Secretary Rubio: "The only way to reach a deal is for each side to get something and each side to give something, and that's been very difficult. If it was easy, this wouldn't have been going on for 3.5 years… That's why Zelensky is coming tomorrow."pic.twitter.com/TMWK3AAqXQ
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) August 17, 2025
Whenever the timing is awkward, assume the timing is intentional;
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released two emails that are significant not only for their content but for their timing, coming just two days before the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. The emails reveal that in late 2016, then-DNI James Clapper pushed the fraudulent narrative that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC), overriding pointed objections from then-National Security Agency chief Admiral Mike Rogers.
The timing matters because this very narrative — the claim that Russia had hacked the DNC to help President Trump — was used to sabotage the 2018 Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki. Just three days before that meeting, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian nationals on charges of hacking the DNC. The indictment was designed to create political chaos. Mueller knew that the 12 Russians were located in Russia and would never stand trial, meaning he would never need to prove the case. The result of the indictments was exactly what Mueller, his team, and any yet-to-be-identified co-conspirators intended: to sabotage the summit and effectively criminalize diplomacy with Russia.
h/t roaddog
Joint Base Elmendorf
Trump-Putin Summit
️ Alaska 2025 pic.twitter.com/Dv4q5n6zOZ
— James Blair (@JamesBlair47) August 15, 2025
Richard Fernandez (facebook) – Suddenly it’s no longer safe to be an international big wheel: an oligarch, decorated general, intelligence colonel. The age of sending cannon fodder against the guns has been replaced by the targeted hit. Fame is no longer a luxury. Invisibility is.
Today, if you scanned and counted public-facing Russian servers and other devices, the country would appear smaller than Romania or Sweden, states with 5-10 times smaller populations.
Before October 15th, 2024, Russia had around 920,000 public internet-facing devices and services. These publicly exposed IP addresses include a wide range of networked devices and services, such as routers, email servers, VPN servers, various web panels, load balancers, video systems, and other software or connected hardware.
Overnight, almost half of these devices disappeared, the ShadowServer Foundation IoT data reveals.
The number briefly spiked above two million devices before the end of 2024 and then collapsed again even further. The publicly visible Russian internet infrastructure remains close to 270,000 devices this year.
Watch Mark Carney disappear.
The silence from the Kremlin is deafening.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) June 2, 2025
What could possibly go wrong: Ukrainian officials did not give the Trump administration advance notice of the attack, both Ukrainian and U.S. officials told Axios
Real Reporter discusses how the Russians are catching up in drone technology, which possibly explains why Putin seems disinterested in peace talks.
Hat Tip: Neil
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy and close aide, Kirill Dmitriev, has praised US President Donald Trump for putting together Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul, the first such direct dialogue between the warring countries since early 2022.
Trump and his team have “made the impossible possible” by bringing Moscow and Kiev to the table. Dmitriev further wrote on X that the Istanbul meeting is happening “against all odds/fierce resistance” and that if “not derailed last-minute, this could be a historic step to peace.”
Dmitriev also specifically named Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the latter two who are present in Istanbul – as major contributors to the mediation effort. The Kremlin had spent the opening years of the conflict blasting the Biden administration for constantly stoking the war and thwarting dialogue, taking Washington-Moscow relations to new historic lows.
The people who quarterbacked the NATO side of the Ukraine war are so pleased with themselves, they can’t keep from boasting about things that will make the average American want to pitchfork the lot of them.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House nearly a month ago, the New York Times packed its pages with stories denouncing Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for abandoning Ukraine, and the impolitic “dressing down” of a friendly foreign leader. The Times like most Western news outlets for years suggested that anything short of a full-throated expression of support for war was a betrayal of the “democratic world order” that would lead to instant battlefield deaths.
Now that the war appears lost, and newspapers abroad (conspicuously, not here) are full of news about an apparent bombing of Vladimir Putin’s motorcade, and the future of NATO hangs by a thread, the Times has run a 13,000-word “Secret History” that shows the same U.S. officials who denounced Trump and American voters for saying it out loud long ago concluded that they, too, should probably “walk away.”
This is a must read. Buy a subscription if you must. There’s too much here to quote, but I’ll include this bit from nearer the end.
There are a hundred details in this “Secret History” that serve as stark warnings to anyone who thinks protection from Armageddon is secure in the hands of career military and intelligence officials. Not only did we allow ourselves to be “blackmailed” into escalating a conflict with a nuclear power, the management of the “partnership” broke down because of a Heathers-style spat between the key brass twits, Ukrainian general Valery Zaluhniy and Mark Milley.
When Milley second-guessed Zaluhniy, the latter would respond with teen-like silence, or by ghosting Milley’s next call. Underscoring: the country to which we were giving hundreds of billions in aid didn’t feel a need to pick up the phone.
I think this livestream is open audience.
36 minute video
The Duran- PUTIN; U.S. must address root causes
Francisco- A lot of people have very strong opinions and feelings about what’s going on here. Which is quite understandable. Having said that, I would ask that you discuss the topic like adults in the comments section. If I have to come back here and babysit the thread there will be a heavy and somewhat indiscriminate hand on the delete button, so fair warning.
Take any position you like, disagree with any position you wish to disagree with but lets keep our emotions on a tight leash.
Kurt Schlichter: 10 Hard Facts About Ukraine and NATO
And let me make something clear at the beginning. I like the Ukrainians. I trained them and they were with us when I deployed. I would like them to be able to win their war. I would also like to have a pony. Wishing doesn’t make things so. It’s time to get hard-nosed and real about what’s going on so we can stop this nightmare before it spins completely out of control. And when two nuclear-armed powers are facing each other, spinning out of control can be really bad.
Mark Wauck- Poland About To Learn The Hard Way
Poland has spent 30 years building its foreign policy around a strong US alliance. Yesterday, that foundation cracked. Andrzej Duda flew across the Atlantic for a planned hour-long meeting with Trump. He got ten minutes.
Classics and Military historian Victor Davis Hanson breaks down the “art of the deal” negotiation tactics Trump uses with world leaders.
🚨BREAKING: President Trump confirms that he’s just had a phone call with President Putin of Russia. The two countries will immediately begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
h/t Marc
“We have 60 days of nuclear poker left”.
More: Germany says Russia produces as many weapons in three months as the entire European Union does in a year.
And two years later, here we are. A sobering interview with national security expert Elbridge Colby.
Blacklock’s- Quietly Waives War Sanction
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly yesterday quietly removed a Russian banker from cabinet’s Ukraine war sanctions list. No reason was given.
Kamyshev is a former partner with Ernst & Young in the United Kingdom. The department would not say what business he had in Canada.
How it started…
France 24- Allies freeze $330 bn of Russian assets since Ukraine invasion
The Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force (REPO) said in a joint statement that they had blocked $30 billion in assets of Russian oligarchs and officials, and immobilized $300 billion owned by the Russian central bank.
How it’s going…
Express- Russia seized £76m from Google ‘to support war in Ukraine’
The Kremlin seized more than £76m from Google’s accounts in Vladimir Putin’s Russia – and used this to fund propaganda supporting the war in Ukraine, court documents claim.
The assets seizure came after a Russian court ruled that Google must pay damages to three Russian TV channels.
Let me make today’s news about the CIA blocking feds from interviewing Hunter’s funders simple:
Burisma was being used as a corporate crowbar by the CIA to pry Russia off the gas market. Hunter helped that happen.
There. No more mystery.