Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with politics . . . although I could certainly go off on that subject as well. But not today.

Rather, this is about information . Like the good citizens of Russia, I have recently found myself with access to fewer and fewer reliable news sources. Oh, they’re out there, all right; I just can’t get to them.

Several years ago, I moved from the Washington, D.C. area, where everything was at my fingertips, to the quiet countryside in the southeastern U.S. It’s peaceful and relaxing here; but it’s also a bit of a schlep to many of the conveniences I had always taken for granted. There’s always a trade-off in life.

And our area does not receive cable TV. There is satellite service, but quite frankly, it sucks: a few drops of rain, or a good breeze, and it’s “bye-bye, TV reception.“ So I gave that up, and went with something called Fire TV, which gives me lots of movies and old sitcoms, plus a couple of network news stations that honestly don’t offer the most in-depth coverage.

Fortunately, there is the internet. And on the internet, there are news services from every corner of the world: CNN, BBC, RFE/RL, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Kyiv Independent . . . even the Moscow Times and TASS from Russia. And more.

I don’t have time to read all of them, so I’ve relied on a chosen few that I found to be the most dependable and least biased, which worked well . . . until, one by one, they began requiring paid subscriptions for online access to their full stories. And there’s the rub.

Now, I get it; I do. The print publications — the Times, the Journal, the Post, et al. — are businesses whose subscriptions have no doubt decreased as more and more people have come to rely on the internet. But why are the TV broadcasters, whose programming is included under their customers’ cable or satellite contracts, also starting to charge for internet access — which logically should be covered by our internet service fees?

I am a news junkie. I am also an older, retired woman with a limited income; I can’t justify the cost of a half dozen subscriptions in addition to what I already pay for internet service (not to mention that Fire TV).

We are living in a time when it is increasingly important to be well-informed by reliable, impartial news sources, so as not to be taken in by all of the misinformation, disinformation, and AI garbage coming at us from every direction. If the legitimate, mainstream media were to become inaccessible, we would be truly lost.

Does anyone out there have a solution?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/6/26

Yesterday was a comparatively good day, news-wise.

On the war front, 314 prisoners of war — 157 Ukrainians and an equal number of Russians — were exchanged and returned home to their families.

And in the United States, Congress passed a bipartisan bill approving $200 million in security assistance for the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the face of perceived threats of aggression from Russia.

So it was a day to celebrate, as Buddha would have advised:

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

In a world where life seems to grow more difficult with each passing day, it helps to focus on the good stuff, and to be thankful that — at least today — we didn’t die.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/6/26

Can it be? Is the U.S. Congress finally waking from its year-long sleep? Have the members begun looking at the facts of life and stopped listening to the hyperbole and outright lies emanating from high-ranking members of the administration? Have they at last taken a closer look at the state of our country’s foreign relations? Or have they merely become aware of the approach of the mid-term elections, when many of their jobs will be at risk of being snatched from them?

Whatever the reason, in a near-miracle of bipartisan action, Congress has just approved — as part of the Fiscal Year 2026 Defense Appropriations Act passed this week — $200 million in security assistance for the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, signaling continued U.S. backing under the Baltic Security Initiative . . . and this despite Pentagon attempts to defund the program.

Republican Congressman Don Bacon — a retired Air Force Brigadier General and co-chair of the House Baltic Caucus, said:

“This is great for deterrence for our Baltic allies. Congress is committed to a strong NATO alliance, and we know that extra emphasis is needed in regard to the Baltics. Most in Congress are committed to NATO and know we need friends to counter China, Russia and Iran. We cannot do it alone. America alone is America weaker.” [Alex Raufoglu, RFE/RL, February 5, 2026.]

Referencing the recent repeated intrusions by Russian drones and aircraft into Estonian and other NATO airspace, Bacon noted that the outcome of the war in Ukraine will directly affect the Baltic states and other neighboring countries, adding:

“If Ukraine falls, we should know with certainty that Moldova will be next” . . . most likely to be followed by the Baltics and Georgia.

“We should not be neutral,” he continued. “We should stand on the side of freedom . . . and against a dictator thug.” [Id.]

Although the Defense Appropriations Act passed the House by a slim 217-214 margin, it cleared the Senate with a much more impressive 71-29 vote, and was promptly signed into law by Donald Trump . . . proving that, when push comes to shove, our lawmakers can work together toward a worthwhile goal.

Now let’s see if they can keep the ball rolling.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/6/26

To the surprise of practically no one, this week’s two-day trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi seems to have yielded little or no progress toward an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The one good bit of news was the exchange — agreed to on Wednesday — of 314 prisoners, which was immediately implemented on Thursday. Welcome home to all, on both sides.

