The Putin Poison Pill

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, pressure is building on all sides for the Biden administration to begin negotiations with the Russians, if only to prove what everyone inside the White House, State Department, and Pentagon already knows: the Russians have absolutely zero interest in negotiating.

Pressure is growing on the Biden administration—both from its more traditional Democratic allies and hawkish Republican critics—to go bigger, faster, better on all fronts to help Ukraine’s fight against Putin’s war. Photo: Contributor/Getty Images

Julia Ioffe

January 17, 2023

There comes a moment that can pierce even the muddy, bloody monotony of 21st century trench warfare and capture what nearly a year of war has meant for the Ukrainian people. On Saturday, a Russian cruise missile landed on a residential highrise in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The missile took out an entire nine-story entryway of the building, on the Victory Embankment, leaving a giant hole in the middle and killing—as of this writing—at least 45 people, one of the deadliest attacks on Ukrainian civilians in this horrific war.