‘DOGE is still hungry’: Musk is gone but DOGE continues https://t.co/JnU9pcQcOD
— POLITICO (@politico) May 29, 2025
Day: May 29, 2025
“The Valley” star Janet Caperna told Page Six that she used to work for the “Charlies Angels” actress’ organic wine company, Avaline wine.
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Taylor Frankie Paul told Newsweek there are some “unexpected” storylines that people will see in upcoming episodes.
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Nutritionist Claire Sorlie recently shared a recipe on TikTok for a refreshing summer drink that’s full of electrolytes and all-natural ingredients.
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Man killed, another injured when a dumpster they were sleeping in emptied into garbage truck in NY
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On May 29, Andrew Michta, senior fellow in the GeoStrategy Initiative, was published in 19FortyFive on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambition to restore “Russia’s imperial dominion.” He argues the Trump administration has failed to bring an end to the war in Ukraine because it does not fully grasp Putin’s worldview and warns that diminishing support for Ukraine and NATO would hand him a strategic victory. Michta’s piece was featured in RealClearDefense and featured in RealClearWorld.
Russia is simply not interested in any outcome in Ukraine short of achieving the primary policy objectives that drove it to invade […] in the first place.
The post Michta in 19FortyFive, RealClearDefense, and RealClearWorld on Putin’s strategic objectives in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.
The post Michta in 19FortyFive, RealClearDefense, and RealClearWorld on Putin’s strategic objectives in Ukraine first appeared on Audio Posts – audio-posts.com.
This war will be decided on the battlefield.
Four months of chaotic shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a cease-fire in Ukraine, multiple phone calls between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, repeated US attempts to pressure, browbeat, and bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into concessions, have all yielded exactly nothing.
Which is not in the least bit surprising. Because there is no deal to be had with Russia on Ukraine. There never has been, and there never will be.
There is simply no magic formula, no concession, and no grand bargain that would satisfy the Kremlin’s maximalist and eliminationist goals. Moscow wants to end Ukraine’s sovereignty, nationhood, and statehood. Ukraine wants to continue to exist as an independent sovereign state. Given this, no compromise is possible. Any Kabuki negotiations or Potemkin cease-fire would be meaningless and treated by the Kremlin as nothing more than a strategic pause and an opportunity for sanctions relief.
“Russian imperialism will not be neutralized by negotiations, compromises, or concessions,” Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies and an associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, wrote on May 22.
Following his latest call with Trump, Putin said he wanted any settlement to address what he called the “root causes of the crisis.” That choice of phrase was no accident. The Kremlin leader used a similar formulation when addressing the issue of ending the war during a joint press conference with Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka in March.
Putin’s repeated use of the term “root cause” is a tell. For the Kremlin leader, the root cause of the war is the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state, which he has long seen as anathema. At the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, Putin made this clear when he told then US President George W. Bush that “Ukraine is not even a state.” Putin has also repeatedly referred to Ukraine as “little Russia,” a Tsarist-era term to describe Ukrainian lands.
For Putin and the Kremlin elite, Russian colonial dominance of Ukraine is an ideological issue that is not subject to negotiation. The Kremlin cannot be persuaded, it can only be defeated.
Russia’s game: decouple the war from relations with Washington
If anyone doubts Russia’s intentions, then recent remarks by Vladimir Medinsky, one of Putin’s court ideologists and the Kremlin’s chief representative at recent talks in Istanbul, should put them to rest. “Russia,” Medinsky told the Ukrainian delegation, “is prepared to fight forever.” He added, in reference to the Northern War of 1700-1721, which elevated Russia to the status of an empire, “we fought Sweden for twenty-one years. How long are you ready to fight?”
But with the front line largely static and Russia making miniscule gains with high casualties, forever may turn out to be a very long time and have a very steep cost.
According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in the first four months of 2025, Russia advanced just 1,627 square kilometers on the front in eastern Ukraine while suffering 160,600 casualties. That’s a staggeringly high ninety-nine casualties for every square kilometer of territory. ISW also estimates that “at this rate of advance, it would take Russian forces approximately 3.9 years to seize the remainder of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts,” the four regions Putin has claimed to have annexed. Moreover, according to ISW, it would take nearly a century to seize all of Ukraine save its Western border regions at a cost of nearly fifty million casualties—which is roughly one third Russia’s current population.
The economics of the war are also not trending in Moscow’s favor. As Charles Lichfield, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center wrote in February, “while Moscow has found ways to mitigate the impact of [Western sanctions], growing deficits, unsustainable subsidies, and the rising cost of debt servicing” are putting severe strain on the Russian economy.
Additionally, a widely circulated report by Craig Kennedy of Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies suggests that the “surprising resilience” that the media and analysts have been seeing in the Russian economy is largely a mirage. According to Kennedy’s research, published earlier this year, the war is largely being financed by concessionary off-the-books loans to defense contractors at well below market interest rates. Simply put, this is not sustainable over the long term.
