Iran protests continue with 538 people killed, activists say

(LONDON) — The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado for her work “promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and her push to move the country from dictatorship to democracy.

Jorgen Watne Frydens, the Nobel Committee chair, spoke broadly about the advance of authoritarian regimes in the world and retreat of democracy in the announcement.

The Nobel Committee called the Venezuelan politician and industrial engineer who is currently the opposition leader in Venezuela “a brave and committed champion of peace.”

“Machado is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize first and foremost for her efforts to advance democracy in Venezuela,” the committee said. “But democracy is also in retreat internationally. Democracy — understood as the right to freely express one’s opinion, to cast one’s vote and to be represented in elective government — is the foundation of peace both within countries and between countries.”

“Maria Corina Machado has led the struggle for democracy in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela. Ms Machado studied engineering and finance, and had a short career in business,” the Nobel Committee said.

In 1992, Machado established the Atenea Foundation, which works to benefit street children in Caracas and, 10 years later, she was one of the founders of Súmate, a group that works to promote free and fair elections and has conducted training and election monitoring. In 2010, Machado was elected to the National Assembly and won a record number of votes.

“The regime expelled her from office in 2014,” the Nobel Committee said. “Ms Machado leads the Vente Venezuela opposition party and in 2017 helped found the Soy Venezuela alliance, which unites pro-democracy forces in the country across political dividing lines.”

The announcement was made on Friday morning, but the actual award ceremony will take place on Dec. 10, in Oslo, Norway.

Frydens was asked about U.S. President Donald Trump’s “campaign” for the prize, but denied it had any impact on the decision making process.

“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what, for them, leads to peace,” Frydens said. “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. We base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”

“Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence,” the Nobel Committee said.

“The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world,” it continued. “We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair.”

“Maria Corina Machado meets all three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a Peace Prize laureate. She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy,” the committee said.

“[She] has shown that the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace. She embodies the hope of a different future, one where the fundamental rights of citizens are protected, and their voices are heard. In this future, people will finally be free to live in peace,” Nobel Committee officials said.

Last year, Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese anti-nuclear weapons group, won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, with the Norwegian Nobel Committee saying that the testimony of the Hibakusha, who are the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is unique in this larger context and that their perspective helps to “generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons.”

There were 338 candidates nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025, of which 244 were individuals and 94 were organizations. This is a significant increase from last year when there were 286 nominees. The highest number of nominees to date was in 2016 when there were 376 candidates.

The list of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize is released 50 years after the prize is awarded, in accordance with the statutes of the Nobel Foundation.

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(LONDON and KYIV, Ukraine) — The Kremlin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, confirmed there is a “preliminary agreement” for U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff — and likely Jared Kushner — to visit Moscow next week, as the White House claims momentum toward a possible Ukraine-Russia peace plan.

“As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will visit Moscow next week,” Ushakov said in an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin for the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin,” broadcast on Wednesday.

“We have agreed to meet with Mr. Witkoff. I hope he will not come alone, but will be accompanied by other representatives of the American team who are working on the Ukrainian dossier, and then we will begin discussions,” Ushakov added.

Witkoff, Ushakov said, will “definitely” meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin if he comes to Moscow next week.

The interview came after Bloomberg published excerpts of a recording of purported phone call between Witkoff and Ushakov, in which Trump’s envoy appeared to offer guidance on how Putin should present the Kremlin’s plan to end the war to Trump.

Ushakov appeared to confirm the call happened but declined to comment. Ushakov also alleged that the leak was intended to undermine the ongoing peace efforts.

“I speak with Witkoff quite often, but I do not comment on the substance of our conversations because they are confidential. No one should comment on them, actually,” he said.

The reported leak was “probably” intended to “hinder” discussions, Ushakov said. “It is unlikely that this is being done to improve relations. They are now being established, with difficulty, through contacts of this kind, including by telephone.”

