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Russian forces continue their steady battlefield gains this week, but Kiev is still seeking to grasp at establishing some sort of leverage at the negotiating table, as the Trump peace plan is still being pushed in back-and-forth US dialogue with Moscow representatives. 

Over the past some 24 hours, Russian troops have captured the settlement of Zarechnoye in the southeast Zaporozhye Region, according to the defense ministry (MoD). "Battlegroup East units kept advancing deep into the enemy’s defenses and liberated the settlement of Zarechnoye in the Zaporozhye Region," the MoD said Wednesday according to TASS.

The military further issued a grim figure, claiming that the Ukrainian army lost over 1,400 troops in a single day across all front line areas. Additional armor and combat vehicles were also reportedly destroyed.

After weeks ago Ukraine finally lost the strategic logistics hub of Pokrovsk, it's been setback after setback for Kiev from there. The pace of Russia's advance has only steadily increased. Reuters conveys Ukraine's response, which seeks to frame it as a strategic retreat:

Ukrainian forces have pulled out of the embattled eastern town of Siversk, Kyiv's military said on Tuesday, as Russian troops wage a battlefield offensive aimed at threatening key cities critical to Ukraine's defences in the east. Sloviansk is a northern anchor of the so-called "fortress belt" of cities in Ukraine's heavily industrialised Donbas region, which Russia has demanded Kyiv cede before it ends its war.
"The invaders were able to advance due to a significant numerical advantage and constant pressure from small assault groups in difficult weather conditions," Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement.
It said it had withdrawn soldiers to preserve lives and resources, adding that they had, however, inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.

And yet, President Volodymyr Zelensky is still pressing for a fresh meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss "sensitive issues" - given Washington and Moscow seem closer than ever to reaching common understanding on the peace deal, after the Miami meetings.

Zelensky has laid out that territorial control of Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland remains unresolved. The US plan hinges on Ukraine giving up territory, specifically in the east where its forces are clearly on the backfoot.

"We are ready for a meeting with the United States at the leaders’ level to address sensitive issues. Matters such as territorial questions must be discussed at the leaders' level," said Zelensky in comments released by his office on Wednesday.

Russia is currently reviewing the latest draft from the US side, after marathon talks in Florida, and a response is soon expected from President Putin.

Below is how Russian media presents Ukraine's current attempts to modify the Trump plan, providing insights into the main disagreements:

Zelensky disclosed the details during a briefing with journalists on Wednesday, claiming the draft largely reflects a joint Ukrainian-American position, while several key issues remain unresolved.

Among the most contentious provisions is the proposal regarding the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which is currently fully controlled by Russian forces. Kiev wants the plant to be jointly operated by Ukraine and the US on a 50-50 basis instead of Washington’s proposed trilateral management involving Russia.

The territorial issue, described as the most difficult, would also place the burden of concessions on Russia despite its vast military gains. One option outlined in the plan would require Russian forces to withdraw from Ukraine’s Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Sumy, and Nikolayev regions, while freezing the conflict along current front lines in Russia’s Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions. 

And there's also this point of contention, per the same report: "Provisions previously linked to Russian language rights and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have been replaced with broadly worded commitments to educational programs promoting tolerance and anti-racism."

Kiev still insists on a mere freezing of the front lines, and not a permanent political settlement of the eastern territories' status. Zelensky has proposed that troops "remain where we are".

The Kremlin's demands for territory actually includes areas where some Ukrainian forces are still present. Putin has warned that this either gets settled at the negotiating table or on the battlefield, and has rejected any short-term 'freeze' which won't ultimately solve the crisis.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Leftist revolutionaries have long been in the habit of reworking the calendar so as to make it easier to force the population into new habits and new ways of life better suited to the revolutionaries themselves.

The French revolutionaries famously abolished the usual calendar, replacing it with a ten-day week system with three weeks in each month. The months were all renamed. Christian feast days and holidays were replaced with commemorations of plants like turnips and cauliflower.

The Soviet communists attempted major reforms to the calendar themselves. Among these was the abolition of the traditional week with its Sundays off and predictable seven-day cycles.

That experiment ultimately failed, but the Soviets did succeed in eradicating many Christian traditional holidays in a country that had been for centuries influenced by popular adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion.