Given this, the Kremlin’s goal vis-à-vis the United States is to decouple the war from Russia-US relations, normalize relations between Moscow and Washington, and get sanctions relief. In a speech in late February, Putin said that Moscow “would be happy to cooperate with any foreign partners, including American companies” to secure rare-earth-minerals deals. Putin added that lifting sanctions could lead to a profitable new economic relationship between the United States and Russia, particularly in the energy sector.
Putin, of course, wants an economic rapprochement without ending his quest to conquer Ukraine. Russia has continued to pound Ukrainian cities with aerial assaults, resulting in mass civilian casualties even as he seeks to entice Washington economically.
And for his part, Trump appears open to the idea. Following his most recent call with Putin, the US president indicated a desire to establish normal economic relations with Moscow. This would be a grave error, as it would throw Putin a lifeline to continue his war of aggression.
Fortunately, there does appear to be pushback in Washington. The Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, which would expand existing penalties on Russia, was introduced in the US Senate by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and has more than eighty cosponsors.
Europe’s moment and Ukraine’s resolve
For its part, the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom have already moved ahead with their own new package of sanctions enacted on May 20, a day after the latest Trump-Putin call. Brussels and London are also pledging to increase military assistance to Ukraine to make up for any shortfall resulting from a US cutoff.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, all seem to understand that this could be Europe’s moment. But one of the biggest wildcards going forward is whether Europe can overcome its internal divisions—mainly opposition from Hungary and Slovakia—and surge arms to Ukraine.
Which brings us to Ukraine itself—and here the calculations are simple. As the Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov wrote earlier this week, “Ukraine’s choices are to fight back and risk being killed, or to surrender and be killed. By fighting back, Ukraine has a chance; by surrendering, it has none—making surrender not a viable option.”
And for Ukraine, as always, necessity has become the mother of invention. Faced with a potential shortfall in weapons, Kyiv has created a vibrant domestic arms industry focusing on drone warfare.
“In just three years, Ukraine’s military has evolved from defending itself with leftover Soviet weapons to pioneering a new kind of warfare,” the Ukrainian war correspondent Nataliya Gumenyuk writes in The Atlantic.
“Fortunately for Ukraine, American weapons are not the only factor that has rebalanced the battlefield in the past three years. Starting in 2024, Ukrainian-made drones definitively changed the way both sides waged war. For Ukraine, the adjustment was not just tactical, but a broader, doctrinal evolution in how its military fights.”
Gumenyuk concludes by noting that “as Ukraine’s partners speak of peace deals and security guarantees, Ukraine’s armed forces are adapting in every way they can to continue carrying out their mission . . . They cannot afford the luxury of counting on American commitments or Russian concessions, because for most Ukrainians, what matters above all is physical safety. And the only force protecting human lives in Ukraine is the Ukrainian military.”
So here we are, after three years of war and four months of failed diplomacy to end it. This war will be decided on the battlefield. It is for the United States and Europe to decide whether they are prepared to help Ukraine win it.
Brian Whitmore is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center, an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas-Arlington, and host of The Power Vertical Podcast.
The post Welcome to the long war: Why a Ukraine deal was never realistic appeared first on Atlantic Council.
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A major rezoning plan that will dramatically reshape a swath of central Brooklyn — replacing low-lying industrial buildings with apartment towers containing potentially thousands of new units, including affordable ones — was approved by the City Council on Wednesday.
The Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan rezones approximately 21 blocks along Atlantic Avenue, stretching from Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights to Nostrand Avenue at the border of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, allowing buildings of up to 185 feet (roughly 18 stories) along certain stretches of the rezoned area.
The plan replaces industrial zoning with new mixed-use districts, paving the way for residential high-rises and expanded retail and commercial space. It also mandates investments for infrastructure upgrades. The rezoning represents a unified plan for the future of the mostly low-lying, industrial stretch of central Brooklyn that has increasingly seen large developments break up the skyline through spot rezonings as property values have climbed, along with demands on housing.
The Department of City Planning estimates the rezoning could create nearly 4,600 new homes. Of those, more than 1,900, or 40 percent, will be permanently “affordable” — e.g. income restricted and rent stabilized.
Nine hundred of those affordable units will be in 100 percent affordable, fully subsidized developments, spread over seven city-owned sites, according to local council members. These fully subsidized units will be targeted at households earning an average of 50 percent of Area Median Income.
At 50 percent of AMI, a single person making $56,700 or a family of three with an income of 72,900 would be eligible. A one-bedroom at that level would rent for about $1,456 per month, while a three-bedroom would be priced at about $2,018. (The Area Median Income will likely increase before any new units are built.)
The other 1,000 affordable units will be created in private, for-profit developments under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing option one. It requires 25 percent of units be set aside for households earning an average of 60 percent of the Area Median Income. (The figure of 1,000 is a city estimate that adds up to a hair more than 25 percent of the 3,700 total apartments apart from those on city-owned land.)
Currently, 60 percent of AMI is $68,040 for a single person or $87,480 for a family of three. A one-bedroom at that level would rent for about $1,747 per month, while a three-bedroom would go for roughly $2,422.
