Countries that approved the first-ever United Nations General Assembly resolution on "killer robots" should promote negotiations on a new international treaty to ban and regulate these weapons, Human Rights Watch said Jan. 3. These so-called "autonomous weapons" systems select and apply force to targets based on sensor processing rather than human inputs.

With Republicans holding up new military aid for Ukraine on Capitol Hill, Russia launched one of the most massive aerial assaults of the war on Dec. 29, killing 40 in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv. Ukraine retaliated the next day with a missile strike on the Russian city of Belgorod, killing at least 22. Russia counter-retaliated with a wave of drone strikes, damaging schools, hospitals and homes across Ukraine, killing at least 24. Russia accused Ukraine of using internationally prohibited cluster munitions in the strike on Belgorod, and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

China's government announced Dec. 14 that it had mediated a short-term ceasefire to the conflict between the Burmese junta and armed groups of ethnic peoples in the northern regions near the Chinese border. The conflict has been escalating since the Arakan Army (AA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) launched Operation 1027 in Burma's northern Shan state in late October. None of the parties to the conflict have commented on the supposed ceasefire.

Globally, there have been resounding calls for a long-term ceasefire to bring an end to more than two months of bloodshed and a spiralling humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. Nearly 19,000 people have now been killed by Israel's bombardment and ground invasion, according to the health ministry in the enclave, and over 80% of the 2.3 million people who live in Gaza have been displaced from their homes. While the United States has continued to support Israel's war effort (including through weapons sales), cracks have emerged as Israel has apparently paid little heed to US calls to try to limit civilian casualties and allow more access for humanitarian aid. Israel has said its fighting against Hamas could last months. With aid agencies already struggling to operate, the impact of a prolonged war on a population squeezed into a sliver of southern Gaza—and suffering from food shortages and outbreaks of disease—is hard to imagine.

In the two months since Israel began bombarding and laying total siege to Gaza, around 85% of the 2.3 million people who live in the coastal enclave have been displaced from their homes, according to the UN. More than 17,000 people have been killed—around 70% of them women and children—and many others are missing and presumed to be trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; the enclave's healthcare system is barely functional; and a rapid food security assessment found that nearly everyone now goes to bed hungry, and most have gone entire days without food. An Israeli ground invasion, which began Oct. 27 and is expanding into southern Gaza, is squeezing hundreds of thousands of displaced into smaller and smaller areas. Humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza have essentially ground to a halt, and UN officials have repeatedly warned that nowhere is safe. Amid these extreme conditions, "civil order is breaking down," the Gaza director of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned, while Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA's commissioner-general, said: "We are reaching the point of no return."

In Episode 197 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that as Israel crosses a genocidal threshold in Gaza, Vladimir Putin hypocritically protests the carnage—despite the fact that he has already crossed that threshold in Ukraine. This hypocrisy is precisely mirrored by that of Joe Biden. The moral position of Ukraine's resistance to Russian aggression, occupation and genocide is undermined by the contradiction of its Western backers such as the US marshalling massive resources—in the very same legislation just introduced by Biden on Capitol Hill—to assist Israeli aggression, occupation and genocide. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dropped his opposition to Sweden's entry into NATO, it was announced just ahead of the opening of the military alliance summit in Vilnius July 11. US President Joe Biden thanked Erdogan for his "courage" in clearing the way for Stockholm's bid. In an apparent quid pro quo, the State Department said the administration is dropping its objections to Turkey purchasing F-16 fighter jets from the US. Congress opposed sales of the jets to Turkey after Ankara bought Russian S-400 missile systems in 2017.

The US announced July 7 that it will provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, despite a plea from Human Rights Watch (HRW) for both Russia and Ukraine to cease their use of the controversial weapons, which have already caused many civilian deaths and injuries over the course of the war. In a White House press briefing, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stressed that the US deferred the decision for as long as possible due to such considerations, but ultimately found that the harm of a continued Russian offensive outweighed the risks of providing the munitions.