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[Direct New from Ukraine by Francis Farrell, Friday 13]

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War Notes by Francis Farrell, Friday 13, From The Kyiv Independent Dear War Notes readers, This is Asami Terajima writing this week’s edition of War Notes from my desk at our Kyiv office. It has still been very cold in Kyiv, but today is much warmer than the past few days, and maybe spring is not so far away. I came home one night this week after dinner and saw an unsheltered man on the stairs of my apartment building. I felt very bad because it was extremely cold outside, and it seemed like he was struggling to even move, and all he could do was sit in silence, staring at the wall. I brought him some food and warm tea, and I hope that made his day better. We had  a missile and drone attack  on Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, Feb. 12. Local authorities reported damage in residential areas, and two people were injured. I was on attack coverage duty that day, so I headed out to one of the attack sites, where several apartment buildings were damaged, and windows had been blo...
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[Americana:] The Visionary (or The Entrepreneur) is a 1989 painting of then-businessman Donald Trump by Ralph Wolfe Cowan. It hangs in Trump's residence of Mar-a-Lago

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visionary#:~:text=The%20painting%20has%20been%20described,after%20Cowan%20repainted%20the%20hand The Visionary The Entrepreneur Artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan Year 1989
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How to make sure the Stalinist in the Kremlin faces a grim future

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Opinion George F. Will Crippled by his Ukraine misadventure, Vladimir Putin is surely defining success down. February 13, 2026 at 7:00 a.m. EST Today at 7:00 a.m. EST The Washington Post, 2/13/26 In Ukraine's Donetsk region contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces, on Aug. 14, 2025. (Ed Ram/For The Washington Post) “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” —  George Orwell, “1984” When the  105-day war  ended, almost  400,000 Soviet soldiers  had been killed or wounded or were missing. The Kremlin reported minor losses. Vladimir Putin, a Stalin admirer, should have studied the actual past that Stalin falsified.  Stalin began the  Winter War , a.k.a. the Russo-Finnish War, on Nov. 30, 1939, as his then-ally Adolf Hitler had begun World War II in Europe three months earlier: by staging a fraudulent border incident. Stalin, dictator of a  nation of 170 million , expected to quickly subdue Finland, a nat...
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Starlink Shutdown Blunts Russia’s Newest Battlefield Advantage

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Limits have hobbled Russia’s use of drone-mounted terminals that had begun to ravage Ukrainian supply lines By Anastasiia Malenko,  The Wall Street Journal , Feb. 13, 2026 6:11 am ET; article contains a video A road and an antidrone net in eastern Ukraine.   REUTERS Quick summary --SpaceX disabled unauthorized Russian access to Starlink internet terminals, curbing a battlefield advantage for Moscow in Ukraine. --The Russians piloted cheap drones, jury-rigged with smuggled Starlinks, from a safe distance to smash into Ukrainian vehicles. --Russia is seeking gains at the front that would bolster its position in peace talks mediated by the Trump administration. KYIV, Ukraine—Russian drone teams had turned the road supplying Ukrainian troops in the embattled city of Pokrovsk into a terrifying gantlet. Their secret weapon: Elon Musk’s Starlink internet terminals. Russians piloted cheap drones, jury-rigged with smuggled Starlinks, from a safe distance to smash into Ukraini...
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