Russia’s last incentive to cooperate with the West crumbles, a fizzy revolution goes flat, and a boot to a child’s skull may have awakened a nation.
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​Note: Since these are the last Dispatches of 2025, we offer a slimmed-down global edition in lieu of the Saturday essay. Dispatches returns on January 8^th. Happy Holidays, my friends!
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The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out
2. Gen Z's Soda Pop Revolution Fizzles
3. Hungarians Set to Give Orban the Boot
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Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.

Last week, at Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome—the sprawling Soviet-era spaceport Russia still leases for $115 million annually—a Soyuz rocket roared toward orbit carrying three astronauts. Exhaust from the engines shoved a service platform into a flame trench below, mangling it beyond repair.
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Someone had forgotten to install the brakes.
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The crew reached the International Space Station safely. But Russia's only launchpad for human spaceflight now sits destroyed. Moscow can no longer deliver the propellant that keeps the station from spinning out of control—the one function that justified its continued participation in cooperative space operations.
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This matters because Russia possesses destructive power it no longer has reason to restrain.
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Moscow is one of three countries capable of shooting down satellites with ground-launched missiles. In November 2021, it deliberately destroyed its Cosmos-1408 satellite, generating over 1,500 debris fragments that forced ISS astronauts into escape capsules and still threaten Western satellites daily. In July 2025, Russia formally notified international regulators it would treat European satellites aiding Ukraine as "legitimate military targets" for jamming. Germany now reports Russian reconnaissance satellites passing over dozens of times daily, shadowing German military spacecraft while jamming GPS signals across the Baltic.
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Countries with thriving satellite networks preserve orbital stability because they depend on it, but Russia's commercial constellation has collapsed under sanctions. Its stake in the ISS is ending in 2028. As Moscow's constructive capabilities decay, its incentive to preserve the system everyone else relies on disappears—leaving only the power to destroy.
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Russia has a recent history of masking failure with aggression. The Baikonur disaster didn't eliminate Moscow's capacity for destruction. It eliminated the last constraint on using it.
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Europe is already learning what happens next.

In August, the son of Nepal’s Law Minister posted a selfie of himself next to a Christmas tree made of Cartier and Louis Vuitton boxes. By September 8, tens of thousands of outraged Gen Z Nepalis had taken to the streets. Three days later, 70 of them were dead.
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Fury erupted. Parliament burned. The Prime Minister’s home was razed. The finance minister—stripped to his undies and a motorcycle helmet—was chased down a river and pelted with rocks.
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Gen Z had claimed a shocking victory, but had no idea what to do next.
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Since July 2024, Gen Z revolts have toppled leaders in Bangladesh, Nepal, Madagascar, Peru, and now Bulgaria. They organized on Discord and TikTok, waving One Piece's pirate flag—Japanese anime turned global defiance symbol.
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But they have achieved little. In Bangladesh, Nepal, and Madagascar, youth were "iced out" of transitional governments. In each country, no checks on executive power have been strengthened. No independent judiciary protections added, no anti-corruption measures implemented.
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After Nepal's rebellion, Gen Z groups cobbled together a soda pop manifesto—fizzing with buzzwords about “inclusion” and “gender diversity,” but flat on substance—no actual reforms, just a vague condemnation of corruption and “elites” and a request for a working group.
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Less TikTok, more civics class.
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Meanwhile, the rebellion remains inaccessible to the most oppressed. In China, Russia, or North Korea, these tactics would land them in prison—or worse.
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​As the Free Press put it, “the Zoomers around the world appear determined to draw a line between themselves and history.” Let’s hope their plans will match their ambition once their prefrontal cortexes fully develop.

In September, the video went viral—the director of Budapest's Szolo Street juvenile detention center kicking a defenseless child’s skull. When opposition leader Péter Magyar leaked a 2021 government report, Hungarians learned that over one-fifth of children in state institutions endure beatings, sexual abuse, and torture—and that it had been buried by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government.
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On December 13th, tens of thousands marched behind "Protect the children!" banners, some carrying teddy bears to symbolize lost innocence. Last year, President Katalin Novák resigned after pardoning an official who covered up child sexual abuse. Orbán's approval has since plummeted.
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Viktor Orbán faces his most vulnerable moment in 15 years. Hungary is already the EU's poorest member, and the OECD projects an abysmal 0.3% growth rate for 2025. Magyar's Tisza Party leads polls ahead of April's election.
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Magyar vows to restore rule of law and return stolen wealth after years of Orbán cozying up to Putin. He speaks constitutional democracy and economic freedom. But skepticism is warranted: he only broke with Orbán after his ex-wife resigned over a pardon scandal.
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Since 2010, Orbán packed the Constitutional Court, forced judges into early retirement, captured media, gerrymandered boundaries, and extended voting to ethnic Hungarians abroad while one million fled. This transformed Hungary from 1989's peaceful transition into electoral autocracy.
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Now Orbán is plotting to retain power. He's considering assuming Hungary's largely ceremonial presidency and rewriting laws to concentrate power there—allowing him to control foreign policy and hobble a Magyar government. Parliament already passed legislation making it harder to remove presidents.
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A generation of Hungarians has known only Orbán's rule. The crowds carrying teddy bears through December's cold want justice for brutalized children.
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But they're also demanding something deeper: an end to fifteen years of creeping authoritarianism.

Gaffes & Corrections

After Thursday’s USA edition, reader correctly challenged my description of the cause of inflation during the Biden administration. Without explicitly stating direct causation, I clearly implied that Biden’s American Rescue Plan alone led to the spike. In fact, it added 2-3 percentage points to peak inflation.
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I should have acknowledged that pandemic supply chain disruptions and energy shocks were also major factors. The 2023 Bernanke-Blanchard study found these supply disruptions were the primary driver, though amplified by strong aggregate demand from the fiscal stimulus of the ARP.
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My core point stands: flooding an economy already growing at over 5% with $1.9 trillion was predictable overheating that contributed significantly to families' pain. But accuracy demands acknowledging the full picture.
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My gratitude to the astute reader who pointed out my mistake.

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