Ushakov denied that Russia leaked the call. “Someone is leaking them, someone is listening in, but it’s not us,” he said.

Trump had already told reporters on Tuesday that his envoy would travel to Russia. “Now, Steve Witkoff is going over maybe with Jared. I’m not sure about Jared going, but he’s involved in the process, smart guy, and they’re going to be meeting with President Putin, I believe, next week in Moscow,” he said.

Pressed on the Bloomberg report and concerns that Witkoff was too sympathetic to Russia’s maximalist war goals, Trump replied, “No, but that’s a standard thing, you know, because he’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what he’s, that’s what a deal maker does.”

“You got to say, look, they want this. You’ve got to convince him with this. You know, that’s a very standard form of negotiation. I haven’t heard it, but I heard it was standard negotiation, and I would imagine he’s saying the same thing to Ukraine, because each party has to give and take,” Trump added.

Asked whether Witkoff was “too pro-Russia,” Trump did not answer directly. He instead said that a deal would be beneficial for both sides, while appearing to talk up Russia’s military capabilities.

“I think, look, this war could go on for years, and Russia’s got a lot more people, a lot more soldiers,” Trump said. “So I think if Ukraine can make a deal, it’s a good thing. I think it’s great for both. Frankly, I think it’s great for both.”

Weekend talks in Geneva, Switzerland, saw American, European and Ukrainian officials meet to discuss the controversial U.S.-backed peace plan proposal put to Kyiv last week, with terms critics say would have constituted a Ukrainian capitulation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week the blueprint “could also form the basis for a final peace settlement,” and suggested it aligned closely with the outcomes of his meeting with Trump in Alaska in August.

On Monday, a Ukrainian official close to the matter told ABC News that the original 28-point draft had been revised down to 19 points after the Geneva talks, with both American and Ukrainian representatives framing the Geneva talks as productive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that the Geneva talks produced a “framework,” adding Kyiv is “ready to move forward together — with the United States of America, with personal engagement of President Trump, and with Europe.”

“I am ready to meet with President Trump,” Zelenskyy continued. “There are sensitive points to discuss,” he said.

After the Geneva meetings, a U.S. delegation held additional talks with Russian and Ukrainian representatives in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. A U.S. official told ABC News on Tuesday, “The Ukrainians have agreed to the peace deal … There are some minor details to be sorted out but they have agreed to a peace deal.”

A source familiar with the discussions confirmed to ABC News that Ukraine agreed to the new 19-point peace plan during the talks in Geneva, not in Abu Dhabi.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump did not elaborate on which issues are still to be agreed with Kyiv. “Standard things,” Trump said when asked. “But people are starting to realize it’s a good deal for both parties if they got to stop the war, they’re losing a lot of people, a lot of soldiers, mostly soldiers.”

Pressed about Ukraine ceding land to Russia, Trump hinted at land swaps and called the overall process “complicated” and said it “doesn’t go that quickly.”

Trump also did not say what concessions Moscow is being asked to make. “They’re making concessions. They’re big concessions. You say stop fighting, and they don’t take any more land again,” the president said.

As to future security guarantees for Ukraine, Trump said the issue is being discussed with European countries. “Europe will be largely involved in that,” he said. “We’re working that out with Europe. Europe really wants to see it end, if possible.”

Moscow is yet to officially comment on the new 19-point plan. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Tuesday that “if the spirit and letter of Anchorage are removed in terms of the key understandings that we have established, then, of course, it will be a fundamentally different situation.”

In his interview with Zarubin broadcast on Wednesday, Ushakov said the new plan was “passed on to us,” as quoted by Russia’s state-run Tass news agency. But the Kremlin aide added that the plan “hasn’t been discussed in detail with anyone yet.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, told reporters on Wednesday it is “too early to say” that the warring parties may be nearing a deal, according to Tass.

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(LONDON) — Ukraine appears at increasing risk of losing the city of Pokrovsk, an important stronghold in eastern Ukraine where its embattled defenders have held off Russia’s grinding assaults for more than a year and a half.

