Is it possible to end the war in Ukraine with Putin alive? Our subscriber, who introduced himself as Sergey Gusev, sees almost no such chances. His material, which we published on May 13, says that for the owner of the Kremlin, negotiations are just a process that should not lead to the disruption of his plans and desires. Our other subscriber, who signs as Chaim Joffe, a delivery courier, does not entirely agree with this.

Beijing residents walk through the city center past a huge poster of Chairman Mao Zedong during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The poster reads: "We must be good soldiers of Mao Zedong, we must listen to his words, we must follow his instructions and read his books." Photo by JEAN VINCENT / AFP In May-June 1966, the “cultural revolution” began in China - a decade that, according to various estimates, claimed from half a million to three million lives.

I. God bless. It was him. Iskander Raulevich Indyukov. Great Russian historian. A little haggard (I wish I could!). And aged (here everything works out for me). But - fundamentally the same as I saw him in the flesh the previous time of God, immediately after the New Year, in pre-war Moscow in 2022. We then sat down in a Japanese bar near the Kursky railway station. And they talked, talked, talked, as if for the last time and for show. Luckily, no one was interested in our conversation.