No, Elon has not restored speeds for Ukrainian drones, Kyiv says. President Trump suggested Musk "put it back." Zelensky's comms adviser @dmtrltvn's answer to me: it's "the same limit." My latest: correspondent.news/articles/…

There are reports this morning that @SpaceX’s Starshield has been restored for Ukrainian use. That is not the case. As one staff officer from a key, large unit, told me just now: “We fly over 180 (km/h), fly for a few minutes, lose connection, drop to 140-150, lose connection, speed up again but the connection is still crashing.”

First Lady Melania Trump @FLOTUS successfully secured a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, localized to the town of Oleshky. Both nations agreed to temporarily stop all military action in Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid to enter and to prepare a civilian evacuation through a designated safe passageway. The localized ceasefire will begin on October 29, 2026. “The situation in Oleshky is dire. Oleshky is a front-line war city on the brink of disaster. Oleshky’s remaining population is comprised primarily of elderly residents who urgently need medical attention, medicine, food, and clean water,” said First Lady Melania Trump. “The people of Oleshky have limited electricity, live amid mined roads, and endure regular military attacks. It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible.” Melania Trump and her representative worked directly with Russian and Ukrainian leadership (in her role as “Exclusive Intermediary”), non-military civilian teams from both sides will visit residents, people can choose to evacuate to Russia or Ukraine, and an impartial American media organization will accompany and document the process. It notes prior child-reunification work and gives basic facts on Oleshky (pre-war population ~24,000; remaining estimate 1,700–2,000, mostly elderly plus ~50 children; heavy flooding after the Kakhovka Dam destruction). whitehouse.gov/briefings-sta…

BREAKING: We have now identified three tankers carrying Russian #diesel to the United States. All three loaded at petroleum berths in Russia and are declaring USA as their destination. Diesel is the only known hydrocarbon which the US OFAC currently permits imports of from Russia. #OOTT

I'm noticing the growing possibility that Europe becomes very poor in the course of the next 10-20 years. You have the following factors: - Heavy industry totally uncompetitive against China, automakers etc. rapidly losing ground - Services industry totally uncompetitive against AI - No natural resources, or regulatory hurdles making their extraction impossible - No access to the new economy (no AI, no data centers, uncompetitive energy sector) - Client states caught in one-way welfare ratchets, spend reallocation + investment well-nigh impossible This seems under-contemplated. And we're talking really, seriously dirt poor: taken to its logical conclusion, many countries will have much, much smaller services and manufacturing industries -- economies may become much more heavily skewed toward natural resources and energy markets, where Europe has made it impossible for itself to compete. And I'm not saying that this is likely to happen, it's an extreme case. But the probability is greater than zero and appears to be growing. The EV of that is so negative that it's surprising to me that it's not coming up more.

Kellogg: Freezing the war in Ukraine in place is a good approach. In World War II the US never recognized that the Soviet Union took Lithuania. We said you own it because you are physically on the land, and legally, de jure, you don't. 1/

Well, here it is. This is what I’ve been telling you all along — Russia doesn’t want to keep fighting, and Putin has confirmed this. It’s just not clear how Russia intends to achieve the goals of the SMO. These goals cannot be achieved except through a complete victory in the war and the elimination of this Nazi Ukrainian state. Putin gave a short interview to journalists: 🔵Russia doesn’t want to fight Ukraine; Kiev wants to fight; 🔵Russia is still ready to negotiate on Ukraine, especially since Russians and Ukrainians are one people. 🔵Recent genetic studies show that Russians and Ukrainians are one people; 🔵Russia does not want and is not preparing for war with Europe; 🔵The lands lost by Kiev are not “their territory” — they are historical lands of Russia; 🔵The Russian Federation has informed the United States that it is ready to resume trilateral negotiations on Ukraine; 🔵The Russian Federation will achieve its goals; all the objectives of the special military operation will be accomplished. 🔵 Ukrainians are rounded up like stray dogs in the streets and sent to the front.

Hilltop youth wedding, Gush Etzion. IDF rifles in the air, and the song is the Neturei Karta anthem: "The rule of the heretics we do not recognise." The singer closes with "We will break the Zionists' teeth!" Someone waves a flag for Ariel Dahari, charged with terrorism for clubbing a 52-year-old Palestinian woman. After the party, a car is torched in Beit Ummar: "Regards, Dahari, and mazal tov." The state arms them and helps them ethnically cleanse Palestinians. They don't recognize it.

