Ex-US ambassador to Ukraine, Taylor: Putin likely expected Trump to pressure Zelenskyy into accepting Moscow’s view. That has not happened.

Zelenskyy is more confident because he knows, war ends only when enough pressure is put on Putin, not when Ukraine is pushed to concede. 1/ Taylor: Territorial concessions are off the table. Russia illegally occupies about 19% of Ukraine, that is a fact, but Ukraine and its partners will not give that occupation legal standing.

They will never recognize Russia’s claim or turn aggression into lawful territory. 2/

A Russian militant known as “Grom” raped filmmaker and journalist Alisa Kovalenko for four days.

Before that, militants beat and interrogated her. They threatened to cut off her fingers and teeth.

Alisa was 27. She came to Donbas to film the start of Russia’s war, UP.

1/ Ukrainska Pravda tells the stories of people from occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Makiivka, Yasynuvata and other cities who refused to live under the Russian tricolor.

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Guards beat Russian mathematician Azat Miftakhov on the soles of his feet, threatened him with rape and shocked him with electricity in Kharp, the Arctic prison where Navalny died.

His global fame both shields him and marks him as a target inside — The Moscow Times. 1/ Police raided a Moscow State University dormitory in February 2019 and detained Miftakhov, then 25 and a fourth-year graduate mathematics student, with 11 others.

At the police station he slit his wrists to avoid abuse. Officers tortured him with a screwdriver anyway. 2/

Sen. Mark Kelly: We got here because in 2018 Donald Trump tore up the JCPOA and got America into an unauthorized war with Iran.

All it has done for Americans is drive up costs, energy, gasoline and food, while people are already struggling to afford life. 1/ Kelly: Secretary Hegseth told the Armed Services Committee it will take years to rebuild U.S. munitions stockpiles.

So yes, America has a munitions problem. When you attack over 10,000 targets from the air, you use a lot of weapons. 2/

Kasparov: With Trump, it is hard to separate reality from fantasy because he constantly blurs that line.

If the Iran deal is signed in the form being discussed, it would not be a peace breakthrough, it would be a catastrophe for America and Israel. 1/ Kasparov: Such a deal may be a tactical gift to opposition forces in America and Israel, but strategically it is a defeat for both countries.

For America, it shows that all the talk about U.S. power has turned out to be empty noise. 2/

Russia recruits teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian servicemen. Police chief Vyhivskyi: six cases of contract killings via Telegram this year, one prevented.

A 17-year-old was arrested in Zhytomyr after poisoning a soldier. — Reuters.

1/ The scheme: recruiters find young women on messaging platforms, promise easy money, pay for apartment rentals to meet soldiers.

Then instruct them where to obtain methadone — a synthetic opioid lethal in high doses — for lacing drinks.

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Zelenskyy: Trump said very right things about Crimea today. That this war started in 2014, with the occupation of Crimea, and if the leadership had been better then, the war wouldn’t have started.

We agreed to meet in the coming days. Also with Europeans and G7.

1/ Zelenskyy: The UK arrested a Russian shadow fleet tanker today. This year, Europeans arresting Russian tankers has become a tradition.

Oil must stop. To stop the war in Ukraine. Thank you UK!

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Snyder: The U.S. is not just unreliable, it is behaving strangely.

Allies like Romania, Poland, Taiwan and South Korea expect America to save resources for serious moments, not waste munitions, reputation and focus on wars it cannot explain. 1/ Snyder: Trump wants to be Putin but cannot. He wants Putin’s money, Putin’s ability to fight wars, Putin’s power.

But he lacks the patience, attention span and competence and he is afraid of American public opinion. 2/

Snyder: Right-wing populism claims to defend the nation, but often hurts it by pulling the country away from the European Union.

What looks like nationalism often becomes cooperation with far-right oligarchy across borders. 1/ Snyder: The foreign policy of right-wing populists is predictable: Trump, AfD, Orban, again and again, they are pro-Putin.

That is not in Romania’s interest, or in the interest of any state threatened by Russian imperial aggression. 2/

Sen. Mark Kelly: Odessa’s port is critical, around 40–50% of Ukraine’s economy goes out through it.

Russia is aggressively attacking Odessa because that port is a huge source of revenue, and Crimea gives Moscow easy access to strike it. 1/ Kelly: The night I spent in Odessa, five Shahed drones came in and all were intercepted.

We toured a bunker at the port; 48 hours later Russia hit it with a drone or cruise missile. Being there shows what Ukrainians live through every day. 2/

Sen. Mark Kelly: Every Ukrainian I spoke to felt more positive about the future. I think it is fair to say right now Ukrainians are winning.

