A daytime Russian drone attack targeted Ukraine’s intelligence service headquarters last week. On Tuesday, another drone smashed into a Ukrainian TV station as it aired a daytime news broadcast. These attacks underlined President Vladimir Putin’s effort to terrorize the Ukrainian people into submission.
Page A2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 13 September 2026
Putin assures Trump of no aggressive plans in Europe, then calls European troops in Ukraine direct conflict.
As it ran on the front
I spent forty minutes on the phone with the county this week about a form. Don't ask — it's the address verification again, they want it every few years like the house might've packed up and moved on its own. The girl transfers me to a department, the department transfers me to a recording, the recording tells me to call back during business hours, which it was. I only bring it up because that's the kind of week I was having when the real thing found me, sideways, the way things do.
I was in the garage when it found me. Car's needed a fan belt since March — I keep saying I'll get to it — and I had the radio going while I was under the hood, and there's a man on it reading a line from a Kremlin readout: Tuesday the 9th, a phone call, an hour long, and an adviser named Yuri Ushakov says the message to the American president was that Moscow has "no aggressive intentions toward Europe." Constructive and frank, he called it. I wrote that down on the back of the fan belt receipt, because that's what was in my coverall pocket.…
…(cont) Then Saturday — three days later — the same man is on a different page telling Europe that if they send troops into Ukraine, that's direct conflict with Russia. Not a caution about a caution. Direct conflict, his words, CBS had it dated the 12th. I keep coming back to that gap, three days, because it's the only part of this whole business I can count on my own fingers standing in a garage.
And it's not just the two pages. In between them — Wednesday, the papers had it — a daytime drone hit Ukraine's intelligence headquarters, and then another one went into a television station while it was on the air, live, daytime. That's not the kind of thing that happens by accident around a man telling Washington he has no aggressive plans. And the Monday before any of that, an American envoy named Witkoff was calling the peace talks "substantive progress," saying both sides had agreed to a three-day window with no shooting, to let the diplomats work. I don't know if it's the same three days. I wrote it down separate. I should check.
By Saturday there's video of what they're calling the first drone battle at sea between the two countries. By Friday, Zelensky's telling the Post he'd sit down with Putin face-to-face at a summit in Miami — calls it a good position for negotiations. Four dated pages in one week, and I've only got the one glovebox to keep them straight in.
I've got a warranty card in my toolbox, top tray, came with the fan belt I still haven't put on. Ninety days, no defects, it says, right on the card. If that belt snapped three days after I bought it, I wouldn't call the company liars over the phone. I'd call them once, and I'd ask what happened in those three days between the card and the belt. That's all a toolbox is good for — it's not the Kremlin, I know that — but it's the only thing I own that makes a dated promise, so it's what I've got to hold the rest of it up against.
Oh — excuse me, before you go. That fan belt, the one from the card. You told me Tuesday it was already swapped in. That was three days ago, and it's still sitting on my workbench. So which one was the lie — the one from the ninth, or the one three days later?
“They tell Trump on the phone there's no aggressive plan, and seventy-two hours later it's "direct conflict" if Europe shows up — that's not diplomacy, that's a guy casing the block and telling the neighbor he loves the neighborhood. Meanwhile the daytime drone hits keep landing on hospitals-adjacent targets and a TV station mid-broadcast, and Washington's envoy is out there calling it "substantive progress." The stakes are a continent, and they're running the same three-card trick they'd run on a car lot.”
“Look, "no aggressive plans" and "direct conflict if you intervene" are totally different statements — one's about Russia's intentions, one's about a hypothetical NATO deployment, apples and oranges. Sure, they're three days apart, but foreign policy isn't static, things develop — did I just defend a moving goalpost? That's not — let me start over. The point is Putin's been remarkably consistent about wanting peace, he's said so, on a call, to the President himself.”
The receipts
The battle comes in a deadly war that has increasingly featured drone warfare in the sky, with Russia using Iranian and other "kamikaze" drones to bombard Ukrainian cities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that sending European troops into Ukraine would amount to direct conflict with Russia.
"I'll meet with Putin. I'll meet with Zelensky... and within 24 hours, that war will be settled" - Trump has made this promise on 53 separate occasions CNN fact check, 25 April 2025 (all 53 instances)
Zelensky ready to meet Putin face-to-face at G20 summit in Miami: ‘Good position for negotiations’Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin have not met in person since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the meeting would offer a rare opening for direct talks.
· Putin assures Trump that Moscow has no aggressive plans towards Europe from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· Witkoff touts 'substantive progress' after peace talks with Ukraine, Russia from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.