But that’s it. As usual, Steve Witkoff posted a rosy forecast on X:

“While significant work remains, steps like this demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine.” [RFE/RL, February 5, 2026.]

Meanwhile, however, Russia continues to launch massive barrages of drones and missiles on various regions of Ukraine, largely targeting its civilian energy infrastructure.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia’s position has not changed and is “absolutely clear and well understood by both Kyiv and the American negotiators.” [Id.]

And Markus Ziener, a former Moscow-based correspondent and now a fellow with the German Marshall Fund — while acknowledging that the prisoner swap was an indication of some progress — said:

“But I’m rather skeptical if we get to the nitty-gritty, actually, of the whole negotiations. So far, there is not really much that gives us hope that a settlement of the war is within reach.” [Id.]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the next round of talks with Russia is “likely” to take place in the U.S., with no timeline being announced as yet.

But despite the obvious need for Zelensky to remain hopeful, nothing is certain. As stated by Markus Ziener:

“I would put myself in the shoes of the Russian president: if I want to negotiate a peace settlement, I would not hammer Ukraine and pound them the way they do. I would actually try to create a situation where you can reach a settlement. Given all the sacrifices Ukraine has [made] so far, I think it’s very difficult for Ukraine to say, OK, well, we’ll cede to the Russian demands and [then] so many lives have been lost lost in vain. So I believe that it’s difficult really to find a settlement that would ask Ukrainians to make major concessions at this point.” [Id.]

Sadly, given the history of the negotiations thus far, Ziener emerges as the voice of reason.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/5/26

There are a lot of pages of history between the end of yesterday’s “Introduction” and today’s “Chapter 25.” But talking about my own experiences isn’t the purpose of this exercise. The point of sharing my long-ago thoughts with you is that the tired old adage — “The more things change, the more they stay the same” — like all adages, has stood the test of time because it is true.

As things were in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist years and throughout the decades of the Cold War, so they remain today . . . only with bigger, “badder” weaponry.

So here is the final chapter, offered up as a cautionary tale for today and all of our tomorrows. Please keep in mind that it was written three years ago; Aldrich Ames is no longer in prison, having passed away in January.

And thanks for coming back for Part II.

*. *. *

CHAPTER 25
What’s Next?

Now, after decades spent trying to determine who really helped to put the most destructive American traitor of the 20th Century out of business and behind bars, I have at last come to the conclusion that it no longer matters — not to me, in any event. Was it someone I knew, someone I brought to the United States and delivered into the hands of the FBI? Perhaps. But what if it was? Knowing the truth might be a source of personal satisfaction, but it’s irrelevant in the context of today’s geopolitical turmoil. If someone else deserves the credit, let them have it. Our — mankind’s — overriding concern now is the future of our world, and how to help secure it by heeding the lessons of the past. Do we continue repeating our disastrous mistakes again, and again, and yet again, until it is indeed too late and Armageddon becomes the final reality? Or do we finally open our eyes and our minds and begin to pay attention to the ongoing insidious machinations of the Kremlin and its inner circle of miscreants?

“But what are these lessons of the past?” you may ask. Let me cite just a few:

> In 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (renamed Lenin) promised the Russian people a future of “Peace, Land and Bread,” and relief from the yoke of Tsarist hegemony. What did he and his successors deliver instead? Seven years of brutal totalitarianism, complete with a “Big Brother” society and an archipelago of GULAGs stretching across eleven time zones from the Urals to the Pacific.

> In August of 1939, the eponymous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — a treaty of non-aggression guaranteeing, among other things, that the Soviet Union and Germany would remain allies and would never invade one another’s territories — was negotiated and signed by the respective emissaries of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. As the dogs of war snapped at the heels of Europe, Stalin chose to place his trust in his friend Hitler, and turned his attention to annexing parts of Finland and Romania, and all of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Hitler, meanwhile, was busy invading Poland and beyond; yet he managed to find time to plan what would become Operation Barbarossa: the invasion of his professed ally, the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941. So much for friendship and trust.

> On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was breached, and three weeks later, at the Malta Summit meeting between Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Cold War was declared kaput. Two years after that, on December 26, 1991, the fifteen Soviet republics gained their respective sovereignties, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist as a political entity. Russia, we were assured, was now our friend. The march toward democracy and capitalism had begun; we could take a deep breath and relax.

