The Ukraine war thread
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Normally I doubt there would much appetite for a Western megapower but nowadays…who knows? Perhaps certain a region like Chukotka for purely strategic reasons but nothing much else.
Russian far east though is definitely a desirable backyard sandbox for the Chinese.
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Ukraine groans a collective “WTF?” to Trump’s latest Putin comments:
https://kyivindependent.com/kyiv-groans-a-collective-wtf-to-trumps-latest-putin-comments/
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General Keith Kellogg speaks:
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And again: the Trump 'kompromat'. Si non e vero, e bene trovato.
I saw that earlier today. There have been other articles published the past year or so citing Mussayev’s claims. He appears to have been at this for some time.
I am of the opinion that there is nothing there and that Mussayev is conjuring this up to get attention in the hope of gaining recognition as an “expert/influencer” and cashing in on what that role offers in the charged populist dichotomy of our times. Even if there is a grain of truth in his claims, I highly doubt any serious kompromat on Trump involves women of any age group. Rather, it would be of a financial nature involving investments of ill gotten Russian money into Trump family owned properties. Essentially Putin knows and has the paperwork showing who, when, where and how much to the penny was involved in laundering money via the Trump syndicate.
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WTF, is he talking about?
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump on Tuesday said Ukraine had "better come to the table fast."
Trump has previously signalled his impatience with the lack of swift progress in solving the four-year conflict.
I wonder why, the lack of progress?
Wait a minute…..
Anne Applebaum gets it. Why can’t the WH narcissist demagogue?
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NYT's news analysis starts leads with this headline:
Trump Bets on Diplomacy Without Diplomats
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/politics/trump-witkoff-kushner-diplomacy.html
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Four years ago today.
Arthur Dron is a 22-year-old graduate student of journalism at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. In 2020, Dron published his first collection of poetry, Dormitory №6, which has been translated into Lithuanian, English, Polish, Italian, and Belarusian. However, now, instead of visiting lectures and receiving awards for his work, he is protecting Ukraine on the battlefield and writing poems about the experience of war. Despite the gentle quietness of his poems, Dron’s voice is loud in the sphere of modern Ukrainian poetry both in Ukraine and abroad.
First Letter to the Corinthians
Love is patient. Love is kind.
It is not jealous, is not pompous.
Love is terrified like a beast
but it perseveres.Love could give up and abandon it all
but it perseveres
Sometimes, love has gunshot wounds to
its legs or bullet fragments lodged in
them.Tourniquets squeeze love’s legs,
or it has no legs anymore.
Then love’s friends carry love.Love digs trenches and lives in them.
It gnaws ice from the bottle cut in half
when it gets thirsty at negative four.
Love takes up combat duty,
gets into position
with hernias, fevers, prostatitis,
with blast injuries,
asthmas and allergies,
with a high probability
of not making it back,
with thoughts about
the most significant one.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things!Love can distinguish by ear
the shots of rocket launchers,
the strikes of mortar shells, and
the movement of tanks.
Love’s eyes hurt when it stares into the
thermal imager for too long.
Love wakes up at night
when the mice in the dugout crawl
under its field coat.
Sometimes, love vomits long in the
trees after heavy combat.
Every now and then, it closes the eyes of
its friends.
Love wraps them up in sleeping bags
and carries them away.Love never fails!
But where there are prophecies, they
will cease;
where there are tongues, they will
be stilled;
where there is knowledge, it will pass
away.
For sometimes, the shelling is over,
and friends close Love’s eyes,
wrap it up in a sleeping bag,
and carry it away.And then it passes to the living.
Background and analysis:
https://nanovic.nd.edu/features/the-first-letter-to-the-corinthians/
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An excellent interview with Fiona Hill from yesterdays Global Story on BBC World Service:
