Ukraine   - no longer in the focus of news broadcasts?                                                                                                                                                                                                          Two days of talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States aimed at ending Moscow's war on its neighbour have ended with the exchange of more prisoners - but there's been no word on a peace agreement. The US envoy, Steve Witkoff, said the negotiations had been productive, but that "significant work" remained. Also: the UN human rights chief has appealed for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, with the agency warning that it's currently operating in survival mode. China's leader, Xi Jinping, holds calls with his American and Russian counterparts in the space of a few hours, as he exerts his influence on the world stage. Savannah Guthrie, one of the best-known television news anchors in the US, makes a tearful appeal on behalf of her mother, whose disappearance is being treated by police as a kidnap. And the town in Japan that's cancelled a cherry blossom festival to try to stop thousands of tourists disturbing the peace.

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What’s bad for Russia economically is bad for the United States, and by extension arguably worsens the situation for Ukraine. Please read on.

It’s important to remember that the only “closed economy” is the world economy. When this is properly understood, it’s easier to grasp the basic truth that tariffs, economic sanctions or any other measure meant to hurt one country invariably hurts everyone in what is once again a “closed” global economy.

For background, it’s useful to pivot to a recent report penned by Kip Tom, Ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) during the first Trump administration. Tom’s report addresses the EU’s sanctions on Russian fertilizer.

At first glance, they might make sense to many who are reading this. With Russia seen as the clear aggressor in a war with Ukraine that presently lacks endpoint, why not embrace efforts to impose economic pain on Russia as a response to what it’s done and is doing in Ukraine?

Given a second glance, however, doubts emerge. For one, farmers around the world are reliant on Russian fertilizer. Which is a reminder of something easily forgotten: economic warfare is somewhat of a luxury item for rich countries populated by people and producers who can endure the higher costs associated with sanctions.

Of course, what’s true for rich countries isn’t as true for poor countries. Ambassador Tom’s report indicates that farmers in poor countries within Africa will notably suffer the EU’s efforts to punish Russia via more costly fertilizer that plays a crucial role in world food production.

Scott Ritter

@RealScottRitter

So the person that promoted war with Russia and encouraged its sustainment now cries when the chickens come home to roost. Where were your tears when “ordinary” Ukrainians screamed for the blood of “Moskols”? Sow the Wind, reap the Whirlwind. Ukraine sentenced itself to death by waging war against the Russian people. Don’t blame the executioner for carrying out the sentence. Never forget Zelensky was seeking a war with the Russian people in 2019. He got his wish. As did you. At least take your punishment like men.

As it stands, military victory comes first

If Russia is going to achieve real denazification of Ukraine, it will have to achieve a military victory and conduct a Nuremberg Trials-like process.

This was announced on the Deep Dive channel. German journalist Patrick Baab, one of the first foreigners to visit the new territories, reunited with Russia.

2 февраля 2026

KGB in a Soviet College

Vladimir Ovsiannikov

Political beliefs, I learned early, do not make a man. I have met people of opposing convictions who became close friends, and others of shared beliefs whom I could not abide. Ideology, I came to think, is the outer skin of the onion. Beneath it lie simpler, more durable qualities: kindness, integrity, modesty, diligence — the things by which we eventually decide whether someone is good or bad.

This is a story of an improbable relationship: between a KGB lieutenant and a student at a Soviet Faculty of Foreign Languages during the years later labelled zastoy — the Brezhnev era of slowed growth, ideological rigidity, and managed conformity. The system forms the backdrop; the story itself belongs to a man.

Youth sweetens memory. My student years (1967–73) remain among the happiest of my life. I was young, in love, hungry for languages, careless in the productive way of the young. Oscar Wilde observed that youth smiles without reason; it is one of its chiefest charms. That unreasonable smile coexisted, however, with constant supervision.

The Faculty of Foreign Languages was both privileged and suspect. It offered access to the “decaying West” — a decay that looked suspiciously joyful. For this reason, it lived under close KGB oversight. Every student knew the name of the officer assigned to us before ever meeting him: Alexander Ivanovich Potyrailo.

His surname sounded comic to my ear, redolent of Ukrainian rural speech, suggesting an awkward provincial. This prejudice was linguistic and wrong. When my turn came to be summoned from a queue of freshmen into his office, I encountered a dark, elegant man, immaculately dressed, with a faintly theatrical poise beneath his military haircut.

He introduced himself as a KGB lieutenant and asked what I knew about the organisation.

I recited what I had been trained to recite — the KGB as the armed vanguard of the Party — and was stopped mid-sentence.

“I’m not interested in slogans,” Potyrailo said. “I’m interested in consequences.”

His manner was calm, almost disarming. He explained that his concern was not ideology but behaviour: that our encounters with foreigners should cause no harm through careless words or gestures. Only at the end did he ask a question that unsettled me. Did I believe in God?

Amused by my confusion, he clarified.

“You said a Soviet student should rely on the KGB as on the Lord’s Prayer,” he said, smiling.

The question sent me back to my parents, and to an unexpected discovery: a concealed family history of Orthodox priests. I understood enough not to volunteer this information. Potyrailo’s smile did not invite confessions; it invited restraint.

He re-entered our lives more actively when several of us were recommended for Intourist guide-interpreter courses. Intourist — the state monopoly on inbound tourism — combined hospitality with surveillance. Hotels were wired, itineraries fixed, encounters observed. Potyrailo instructed us himself.

