By EMMA BURROWS, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has no desire to halt Russia’s almost 4-year-old invasion of neighboring Ukraine and thinks he can “outsmart” the United States during talks with Washington about how to end the war, a senior European intelligence official told The Associated Press.

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Kaupo Rosin, the head of Estonia’s foreign intelligence service, said Moscow is playing for time in the talks with Washington and “there is absolutely no discussion about how to really cooperate with the U.S. in a meaningful way.”

Rosin, who spoke at an online briefing with reporters ahead of the publication of Estonia’s annual security report on Tuesday, said the findings were based on intelligence his country gathered from “Russian internal discussions.” He did not elaborate on how the information was obtained but said the discussions showed that Russian officials believe that Washington remains Moscow’s “main enemy.”

The Estonian report says Russia is unlikely to attack NATO this year or next but that Moscow remains dangerous as it tries to build up its armed forces.

Russian officials have publicly insisted they want a negotiated deal, but they show little willingness to compromise and remain adamant their demands must be met.

U.S.-brokered talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine in recent weeks have been described by officials from both sides as constructive and positive, but there has been no sign of any progress on key issues in the discussions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, “in his head, still thinks that he can actually militarily win (in Ukraine) at some point,” Rosin said.

A White House official responded to the Estonian intelligence chief’s comments and said the president’s negotiators had made “tremendous progress” on the talks to end the war in Ukraine. Although prisoner exchanges have happened sporadically since May, they pointed in particular to a recent agreement in Abu Dhabi among the U.S., Ukraine and Russia to release more than 300 prisoners.

That agreement was evidence that efforts to end the war are advancing, said the official, who was granted anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly.

In an indication that U.S. President Donald Trump wants to accelerate the momentum of peace efforts, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that Washington has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a settlement. Trump over the past year has set several deadlines that have come and gone without apparent consequences.

Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and adviser to Trump in his first term, said Trump and his officials are spinning a story that depicts the U.S. president as a peacemaker and, for that reason, they are not interested in changing their assessment that Putin wants to end the war.

Both leaders, she told the AP, “need their version of events to play out” and are hanging on to their version of the truth — Putin as the victor in Ukraine and Trump as the dealmaker.

It’s unclear why US officials believe Putin wants peace

Russian bombardments of Ukraine have continued unabated.

Related Articles

When conflict meets competition: Trump’s immigration agenda roils opening days of Winter Olympics

Judge blocks California’s ban on federal agents wearing masks but requires badges be clearly seen

Democrats and White House trade offers as shutdown of Homeland Security looms

Gabbard’s office warns attorney against sharing classified complaint with Congress

Trump administration’s changes to the CFPB cost Americans $19B, a new report says

On Tuesday morning, Russian glide bombs killed an 11-year-old girl and her mother in the eastern Donetsk region, regional chief Vadym Filashkin said. Seven others, including a 7-year-old girl, were injured.

During the night, at least five people were wounded, including a toddler and two children, in Russian drone attacks across Ukraine, regional authorities said.

Although Trump has repeatedly suggested that Putin wants peace, he has sometimes appeared frustrated with the Russian leader’s lukewarm approach to talks.

From an intelligence perspective, Rosin said he doesn’t know why U.S. officials believe the Russian leader wants to end the war.

Hill, who served as a national intelligence officer under previous U.S. administrations, said it’s unclear what intelligence information Trump gets on Russia — or if he reads it.

He relies heavily on his lead negotiators, special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who Hill said may struggle to believe that the damage to the Russian economy caused by the war is a price Putin is willing to pay for Ukraine.

Referring to reports that Witkoff has attended meetings with Putin without a U.S. State Department translator, she questioned if Trump’s envoys understood what was being said in meetings and suggested officials may be “selectively” looking for what they want to hear.

Being told what they want to hear

Putin is fixated on controlling all of Ukraine and the idea “is so deep in his head” that it takes priority over anything else, including economics, Rosin said, suggesting that the conflict will continue in some form for several years.

He said Putin’s position may change only if the situation in Russia, or on the front line, becomes “catastrophic,” threatening his power. For now, the Russian leader still believes he can take Ukraine and “outsmart everybody,” Rosin said.

One reason Putin thinks he can win militarily in Ukraine is because he is “definitely” getting some incorrect information from his officials, the Estonian intelligence chief said.

Not all Russian officials, however, believe they are winning the war in Ukraine, Rosin said.

“The lower you go in the food chain,” the more people understand “how bad it is actually on the ground,” he said, whereas higher up, officials are more optimistic because they are given more positive reports. Rosin cited examples of officials being told Russian forces had captured Ukrainian settlements when that was not true.

The reports that arrive at Putin’s desk may be “much more optimistic” than the situation on the ground because Putin only wants to see success, Rosin said.

Hill said both Trump and Putin are probably being told what they want to hear by people who want to please them.

