region still controlled by Kyiv. The city has faced repeated Russian bombardments as Moscow continues its military campaign to capture the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in Donetsk.
Its transport infrastructure serves residents who have remained despite years of fighting, including those travelling between neighbouring communities and those attempting to leave the region.
Regional officials have repeatedly urged residents to evacuate to safer areas of Ukraine as Russian bombardments continue. However, civilians remain in Kramatorsk and surrounding settlements, where everyday services, including public transport, continue to operate despite the danger.
Guided bombs and civilian protection
Russian forces have used guided aerial bombs against Ukrainian-controlled settlements near the front line. Such weapons can be released from aircraft at distances that reduce Russian pilots’ exposure to Ukrainian air defences.
The UMPB D-30SN, provisionally identified in the Kramatorsk attack, is a guided munition designed to reach targets beyond the immediate position of the launching aircraft. Its suspected use against an area containing occupied passenger buses will form part of the investigation.
Investigators will need to establish the intended target, the weapon used and the information available to those who planned and carried out the strike. These findings are relevant to determining whether the attack violated the laws of war.
Investigators examine civilian deaths
The Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office is collecting evidence concerning the bombardment, including the type of munition used and the circumstances in which the buses were struck.
Establishing whether the vehicles were deliberately targeted, or whether the attack resulted from an indiscriminate or disproportionate strike, will be central to any assessment under international humanitarian law.
The identities of the victims and the full extent of the damage have yet to be established publicly. As of the updated figures issued by Ukrainian prosecutors on 8 October, 30 people were reported killed and 18 injured.
Dopo il 31 marzo 2026 ha cominciato a circolare in inglese un report di venti pagine intitolato Heirs of Goebbels: falsification of the events in Bucha and bloody staged performances of the Kiev regime. Lo firma il «Tribunale pubblico internazionale sui crimini dei neonazisti ucraini», organismo presieduto da Maksim Grigor’ev, che per il testo integrale rinvia al sito del Fondo russo per lo studio dei problemi della democrazia. La tesi sta già nel titolo: gli eventi di Bucha del marzo 2022 sarebbero stati falsificati dall’Ucraina con l’appoggio dei governi occidentali, secondo una tecnica che il testo accosta alla provocazione nazista di Gleiwitz del 1939.
Il documento merita una lettura attenta proprio perché non si limita alla negazione. A differenza delle smentite russe dell’aprile 2022, costruisce il proprio argomento su materiale ucraino verificabile: le targhe del memoriale, i necrologi militari, i siti commemorativi locali, le dichiarazioni della Presidenza. È su questo terreno che va discusso. La domanda che pongo qui è più stretta di quella del report e, credo, più utile: chi compare davvero sul Muro della memoria di Bucha, con quale qualifica, e che cosa succede quando una categoria commemorativa viene usata come categoria giuridica e statistica. La risposta chiama in causa tanto chi ha costruito la narrazione ufficiale quanto chi pretende di smontarla.
L’impianto è semplice. Dopo il richiamo a Gleiwitz, il testo elenca quattro metodi di falsificazione che il governo ucraino avrebbe impiegato: la presentazione come civili di militari caduti in combattimento; l’attribuzione alla Russia di morti causate dal fuoco ucraino; il conteggio tra le vittime di anziani morti di malattia; l’uccisione deliberata di propri cittadini davanti alle telecamere. Il bersaglio dichiarato è la formula ufficiale secondo cui il memoriale conterrebbe «509 nomi di civili identificati», formula che il report attribuisce al sito della Presidenza ucraina, al sindaco Anatolij Fedoruk, a Euronews e ai ministri europei presenti alla commemorazione del 31 marzo 2026.