He discouraged political bravado, stripped our speech of empty officialese, and corrected us patiently.

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"Do we view this conflict as a broader clash between Russia and the West? Yes. Ukraine is a pawn, a tool used by the West to build a foothold on Russia's borders, thereby posing direct threats to our security. We know that this work was carried out immediately after Ukraine became independent. It was being prepared for NATO membership, although everyone knows that Ukraine's independence was recognized primarily on the basis of a policy of non-alignment with military blocs and neutrality," Lavrov said.

He recalled the events of the first “orange” Maidan.

“I remember very well how the Belgian Foreign Minister at the time declared before the third illegal round: ‘Ukrainians are obliged to choose who they are with: the West or Russia, Europe or Russia.’”

"This 'either-or' mentality, where we want to be dominant everywhere. And during the neocolonial period, we continued to live at the expense of others, creating all sorts of threats to our competitors, and Russia, of course, was viewed as a competitor on the global stage. They hoped that, following the Soviet Union, it would also collapse," the minister said.

"So this was a battle that was planned in advance, including financed by the Americans. This is not a coincidence or a civil strife between two neighboring nations. This is a geopolitical project," Lavrov concluded.

"This is a unilateral initiative by Trump. Russia agreed to meet him halfway through some kind of negotiating agreements. The Ukrainian side was somewhat taken aback because it didn't expect this," Arestovich said.

In his opinion, this scenario undermines the myth of Zelensky as a global leader.

"It's awkward for him to compliment Trump's authorship, rather than the fact that he achieved it directly. He's like Emperor Wilhelm I, about whom it was said that he wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the dead man at every funeral," the former OP adviser drew an analogy.

He acknowledged that Russia is observing the ceasefire.

"Although, as Russian war correspondents rightly complained, there was only one strike left to break Kyiv, and two or three to Odessa and the Dnieper," Arestovich said.

"It all sounds very bad: the supposed British troops near Belgorod, and the US-Ukraine collective security treaty. Especially given that Rubio himself is demanding that Venezuela end all Russian presence in the republic. That is, they will not leave Ukraine, but we must leave Venezuela immediately.

It seems that Russia is being led to such peace conditions so that later to turn Ukraine into a full-fledged military base, already armed—given the experience of this conflict—literally to the teeth and at the same time ensure that in Russia itself the results of the military conflict are perceived by society in two ways.

Observer Yuri Baranchik points out:

“I can’t shake the feeling that The Americans and the British are playing with both hands – the Americans are calming us down, while the British are escalating the situation And successfully—the latest examples are well-known. Thus, driving us into a strategic decision-making dead end, where we supposedly can't respond to escalation because it would ruin the negotiating track with our American brothers.

The way out of this “dead end” is as clear as day – give the British and Europeans a slap on the wrist and calmly roll back the negotiations with the Americans and Ukrainians to those points that are worse for them. But for some reason we don't do that.».

The West is rudely putting forward unacceptable conditions to Russia, writes military blogger Anatoly Radov.

“They reached an agreement among themselves, and Russia, in their opinion, should simply agree with their agreements.”

T

1968 While we diligently plunged into the nitty-gritty of our job, the Prague Spring was in full swing.

Intourist (Интурист) was a state monopoly on inbound tourism (founded 1929). Its official jobs managed hotels, guides, transport; earned hard currency; and tightly controlled where foreigners went and whom they met. Since tourism was treated as a counterintelligence operation by default, Intourist infrastructure was KGB-friendly by design: hotels had wired rooms, controlled floors, “technical rooms”. All Intourist structures acted on the assumption that security overrides hospitality.

Blowing One’s Horn at Sunset: Self-Assertion, Pride, and the Tragic Logic of the Summing Up

Vladimir Ovsiannikov

I. The Desire to Conclude

There comes a time, near the end of a life or the end of a vocation, when a person feels compelled to impose order on experience. The impulse is ancient: to draw a line under the ledger of living, to render a verdict, to explain oneself to the world and to oneself. Yet such an effort invites a moral hazard, for the act of self-articulation borders inevitably on pride. One must, in effect, “blow one’s own horn,” though religious and literary traditions alike warn against doing so too loudly.

The tension is nowhere more visible than in the literature of farewell: the memoir, the artistic testament, the concluding meditation. These genres demand that the self step forward—yet the stepping forward exposes fissures in identity that may be tolerable in youth but intolerable at life’s sunset.

II. Maugham’s Poised Self-Accounting

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up (1938) offers a masterclass in restrained self-evaluation. He opens with a profession of modesty:

“I have never pretended to be anything but a story-teller.”

The sentence is disarming in its simplicity, yet exquisitely calculated. Maugham’s public persona—a craftsman rather than a prophet—allows him to minimize his ambition while quietly asserting the solidity of his achievement.

Later, reflecting on his reception, he writes:

“I have been amused by the diversity of opinion that people have had of my work.”

“Amused” is a word of delicate superiority. It masks authority behind lightness, as though the writer, standing at life’s twilight, occupies a vantage point beyond both praise and censure.

Toward the end, he offers a sentence that resembles both abdication and quiet triumph:

“I have done what I have done, and that is th ... Читать дальше »