Ex-CIA Director, Petraeus: Ukraine will be the most important military industrial complex in the free world.

It is producing cutting-edge unmanned systems in the air, on the ground and at sea. Software changes come in under a week, hardware changes every few weeks. 1/ Petraeus: Ukraine has extended the range and accuracy of its deep strikes into Russia. It is hitting refineries, fuel storage and export terminals that fuel the Russian war machine.

It now has a cruise missile with longer range and a bigger warhead than the US cruise missile. 2/

Applebaum: Trump is listening to Putin. He is getting information about NATO only from his speeches.

He is not looking at American history — which he doesn't know — nor at what's actually happening on the ground.

1/ Applebaum: Trump talks about NATO as if the US didn't form it, and if it is not a member.

Since Trump was elected, the US gave almost no weapons and no money to Ukraine.

The war is now 100% supported by Europe. And Ukrainians now have the world's best drone industry.

2/

Broken nose bones, ear blows rupturing eardrums, electric shocks, drowning, burns, cutting.

“Sometimes after certain stories you just want to shut down. You can’t understand how people could survive this and stay sane,” says doctor Oleksiy Dzhirov — Slidstvo Info. 1/ Dmytro Sirenko returned on March 5, 2026. He goes through procedures every day. One is electromyostimulation — 8 milliamps of current, muscles contract rhythmically. 2/

Fukuyama: The United States has never been as isolated as it is today.

No sane European leader can believe backing America in Hormuz now would be reciprocated later by a Trumpist America.

There has never been a time when the US was less trusted by friends and rivals alike. 1/ Fukuyama: If I rewrote Trust today, I would no longer describe the United States as a high-trust society.

Political polarization has become something worse: Americans now see their opponents as deeply malevolent and dishonest, and distrust is rampant across society. 2/

Ukrainian soldier Ruslan Knyzh lost both arms and both legs in the war.

“First of all, you are disabled” — adoptive mother told him after he came back from war.

He is 20, from Selidove in Donetsk region and still says: “I want to return to the battlefield.” 1/ He went to a bank branch to restore his card and get his payments.

The manager told him: “Take it in your hands and hold it near your face for a photo.” Ruslan has no hands. Alina tried to help.

The system rejected it. “Then you’ll get it when you have prosthetics,” he recalls. 2/

Ukraine is playing by its own rules in the US game. The US asked Kyiv to stop striking Russian energy facilities. On April 5 Ukrainian drones hit a Lukoil refinery near St Petersburg anyway, writes The Telegraph. 1/ A 30-drone barrage hit the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod region — 250 miles east of Moscow. Two facilities were damaged. Photographs showed large flames and explosions lighting up the night sky. 2/

Kellogg: During the nuclear negotiations, I used to say: trust, verify. That is what we need now.

I would caution Iran against dragging this out with back-and-forth games. Trump means what he says, and over the next two weeks they need to take that seriously. 1/ Kellogg: Look at Trump’s record. He struck the sites Assad used for nerve gas, moved the embassy to Jerusalem, walked away from the JCPOA and killed Soleimani.

The Iranians know this is a president who means what he says. He will deliver. 2/

Trump's land-for-security-guarantees formula for Ukraine has stalled. Russia won't stop at the Donbas. It wants to block Ukraine from Western weapons.

Ukraine won't surrender the "fortress belt" and become more exposed — Samuel Charap and Jennifer Kavanagh, Foreign Affairs.

1/ Negotiations have proceeded on separate tracks. US-Ukraine, US-Russia, Europe-Ukraine.

No meeting has included Russia, Ukraine, the US and Europe together. This creates misunderstandings and makes it impossible to identify terms all parties accept.

2/

Lesson for Ukraine from Ray Dalio: We must be strong and ready to endure Russia’s pressure.

Dalio: No country enforces global rules — conflicts spread. Wars are decided by endurance. The US is strongest, but with 750+ bases it’s overstretched — and Iran war is testing that.

1/ Dalio defines today’s wars as one system: Russia–Ukraine–US–Europe, Israel–Gaza–Iran, and Yemen–Sudan conflicts run at the same time. Nuclear states sit inside these wars, and trade, tech, and capital fights connect them.

2/

Keane: I do not trust the Iranians at all. Trump does not trust them either. He knows they are liars and cheaters.

My preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage. A ceasefire takes pressure off them, and that is exactly what they wanted from the start. 1/ Keane: The deal has to take away everything military force took from Iran. Number one is nuclear enrichment.

That was the issue at the start. We will know quickly if Tehran is serious when we get to the fine points of the deal, the verification, and the concessions they make. 2/

Tucker: Easter morning should have been about resurrection, peace, and victory over death.

