[From The Kyiv Independent: Most popular news (June 30)]

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Putin just called Trump’s bluff on Ukraine, with the Russian art of the ‘no’ deal

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Analysis by  Nick Paton Walsh , CNN   Updated 9:19 PM EDT, March 18  Orig inal article contains additional links and illustrations . See also   Thomas L. Friedman ,   I Don’t Believe a Single Word Trump and Putin Say About Ukraine,  The New York Times , March 18; and also A “no” is not a “yes” when it is a “maybe,” a “probably not,” or an “only if.” This is the painfully predictable lesson the Trump administration’s first real foray into wartime diplomacy with the Kremlin has dealt. They’ve been hopelessly bluffed. They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got – after a theatrical week-long wait and hundreds more lives lost – a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and – per the Kremlin readout – a month-long mutual pause on attacks against “energy infrastructure.” This last phrase is where an easily avoidable technical minefield begins. Per US President Donald Trump’s post and that of his ...
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Ukraine turns the tables on Russia

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A bold Ukrainian operation in Kursk has humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and upended some of the logic of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Column by  Ishaan Tharoor The Washington Post , August 14, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT; see also Ukrainian soldiers pose for a picture as they repair a military vehicle near the Russian border on Sunday. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters) Russia’s Kursk oblast is no stranger to war.  In medieval times, the district was overrun by the Mongol horde, and was claimed and ceded down the centuries by Eurasian empires. During World War II, the environs of the city of Kursk became the site of the greatest tank battle in history, as Nazi Germany suffered a grievous strategic defeat at the hands of  the bloodied yet unbowed Soviet Union . This past week, Kursk has been the site of the first major invasion of Russian territory since then. This time, it’s not the Nazi war machine rolling in — no matter what Kremlin propagandists insi...
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News Analysis [:] Russia’s Strategy Against the West: Escalate Slowly and See if It Responds

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Ukrainian and European officials say President Vladimir V. Putin has become emboldened by a lack of Western pushback.  The police inspected the damage to a house caused by debris from a shot-down Russian drone in the village of Wyryki-Wola, eastern Poland on Wednesday. Credit... Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By  Andrew E. Kramer Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine The New York Times , Sept. 11, 2025 Updated  8:49 a.m. ET An American factory in western Ukraine. Two European diplomatic compounds and a key Ukrainian government building in Kyiv. And now Poland. Over a roughly three-week period, Russian drones and missiles have struck sites of increasing sensitivity for Ukraine and its Western allies, culminating in the volley of Russian drones that buzzed early Wednesday over Poland, a NATO country. For decades, American and European military planners feared something else: a bolt-from-the-blue assault, like an all-out nuclear strike, from the Soviet Union or ...
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