So why, in the face of all of this more recent peace, good will, and back-slapping brotherhood, have we continued — throughout the remainder of the 20th Century and now well into the 21st — to spy on, undermine, and threaten one another as though all of our earlier peace initiatives had never occurred? Why have the Aldrich Ames, Bob Hanssens, and countless others been ignored until their irreparable damage has been done? Why do we still need the American CIA, FBI, NSA, and the rest of the Washington alphabet soup, to counter Russia’s still-threatening FSB, SVR, GRU, et al.?

Because, after thirty years of relative peace and quiet, we find ourselves confronted by the uncomfortable fact that we are now in a new Cold War — or, more accurately, that the old one never really ended, but has merely risen again from its own ashes.

Russia rode out the 1990s under the more-or-less benign presidency of Boris Yeltsin in an atmosphere of hope and increasing prosperity. And then, while the rest of the world was focused on the burgeoning problems in the Far East and Middle East, along came Vladimir Putin, slithering his way into Yeltsin’s chair before anyone in the West even knew who he was.

Well, we know who he is now, don’t we? He is the individual who has rolled back the Russian calendar to the Stalinist era: banning dissent, shutting down all independent media outlets; imprisoning or simply assassinating those who do not comply with his new, ever-more-draconian laws; and — to ensure that the world gets his message — invading Ukraine in a blatantly obvious war of attrition that he stubbornly insists on labelling a “special military operation.”

And for those who would wish Vladimir Putin gone with the wave of a magic wand or the twitch of a genie’s nose, a word of warning: Be careful what you wish for. Because standing behind him is a bevy of sycophants ready to vie for the job, each more treacherous than the last. An internecine battle in the halls of the Kremlin would truly be an historic event of apocalyptic proportions.

How have we let it come to this? I shudder as I recall those months of living in Moscow, in what were supposed to be times of peace and freedom, and slowly coming to realize then that nothing had changed in the government but the names on the doors. And the longer period of two years when I lived and worked amongst the FBI, CIA, KGB, a pair of Russian defectors, and several ancillary players who may or may not have been who or what they professed to be.

I shudder . . . not from any remembrance of long-ago events, but from the realization that, however much things may seem to progress, in reality we continue to allow them to stay the same.”

*. *. *

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/5/26

Speaking of tyrants — as I so often do — few people have described the goals and the methods of a tyrannical regime better than this fellow:

If this warning from the past sounds relevant today, it should:

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

– George Orwell, “1984”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/5/26

To quote the fictional Professor Henry Higgins when he realized he’d grown unexpectedly fond of Eliza Dolittle:

“DAMN! DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!”

When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would not be joining bilateral Ukraine-Russia meetings in Abu Dhabi scheduled for February 4-5, I had high hopes that a new, more qualified, team of negotiators was about to be appointed to carry on the continuing peace talks.

But, alas! It was not to be. On the first day of talks on Wednesday, lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov posted on X:

“Another round of negotiations has begun in Abu Dhabi. The negotiation process started in a trilateral format – Ukraine, the United States, and Russia. Next comes work in separate groups by specific tracks, after which a follow-up joint synchronization of positions is planned.” [RFE/RL, February 4, 2026.]

Following the first day’s session on Wednesday, no details were offered; but Umerov’s spokeswoman, Diana Davitian, told journalists that a second day of talks was planned to be held on Thursday. [Id.]

And then I read that “US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, along with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are representing the United States at the negotiations with Ukraine and Russia.” [Id.]

One brief, shining moment of hope, and then . . .

I’ve said it before: Two more hapless victims of Vladimir Putin’s duplicitous political machinations would be difficult to find . . . and he knows it. As long as Witkoff and Kushner continue as Donald Trump’s messengers, and Trump continues to control the U.S. and European narrative, this war will drag on, because that is what Putin wants.

Of course, I could be wrong. But we’ll see what happens in Thursday’s second-round meeting.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/5/26

What a wakeup call!

The name of someone with whom I was acquainted many years ago just popped up in the Epstein files.

I will not identify him, because there is no indication that he was involved in any of Epstein’s despicable, odious, heinous — not to mention, illegal — activities. Nor do I have any reason to believe he was.

But what struck me was how small this world really is, and how easy it is for someone like me — or you — to be just one or two degrees of separation from an abomination like Jeffrey Epstein.

And I see in this a lesson for those who would rush to judgment on the thousands of people named in those files: Mere interaction with someone — being introduced at a social gathering, or involved in a legitimate business transaction — does not make you part of their inner circle. Nor do you “catch” another person’s worst character traits by being in their presence; it’s not a virus.

