Editorial; The Guardian view on the Alaska summit: there must be no more gifts to Vladimir Putin
"Ukraine must remain in control of the future of its own territory, and the use of force must not be rewarded by the summary redrawing of borders. With enormous bravery and skill, and at immense cost, Ukraine has resisted an illegal invasion for more than three years. There must be no sellout."
Joel Gunter, BBC ; Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine
"For Ukrainians, polling shows security guarantees are an absolutely vital part of any potential agreement on territory or anything else.
"People in Ukraine will accept various forms of security guarantees," said Anton Grushchetsky, the director of Kyiv's International Institute for Sociology, "but they require them."
For Yevhen Tkachov, the emergency worker in Kramatorsk, exchange of territory could only be considered with "real guarantees, not just written promises".
"Only then, more or less, I am in favour of giving Donbas to Russia," he said. "If the British Royal Navy is stationed in the port of Odesa, then I agree."
As various paths to peace are floated and discussed, sometimes in the deal-making style preferred by President Trump, there is a risk of losing sight of the real people involved – people who have already lived through a decade of war and who may stand to lose even more now in exchange for peace.
Donbas was a place full of Ukrainians from all different walks of life, said Vitalii Dribnytsia, a Ukrainian historian. "We are not just talking about culture, about politics, about demographics, we are talking about people," he said.
Donetsk might not have the cultural reputation of somewhere like Odesa, Mr Drinytsia said. But it was Ukraine. "And any corner of Ukraine, regardless of whether it has some great cultural significance or not, is Ukraine," he said."
Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv and Artem Mazhulin , The Guardian; Ukrainian mood hardens as MPs insist country should not be forced to surrender
[Kip Currier: For anyone who thinks Ukraine should just capitulate to Putin and Trump's pressure to give up its sovereign territory and its peoples, realize what that means:
all. Ukrainians. in. those. territories. will. now. be. living. under. Russian. totalitarian. rule.
Period. Full stop.
Ask yourself, too, if you're an American, if you'd be willing to just acquiesce to pressure and surrender a half dozen U.S. states to an authoritarian invader.
Moreover, giving up those states to Russia is no guarantee that Russia won't later use those newly acquired regions as footholds to again attack Ukraine and try to take over the entire country. As an 8/17/25 BBC article reports:
Zelensky has consistently said Ukraine would not hand over the Donbas in exchange for peace. And confidence in Russia to abide by any such arrangement – rather than simply use the annexed land for future attacks – is low.
For that and other reasons, about 75% of Ukrainians object to any formal cessation of land to Russia, according to polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv1pdkll8o
That's what a despotic abductor of Ukrainian children, a bomber of hospitals, and indicted war criminal like Putin is likely to do.
And for anyone who is a marginalized person in those territories, such as LGBTQ+ persons, your very life may be at risk if Russia takes control of those lands. (See here and here and here.]
[Excerpt]
"A string of Ukrainian politicians and public figures condemned the idea of handing over unoccupied land to Russia for peace on Sunday, arguing that their country had not been defeated and should not be forced into a surrender.
The hardening of the mood came at the end of a weekend where there was first ridicule and disgust in Ukraine at the red-carpet treatment of Vladimir Putin by Donald Trump at their summit in Alaska, followed by frustration as it appeared that Trump was siding with the Russian leader.
Trump reportedly told European leaders that he believed a peace deal could be negotiated if Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to give up the areas of the Donbas region that the Russian invaders have not been able to seize in more than three years of fighting.
Halyna Yanchenko, an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament, said the suggestion that Ukraine should “simply surrender new territories without a fight – just because Putin wants it – is absurd from the very start”.
The MP, an anti-corruption activist previously part of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, said hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would be affected by Putin’s proposal, initially favoured by Trump after Friday’s Alaska summit.
Official estimates are that 255,000 people still live in the 3,500 square miles (9,000 sq km) of Donetsk province that Russia has been unable to seize in its three-and-a-half-year invasion, which includes the industrial cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Donbas also comprises Luhansk province, which is almost totally occupied by Russia.
Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion the population of Donetsk was 1.9 million, so the number of people with property and other connections to the area wanted by Russia is higher. “So when someone brings up the idea of ‘trading territory’, we must understand that in practice it is trading people,” Yanchenko said...
Cartoons and memes circulated widely online over the weekend with a particular focus on the sight of US soldiers kneeling to straighten out the red carpet in Alaska for the Russian president.
“Dishonored,” wrote Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian drone fundraiser, on X, comparing the image to soldiers raising the US flag at Iwo Jima towards the end of the second world war.
