Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids; The Daily Beast, August 29, 2025

Anna Nemtsova, The Daily Beast ; Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids

"Children as young as 7 are now being forced to join Vladimir Putin’s dystopian drone war, which rained down attacks on Kyiv on Thursday that left 23 people dead, including four kids.

The 7-year-olds are not directly involved in the war in Ukraine, but in a chilling escalation, they will be trained as future drone pilots as part of their education in school from next year. And then, starting in ninth grade, children are being actively recruited to work in a drone factory that is part of a college where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are sent to kill civilians in Ukraine are being manufactured.

Conditions are brutal in the drone factory at Alabuga college, 600 miles west of Moscow, with allegations of bullying and physical abuse. One of the young workers, who asked to be called Kate, told the Daily Beast that she was being reprogrammed into an “unbreakable” part of Putin’s war machine...

Putin said drone piloting had to become a part of the school program to teach children “to pilot, assemble and construct drones.”

“I am convinced that it will make the kids busy with something useful and interesting, distract them from things they should not be doing,” he explained."

The Guardian view on the Alaska summit: there must be no more gifts to Vladimir Putin, Editorial; The Guardian, August 17, 2025

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."

Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine; BBC, August 17, 2025

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."

Trump’s Shameful “Summit” Was Even Worse Than We Thought; The Bulwark, August 16, 2025

 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."

Why Trump’s Latest Reality TV Show Is a Flop; The Daily Beast, August 16, 2025

 David Rothkopf, 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."

Fox News Calls Out Trump for No-Question ‘Press Conference’; The Daily Beast, August 16, 2025

William Vaillancourt , The Daily Beast; Fox News Calls Out Trump for No-Question ‘Press Conference’

"Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich, who witnessed Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ignore reporters’ questions after their summit Friday, said everyone in the room was “surprised” by the president’s silence.

Heinrich, the network’s senior White House correspondent—whom Trump has previously targeted—spoke about the summit’s conclusion with anchor Brian Kilmeade, who also said he hadn’t expected things to wrap up with the usually talkative Trump walking away without taking questions...

When reached for comment, the White House did not answer the Daily Beast’s question about why neither Trump nor Putin took reporters’ questions.

As for Heinrich’s report, a press aide directed the Daily Beast to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung’s brief post on X in reply to the tail end of her comments to Kilmeade. 

“Total fake news,” was the response from Cheung, who just yesterday tried to criticize California Gov. Gavin Newsom for avoiding questions after a speech—except Newsom answered nine questions, nine more than Trump did Friday."

The cruel human cost of the ‘land swap’ idea for Ukraine; The Washington Post, August 14, 2025

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."

How do we lead moral lives in an age of bullies?; The Guardian, July 28, 2025

Robert Reich, The Guardian; How do we lead moral lives in an age of bullies?

"We are living in an age of bullies. Those with power are less constrained today than they have been in my lifetime, since the end of the second world war.

The question is: how do we lead moral lives in this era?...

This isn’t a matter of “left” or “right”. It’s a matter of what’s right.

Living a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action; it cannot be done alone. Each of us must organize and participate in a vast network of moral resistance.

This is what civilization demands. It’s what the struggle for social justice requires. It’s why that struggle is so critical today, and why we all must be part of it."

White House Hangs Hegseth Out to Dry for Rogue Arms Move; The Daily Beast, July 9, 2025

Cameron Adams , The Daily Beast; White House Hangs Hegseth Out to Dry for Rogue Arms Move

[Kip Currier: Regarding Trump's statement (see below) "[Putin is] killing too many people", how many is "too many"? The callousness of this statement is striking but not surprising.]

[Excerpt]

"On Tuesday, Trump was asked about the U.S. resuming sending key weapons to Ukraine as it battles the ongoing invasion spearheaded by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin is not... he’s not treating human beings right,” Trump said. “He’s killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I’ve approved that.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins then asked Trump who ordered the pause last week. He sidestepped a direct answer, instead asking, “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?” Hegseth, who was seated next to the president, remained silent."

Trump’s Un-American Parade: What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.; The Atlantic, June 13, 2024

 T. H. Breen, The Atlantic; Trump’s Un-American Parade: What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.

"To discern the values of a nation and its leaders, watch their parades. Tomorrow, on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, President Donald Trump plans not only to display the country’s military might but also to present himself as its supreme leader. Some 6,600 soldiers and 200 tanks, warplanes, helicopters, and the like are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. According to reports, parachuters will land on the Ellipse, where Trump instructed rioters on January 6 to “fight like hell,” and submit to him a folded American flag. All of this will occur on the president’s birthday, which spurs the question of whether we’re celebrating the country or the man who seeks to dominate it.

President George Washington offered a very different model of an American parade—one better suited for a moment that tested the nation’s founding principles. In October 1789, Washington was scheduled to visit Boston, which had planned a celebration in his honor. Unlike Trump, Washington resisted attempts to turn the event into a military display. The very notion of a ceremony organized around him made the first president uneasy...

Washington served in the Continental Army, so he understood the sacrifices that soldiers make for their country, and the public reverence those sacrifices are due. But he also knew the dangers of using the military for personal purposes. He saw clearly the need for the citizens of a republic to stand vigilant against the pretensions of a leader who would use the Army to flex his own might. He had no wish to become America’s elected monarch."

Corruption Has Flooded America. The Dams Are Breaking.; The New York Times, June 8, 2025

 Ben Rhodes, The New York Times ; Corruption Has Flooded America. The Dams Are Breaking.

"President Trump has more than doubled his personal wealth since starting his 2024 election campaign. Billions of foreign dollars have flowed into his family’s real estate and crypto ventures. A plane that doubles as a “palace in the sky” has been given for Mr. Trump’s use by the government of Qatar.