Council Member Crystal Hudson, who represents much of the rezoning area, including Crown Heights and Prospect Heights, called the plan “the culmination of more than a decade of advocacy from local residents and nearly three years of public engagement, hard work, and tireless negotiations.”
She emphasized that about 40 percent of the new units will be affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers — equivalent to the median per capita income across the entire city of $50,776, according to the census — and said the plan also includes more than $215 million in public investments. These span infrastructure upgrades, park and playground renovation, local hiring initiatives, and tenant and homeowner protections.
“With this community-led rezoning, we’re tackling several major crises facing our city: a housing shortage, dangerous streets, and the urgent need for good-paying jobs accessible to all New Yorkers, regardless of education level,” Hudson said.
In addition to housing, the plan allows for more than 921,000 square feet of commercial and community space, including offices, retail, light industrial businesses, and services. The non-residential components could generate approximately 2,800 new jobs, according to city documents.
During the rezoning process, community members raised concerns about displacement, affordability, and the loss of industrial space. In earlier stages of review, the borough president and local community boards supported the plan with conditions.
Conditions included that buildings be capped at 12 stories, affordability deepened beyond current city rules, tenants and homeowners protected from displacement, local businesses get support, manufacturing space protected, and infrastructure upgrades completed. While some of the those conditions were addressed in the rezoning that passed, including investments for infrastructure, tenant and homeowner protection, and deeper affordability, others, such as the height restrictions, were not.
The deal added a greater number of affordable units not through developer concessions but thanks to a city commitment to building affordable units on city-owned lots using public subsidies.
Concerns around affordability and the protection of manufacturing space were also raised by City Planning Commissioners when they voted yes on the plan.
Council Member Chi Ossé, who represents the portion of Bed-Stuy affected by the rezoning, said at Wednesday’s council meeting the projected 4,600 units the rezoning could potentially bring goes beyond the total number of homes built in the area over the past decade.
“Through the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, 40 percent of units will be permanently income restricted, and 100 percent will be contributing to New York’s desperately low housing supply, putting downward pressure on rents for everyone,” Ossé said.
He also celebrated the investments in workforce development, street safety, parks, and infrastructure. “We are redesigning the stretch of Atlantic so kids can cross in safety, seniors can stroll without fear, and small businesses can flourish along a calmer, greener corridor,” he said.
“Some will ask, why build so much?” he added. “My answer is simple: Displacement is not a force of nature—it is a policy choice. When we deprive our city of new homes, rents skyrocket and families are pushed out. When we say yes to new homes, to income-restricted homes, to making room for everyone so no one is priced out—we choose community over scarcity and inclusion over exclusion.”
The rezoning includes multiple zoning changes. Industrial M1-1 and M1-2 zones along Atlantic will be replaced with C6-3A districts, permitting higher-density mixed-use development with mandatory affordable housing. Buildings as tall as 185 feet, or approximately 18 stories, including bonuses, would be allowed in some areas, according to city rezoning documents. Developers will be eligible for a 20 percent floor area bonus if they include publicly accessible open space, and incentives will encourage projects that combine residential and commercial uses.
North-south avenues such as Bedford, Grand, and Classon will be rezoned to R7D and R6B, allowing mid-rise mixed-use buildings. Side streets including Dean, Bergen, and Pacific will see R6B zoning with height limits. The Bedford Atlantic Armory site will be rezoned to C4-4L, allowing for future community-oriented development.
The city-owned parcels that will be developed into 100 percent affordable housing include Dean Park Edge and Bergen Green, which will together offer 262 affordable apartments. A former Department of Education site on Nostrand Avenue will be converted into housing with 200 units. Additional sites on Pacific Street and Atlantic Avenue will yield another 286 affordable homes.
The plan also includes pedestrian safety improvements, new open spaces, and better access to public transit. City officials said the plan builds on years of grassroots organizing, including Community Board 8’s earlier work on the M-CROWN proposal, which aimed to preserve jobs and manufacturing in the area.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams praised the collaboration between city agencies and locals at the meeting, saying: “The Council’s partnership with the Department of City Planning and community stakeholders, including Brooklyn community boards 3 and 8, represents a model of community planning and collaboration that can advance housing solutions and community investments that benefit all New Yorkers.”
Community Board 8 member and Prospect Heights resident Gib Veconi told Brownstoner he is disappointed the rezoning requires Mandatory Inclusionary Housing option one rather than option three, which would have targeted incomes averaging 40 percent of Area Median Income, or $58,320 for a household of three people.
While the version of the rezoning that passed lacked incentives for light manufacturing — intended to create good jobs for locals without a college degree — the Department of City Planning plans to correct the document and add them, he said.
He hopes the funding for an attorney to help renters facing eviction will be adequate as the “need for these services is very great” to stem displacement, he added.
The plan now heads to Mayor Eric Adams’ desk for final approval.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner
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Vongvichit Vatthanavong, a 50-year-old Brooklyn man, pleaded guilty last week to a January 2023 robbery in Brick, New Jersey.
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