The devastated city — which was home to some 60,000 people before Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion — has become a key focus of the Kremlin’s yearslong push to capture all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Oblast, which along with neighboring Luhansk Oblast makes up the Donbas region.

Although Ukraine for now is still maintaining a defense, the fall of Pokrovsk would be one of the most serious defeats Ukraine has suffered since March, when its troops were forced to retreat from Russia’s Kursk region.

Russia has for many months been attempting to encircle Pokrovsk and neighboring Myrnohrad from the north and south. Moscow’s forces are now close to cutting off the main roads into Pokrovsk, with its two key supply routes already under fire from Russian drones making it dangerous and difficult to bring in supplies and also threatening Ukrainian forces ability to withdraw.

In recent weeks, a growing number of Russian troops have advanced into Pokrovsk, with small groups using infiltration tactics to penetrate into the heart of the city, according to both Ukrainian and Russian military analysts.

Intense street fighting is now taking place inside Pokrovsk, with Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi describing the situation as “difficult.”

“The enemy in Pokrovsk is paying the highest price for attempting to fulfill the Kremlin dictator’s task of occupying Ukrainian Donbas,” Syrskyi wrote in a post to Telegram on Saturday.

Ukrainians outnumbered, under fire
Ukraine in recent days has launched counterattacks to push Russian forces back from the northern edge of Pokrovsk and keep a road there open to Myrnohrad.

Last weekend, for example, special forces troops under the command of Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) chief Kyrylo Budanov launched an audacious heliborne operation into territory that Russian forces claimed they already controlled. The GUR later uploaded video of the assault.

But the momentum in Pokrovsk appears to be with the attacking Russian forces. The city’s fall would be a blow to Ukrainian morale and would complicate its broader defense of the Donbas region.

There are also concerns in Ukraine that its loss could open a route for a Russian offensive towards the cities of Kostyantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk — the largest Donbas cities still controlled by Kyiv.

But military analysts who spoke to ABC News suggested that the fall of Pokrovsk alone would not necessarily imperil Ukraine’s forces holding the area.

“The Ukrainians could quite likely just as easily continue to defend outside Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad,” Pasi Paroinen of the Finland-based Black Bird Group open-source intelligence analysis organization told ABC News.

Though urban centers “usually make decent tactical defensive positions,” Paroinen added, “when you are already surrounded from three sides and your lines of communications have been cut off or are being disrupted as badly as they are right now over there, then those positions become liabilities, and they are just basically draining Ukrainian resources.”

A Ukrainian withdrawal may even improve Kyiv’s prospects, Paroinen said, assuming that new defenses have been prepared to the city’s west. If those new fortifications are not ready, “then they have a bigger problem than failing to hold Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad,” he said.

The Institute for the Study of War think tank suggested that Russia is unlikely to have the reserves to exploit Pokrovsk’s potential fall to advance rapidly to seize more of the Donbas region. Rather, Moscow’s mauled forces would likely have to continue their slow and costly forward grind, the ISW said.

Regardless, the situation is fraught for Ukrainian units still present in the city. The omnipresent threat of drones could complicate any Ukrainian retreat effort, which would likely see Kyiv’s troops attempt to break out to the west of the city using its under-fire supply routes.

If unable to retreat, large numbers of Ukrainian troops could find themselves cut off and potentially captured. To date and with the exception of the Russian siege of Mariupol in the early stages of the invasion, Kyiv’s forces have avoided being forced into mass surrender, even as they’ve gradually ceded territory in the east of the country.

The fall of Pokrovsk would also likely buoy Russian morale and send a signal that the war is going in its favor — a signal likely to be amplified by Russian state-aligned media and the Kremlin.

Moscow has amassed around 170,000 troops in the Donetsk region with a focus on Pokrovsk, according to remarks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday — a signal, he said, of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intent to capture the area.

Russia has not said how many troops it has deployed to the area. Ukrainian troops defending it are outnumbered eight-to-one, Zelenskyy said.