Russia usually launches bigger offensives this time of year, but they are struggling and the momentum is shifting. 1/ Kelly: Russia is losing upwards of 35,000 troops every month.

Ukraine is trying to push that closer to 50,000, and Russia is having a hard time replacing killed and wounded troops. This is becoming a very challenging time for Putin’s army. 2/

Madyar, Ukraine’s top drone commander: We will isolate Crimea. Striking vehicles on that highway is as easy as shooting partridges in an open field.

Military personnel and defense workers will find it impossible to remain there or use access routes to it.

1/ Madyar: The pain felt in every Ukrainian town should now be felt in the consciousness of Crimea's residents too.

Ukraine has not and will not strike civilians — unlike Russia's accusations, which are false.

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Russia could be ready to invade NATO by 2029 or earlier — Germany’s army chief Christian Freuding, Politico.

Russia is expanding military infrastructure near Finland, Norway, and the Baltic region. 1/ Europe has raised defense budgets since the full scale invasion of Ukraine. But procurement, stockpiles, and production capacity move slowly.

The gap between spending plans and usable capability is the operational problem. 2/

Fiona Hill: Autocracies see the state as strong and society as irrelevant. Individuals have no real role.

The fundamental difference with democracies is that societies still matter and in Ukraine, society has shown extraordinary resilience. 1/ Hill: In Ukraine, strong society is beating strong state.

The state was weak and messy, but society mobilized, networked, flattened hierarchies and worked with the military. That is the opposite of Russia’s vertical, top-down system. 2/

Fiona Hill: Trump does not understand the complexity of the Middle East. Lebanon, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah and Ukraine are connected in different ways.

For him, it is simpler: deal with whoever is on top, negotiate with himself, and ignore advice. 1/ Hill: Trump weakens his own negotiating position every day because he tells Iran what he is thinking in real time.

Tehran has no incentive to make a deal when there is no certainty, no assurance and no clarity about what the outcome would be. 2/

Applebaum: What binds Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is not religion or ideology.

China is communist, Russia nationalist, Iran theocratic. What binds them is fear of liberal language: rights, rule of law, separation of powers and independent courts. 1/ Applebaum: Ukraine has changed how the war is fought. The front is now a 20-mile transparent zone where Ukrainian drones can see almost everything.

Every Russian truck, car or soldier entering that zone can be identified and hit. 2/

Applebaum: Trump is not handling the Iran war strategically. He is not asking what is good for Americans, Iranians or the Middle East.

He is asking: how is this good for me? How do I emerge as the winner? He is chasing applause, not solving the problem. 1/ Applebaum: Trump has never made clear why America is fighting in Iran. Is it because he failed to destroy all nuclear facilities?

Because he wants Netanyahu’s approval? Nobody knows. This is not a problem of democracy, it is a problem of why this war exists. 2/

Applebaum: The Trump administration often seems uninterested in human beings, not Americans facing inflation, not Iranians under bombing, not Epstein victims.

It is focused on clips, engagement, visuals and what the online world will say. 1/ Applebaum: This is beyond ordinary political spin. Spin doctors used to spin real events.

Trump’s world tries to create new realities, stories that may or may not have happened, shaped for screens and algorithms rather than for truth. 2/

Applebaum: Ukraine has reached another turning point. The technological advantage is once again on the Ukrainian side.

The front is now a 20–25 mile transparent zone where Russian soldiers, tanks and trucks are spotted by drones and hit. 1/ Applebaum: “Stalemate” does not mean nothing is happening. It means waves of Russian attacks are being smashed.

Russian casualties can reach around 1,000 killed and wounded a day, while Ukraine’s war is increasingly automated and drone-driven. 2/

Applebaum: On Iran, Trump keeps changing the story. One day the U.S. may invade, the next day it may not.

Maybe one day he will say something true, but how would anyone know? We are beyond “the boy who cried wolf” now. 1/ Applebaum: Trump is using something like the Russian “firehose of falsehoods”: say so many contradictory things that people blank out, stop knowing what is true, throw up their hands and disengage. Maybe that confusion is the point. 2/

Historian Antony Beevor: Nicholas II once said Russia had to remain 200 years behind Western Europe to protect Russian tradition and culture.

That “time lag” was treated as essential because loosening the chains was feared to mean chaos. 1/ Beevor: Russian rulers have long feared that unless Russia keeps expanding, it will contract.

That anxious imperial mentality, the fear of losing everything unless more territory is seized, runs through Russian history. 2/