It is easy to dismiss this as just a bigger and more brazen version of the self-dealing we saw during the first Trump term. But it poses a more fundamental danger. Our political system is being transformed into something that no longer serves the people. Indeed, the United States is seemingly becoming just another country with a corrupt strongman personalizing and profiting from power...

Corruption is a powerful tool, but it is not popular. To build a movement powerful enough to push back on Mr. Trump’s self-dealing, Democrats must show people how it will affect their lives."

Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool; The Guardian, April 25, 2025

 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."

NASA chief and Democratic lawmakers urge investigation into reports of Musk-Putin conversations; Business Insider, October 27, 2024

Erin Snodgrass and Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert , Business Insider ; NASA chief and Democratic lawmakers urge investigation into reports of Musk-Putin conversations

"NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are calling for an investigation into The Wall Street Journal's report that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Several Washington officials began pushing for a probe less than a day after The Journal — citing several current and former US, European, and Russian officials — reported that Musk and Putin have had regular calls since 2022 in which they have discussed "personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions."

Musk has not responded to requests for comment from Business Insider. In a statement on X, which Musk reposted, the official SpaceX account described The Journal's report as an "incredibly misleading story" based on "completely unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources."

On Friday, Nelson told Semafor that calls between Musk, the richest man in the world, and Putin "would be concerning" if true, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense. Nelson added The Journal's report should be investigated but did not specify by which agency."

Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin; Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2024

Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold, and Sam Schechner, Wall Street Journal; Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin

"Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022."

Surviving Putin's gulag: Vladimir Kara-Murza tells his story; The Washington Post, August 14, 2024

Today’s show was produced by Charla Freeland. It was edited by Allison Michaels and Damir Marusic and mixed by Emma Munger, The Washington Post; Surviving Putin's gulag: Vladimir Kara-Murza tells his story

"Pulitzer Prize winner Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was part of August’s massive prisoner exchange with Russia, sat down to talk with Post Opinions editor David Shipley about his time in jail, the importance of freedom of speech and what the future holds for Putin’s regime."

The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over; The New York Times, May 5, 2022

 SERGE SCHMEMANN, The New York Times; The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over

"As a former K.G.B. agent, Mr. Putin sees the world as a battleground of conspiratorial maneuvers. In his speeches, the color revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring and other global upheavals are machinations to bolster American domination. As an heir to the Soviet worldview, he believes more than many Western leaders do in the importance of information warfare, both to give his regime a veneer of legitimacy and to challenge liberal democracy. On this battlefield, lies are ammunition in Mr. Putin’s long and increasingly personal struggle to stay in power.

As the war enters a new phase, as the images and horrors become familiar and the costs rise, it will become ever more difficult for the Biden administration and for Mr. Zelensky to sustain their early lead in the information war. That makes it all the more imperative for the West to press the message that this is not a war Ukraine chose and that the cost of allowing Mr. Putin to have his way in Ukraine would be far higher than the sacrifices required to block him."

In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected; The New York Times, March 15, 2022

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times; In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected

"I am always amazed by the courage that seemingly average people manifest in war — in this case, not only by Ukrainians, but also by Russians who refuse to buy Putin’s lies, knowing that he is turning them into a pariah nation. So I marvel at the breathtaking courage demonstrated on Monday evening by Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee at Russia’s Channel 1, a state-run television channel, who burst into a live broadcast of Russia’s most-watched news show, yelling, “Stop the war!” and holding up a sign behind the anchorwoman saying, “They’re lying to you here.” She was interrogated and, for the moment, released — probably because Putin feared making her into a martyr.

Marina Ovsyannikova — remember her name. She dared to tell the czar that he had no clothes. What courage.

And finally, wars also reveal extraordinary acts of kindness."

Opinion: Travels with Milley: The general brings his ‘big green map’ to NATO’s flank; The Washington Post, March 8, 2022

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Opinion: Travels with Milley: The general brings his ‘big green map’ to NATO’s flank

"On the eve of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, Biden ordered Milley and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to brief Congress on what the map showed — and then to give the same briefing, on “deep background,” to the Pentagon press corps. This was a declassified version of code-word intelligence, drawn from communications intercepts, surveillance satellites and spies on the ground. America’s best weapon against Putin, Biden decided, was the truth. The administration had found a way to weaponize intelligence."

Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war; The Guardian, February 28, 2022

Yuval Noah Harari, The Guardian; Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war

"Nations are ultimately built on stories. Each passing day adds more stories that Ukrainians will tell not only in the dark days ahead, but in the decades and generations to come. The president who refused to flee the capital, telling the US that he needs ammunition, not a ride; the soldiers from Snake Island who told a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself”; the civilians who tried to stop Russian tanks by sitting in their path. This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count for more than tanks."

Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies; CNN, February 25, 2022

Opinion by Frida Ghitis, CNN ; Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies

"In the end, Putin did exactly what President Biden told the world he would do: He invaded Ukraine on a runway of lies.

In Russia, where most people get their news from government-controlled media, many believed Putin's claims of a nefarious threat from Ukraine. But the rest of the world saw the propaganda fall flat in real time. 

"Orwellian" doesn't begin to describe the falsehoods. Putin announced he was sending "peacekeepers," as he ordered his military machine to move into Ukrainian territory. His soldiers went into Ukraine to supposedly "de-Nazify" -- smearing the Nazi label on a country that is a democracy, though a flawed one, whose president happens to be Jewish. Putin claimed Moscow needed to move in to defend Ukraine's Russian speakers from a nonexistent "genocide" by Ukrainians (a tactic made infamous of World War II).

Washington succeeded in thoroughly delegitimizing not only the phony Russian justification for war, but Putin's own credibility before the entire world. It may take some time for the Russian people, too, to grasp the depth of the deception, but eventually they will."