Visiting a command post in the Dobropillia sector — just north of Pokrovsk — this week, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces there are “defending Ukraine and our territorial integrity. This is our country, this is our East, and we will certainly do our utmost to keep it Ukrainian.”

Russian soldiers have already paid a high price. Ukraine’s General Staff said that, since the start of 2025, Moscow has lost some 200,000 soldiers who have been killed or wounded in Donetsk, most of them in the Pokrovsk and Kupyansk directions.

Russia does not release details about its casualties, making it difficult to independently confirm that figure. Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties have broadly chimed with estimates from U.S. and European intelligence agencies since 2022.

A Russian victory in Pokrovsk will be welcome good news for the Kremlin as Putin maneuvers for advantage over his Ukrainian and American counterparts in anticipation of possible talks over a proposed ceasefire and eventual peace deal.

Russian Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov last week sought to play up the significance of Moscow’s advance on the city, telling Putin that up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers were “encircled” in areas including Pokrovsk — a claim later denied by Ukrainian officials and even disputed by some Russian military analysts, and that most military observers say is currently false.

Fight or flight?
The current situation in Pokrovsk is following a similar pattern as other embattled Donbas cities like Bakhmut in 2023 and Avdiivka in 2024. In all three, Russian forces edged forward over several months at staggering human cost despite a resolute Ukrainian defense, according to figures released by Kyiv. In Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Ukrainian forces were eventually forced to abandon the cities.

Zelenskyy and his generals have been criticized by some military bloggers and analysts in Ukraine and abroad for their perceived sluggishness in ordering retreats from doomed Donbas cities.

“The Ukrainians are committing to defending these towns, I would say, for too long,” Paroinen said. “The Russians are already too deep, and I think in too many numbers inside Pokrovsk for Ukrainians to be able to throw them out.”

Ukrainian political and military officials have repeatedly said that military — not political — considerations are front of mind, framing their defense of certain cities as a means to further bleed Russia’s attacking units. Others have argued for a nimbler “defense-in-depth” approach to preserve Ukrainian lives and conserve stretched resources.

“Defense-in-depth is not something the political leadership appreciates too much,” Oleksandr V. Danylyuk — an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the U.K. and the chairman of the Center for Defense Reforms think tank in Kyiv — told ABC News. “That’s why I would rather expect the government to fight for as long as they can.”

“I think that potentially, Ukraine can actually keep the ground in Pokrovsk, in the same way as the ground has been kept in Chasiv Yar, for instance,” Danylyuk — who has previously served as an adviser to top Ukrainian military and intelligence officials — added, referring to the pivotal fortress city to the northwest where Ukrainian troops have been pushed back but retain a foothold after a yearlong Russian offensive.

“I’m not quite sure if Pokrovsk is of the same importance militarily as Chasiv Yar,” Danlyluk said.

“Personally, I don’t see any real military reason to actually fight for Pokrovsk,” he said. “I understand political reasons. I understand symbolic reasons. And I believe that it is doable. It’s just a matter of price. And I’m not quite sure if we need to pay the price.”

Oleksandr Merezhko — a member of the Ukrainian parliament representing Zelenskyy’s party and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee — downplayed the criticism of the decision to fight for Pokrovsk.

“I guess our military philosophy is to defend a particular point till the last opportunity, but at the same time to save people,” he told ABC News. “To make the Russians lose more of their soldiers and to save our soldiers.”

But influential military figures, such as Vitalii Deineha — the well-known Ukrainian volunteer and founder of the Come Back Alive Foundation — are already calling for Kyiv to abandon the city.

“The General Staff reports to the top contain more and more lies every day,” Deineha wrote in a post to Facebook. “In fact, we have practically already lost Pokrovsk, which means that holding Myrnohrad also makes no sense.”

“We should not be afraid of rating drops, because there will be no elections: next year there will be war again. And someone will have to fight it,” he added.

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