In these days when most of us spend at least some time on social media, it is too easy to make a snap judgment based on partial information. We need to be careful not to do that . . . because you never know when someone you once met, perhaps a long time ago, might drag you down with them.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/4/26

I hope the esteemed Bard will forgive me.

This is clearly taken out of context; but it so perfectly sums up what the entire northern hemisphere has been experiencing lately, I just couldn’t resist borrowing it:

“Now is the winter of our discontent . . .”
– William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Scene 1

I’m sure if old Will had witnessed this, he would have agreed with me:

Take heart, everyone . . . spring is only six weeks away.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/4/26

I wrote this story more than three years ago and never published it, out of what was probably an excess of caution. But a man died last month in prison at the age of 84, presumably of natural causes . . . likely taking a number of secrets with him to the grave.

Now his demise has inspired me to retrieve my earlier writing, and to share parts of it with you. It doesn’t change anything; but my readers may find it historically interesting. And if nothing else, perhaps sending my words out to the universe may serve as a catharsis to me, after more than 30 years.

So, without further ado or explanation — and without updates to the timeline from three years ago to the present — here is Part 1 of 2:

*. *. *

INTRODUCTION

On April 16, 1985, an American man walked into the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street in the northwest quadrant of Washington, DC, and asked the guard at the glass-protected desk if he might speak with an Embassy diplomat, Sergei Chuvakhin. When the guard called Chuvakhin to the front entry, the American handed him an envelope addressed to Stanislav Androsov, then the KGB rezident (chief of station) at the Embassy. Unknown to Chuvakhin, the envelope contained a few documents and an offer to procure and provide more of the same in exchange for the sum of $50,000. The American then left the Embassy and returned to his office in suburban Langley, Virginia.

Upon receiving and opening the envelope and reviewing its contents, Androsov summoned his deputy, Viktor Cherkashin, then the head of counterintelligence at the Embassy, to discuss the significance of the unexpected and unconventional communique. [Viktor Cherkashin, “Spy Handler,” Basic Books 2005, p. 19.]

The American waited nervously until a month later, when he finally received a call inviting him to meet again with Sergei Chuvakhin at the Embassy on May 17th. On the American’s arrival, Mr. Chuvakhin greeted him, showed him into a small fourth-floor meeting room, and withdrew as he had been instructed. In a few moments, a different gentleman entered the room and introduced himself as Viktor Cherkashin. Their meeting was brief but productive, culminating in an agreement by the KGB to the payment of $50,000 in exchange for additional documents from the American. [Id.]

Cherkashin and the American next met on June 13, 1985, at Chadwick’s Restaurant, a popular watering hole in the historic Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. The American brought with him a larger package of classified CIA files, which he exchanged with Cherkashin for the agreed amount of $50,000. [Id., at p. 149.]

Thus began the career of Aldrich Ames as a mole for the Soviet KGB inside the CIA — a career that lasted for nine years, until his eventual arrest on February 21, 1994. Nine years, during which a troubling number of U.S. human assets in Russia were lost, engendering the beginning of a years-long mole hunt within the CIA’s ranks.

Nine years, during which Ames evaded detection despite internal CIA investigations, lie detector tests, routine vetting, and his own reckless extravagance and general carelessness.

Nine years, until — with Ames already at or near the top of the CIA’s short list of suspects — a recently-arrived former KGB officer talked to the FBI and revealed, either knowingly or inadvertently, a key bit of information that allowed the FBI to make its airtight case of espionage against Aldrich Ames.

Without the CIA task force’s relentless, top-secret internal search for a mole, Ames might never have become a suspect. But the CIA has no law enforcement authority in the United States, and so they finally had no choice but to enlist the help of the FBI. It was the joint effort of the two agencies — a rather exceptional collaboration at the time — that brought down the man who still, nearly thirty years later, is described by many as perhaps the most destructive U.S. traitor of the 20th Century.

Much has since been revealed about the extent of the damage done by Aldrich Ames and the lives lost as a result of his betrayal, including details elicited by Pete Earley, a former reporter for the Washington Post and noted author who was given unprecedented access to Ames in prison. [Pete Earley, “Confessions of a Spy,” G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1997.] But still, nearly thirty years later — as he continues to live out his life sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution at Terre Haute, Indiana — Ames claims to have additional information yet to be shared with U.S. intelligence authorities.

And still — thirty years after the fact — the identity of the Russian defector who provided that last vital piece of the puzzle also continues to be protected, presumably for his own safety. A few names have been posited by various sources and, not surprisingly, vehemently denied or simply not commented upon.

One was an acquaintance of mine.

*. *. *

To be continued . . .

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/4/26