Il nucleo del documento (pp. 3–12) è un elenco di circa trenta nomi, ciascuno accompagnato dalla foto della targa e, spesso, da un ritaglio di stampa ucraina. Li si può raggruppare in cinque classi. La prima comprende persone indicate come membri di Azov o di unità collegate: Jevhen Petraš, Jevhen Vas’kovyč, Illja Chrenov, Bohdan Knyščuk, Volodymyr Bisaha. La seconda riunisce militari regolari: il pilota Ruslan Bilous (Belous) della 7ª brigata di aviazione tattica e il suo compagno d’equipaggio Roman Dovhaljuk, il cecchino Oleh Cymbal della 80ª brigata d’assalto aereo, Vadym Smetans’kyj della stessa brigata, un colonnello dell’SBU, un maggiore del Dipartimento di protezione statale, il comandante della guardia al commissariato militare di Bucha. La terza raccoglie membri della difesa territoriale o di formazioni volontarie: Anatolij Korytko, Serhij Smyrnov, Oleksandr Blahodatnyj, Andrij Verbovyj, Mychajlo Bojčenko. La quarta riguarda civili che avrebbero preso parte ad azioni ostili: Oleksandr Šarava, uscito di casa con bottiglie incendiarie il 27 febbraio 2022; Vitalij Fesjuk, osservatore che trasmetteva i movimenti dei mezzi russi; Oleksandr Bondar, che secondo la stampa ucraina compiva ricognizioni per le forze armate. La quinta riguarda persone morte fuori dalla città (a Vorzel’, Moščun, Kopylov, Zdvizhevka, Guta-Mežigorskaja, Irpen’) e una donna di 68 anni, Halyna Semenjuk, morta di tumore.
A questo elenco il report aggancia due riferimenti giuridici corretti nella sostanza: l’art. 51, par. 3, del Primo Protocollo addizionale, per cui i civili perdono la protezione quando e per il tempo in cui partecipano direttamente alle ostilità, e un passo divulgativo del Comitato internazionale della Croce Rossa sullo stesso principio. Le pagine 12–20, infine, riportano sedici testimonianze su bombardamenti ucraini «a favore di telecamera». Nessuna riguarda Bucha: i testimoni parlano di Avdeevka, Ugledar, Toreck / Dzeržinsk, Lisichansk, Kurakhovo, in episodi che vanno dal 2021 al 2024. Il passaggio da quel materiale a Bucha è affidato a una frase esplicita: la pratica delle uccisioni deliberate «consente di concludere ragionevolmente» che lo stesso sia avvenuto anche lì.
Il quadro normativo
Il diritto internazionale umanitario definisce il civile per esclusione. Secondo l’art. 50 del Primo Protocollo è civile chiunque non appartenga alle forze armate come definite dall’art. 43, cioè a tutte le forze, i gruppi e le unità organizzati posti sotto un comando responsabile. In caso di dubbio la persona va considerata civile, e la presenza tra la popolazione di individui non civili non priva la popolazione del suo carattere civile. Il civile che partecipa direttamente alle ostilità resta civile, ma perde la protezione dagli attacchi per la durata della partecipazione. La Interpretive Guidance del CICR fissa per tale partecipazione tre requisiti cumulativi (una soglia minima di danno, un nesso causale diretto, un nesso bellico) e distingue il civile che agisce in modo episodico dal membro di un gruppo armato organizzato con funzione di combattimento continuativa, che perde la protezione per tutta la durata di tale funzione.
Due ulteriori norme contano per il caso di Bucha. La prima è la levée en masse: gli abitanti di un territorio non ancora occupato che, all’avvicinarsi del nemico, prendono spontaneamente le armi senza aver avuto il tempo di organizzarsi sono combattenti legittimi, se portano apertamente le armi e rispettano le leggi di guerra. La seconda è interna. La legge ucraina «Sui fondamenti della resistenza nazionale», in vigore dal 1° gennaio 2022, ha fatto delle Forze di difesa territoriale una componente delle Forze armate e ha istituito le formazioni volontarie delle comunità territoriali (DFTH) come unità paramilitari destinate a compiti di difesa territoriale. Chi apparteneva a queste strutture, per il diritto internazionale umanitario, non era un civile.
