Things are becoming clear. The United States no longer believes that Ukraine should control its own future. The United States no longer cares if the Donbas and Crimea belong to Russia, whether or not Ukraine cares. The United States no longer supports any future which sees Ukraine as a member of NATO.

President Trump is not only going to meet with President Putin, but it looks like they may have two meetings, one in Russia and one here. During these meetings and further telephone calls, they will talk about how the war in Ukraine must end. President Zelensky will not be part of these talks.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a violation not only of international laws which respect the boundaries of sovereign states, but a violation of specific treaties involving Ukraine and Russia, which has been deemed a major threat to world stability not only the United States, but by virtually all of NATO, now no longer really matters that much. An agreement to end the fighting by Russia with territorial losses by Ukraine, which had been viewed as another Munich agreement, emboldening Putin to attack other neighboring states, is now the cat’s meow.

Yesterday, Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was arrested and convicted four years ago for having in his possession in Russia a small amount of marijuana, has been freed and today, four prisoners of Belarus (one of whom was American) has also been freed. It is widely assumed that their release (and who can be sad about their release) came at a price. The price does not seem to be prisoner exchange, as one would normally expect, but rather a promise or set of promises having to do with American support of Ukraine and America’s relationship with Russia. Details, we don’t know.

On Monday, I suggested four books about Fascist leaders which I suggested you read, starting with Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen (Edie has put it next on her list). Today, I add another, Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World. I admit that I haven’t yet read this book, but I have heard its author speak about it several times, and understand the general idea. The general idea is that today, as opposed to times past, dictators (the same as strongmen) who have varying ideologies have banded together to form a mutual aid society to oppose democratic countries. Whereas before, you would not expect a Putin and an Ayatollah and a Xi, with widely different political philosophies, to band together to oppose the liberal West, today this is exactly what is happening. And it poses a major challenge.

The problem is, using Applebaum’s terms, that with Trump’s election, it is less and less clear that the United States stands on the side of the democracies and that, if this is true, we will see Trump cozying up to some of these dictators, such as he seems already to be doing with Putin and joining Autocracy, Inc., or at least becoming a fellow traveler.

First reports from Pete Hegseth’s meeting with NATO officials about the Ukraine state that the United States position is now to support conversations to end the war, to make it clear that American troops would not get involved in policing the area, and to insist that Ukraine will not join NATO. On the other hand, Treasury Secretary Bessent has recently been in Ukraine and he is talking about further American support being dependent on Ukraine’s granting America the rights to $500 billions of rare minerals, which seems a bit in contradiction to Hegseth’s and Trump’s comments

So……we really don’t know what will happen next. But it is very worrisome.

This morning, with my Thursday breakfast group, I heard a friend’s presentation on the secret code breaking accomplishments during World War II at Bletchley Park in England, where both the Japanese and the even more encrypted German codes were broken to help the Allies win the war. Within this amazing story is a fascinating statistics. At its height, there were about 9,000 people working at Bletchley, experimenting, running into many dead ends, and finally reaching success. WWEMD? What would Elon Musk have done if he had been asked to examine the staffing at Bletchley Park? What a difficult time we are now living in.

Now, on my TV, is the committee hearing on Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI. I am now publishing this blog post before knowing how this vote will come out. I haven’t watched the entire hearing, but I don’t see any sign that any Republican has spoken against the Patel nomination, so I guess we know, without waiting for the vote, how this will turn out.