Maksym Palenko, a cartoonist, drew a picture of a glum-looking Trump with his trademark red tie spooling out beneath him and turning into a carpet on which a laughing Putin was standing. It reflected shots of Putin smiling as he was sitting in Trump’s limousine while it was setting off.
“We do not deserve to surrender and we are not in a position to surrender,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP with the opposition European Solidarity party. “This part of Donetsk is a fortress and Putin has tried and failed to take it for 11 years. Now he wants to take it through diplomatic tricks and manoeuvres.”"
TIM MILLER , The Bulwark; Trump’s Shameful “Summit” Was Even Worse Than We Thought
"Tim Miller takes on how the Trump-Putin Alaska summit went from what seemed to be an empty nothing-burger to a grotesque betrayal as it’s now being reported Trump pushed Putin’s demands onto Zelenskyy that Ukraine give up Donetsk and Luhansk."
, The Daily Beast; Why Trump’s Latest Reality TV Show Is a Flop
"It is important to note that while Trump threatened to get tough on Russia if it did not go along with peace plans, what Trump really did was the opposite. He gave Putin a huge win by inviting him to the U.S. He literally rolled out the red carpet for a mass murderer, ending Putin’s well-deserved isolation from the U.S. and the international community. Trump spoke not of penalties for Russia but of future economic deals the two nations could celebrate. In other words, once again, Trump got fully played by Putin.
That is because Putin has realized all along that Trump was just a reality TV star playing at being president. The Russian thereby understands how to give Trump what he wants and therefore how to get what he seeks from Trump. He granted Trump just enough of a victory for the cameras while also sending an unmistakable message to those who really understand the game that is being played that Trump is weak, a stooge, a transitory character Putin will use and ultimately move on from.
There was a pathos to the whole event because if you watched closely, particularly during the closing press conference, it appeared Trump understood this as well. He was low-energy. He seemed defeated. He was going through the motions."
Anna Husarska, The Washington Post; The cruel human cost of the ‘land swap’ idea for Ukraine
[Kip Currier: The callous nonchalance and indifference with which Trump speaks of the suffering that Ukraine has endured -- and continues to face -- at the hands of Putin is both galling and appalling. Note, too, that this is the same person who reportedly called Sweden's finance minister recently in pursuit of a Nobel Prize for Peace: transactionalism and grandiosity are at Trump's very core.]
[Excerpt]
"On Monday, President Donald Trump elaborated on what kind of deal might emerge from his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage this week. “There’ll be some land swapping going on. To the good, for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff.
“Also, some bad stuff for both,” Trump conceded.
Let us imagine a different kind of swap. Suppose Cuba invaded the United States, occupied most of Florida (justifying it with the claim that there are many Cubans living there) and three-quarters of Texas — and then agreed to withdraw from Texas if the United States gave it the whole of Florida. Would this qualify as a swap? And would it be “to the good” of the United States?
It is unjust to reward territorial aggression with territorial concessions. And such concessions would certainly set evil precedents in an increasingly chaotic world. But while these big questions are important, we must also not lose sight of the human costs such a “swap” would put on the Ukrainian people. Immediately ceding whatever territory Ukraine still holds in Donetsk region, as Russia is reportedly demanding, would be disastrous for the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians still trying to live in a war zone."
Adam Goldman Glenn Thrush and Mattathias Schwartz , The New York Times; Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing System
"Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least in part responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records that might contain information that could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach.
It is not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion or if other countries were also involved, which some of the people familiar with the matter described as a yearslong effort to infiltrate the system. Some of the searches included midlevel criminal cases in the New York City area and several other jurisdictions, with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames.
The disclosure comes as President Trump is expected to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in Alaska on Friday, where Mr. Trump is planning to discuss his push to end the war in Ukraine."
Carl Zimmer, The New York Times; Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds
"Even as paper mills have worked to keep their efforts hidden, Dr. Abalkina has traced the output of companies in Russia, Iran and other countries, and found thousands of their papers in print. “You learn to see the patterns,” she said.
Dr. Amaral and his colleagues have now analyzed those patterns, using network theory and other statistical techniques. “We tried to give a picture of what’s below the surface,” said Reese Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and an author of the new study.
For their analysis, the scientists built a database of more than a million scientific papers. They searched for the papers in online forums where sleuths share duplicated images and tortured phrases, as well as the Retraction Watch Database, maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity.
The researchers compiled a list of 30,000 papers that have either been retracted or show signs of having come from a paper mill. They discovered connections between the papers that strongly hinted that they were the product of large-scale fraud. Many of these connections linked clusters of editors and authors who often worked together.