Once the communists took control of the Russian state, the usual calendar of religious holidays was naturally abolished. Easter was outlawed, and during the years when weekends were removed, Easter was especially difficult to celebrate, even privately.

But perhaps the most difficult religious holiday to suppress was Christmas, and much of this is evidenced in the fact that Christmas wasn’t so much abolished as replaced by a secular version with similar rituals.

Emily Tamkin writes at Foreign Policy:

Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol (youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928 they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day.

Then, in 1935, Josef Stalin decided, between the great famine and the Great Terror, to return a celebratory tree to Soviet children. But Soviet leaders linked the tree not to religious Christmas celebrations, but to a secular new year, which, future-oriented as it was, matched up nicely with Soviet ideology.

Ded Moroz [a Santa Claus-like figure] was brought back. He found a snow maid from folktales to provide his lovely assistant, Snegurochka. The blue, seven-pointed star that sat atop the imperial trees was replaced with a red, five-pointed star, like the one on Soviet insignia. It became a civic, celebratory holiday, one that was ritually emphasized by the ticking of the clock, champagne, the hymn of the Soviet Union, the exchange of gifts, and big parties.

In the context of these celebrations, the word “Christmas” was replaced by “winter.” According to a Congressional report from 1965,

The fight against the Christian religion, which is regarded as a remnant of the bourgeois past, is one of the main aspects of the struggle to mold the new “Communist man.” … the Christmas Tree has been officially abolished, Father Christmas has become Father Frost, the Christmas Tree has become the Winter Tree, the Christmas Holiday the Winter Holiday. Civil-naming ceremonies are substituted for christening and confirmation, so far without much success.

It is perhaps significant that Stalin found the Santa Claus aspect of Christmas worth preserving, and Stalin apparently calculated that a father figure bearing gifts might be useful after all.

According to a 1949 article in The Virginia Advocate,

at children’s gatherings in the holiday season … grandfather frost lectures on good Communist behavior. He customarily ends his talk with the question “to whom do we owe all the good things in our socialist society?” To which, it is said, the children chorus the reply, ‘Stalin.’

Commerce Scretary Lutnick appeared on Fox News, discussing new energy for data centers.

As we have noted previously, energy prices continue to spike near data center facilities across the US. Lutnick claimed data centers are going to provide additional power generation and capacity to the grid along with the construction of their facilities to lower the energy prices, but so far this has not been the case.

The additional costs of infrastructure to the wider grid that come with higher demand are not covered in the higher rates paid by the hyperscalers. Many of the costs extend to equipment outside of the immediate vicinity of the new power consumer, such as upgrades and maintenance to upstream transformers and powerlines. Maybe the rest of the US should copy what Texas does...

Make "behind the meter" mandatory https://t.co/ZEcmX5Ge0e pic.twitter.com/bCBnwx2E5g

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 24, 2025

And while multiple companies and developers are working on solutions for on-site, "behind-the-meter" power for AI data centers - with little practical success to date - one power developer has formally proposed an idea that has been informally discussed for years. 

HGP Intelligent Energy, a Texas power developer, is proposing to use reactors from US Navy submarines and aircraft carriers to power a data center project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company claims redirecting two retired naval reactors could produce about 450-520 MW of power in what would be the fastest way to add new baseload power to the grid while the commercial nuclear industry struggles to get back on its feet.

The likelihood of this proposal being accepted by the US government is extremely low. The idea that the government will allow a private company, even with deep coordination with the DoE/DoW, to own or operate one of the most strategic assets in the US government’s arsenal, is absurd. Naval reactors have multiple differences compared to traditional commercial reactors, most notably the extremely high enriched uranium content, which is over 90%, compared to traditional reactors which are less than 5%.

In addition to concerns about proliferation of weapons grade uranium, there are also concerns of how the reactors can operate after they are removed from their submarines or carriers. The reactors are removed from their vessels and decommissioned due to no longer being able to operate as designed at their old age. There are likely multiple concerns with safely operating the reactor in its aged status with respect to reactor physics and material integrity. You can't just stick lower enriched fuel inside a reactor designed for highly enriched fuel, the geometry of the core alone will likely not allow for proper operation.

