Notes and Essays -- John Brown

Soldiers preparing to launch drones at a 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 Reporting from Dnipro, Kyiv and eastern Ukraine The New York Times , June 10, 2026 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 into battle. Kyiv is calling the effort a “logistics lockdown,” and it is systematically ...

  Elena Gold  ·  Follow Wrote a book about Russia-Ukraine war   When will the Ukraine win its war against Russia? What would a Ukrainian victory entail? " Victory in this war is when the Russian society recognizes that the war is awful, that the war is a tragedy not for someone, somewhere, but for themselves,”  said  president Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy believes it’s now happening: the Russians no longer enjoy their “special military operation.” Zelenskyy says that the military situation is the most positive for Ukraine since 2023: “We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day.” The developments in the war are indeed significant: Ukraine’s defence minister Fedorov announced that Ukraine already has interceptor drones that act autonomously to destroy Russian attack drones—just point a target and the interceptor drone does all the work. A Ukrainian drone operator is now able to manage a whole swarm of dr...

A protester waves an upside-down American flag. (Andres Kudacki/Getty Images) image from article U.S. News Decision Points 5:38 PM (41 minutes ago) By Olivier Knox [jb:  see ] It’s June 09, 2026. As the U.S. prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, a new poll finds Americans less likely to say that a democratically elected government is central to our national identity. It’s enough to make one semisqueamish about the semiquincentennial. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll notably reveals a generational gap, with young people much more likely to say having a republic is “not too or not at all” important to the United States’ identity. Twenty-one percent offer that bleak assessment. Just 51% of 18-to-29-year-olds say it’s “extremely or very” important. Among all adults, the proportion is 66%, down from 80% in a similar survey in 2021. Americans 60 and over are the most sanguine about this notion, with 81% saying as much. What this means for the future...

World of Gold  ·  Follow Posted by  Elena Gold   12m Elena Gold Scholar of history, author  21h Why did Kiev change to Kyiv? The spelling changed in 1995, but for a while the Ukrainians didn’t request everyone to follow it. In 2018, the Ukrainian government undertook a campaign to have international bodies change to the Ukrainian transliteration to English, as opposed to the Soviet (Russian) one. “Kyiv not Kiev” became the central slogan of the campaign . While some people still use the old Russian (Soviet) spelling—out of habit, not understanding the importance of it—the Ukrainians insist that the old spellings are actually supporting the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is respectful (and also correct English) to use the current spellings used in official documentation and maps. If unsure, just Google the name (that’s what I do)—it’s not hard, takes a few seconds, but you know that you are using the correct names. I too used to write “Kiev” out of ...