“There are huge networks that are very densely connected, where they’re all sending their papers to one another,” Dr. Richardson said. “If that’s not collusion, I don’t know what is.”"
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian; Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool
"Whether Trump succeeds in making Kyiv buckle or not, the new reality is clear. The US president is taking an axe to an international order constructed in the aftermath of a bloody world war, a system that has held, however imperfectly, since 1945. A central tenet of that order was that big states could not simply swallow up smaller ones, that unprovoked aggression and conquest would no longer be allowed to stand. Yet here is Trump bent on rewarding just such an act of conquest, not simply acquiescing in Putin’s land grab in Ukraine but conferring on it the legitimacy of approval by the world’s most powerful nation.
Note how he speaks as if Putin had every right to seize the territory of his neighbour. Asked this week what concessions, if any, he had extracted from Moscow, Trump replied that Putin’s willingness to stop the war, rather than gobbling up Ukraine in its entirety, was a “pretty big concession”.
This is not only a disaster for Ukraine, though it is obviously that. It is also the destruction of global architecture that has stood for many decades – and it is hardly a lone case. Trump’s tariff fetish is similarly upending a system of international trade that had made the world, and especially the US, more prosperous. The consequences are already visible, in plunging global stock markets, gloomy growth forecasts and warnings of a recession that will start in the US and then spread everywhere else.
Trump’s eagerness to acquiesce in Putin’s seizure of Ukraine makes a dead letter of international law, with its prohibition of the crime of aggression, and that too points to a wider pattern. For Trump is at war with the law at home as well as abroad. Indeed, in three short months, it has become an open question whether the rule of law still operates in the US...
There is no mystery to Trump. It’s all plain to see – the habits of the vandal, the autocrat, the gangster and the fool – with Ukraine as clear a guide as any. Not that that is any comfort to the people of that besieged land. They don’t want to be a cautionary tale, a demonstration case of the fecklessness and menace of Donald Trump. They want to be a free, independent nation. Their great misfortune is that the mighty country that should be their most powerful friend is now in the hands of an enemy."
Douglas Murray, New York Post; Mr. President: Putin is THE dictator and 10 Ukraine-Russia war truths we ignore at our peril
"In Trump’s rush to end the bloodshed, these are also the truths against which any deal will be judged and which will define him when the history books are written.
To ignore them or not treat them with the gravity they deserve will also have enormous consequences for decades to come:
Truth No. 5
HANNA ARHIROVA / AP, Time; Ukrainians Rally Around Zelensky as Trump and Putin Denigrate Him
"After Trump called Zelensky a “dictator”—for legally postponing an election last year—and as reports emerged of U.S. and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible ceasefire without input from Ukraine, even some of Zelensky’s harshest domestic critics have begun defending him.
“We may have different opinions about Zelensky, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos. “And to publicly criticize him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”
Trump’s harsh words for Zelensky have drawn criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans in the U.S. Congress, where defending Ukraine from Russia—with tens of billions of dollars in military aid—has had bipartisan support. But Vice President J.D. Vance admonished Zelensky for publicly warning Trump about falling for Russian disinformation...
A poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology put public trust in Zelensky at 57%. The survey was conducted Feb. 4 to Feb. 9 among 1,000 people living across Ukraine in regions and territories controlled by the Ukrainian government."
Ronny Reyes, New York Post; Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin’
"Fox News host Mark Levin, a longtime supporter of President Trump, is breaking with the commander-in-chief over his recent attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warning Trump that “MAGA doesn’t support Putin.”
Speaking on the Mark Levin Show on Wednesday, Levin offered a rare criticism of the president as he backed Zelensky for maintaining order in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Levin’s segment appeared to be a direct response to Trump’s claims that Zelensky is a dictator that the Ukrainian leader is stopping free elections and only has a very low approval rating.
The Fox News host said both of those assertions are false."
Eva Maitland and Madeline Roache, NEWSGUARD, NewsGuard's Reality Check; Russia’s War on Ukraine: Three Years, Three Hundred and Two False Claims
"As the war in Ukraine approaches the three-year anniversary of the Russian invasion that launched the conflict, NewsGuard has now identified and debunked 302 false claims relating to the war, nearly all of them originating as Russian propaganda.
These 302 claims appear in NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints proprietary database of viral false narratives that NewsGuard analysts have identified and debunked. NewsGuard analysts have identified 551 websites spreading these false claims...
Siân Boyle, The Observer via The Guardian; Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests
"Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist party, to facilitate censorship requests, an Observer investigation can reveal.
The technology company has engaged with the administrations of about 150 countries since 2011 that want information scrubbed from their public domains.
