The 2013 Snowden leaks forced President Obama to work the phones with furious allies. One cancelled a state visit. This time, the response has been muted.
- Secretary of State Blinken joins a Kyiv band for Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”
- In Port a Prince Haiti, Secretary of State Antony Blinken makes clear he will not serve into a Harris administration if asked, saying that he "will relish spending a lot more time" with his kids after January 2025.
- On a 2015 trip with then-Army chief of staff Mark Milley I visited the training site in western Ukraine that the Russians bombed this morning
- “Putin essentially takes American citizens hostage because he wants to use them as leverage… So if he brings espionage charges, he’s going to want to get one of his own spies back.”
- most interesting — and new to me — is Biden’s talk of national sacrifice
- Resilient tone on Ukraine here in Munich, as Zelensky warns against “fatigue”
- Blinken wouldn’t speculate about Putin’s state of mind, but noted the Russian leader's insulation from dissenting views. “One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is the inability to speak truth to power.”
- New glimmers of hope for negotiations, if little more than that for now
- NEW: The moral dilemma behind the rising trend of prisoner swaps
- NEW: Months before the Gaza war, the Biden administration lowered its bar for cutting off arms transfers to foreign militaries. Critics say Biden is defying his own policies, and U.S. law.
- “It is very, very difficult for countries to seriously interdict supply lines. Limited striking of targets in Ukraine, or in countries like Poland, is not going to meaningfully stop the flow.”