C’è però un punto che il report non tocca mai. Stabilire che una persona era un combattente non dice nulla su come sia morta. Un combattente catturato, ferito o arreso è hors de combat, e ucciderlo è un crimine di guerra.
Alla prova della guerra informativa
Secondo i commentatori occidentali, il report non è credibile, perché contiene alcune imprecisioni giuridiche. Degli errori tecnici ci possono stare, ma guardare il dito ignorando la luna è un errore madornale. A Bucha, il crimine è stato compiuto dagli ucraini, non dai russi. E c’è un crimine atroce che è divenuto uno strumento di propaganda, parte di una guerra informativa che era indispensabile per l’Occidente collettivo.
Bucha ha rappresentato uno dei momenti decisivi della guerra dell’informazione sviluppatasi intorno al conflitto russo-ucraino. Dopo il ritiro delle forze russe dalla città, le immagini dei cadaveri presenti nelle strade e le testimonianze raccolte sul posto furono rapidamente diffuse dai media internazionali, trasformandosi in un potentissimo dispositivo comunicativo. Tutto avvenne con estrema velocità, con i media occidentali che, a reti unificate, diffondevano il materiale dappertutto, costruendo l’immagine della guerra come aggressione caratterizzata da atrocità sistematiche, nella quale la Russia veniva progressivamente rappresentata non soltanto come avversario militare, ma come responsabile di crimini contro la popolazione civile. Le immagini possedevano, in questo senso, una forza persuasiva superiore a quella di molte argomentazioni diplomatiche: il corpo del civile ucciso diventava una prova visiva capace di condensare in pochi fotogrammi un’intera interpretazione del conflitto.
Bucha assunse così una funzione strategica nella comunicazione occidentale e contribuì a consolidare il consenso pubblico alle sanzioni, all’isolamento diplomatico di Mosca e all’incremento dell’assistenza politica e militare a Kiev. Osservate come un evento tragico, come tragica è ogni guerra, sia stato trasformato in un’arma di guerra. Del valore dei morti, della verità delle loro biografie, a nessun media occidentale importava. L’unica cosa necessaria era incolpare la Russia e motivare l’escalation di un conflitto folle.
Ma la verità prima o dopo viene a galla.
È così che il Ministero degli Affari Esteri russo ha ha riportato il caso di Bucha al centro dell’attenzione internazionale. La portavoce Maria Zakharova ha dichiarato che Mosca intende sollecitare le Nazioni Unite a riesaminare gli eventi, sostenendo che l’ONU non avrebbe partecipato direttamente alle indagini svolte all’epoca, finendo invece per assumere come prevalente la versione fornita da Kiev. Pochi giorni dopo, anche il ministro degli Esteri Sergej Lavrov è tornato sull’episodio, denunciando quella che considera una pratica tipica della guerra dell’informazione: costruire rapidamente una narrazione, trasformarla in verità dominante e impedire che versioni alternative possano raggiungere il pubblico.
È precisamente questo, secondo Lavrov, il meccanismo attraverso cui l’Occidente avrebbe consolidato la propria interpretazione di Bucha. La prima narrazione occupa lo spazio informativo disponibile come una trincea vuota: una volta conquistata e difesa dai grandi media, sostituirla richiede uno sforzo enormemente maggiore. Nel caso di Bucha questo processo avrebbe impedito fin dall’inizio un esame realmente imparziale degli avvenimenti.
Resta dunque una questione centrale: perché riaprire oggi il dossier Bucha? Perché Mosca è pronta a confrontarsi con il mondo intero sulle menzogne propagandate dagli occidentali. L’Occidente, invece?
Nearly 22,000 Palestinian students and education workers were killed during three years of Israeli attacks, according to a statistical report released Wednesday by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. The report documents Israeli violations against the education sector from October 7, 2023, through October 7, 2026.