White House reporter Seung Min Kim in Washington D.C. and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report. 

By DAVE SKRETTA, Associated Press Sports Writer

MILAN (AP) — U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn says she has smoothed out copyright concerns with the artist behind one of the pieces of her free skate music, and that the Olympic team gold medalist may have struck up a new friendship with him because of it.

Team USA’s Amber Glenn celebrates with her gold medal after the figure skating team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Canadian artist Seb McKinnon, who produces music under the name CLANN, had taken to social media after Glenn performed her free skate to conclude the team event Sunday and expressed surprise that his song, “The Return,” was used as part of the program.

“So just found out an Olympic figure skater used one of my songs without permission for their routine. It aired all over the world … what? Is that usual practice for the Olympics?” McKinnon posted to X, eventually congratulating Glenn on her gold medal.

Related Articles

Harvey, Dunne lead U.S. to 3rd straight win in Olympic women’s hockey

When conflict meets competition: Trump’s immigration agenda roils opening days of Winter Olympics

Vonn says she has complex leg fracture, needs multiple surgeries

Olympic women’s hockey: U.S. stays perfect by blanking Switzerland

Duluth curling duo will play for first U.S. mixed doubles gold

Figure skaters are required to obtain copyright permission for the music they use. But the process is confusing and prone to mistakes, and several skaters have changed programs at the last minute for the Milan Cortina Games because problems have arisen.

“The issue of music rights can be complex and confusing,” Glenn said in a statement. “Seems like there was a hiccup in that whole process. I’m glad we cleared things up with Seb and I look forward to collaborating with him.”

Glenn has been performing her free skate to “The Return” for the past two years without any issues.

“It was a dream come true to perform at the Olympic Games and to have Seb acknowledge my performance and congratulate me afterward made the moment even more special,” Glenn said. “It’s my sincere hope that I was able to help create new fans of both figure skating and Seb. We will move forward and continue supporting both artists and the skating community.”

By LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ hope for their future has fallen to a new low, according to new polling.

Related Articles

Today in History: February 10, Chess champ loses against a computer

Judge blocks California’s ban on federal agents wearing masks but requires badges be clearly seen

The US has a new center in Texas to disperse sterile screwworm flies to block a parasite it spawns

Catherine O’Hara died from a pulmonary embolism. Cancer was the underlying cause

Person is shot in a high school in Maryland and a suspect is in custody, police say

In 2025, only about 59% of Americans gave high ratings when asked to evaluate how good their life will be in about five years, the lowest annual measure since Gallup began asking this question almost 20 years ago.

It’s a warning about the depth of the gloom that has fallen over the country over the past few years. In the data, Gallup’s “current” and “future” lines have tended to move together over time — when Americans are feeling good about the present, they tend to feel optimistic about the future. But the most recent measures show that while current life satisfaction has declined over the last decade, future optimism has dropped even more.

The finding comes from a longstanding Gallup question that asks Americans to rate their current and future lives on a scale from 0 to 10. Those who give themselves an 8 or higher on the question about the future are categorized as optimists.

“While current life is eroding, it’s that optimism for the future that has eroded almost twice as much over the course of about that last 10 years or so,” said Dan Witters, the research director of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index.

Gallup assesses people who rate their current life at a 7 or higher and their anticipated future at an 8 or higher as “thriving.” Fewer than half of Americans, about 48%, are now in that category.

Democrats and Hispanic Americans, in particular, were in a darker mood last year. But even with President Donald Trump back in the White House and his party in control of both houses of Congress, Republicans aren’t feeling nearly as good about the future as they were in the last year of Trump’s first term.

Democrats’ optimism fell significantly

Americans’ attitudes toward the future tend to shift when a new political party enters the White House — generally, the party in power grows more optimistic, while the party without control is more down. For instance, Democrats became more positive about the future after Joe Biden won the presidency, while Republicans’ outlook soured.

Witters notes that these changes typically happen “by roughly the same amount, same level of magnitude, so they cancel each other out.”

That didn’t happen in 2025.

Toward the end of Biden’s term and the start of Trump’s second term, Democrats’ optimism fell from 65% to 57%. Republicans grew more hopeful, but not enough to offset Democrats’ drop.

“The regime change in the White House almost certainly was a big driving factor in what’s happened,” Witters said. “And a lot of that was just because the people who identified as Democrats really took it in the chops.”

But Republicans are still quite a bit gloomier about the future than they were in the last year of Trump’s first term. A January AP-NORC poll found that while the vast majority of Republicans are still behind the president, his work on the economy hasn’t lived up to many people’s expectations.

Hispanic adults grew more pessimistic

Hispanic adults’ optimism for the near future also declined during Trump’s first year in office, dropping from 69% to 63%.

That decrease was sharper than among white and Black Americans, something that Witters said could be tied to overall cost concerns, health care worries or alarm about Trump’s recent immigration policies.

