From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / December 16, 2025
From a submarine burning in Novorossiysk to diplomats stuck on the ten percent that decides everything, December 15 showed how fast the war is evolving—and how hard it is to end.
The Day’s Reckoning
Morning broke with fire on the water. At Novorossiysk Naval Base, an underwater Ukrainian drone struck a Russian submarine once believed invisible, sending flames and shockwaves across a harbor deep inside Russian territory. Hours later in Berlin, negotiators emerged from quiet rooms to declare ninety percent agreement on a peace framework—while carefully sidestepping the ten percent that decides borders, sovereignty, and whether the war truly ends.
Far from the chandeliers and microphones, Ukrainian soldiers fought a different kind of battle beneath Kupyansk. Russian troops had crawled through gas pipelines to infiltrate the city, turning civilian infrastructure into underground invasion routes. Ukrainian units sealed the tunnels and hunted the intruders while, above ground, residents waited for electricity that might not come. Across eastern Ukraine, the power grid hovered on the edge of collapse, battered by strikes timed to break repairs faster than crews could restore them.
In Brussels, frozen Russian billions became leverage on briefing tables—abstract numbers weighed against shattered substations, blacked-out neighborhoods, and a winter that refused to pause for diplomacy. In Moscow and Rostov, drone alerts and fires pushed the war further inward, reminding Russians that distance no longer guaranteed insulation.
By nightfall, nothing had resolved. The submarine was crippled. The pipelines were blocked. The talks were praised. The disagreements remained untouched.
December 15 revealed the war’s central truth: progress and paralysis can exist in the same day. Technology races forward. Diplomacy inches ahead. And the question that matters most—how much of Ukraine remains Ukraine—still has no answer.
When the Sea Betrayed the “Black Hole”
They called it the “Black Hole”—a submarine built to disappear. The Russian Project 636 Varshavyanka absorbed sound, slipped past sonar, and waited offshore to launch Kalibr missiles toward Ukrainian cities. Russian naval planners believed it was untouchable, one of their most survivable weapons. That belief shaped Ukraine’s response: not to hunt it the old way, but to change the battlefield itself.
Footage released by the Security Service of Ukraine shows the moment the myth collapsed. Explosions ripple along the submarine’s hull as it sits docked at Novorossiysk Naval Base in Krasnodar Krai. The attackers were “Sub Sea Baby” underwater drones—machines that traveled hundreds of kilometers from Ukrainian-controlled waters, threading Russian coastal defenses without crews, signals, or margin for error. When they reached the pier, they struck cleanly. The SBU described the damage as critical. Four Kalibr launchers would never fire again.
NASA’s FIRMS satellite data confirmed the aftermath: fires burning near the naval base, smoke rising from a harbor Russia considered safe simply because it lay on the mainland. The submarine had been hiding in plain sight, believing geography itself was protection.
Voice of Ukraine 