Issued under the slogan, “Three Years After the Genocide: Education Is a Will That Cannot Be Broken,” the report said Israeli forces killed more than 19,189 school students and 1,386 university students in the Gaza Strip. Another 28,586 school students and 3,082 university students suffered injuries of varying severity.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed 134 school students and 39 university students and injured 871 school students and 283 university students. The forces also abducted 416 school students and 481 university students.
Among educational and administrative personnel in Gaza, Israeli forces killed 805 school employees and 246 university lecturers and staff members.
The report also documented the injury of 3,298 school employees and 1,493 university personnel. In the West Bank, Israeli forces killed seven school staff members and injured 26 others, while abducting more than 176 teachers and school employees and 21 university staff members.
Regarding attacks on educational institutions, the ministry said Israeli forces completely destroyed more than 179 public schools in Gaza and more than 105 schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). More than 63 university buildings were also completely destroyed.
In response to the widespread destruction and in an effort to maintain the educational process, 700 teaching and learning centers were opened throughout the Gaza Strip, along with 12 virtual schools serving students from Gaza inside Palestine and abroad.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces continued targeting educational institutions. They issued a final demolition order against the Janba School in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, and closed four schools in Hebron’s Old City for several days: Yasser Amr, Al-Faiha, Qurtuba, and Al-Ibrahimiyya schools.
Israeli authorities also denied work permits to teachers at private schools in occupied Jerusalem, preventing them from reaching their workplaces, and continued invading Palestinian universities, most recently Birzeit University.
A Epic Games Store vai liberar de graça, a partir de quinta-feira (08/10), os jogos Out of Sight e TerraScape. Segundo a programação da loja para o Brasil, a oferta começa às 15h UTC, o equivalente a 12h em Brasília, e vai até o mesmo horário de quinta-feira (15/10). Cada um custa R$ 44,99 fora da promoção, conforme os dados da página de jogos grátis da Epic.
Out of Sight, da The Gang Studio, é descrito pela loja como um jogo atmosférico de terror, com perspectivas em primeira e em segunda pessoa e dublagem. A página do jogo na Steam informa que ele é para um jogador, roda em Windows e tem português do Brasil entre os idiomas, com áudio completo só em inglês. Os requisitos mínimos incluem Windows 10, 8 GB de memória RAM, placa de vídeo GeForce GTX 1060 ou Radeon RX 470 e 5 GB de espaço livre.
TerraScape, da Bitfall Studios, é um quebra-cabeça de construção de cidades em ilhas flutuantes. Segundo a Epic, tem desafios semanais, mapas gerados aleatoriamente e modos para um jogador e multijogador. A página na Steam lista português do Brasil, versões para Windows e Mac e requisitos mínimos de Windows 10, 4 GB de RAM, placa de vídeo GeForce GTX 1060 e 2 GB de espaço livre.
As informações de idioma e requisitos são das páginas da Steam e podem diferir na versão da Epic.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces continued violating the “ceasefire” agreement, which took effect in the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2025, by shelling several areas and opening fire, killing and wounding more Palestinians.
The truth is told very well with images. A picture says a thousand words, and memes a few more. These pages have lots of images and memes that focus on the truth. Click image to enlarge + use arrows to navigate.
Christa Pike, 50, has been hospitalized for almost a week after receiving two injections that allegedly contained lethal pentobarbital. On Tuesday, her lawyers said she had regained consciousness and speech, though her prognosis remains uncertain. The state of Tennessee had attempted to execute her for the 1995 murder of a fellow student, but Pike survived and was taken to hospital. If she stabilizes and is discharged, the state could send her back to death row and try to execute her again.
O jogo de ação Arena of Trophies será retirado da loja da Steam em 22 de outubro, uma quinta-feira, e pode ser adicionado de graça à biblioteca até lá. O título, que já é gratuito, foi lançado em 23 de abril de 2024 pela Thor Game Studios e roda em Windows.