Still, the recommendation of involving the nuclear navy with the reinvigoration of the nuclear industry does hold value. The Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program is the most successful nuclear program in history, with over 7500 reactor years of safe operation. Their expertise with reactor plant construction and operation would likely benefit the commercial nuclear industry in multiple ways.

After President Donald Trump publicly attacked Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan in August, writing, “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,” Intel rushed to arrange a White House meeting that became a turning point for the struggling chipmaker which was on the verge of failure, Reuters wrote in a new report.

Tan, a veteran venture capitalist with a long history of investments in China, prepared for the meeting, seeking support from influential allies including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

The roughly 40-minute Oval Office meeting included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and focused on how Tan would stabilize and rebuild Intel at a moment when US semiconductor policy had become a central national priority.

During that meeting, Tan agreed to the proposal which was already reported and which saw the US government receive equity in Intel in exchange for additional CHIPS Act funding. The agreement delivered $5.7 billion in cash, made the U.S. government Intel’s largest shareholder, and conferred on the company what many investors now describe as a “too-strategic-to-fail” status.... although maybe not.

After the deal, Tan pledged to “make Intel great again,” which Lutnick posted under the caption, “The Art of the Deal: Intel.” The government’s involvement quickly helped "improve" Intel’s standing with potential partners and customers eager to align with the administration’s industrial strategy.

Sure enough, since Tan became CEO in March, but really since the deal with the Trump admin, Intel’s stock has climbed about 80%, far outpacing much of the broader market. The new momentum helped secure major investments, including $5 billion from Nvidia and $2 billion from SoftBank.

Technology lobbyist Adam Kovacevich called the government deal a “lifeline” for Intel, suggesting the company’s leadership and strategic direction might have been in jeopardy without it. At the same time, Tan began a sweeping internal restructuring, cutting roughly 15% of Intel’s workforce, flattening management layers, and pushing for faster, more engineering-driven decision-making across the organization.

That's the good news. The bad news is that, well, despite the optics little has changed.

As Reuters notes, despite the improved deal flow (or at least perception thereof) and the political backing (in exchange for a pound of flesh equity), Intel’s core manufacturing challenges remain and the Commerce Department appeared to make it clear that they are not a guaranteed priority, and in fact more dilutions for the benefit of taxpayers may be on deck. 

Intel is not "too strategic to fail" one official told Reuters refuting the prevailing market mantra which assumes the opposite, adding that "Secretary Lutnick talks to all parties rather than prioritizing calls for Intel’s sake."

And while the company claims that its advanced chip process is “progressing well,” there was more bad news - which apparently never rose to the level of 8K importance - after Nvidia recently tested Intel’s 18A manufacturing technology and chose not to proceed. Even after investing billions, Nvidia made no commitment to manufacture its chips at Intel, and Tan acknowledged the limited scope of the partnership, saying, “Right now we are focused on collaborations."

But now that the forced deal "honeymoon" period is over and the stock is once again drifting lower, Tan may want to consider focusing on delivering results because the goodwill that the CEO bought by going in bed with Trump is almost over.

In response to the Reuters report, INTC stock dropped as much as 4%, and down almost 20% from its recent high at the start of the month. It still has a long way to fall to the low $20 where it traded before the company announced its "tactical alignment" with the US government.

After two poor, disappointing coupon auctions earlier this week, when global yields were surging thanks to the circus that is Japan, we have come to the final note auction of the year, and yes... this one was not quite as bad. 

The sale of $44BN in 7Y notes priced at a high yield of 3.930%, up from 3.781% in November and the highest since July. That said, the auction stopped through the 3.933% When Issued by 0.3bps, and followed 4 consecutive tailing auctions.

The bid to cover was 2.509, up from 2.459 last month and the highest since July, if just below the six-auction average of 2.520.

Unlike the week's previous coupon auctions, which saw a slide in foreign demand, the internals were stronger and Indirects took down 59.04%, up from 56.65% and the highest since August's 77.5%. And with Directs rising to 31.6%, just shy of a record high, Dealers were left with just 9.34%, the lowest since July.

Overall, this was a stronger auction than the subpar fare observed earlier this week, which is handy since this was also the final auction of the year, helping push yields down to session lows. Of course, we now have an entirely new year to look forward to and with an onslaught of deficit-funding debt on deck, far more ugly auctions on deck.