Notes and Essays -- John Brown

The war in Ukraine has lasted as long as Soviet involvement in World War II, with no victory in sight. By  Amy Knight, The Wall Street Journal ,  Jan. 11, 2026 11:59 am  ET Vladimir Putin speaks with military personnel and their family members in Solvechnogorsk, Russia, Jan. 7.   VYACHESLAV PROKOFYEV/SPUTNIK/REUTERS The year has started badly for  Vladimir Putin . As of Sunday, the war in Ukraine has lasted as long as the Great Patriotic War, as Moscow refers to the Soviet involvement in World War II: 1,418 days. Stalin’s forces made it to Berlin in that time, but Mr. Putin’s progress has been more modest. Last year Russian troops captured less than 1% of Ukrainian territory. At this pace, it will take Russia another year to reach the Donetsk border and control the area Mr. Putin is demanding Ukraine hand over as a precondition for peace. The U.S. military’s swift capture of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3 further highlighted...

Russia’s Belgorod is experiencing the power and heat outages that are normally inflicted by Russian forces on neighboring Ukraine. Robyn Dixon  and Natalia Abbakumova,   The Washington Post For months Russian strikes have been systematically smashing Ukraine’s energy sector, hitting power plants and electricity relay stations, and plunging the country into darkness during the frigid winter. Starting Friday, one Russian city on the border, Belgorod, got a taste of what the Ukrainians have been going through when it was hit by widespread outages after Kyiv’s forces launched its own strike against the city’s infrastructure. Ukraine hit the plants producing power and hot water for Belgorod, leaving 600,000 people without power and 200,000 without water — a situation common across the border in Ukraine just 25 miles away.  In the days that followed, as authorities struggled to come to grips with the crisis, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, found plenty of people...

Perhaps indirectly relevant to the situation in Eastern Europe/Russia today ... JB note: Since the now-not-recent brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, my views on Russia, under Putin, have drastically changed -- for the worst . Interview with ex-USA dip John H. Brown February 2007 I was in charge of the press and cultural section in Kiev (1993-1995), where I helped to establish the first (and, as far as I know, last, at that time?) “America House” in the former Soviet Union . Those who have an interest in the beginnings and modalities of a diplomatic career likely will find this article informative. With the permission of the interviewee and the publishers of “English,” based in Moscow,  American Diplomacy  offers below extended interview transcript excerpts on one man’s attraction to a career in the U. S. Foreign Service and his special fascination with Russia.  The son of a Foreign Service officer, John Brown ended his twenty-two-year Service career by resigning his co...