Notes and Essays -- John Brown

A long, very informative article from The New York Times , too long to be posted here; its author, Adam Entous, "conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Turkey."  Another lengthy, informative article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drones-war-russia.html Putin President"

A Times investigation reveals the inside story of the Trump administration’s chaotic push for a peace deal and its erratic role in the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times By Adam Entous, The New York Times , Dec. 30, 2025 At least 83 times during his campaign to return to power, President Trump pledged to negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours, even before taking office. After nearly a year of painful on-again, off-again negotiations, Mr. Trump would come to acknowledge a hard reality. As he put it on Sunday after meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at Mar-a-Lago: “This is not a one-day process deal. This is very complicated stuff.” The New York Times spent the year chronicling the hidden story of the negotiations; the ambition, the tenacity, the ideological and personal infighting; the cruelty and the inconsistency that Mr. Trump’s cam...

Russia’s sudden accusation should be seen as “perfectly timed theater,” one analyst told NBC News.   Dec. 30, 2025, 12:00 PM EST By Yuliya Talmazan,  NBC News ;  original article contains a video and links There can be no forgiveness. It is, in fact, “insane” to question whether this “terrorist act” took place at all.   That was the feverish message from Moscow on Tuesday, as it doubled down on accusing Ukraine of targeting a presidential palace with drones in a bid to disrupt peace talks.  Kyiv has dismissed the allegation as a baseless lie aimed at building a pretext for the Kremlin to push ahead with its war.  Russia has  presented no public evidence for its claim and the timing was not lost on observers in Kyiv and Europe, following the positive mood of President Donald Trump's weekend summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting in Moscow on Monday. Mikhail Metzel / AFP via Getty Images ...

By Adam Entous, The New York Times Entous image from Dated March 29; appeared today, December 30, in the  NYT ; too long to copy here. From the article: Ukrainian, American and British military leaders during a meeting in Ukraine in August 2023.   Valerii Zaluzhnyi

Is Putin's Russia really expansionist or is it just necessary Western propaganda?  from Quora Misha Firer  ·  Follow Writes about Russia on patreon.com/mishafirer 4y Putin’s Russia can be compared with an unscrupulous and deranged prostitute who has sex with every country as long as they pay [sic] while feeling paranoid about being raped. She carries around a pepper spray in case someone decides to take advantage of her. To call Putin’s Russia expansionist is ridiculous. The only thing its elites and generals are interested in is robbing the country, stealing from its people, and lining their pockets. That’s it. Simple as that. There is no other agenda and has never been. What the Russian elites did, they created a buffer zone between the NATO states to stop the expansion of liberal democracies lest the Russian populace catches the bug and decides to get rid of them. The buffer zone consists of ‘countries’ unrecognized by most of the world. They look even worse than the u...

image (not from the below)  from Global Update: How Russia and Ukraine Are Fighting to Shape Trump’s View of the War The New York Times   < yourplaces-globalupdate-noreply@nytimes.com >   Unsubscribe 2:06 PM (1 hour ago) to  me December 30, 2025, 2:06 p.m. Eastern time We’ve gathered the latest coverage on the places you’re following to keep you up to date.  Manage your places News on the places you follow How Russia and Ukraine Are Fighting to Shape Trump’s View of the War Off the battlefield, each side is trying to influence President Trump’s perception of the military conflict as they look to negotiate a peace settlement in their favor. Because you follow:  Russia, Ukraine Trump, Pressing Ahead on Ukraine-Russia Talks, Confronts Difficult Realities The U.S.-led negotiations have made some progress, but still face fundamental challenges, including over security guarantees to counter future Russian aggression. Because you follow:  Russia, Ukrain...