This episode of The Restricted Handling Podcast takes you deep inside the last 24 hours of chaos, diplomacy, and deception surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine. From the marble halls of Geneva to the mud-soaked streets of Pokrovsk, the global stage is alive with drama — and we’re breaking it all down with energy, sharp wit, and a touch of that “you can’t make this up” disbelief. 

We start in Geneva, where U.S., Ukrainian, and European leaders scrambled to clean up the diplomatic firestorm ignited by Trump’s controversial 28-point peace plan. Originally written with “input” from a Russian oligarch under U.S. sanctions (because of course it was), the plan basically handed Putin a victory lap and asked Ukraine to say thank you. Now, Rubio and Zelensky’s team are rewriting it on the fly — trying to turn a diplomatic trainwreck into something resembling an actual peace framework. 

Europe’s not sitting quietly either. The Brits, French, and Germans dropped a counterproposal that doubles Ukraine’s troop cap, adds NATO-style guarantees, and tells Putin he can earn his way back into the G8… if he behaves. Meanwhile, Trump is blasting Ukraine online for “zero gratitude,” Zelensky’s smiling through gritted teeth, and European leaders are warning that any peace deal that rewards aggression is a one-way ticket to another war. 

On the ground, Russia’s trying to turn Pokrovsk into the next Mariupol, launching wave after wave of attacks to encircle the city. Ukrainian paratroopers are still holding the center, fighting block to block. Kyiv’s also flipping the script, hitting back with deep drone strikes — including one that lit up a Moscow power plant like a Fourth of July firework show. 

Back in Moscow, Putin’s doing what he does best: repression and revisionism. His government just labeled Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation a “terrorist organization.” That’s right — a group of anti-corruption lawyers now shares a list with ISIS. Classic Kremlin logic. Meanwhile, Russian state media’s busy pushing tall tales about “Ukrainian saboteurs” blowing up railways, and their navy’s creeping around British waters again, getting chased off by the Royal Navy. 

We wrap with Russia’s “reconstruction” of Mariupol — a Potemkin village of propaganda where Ukrainian culture is being scrubbed away and replaced with kitsch patriotism — and a look at how 200,000 Ukrainians in the U.S. are suddenly stuck in immigration limbo. 

It’s an episode that has everything: high-stakes diplomacy, drone warfare, propaganda straight out of a Cold War reboot, and a cast of world leaders whose egos could power a small city. 

If you want the day’s geopolitics with personality — the headlines, the heat, and the human mess underneath it all — this is your brief.