■ The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace (Jeffrey D. Sachs)

A senior Ukrainian official has admitted that his country has assassinated "quite a few" Russian civilians who support Putin and his war to assert control of the Donbas region. In interviews first reported by The Times of London, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, who heads Ukraine's military intelligence service, also promised more attacks are to come. Budanov isn't merely an unapologetic terrorist, he's a boastful one. ● "These cases have happened and will continue," he said. "Such people will receive a well-deserved punishment, and the appropriate punishment can only be liquidation and I will implement it." ● In a separate interview with a Ukrainian YouTube channel, Budanov said that any country could be witness to his killing of civilians who say or write the wrong things. The head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, Major-General Kyrylo Budanov, admitted that several Kremlin propagandists have been assassinated since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Seymour Hersh (Substack) | Ukraine's neighbors push for Zelensky to pursue peace as millions of displaced people flow into Europe. | Last Saturday the Washington Post published an exposé of classified American intelligence documents showing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, working behind the back of the Biden White House, pushed hard earlier this year for an expanded series of missile attacks inside Russia. The documents were part of a large cache of classified materials posted online by an Air Force enlisted man now in custody. A senior official of the Biden administration, asked by the Post for comment on the newly revealed intelligence, said that Zelensky has never violated his pledge never to use American weapons to strike inside Russia. In the view of the White House, Zelensky can do no wrong. ● Zelensky’s desire to take the war to Russia may not be clear to the president and senior foreign policy aides in the White House, but it is to those in the American intelligence community who have found it difficult to get their intelligence and their assessments a hearing in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, the slaughter in the city of Bakhmut continues. It is similar in idiocy, if not in numbers, to the slaughter in Verdun and the Somme during World War I. The men in charge of today’s war—in Moscow, Kiev, and Washington—have shown no interest even in temporary ceasefire talks that could serve as a prelude to something permanent. The talk now is only about the possibilities of a late spring or summer offensive by either party. ● But something else is cooking, as some in the American intelligence community know and have reported in secret, at the instigation of government officials at various levels in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Latvia. These countries are all allies of Ukraine and declared enemies of Vladimir Putin.