Em aviso publicado na Steam em 24 de julho, o desenvolvedor informou que decidiu encerrar o desenvolvimento e retirar o jogo da loja. Segundo ele, não consegue mais dedicar o tempo e os recursos necessários para manter, atualizar, testar e dar suporte ao título, e não quer que novos jogadores baixem um produto sem desenvolvimento ativo.
Quem adicionar o jogo à conta antes da data poderá baixá-lo, instalá-lo e jogá-lo depois da retirada, de acordo com o aviso. O desenvolvedor afirma ainda que o jogo não tem compras dentro do aplicativo e não depende de servidores online que serão desligados.
Na página do jogo, consultada nesta terça-feira (06/10), Arena of Trophies aparece como título para um jogador, com conquistas da Steam e compartilhamento em família. Os requisitos mínimos incluem Windows 10 ou 11 de 64 bits, 8 GB de memória RAM e placa de vídeo GeForce GTX 1070 ou Radeon RX 480. A página não lista o português entre os idiomas disponíveis.
As análises de usuários na Steam são mistas: 56% positivas, em um total de 25 avaliações.
A year after the bombing that killed 22 people, including 5 journalists, at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, an Israeli soldier has told Le Monde and other media how the IDF pulls out all stops to link bombing victims to Hamas
France greenlit 35 military sales to Israel between May and September 2026, according to a joint investigation by the Palestinian Youth Movement and the French collective Urgence Palestine, with all shipments bound for subsidiaries of lead Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems.
The report states that suppliers based in five French regions manufactured the equipment, which includes cooling units used in tanks and missile launchers, visors fitted to the helmets of helicopter and fighter jet pilots, surveillance systems, and assorted electronics.
French arms firm Thales built and shipped control panels used to fire weapons remotely, a technology that rights groups and Gaza-based journalists have repeatedly reported Israel using to shoot civilians in their tents and on the streets, children among them.
Of the 35 shipments, 33 left from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, 32 of them aboard Israel’s national carrier El Al.
French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin told parliament last week that France supplies no offensive weapons to Israel, repeating the government’s position that such sales ended in 2024.
Thomas Nayla, a lawyer with Urgence Palestine, dismissed that distinction, tellingMiddle East Eye that, given items such as tank cooling units and pilot visors, “there is no way these can be considered defensive.”
The new findings follow an April report by the same two groups, which counted more than 525 shipments of French military-use equipment to Israel between October 2023 and March 2026, arming the Israeli military throughout the genocide in Gaza.
The French shipments are part of a broader pattern in which European governments and companies continued to supply Israel with military and dual-use equipment throughout the Gaza genocide, even as several governments publicly criticized Israeli apartheid and war crimes, and announced partial or symbolic restrictions.
Germany, Israel’s largest European arms supplier, approved more than $930 million in export licenses to Israel in the first five months of 2026 alone, according to Germany’s news magazine Der Spiegel, citing Economy Ministry data
Britain, meanwhile, has touted its suspension of some export licenses while keeping F-35 components largely exempt, and has still approved at least $236 million in fixed-value military export licenses to Israel since October 2023, according to Campaign Against Arms Trade, a figure that excludes the open licenses covering much of its F-35 contribution.
Elbit Systems, which supplies roughly 85 percent of Israel’s drones and ground-based equipment, has been central to the Israeli military’s relentless onslaught across West Asia.
The arms company’s Hermes drones provided near-total aerial surveillance and target selection for attacks, and its AI-enabled Tzayad system identified more than 800,000 “targets” across Gaza and Lebanon in two years by the company’s own account.
The firm posted record profits throughout the genocide, boasting that its Tzayad system had flagged “up to or over half” of Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure as targets while marketing its Gaza-used weapons to buyers as “battle-tested” to command a higher premium.
The truth is told very well with images. A picture says a thousand words, and memes a few more. These pages have lots of images and memes that focus on the truth. Click image to enlarge + use arrows to navigate.
Israeli forces continued attacks across Gaza Strip Tuesday, killing and and wounding others in airstrikes and gunfire, while another Palestinian succumbed to wounds sustained in an attack the previous day
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