Aleppo is getting pummeled again. And the latest Russian bombing comes a day after Putin spoke with President-elect Donald Trump by telephone. “The strikes were the first to hit Aleppo since October 18, when Russia agreed to a humanitarian halt to the bombings, but the resumption of airstrikes was expected for several weeks.”

+ John McCain is not a fan of what looks like the oncoming thawing of relations with Putin: “We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies and attempted to undermine America’s elections.”

+ There are the politics of war. And there is the real life of war. Here’s a pretty amazing scene of an Iraqi soldier finding his mother on a bus out of Mosul.