It’s not completely clear if Starshield speeds have been fully restored yet for the Ukrainian military, after being throttled for the last week. A brief thread on how speed throttling impacts Ukrainian operations and battlefield dynamics. /1    nytimes.com/2026/10/21/world…

I work for Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and today, on the 1,700th day of the war in Ukraine, we brought home all three deliverables. A freed American. A word. A date. My title is Deputy Director for Deliverables Sequencing. Nobody outside the building knows the job exists, which is how you know I’m good at it. Every envoy trip has to come back with the same three things. I keep them on a laminated card in my passport wallet: TOKEN. WORD. DATE. The token is something the other side gives us that fits on a plane. The word is something we give them that fits in a headline. The date is the next meeting. That is the product. Peace is a different department. I’ve never found it on the floor plan. My daughter plans weddings. She calls it the run of show. It’s the same skill set. You make sure the vows happen before the open bar, and nobody asks whether the couple likes each other. Here is how sequencing actually works, and I’m going to walk you through this one slowly, because I think it’s my masterpiece. A swap is crude. A swap is two vans on one tarmac on one afternoon, and everybody can count. A sequence is a swap with the calendar stretched out until nobody can see both ends at once. October 9. The President posted that, after “a highly successful discussion,” Russia would “immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace.” Treasury issued a temporary license easing sanctions on Russian diesel. Brent, our Treasury liaison, delivered the license to my desk personally, in a manila folder. Brent believes some things deserve paper. October 10. Russia partially lifted its own diesel export ban, the one it imposed on itself in July after Ukrainian strikes on its refineries. The Russian cabinet said the decision “is aimed at implementing the agreements reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump.” I printed that sentence and put it on my fridge. You rarely get a counterparty who footnotes your work for you. October 16. The President signed an executive order that set the new Graham Act tariffs and sanctions on Russia and waived them in the same document. Brent calls this a self-cancelling instrument. I call it a palate cleanser. October 21. Today. The American walked free. The President posted that the United States “was not required to give anything in return,” and that “There was no ‘swap’ necessary for this release.” Twelve days. Four documents. Zero vans. That’s sequencing. The meeting was at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, an old Romanov grand-duke residence outside St. Petersburg. Kirill Dmitriev met us at Pulkovo. Steve was inside with President Putin for almost three hours. The token came first, on camera, at the very top. President Putin announced that the American was free and “at Pulkovo Airport.” I didn’t design that. The Russians sequence too. They had the gift waiting at the airport before the cameras came on, like luggage nobody had to carry. Then the word. Steve said: “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you.” The word is my favorite deliverable. It costs nothing and it lasts forever. A prisoner flies home once. A word gets clipped, captioned and replayed by both sides for years. The Kremlin posted its own Russian transcript within hours. It didn’t use the word. It turned our line into something like “a man who graciously considered this matter.” Even the host thought we’d overpaid. I’ve never had a counterparty hand back change. Then the papers. “We’ve brought some papers. It’s really some ideas, some sort of peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and you’ll read that at your leisure.” Those ideas came out of Oslo the day before, where we sat with Ukraine, Norway and Finland, and the Norwegian prime minister said the aim was “to put diplomatic efforts on a more constructive path.” I keep a file for documents like that. The tab says LEISURE. It’s the thickest file in the office. Then the thank-you, which I sequenced last, because the token, the word and the papers had to land first. Steve thanked President Putin for “your decision to remove export controls on diesel oil,” on behalf of the President and of “our farmers and other truckers who use diesel.” The decision he was thanking had been in force for eleven days. Russia banned it. Russia partly unbanned it. We thanked Russia for the second half. I’ve never been prouder of a paragraph. My other job today was the tablet. Jared Kushner was meant to come, but he had the flu, so he joined remotely. Steve told the room he’d bring Mr. Kushner in “by phone.” The Kremlin said afterward that a video link was, “incidentally,” organized. I held the tablet. I’ve learned to let the host describe the furniture. Kayla, our newest advance staffer, sat next to me through all three hours. She’s 24. She still reads posts to the end. On the flight home she read the President’s second post out loud. It said that if the sanctions “would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt.” She looked up and asked whether that was the swap, just written down. I told her that was a very junior way to read a timeline. Then the date. At 16:25 Yuri Ushakov briefed the press that President Putin was “ready in principle” to resume trilateral talks “around November 10.” He also said the proposals we’d brought “contained little that was useful.” “In principle” is the most valuable phrase in my profession. It means yes in every language and binding in none. Dates are the spine of my performance review. In September Steve announced “movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks.” Earlier this year the target was a deal by June. A second round with the Ukrainians in Miami was set for October 10, the day after the diesel post, and dropped. Now it’s around November 10. TASS says “around.” CNN and AP say “after.” Kayla asked which one. I booked both. The same day, in Mumbai, the Secretary of State was asked about the American and said, “Yeah, I don’t comment on that.” He was on an earlier leg of the sequence. It happens. Back home, Senator Thom Tillis posted, “WTF, Steve?” and “Look up the definition of ‘humanitarian.’” Senator John Cornyn posted, “No. Putin is stone cold killer.” Both Republicans. I filed them under good signs. When your own party is angry about the word, the word got coverage. None of this changes the grinding. UN monitors counted 2,570 civilians killed in Ukraine from January through September, almost 60 percent more than the same months last year, and said the first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years. Those numbers aren’t on my card. My card has three words. Tomorrow the first Russian diesel tanker leaves for the United States: 40,000 tonnes of the 300,000 promised “immediately.” Brent says that’s 13%. I say that’s a start date. Tonight the office approved a new title for me. Senior Director, Deliverables. Kayla has been reassigned to the Oslo file. Somebody has to write the papers. On the plane I opened next year’s calendar. I’ve blocked off the tenth of every month.