Letter From the Editors

As 2025 becomes one for the books, what events will we look back on and remember most? Those of dashed hopes? Empty promises? Surprise plot twists that even a detective novel couldn’t match? Well, all those, actually. Here are the stories that shook the pages of The Current Digest, in no particular order (but mostly chronological).

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Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Yes, the one event that got the ball rolling on several more on this list. And unlike the Donald of his first term, DJT 2.0 was less about talk and more about actions (although a lot of talk, too – mostly about himself). Proclaiming himself the greatest peacemaker ever, Trump took credit for ending the Israel-Hamas war (although that’s a ceasefire and not an outright peace); reconciling Armenia and Azerbaijan (but only if they name a road after him and cut him in on some lucrative deals). Well, and the Russia-Ukraine…oh wait. No, that one is still ongoing, much to Trump’s chagrin. There goes that Nobel Peace Prize.

President Zelensky’s White House dressing-down. See above. Izvestia aptly called the ugly scene “fear and loathing in the Oval Office.” But who’s afraid of whom? Perhaps Trump thought Zelensky would be that easy to intimidate. Or maybe the real fear here is that the 47th US president began to realize he was in over his head with his “deal making.”

Neural networks are making us nervous. Yes, AI continued to further entrench itself into people’s daily life. And that was a cause for anxiety, at least according to pollsters at Russia’s CROS, which released its annual anxiety listing. Besides drones and a Spanish slug invasion (!), Russians were worried that AI “could leave them without a job, develop unchecked and become a threat to humanity.” Another noteworthy event here was the surprise of DeepSeek: China showed that world-class AI models can be built with significantly less money and computing power than previously thought.

Money woes. Not exactly surprising. As long as money has existed, it seems humans have worried about it. It didn’t help that Trump unleashed a tariff war and seems determined to provoke a “global economic crisis,” according to Republic. Money woes were also a top recurring fear for Russians – ever since the country’s top bean counters admitted the economy has hit a dead end during June’s SPIEF session.

Protests in Serbia. Unnerving both President Aleksandar Vucic and the Kremlin, student-led protests in Belgrade, Novy Sad and other major Serbian cities were a major news story in mid-2025. Vucic has managed to keep a relative lid on them, but as many hot spots show, unresolved tensions can flare up again at any moment.

Anticorruption reform protests in Ukraine. As President Zelensky learned the hard way in July, the spirit of maidan is neither gone nor forgotten. When the presidential administration attempted to take away the independent status of Ukraine’s two main anticorruption bureaus, people took to the streets for the first time in war-torn Ukraine – and Zelensky had to quickly double back to avoid the fate of his predecessor. No less dangerous was the corruption scandal surrounding his close associate Timur Mindich. The fact that Mindich managed to escape to Israel just before investigators showed up at his front door had many saying that he got a tipoff from the inside – which also doesn’t look good for Zelensky.

As we raise a toast to 2026, are those champagne glasses half-full or half-empty? John F. Kennedy once said: “History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.” If anything, 2026 is a wake-up call for active leadership that goes beyond “the art of the deal.” Let’s hope that lesson is learned in the coming year – and beyond.