As well as democratic governments, it has interacted with dictatorships, sanctioned regimes and governments accused of human rights abuses, including the police in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians."
Tim Reid and Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters; Hoax bomb threats linked to Russia target polling places in battleground states, FBI says
"Hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed on Tuesday at polling locations in four battleground states - Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin - as Election Day voting was underway, the FBI said.
"None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far," the FBI said in a statement, adding that election integrity was among the bureau's highest priorities...
The two locations, in Fulton County, both re-opened after about 30 minutes, officials said, and the county was seeking a court order to extend the locations' voting hours past the statewide 7 p.m. deadline.
Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, blamed Russian interference for the Election Day bomb hoaxes."
JOHN SAKELLARIADIS, Politico; A torrent of Election Day disinformation is coming. Here’s how to avoid falling for it.
"Haitian immigrants did not vote multiple times for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia, and poll workers in Pennsylvania did not destroy ballots for Trump, though a pair of videos that went viral in the last 10 days would have you think otherwise.
Both were fabrications of Kremlin influence actors, the U.S. intelligence community has said, and late Monday, it released a new statement calling out “additional influence operations” from Russia...
America’s adversaries “likely learned lessons” from the political turmoil that engulfed the U.S. after Election Day in 2020, senior U.S. intelligence officials told reporters last month. That means Russia, China and Iran are likely to amp up their efforts to spread lies and even incite violence between Election Day and inauguration.
One key defense is to refer any pressing questions to your local officials. “The bottom line when it comes to mis- and disinformation is that voters need to go to the source, and the source is your local and your state election officials,” said Marci Andino, the senior director of the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center."
Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times; Russia Escalates Effort to Subvert Election and ‘Instill Fear in Voters,’ U.S. Says
"Russian groups and other foreign adversaries have unleashed an extensive disinformation campaign to undermine confidence in the election, and senior U.S. officials are worried that Moscow’s efforts could continue to stoke political discord until the election is certified in January...
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the F.B.I. said in a joint statement that foreign adversaries led by Russia were “conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans.”
In recent weeks, the intelligence agencies have dramatically stepped up their alerts. Two weeks ago, they warned of post-election violence. Over the last 10 days, they have now issued three warnings about Russian attempts to undermine faith in the election. And Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said her organization would give regular updates Tuesday to inform the public of threats to the election."
Margaret Brennan, Robert Legare, James LaPorta, , CBS News; 2 more Russian disinformation videos targeting U.S. election are circulating online, sources say
"U.S. officials believe another two fake videos circulating online and publicly identified by the FBI as an attempt to push false election security claims are likely part of a Russia-backed malign influence campaign ahead of Tuesday's presidential election, two sources familiar with the process told CBS News.
The news comes after the FBI said in a statement Saturday that the videos "are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false."
The agency said that one of the videos falsely claims "the FBI has apprehended three linked groups committing ballot fraud, and the second relates to first gentleman Doug Emhoff."
The FBI in its statement did not say who was behind the videos, and when reached by CBS News, declined to comment further.
It added that the two videos — using Justice Department and FBI signage within them and images of Emhoff — were being circulated as part of "attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI operations."
JULIANN VENTURA , The Hill; Raffensperger asks X to take down ‘false’ video purporting to show voter fraud
"Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said that his office asked Elon Musk, the owner of X, and the leadership of other social platforms to take down a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who claimed to have voted multiple times.
The secretary’s office said that the video is false and it is working to identify where the video originated. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is also investigating the matter, according to a press release."
Emma Graham-Harrisonand Artem Mazhulin in Kyiv, The Guardian; ‘Carved on bodies and souls’: Ukrainian men face ‘systemic’ sexual torture in Russian detention centres
"The UN commissioner for human rights has documented hundreds of cases of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian troops since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Two-thirds of the victims are men and boys who were tortured in Russian jails.
Russia deploys systematic sexual torture against Ukrainians, both civilians and prisoners of war, in “almost all” detention centres where they are held, the UN found.
That includes “rape, attempted rape, threats of rape and castration, beatings or the administration of electric shocks to genitals, repeated forced nudity and sexualised humiliation”.
“The numbers in Ukraine are quite startling,” said Charu Lata Hogg, the executive director of the All Survivors Project, which supports men and boys who have endured sexual violence.
The organisation keeps a global database of cases that stretches back three decades, and the scale of new abuse recorded in Ukraine is unprecedented, she said. Sexual violence against men “happens all over the world, but the struggle is always getting documented cases”.
In Ukraine, the UN has recorded 236 incidents of sexual violence against men and two against boys in under three years."
