Briefings

Background Briefing: February 24, 2026

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As Russia’s War on Ukraine Enters Its Fifth Year, A Report From Kyiv On How the Ukrainians Are Holding Up

We begin with the fifth year on Russia’s war on Ukraine beginning today and go to Kyiv to assess how the Ukrainian people are dealing with a bitter winter, constant Russian attacks on civilian targets and a United States under Donald Trump that has cut military and economic support while cozying up to Russia’s ruthless dictator who started this war and appears to have no interest an any real peace short of Ukraine’s capitulation. Joining us is Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page. She is the author of Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and we discuss her article at The Washington Monthly, “Ukraine: Requiem for a Citizen Soldier: My friend, an entrepreneur turned exemplary officer, was killed in action in eastern Ukraine this year. Like his comrades, he knew what he was fighting for.”

How Boycotts of Companies Doing Business With ICE Are Working

Then we look into how boycotts of companies doing business with ICE are working and whether a general strike will be necessary to bring down the Trump regime. Joining us is Eric Blanc, an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, the director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative, and the author of the substack “Labor Politics,” which can be found at laborpolitics.com. His latest book is We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. And his latest articles at Jacobin we discuss are “Your Individual Boycotts Aren’t Helping” and “How to Organize a Real General Strike in the US.“