Notes and Essays -- John Brown

  Ukrainian drone attacks have achieved breakthroughs, but only ballistic missiles can push Russia to reconsider its war objectives, military experts and officials say. An oil refinery in Moscow after a Ukrainian drone attack on Thursday, in an image from social media. Credit... via Reuters By Constant Méheut Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine The New York Times , June 19, 2026, 9:15 a.m. ET Original article contains links Ukrainians have spent the past day flooding social media with footage of their army’s large-scale drone attack on Moscow. To many, the images of black smoke billowing over the Russian capital are proof that Ukraine is now able to respond in kind to Russia’s air assaults — or, as President Volodymyr Zelensky put it, “If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well.” But the celebrations over Thursday’s attack obscure a more complicated reality. However  effective its drone arsenal may be, Ukraine still lacks the weapon that has long underpinned Russia’s most...

The drone attack that sent plumes of smoke rising over Moscow intensified Ukrainian hopes of bringing the war to Russia. Smoke rising from an oil refinery in Moscow after a Ukrainian drone attack on Thursday, in an image obtained from social media. Credit... via Reuters By Siobhán O’Grady Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine June 19, 2026 Updated 9:45 a.m. ET [original article contains links] Assessments that Ukraine has reached a turning point in the conflict with Russia may well prove premature. But the towering dome of black smoke that hung over Moscow this week after a Ukrainian drone onslaught showed that Kyiv still has plenty of cards to play, no matter President Trump’s earlier appraisal of its prospects in the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hand was made clear as he moved to seize the initiative both militarily and diplomatically. The strikes on Moscow left part of the city’s biggest oil refinery in flames. An immense blast sent the top of a fuel storage vessel soaring into the ...

image (not from article) from “I’m not a big fan of Ukraine,” he [Trump] announces at a high-level Oval Office meeting. “Except their women. They keep winning Miss Universe.” ...  "He also declares his scandalous public dressing-down of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky , in February 2025, “great television” and “better than ‘The Apprentice.’"  *** Quotations from: REGIME CHANGE: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan The New York Times , June 18

Soldiers preparing to launch drones at targets in Russia from an undisclosed location in Ukraine last month.Credit. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Midrange attacks, using upgraded drones that Ukraine produces in huge numbers, are causing fuel shortages and complicating troop rotations. By Marc Santora, The New York Times Reporting from Dnipro, Kyiv and eastern Ukraine Published June 10, 2026 Updated June 16, 2026   [JB: republished June 18] article contains links First Ukraine assembled an arsenal of millions of drones that, along with Russia’s own buildup, turned a 25-mile-wide strip along the front line into a killing ground. Then Kyiv expanded its reach deep into the Russian heartland as it targeted oil infrastructure and military factories, making long-range violence in the war a two-way street. Now, Ukraine is focusing on the middle ground — the critical roads and railways, in some cases more than 100 miles from the front, that feed Russian troops and matériel in...

The attack, which shut down the capital’s airports for several hours, appeared to be the biggest wave of strikes on the city since the start of the war.   The scene over the area of an oil refinery on the outskirts of Moscow on Thursday. Credit... via Reuters By Paul Sonne and Nataliya Vasilyeva Paul Sonne reported from Berlin. June 18, 2026 Updated 8:34 a.m. ET original article contains links as well as an image,  "Damage in Moscow after Ukrainian drone strikes" Black smoke from a burning oil refinery filled the Moscow sky. The city’s four airports were urgently closed. And part of the busy highway that rings the Russian capital, a metropolis of 13 million people, was shut down. As Ukraine escalated its effort to bring the war home for Russians, the strikes on Thursday appeared to be the largest drone attack on the Russian capital since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the war more than four years ago. No deaths were immediately reported. But the large-scale assault see...