Instead Trump threatened power plants and bridges in Iran. Civilian infrastructure, blackouts, refugees and dead noncombatants — including over a million Christians who live in Iran. 1/ Tucker: Millions of Christians backed Trump not because he was pious, but because he looked like a protector — of religious liberty, of Christians, of the unborn.

I think the first moment they should have stopped and asked what this really was came on Jan. 4, over Venezuela. 2/

A Russian artillery shell fired in August 2024 carried a message: “Subscribe to Russians With Attitude.”

The podcast has 422,000 followers on X — mostly American far-right. The Kyiv Independent unmasked the two men behind it. Both fundraised for sanctioned Russian neo-Nazi units. 1/ One lived in Germany for most of his life. Both fundraised for sanctioned Russian neo-Nazi units while building a massive English-language audience. 2/

"Ukraine survived this difficult winter because we had Patriots.
We constantly ask for more. If we're left without these critically needed rockets, Russians will destroy our critical infrastructure," says Yuriy Ignat, head of communications for the Ukrainian air force in The Times. 1/ Russia has changed tactics. For the past two weeks it has been launching massive drone swarms during daylight hours — some lasting up to 24 hours, using as many as 1,000 drones in a single attack. The goal: drain Ukraine's Patriot missile stocks and exhaust interceptor teams. 2/

Ukraine launched more attack drones than Russia.

For the first time since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, writes United24.

Zelenskyy: Never before in history has Ukrainian defense been so long-range and so tangible for Russia. 1/ The numbers: Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it downed 7,347 Ukrainian drones in March — a record for the entire war, averaging 237 per day. 2/

NATO is on the edge. America may walk out.
Trump called allies “cowards”.

Rubio — who co-wrote the 2023 law blocking unilateral NATO exit — now calls the alliance “a one-way street” and demands a full re-examination after the Iran war, writes The Economist. 1/ Spain shut its bases and airspace to US forces attacking Iran. Italy blocked American planes from a Sicilian base. France barred US military aircraft from its airspace entirely. Britain allowed base access only to protect neighboring countries — not to fight. 2/

Ukrainian artillery is now guided by FPV drones mid-flight. A drone flying its own mission, spots a target — and corrects artillery fire in real time.

Colonel Dovhal, 147th Artillery Brigade: "We no longer chase a moving enemy. We fire ahead of him. — Oboronka.

1/ Reconnaissance drones transformed artillery. Operators now see strike results in real time and adjust fire.

Large drones like Shark and Gor reach 30–50 km deep.

2/

Zelenskyy: We proposed to Russia a ceasefire for Easter. But for them all times are the same.

There is nothing sacred to them. If Russia can afford this war and finance it, it will not move toward peace on its own. That is why pressure on the aggressor cannot drop. 1/ Zelenskyy: Our long-range sanctions are working. They are cutting Russian revenues, above all oil revenues.

Only serious financial losses force Russia to think about an exit from the war. Everything Russia earns from shock oil prices, it will pour back into war. 2/

Trump spent his first year back in office imposing tariffs on Europe, threatening to withdraw US troops, and flirting with NATO exit. Europe wants to reduce its dependence on Washington.

But the US accounts for over 20% of European exports — Jacob Kirkegaard, Foreign Affairs. 1/ Two-thirds of Europe's cloud market runs on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Three quarters of European firms run on US software.

Visa and Mastercard handle roughly two-thirds of card transactions in the euro area. 2/

DW: Ukrainians bring a lot of expertise in UK. They are showing the British how they operate drones.

"Our partners have a certain understanding of drones, but they have not encountered them. They don't fully understand how drones affect the battlefield, how intense it is.” 1/ Ukrainian serviceman: A Ukrainian warrior is an intellectual warrior. He knows why he's going to the front. He knows what he has to do at the front. This is in contrast to the Russian soldier who doesn't know why he's there, who gets sent there by Putin. 2/

Orbán has vetoed more EU decisions than any leader in the bloc's history.

On April 12, Hungarians vote in what may end his 16-year grip on power — AP News. 1/ "He entered a club, read the rules, figured out how he can rig the rules, and then started to blackmail all of the other club members" — Dániel Hegedűs, Institute for European Politics. 2/

Syrskyi: Russia gets about $700M a day from oil, and that money finances the war.

Our strikes on refineries, Ust-Luga, Primorsk, and missile plants are strategic actions. They cut export capacity, hit military production, and reduce the aggressor’s offensive potential. 1/ Syrskyi: There is no instant straight line from a strike on Ust-Luga to a trench in the east.

But the effect builds over time: fuel delays, disrupted deliveries, tanks that do not arrive, missiles that do not fly, and a smaller stockpile for Russia’s war machine. 2/