Last year, a survey by the American Communities Project found that people living in heavily Hispanic areas were feeling less hopeful about their future than in 2024. Trump’s favorability fell among Hispanics over the course of 2025, according to AP-NORC polling, which also found that Hispanic adults reported higher levels of economic stress than other groups.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October found that the administration’s tough immigration enforcement is highly visible in Hispanic communities. About 6 in 10 Latinos said they had seen or heard of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids or arrests in their community in the past six months.

“(Deportations are) something that everybody can see and look at with their own eyes,” Witters added. “But if you’re Hispanic, I think it’s fair to think that that might hit a little closer to home.”

This data is a part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. The 2025 results are based on data collected over four quarterly measurement periods, totaling 22,125 interviews with U.S. adults who are part of the probability-based Gallup Panel.

I couldn’t stop blinking back tears, and I couldn’t understand why.

I’d just walked out of a movie called “The Testament of Ann Lee.” Lee was the founder of the American Shakers, a tiny utopian Christian sect that started in England in the mid-18th century. Lee brought a small band of followers to the United States shortly before the Revolution.

The Shakers were known for their ecstatic worship (hence the name), their egalitarianism and pacifism, their absolute commitment to celibacy and their furniture. Shakers committed themselves to excellence in all things, and their craftsmanship was impeccable.

I’m not exactly the target audience for a film about chair-making religious extremists. I’m more the kind of moviegoer who’s drawn to Will Ferrell or light sabers or dragons. Also orcs. I find great meaning in superhero movies. But my wife and son were going, and I wanted to hang out with them.

So I went, a bit skeptically, hoping that perhaps I might get to see a new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey.” But then the movie started, and it broke my heart.

A theology born of loss and persecution

Lee was born in Manchester, England, in 1736. As a young woman, she joined a group of religious dissenters that eventually became known as the “shaking Quakers.” When they worshipped they would sing and dance and often demonstrated physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence.

Lee’s theology was born of horrible trauma, deep loss and profound persecution. While living in Britain, she was arrested and imprisoned. She was pressured, by some accounts, into an arranged marriage. She lost four children. She turned to God for solace and comfort and made a radical commitment to celibacy, shunning any further sexual activity, including with her husband. She believed that sex — all sex — separated man from God.

Persecuted in England, she did what so many others did before — and have done since: She left everything behind but the smallest band of followers and sought freedom in the New World.

When she lands the film depicts her immediately witnessing America’s profound flaws. As soon as she gets to New York, she and her followers see a slave auction and shout “shame” at this obvious, grotesque violation of human dignity. After she settles in her new home, American colonial authorities imprison her after she refuses to swear allegiance to the patriot cause — as pacifists the Shakers would not take part in the conflict.

After the governor of New York, George Clinton, orders her release, she and her brother are brutally beaten by a local mob, and in the climactic scene of shock and horror, you can still hear the deep conviction and love of neighbor in her brother, as he begs his fellow Shakers not to resist the beating. “Do not fight back!” he shouts as the blows fall.

Patterns in our history

This movie isn’t a mere period piece. It takes you inside the Shaker faith in a way that’s unusual in American cinema. It portrays the faith so sympathetically and in a way that is so emotionally resonant that I completely understood why the Shakers would endure so much.

In one sense, you’ll look at various scenes in the movie and see something very weird. People moan in sorrow at their own sin. There’s an explosively joyful reaction to the experience of forgiveness. They worship with their voices and bodies, singing and dancing for hours on end. Yet in many ways these scenes of deep emotion are the most authentically real element of the movie.

I’ve been in places of ecstatic worship. I’ve seen people shake and tremble as they perceive the presence of God. I’ve seen how the experience of forgiveness — the idea that the creator of the universe loves you enough to give you eternal hope in spite of your worst and most horrible deeds — creates a sense of joy and relief that is difficult to describe.

But that joy and relief can also turn into dangerous zeal. As history demonstrates, this kind of encounter with the perceived presence of God can create a devotion to God that can rage out of control. The zeal for their faith turns into brutal intolerance of everyone else.

Much of American history follows this pattern. Early settlers often came to the colonies to secure their own religious freedom, not necessarily out of love for the freedom of others. And when they encountered religious differences in the New World, they could be just as intolerant as their oppressors in the Old.

In Ann Lee’s case, her radical faith, which mirrored Christ’s and the Apostle Paul’s commitment to singleness and celibacy, also manifested itself in radical love, both for people inside her community and outside it.

In essence, Lee and her followers turned to God and said — as so many believers have — I will do anything for you. And they heard God’s ancient answer to that declaration: Love thy neighbor. And your neighbor includes the enslaved Black man, and the white indentured servant who possessed so few rights, and the Native American who was slowly but surely being driven from his land.

‘Already and not yet’

When I was growing up in the evangelical church, I was taught an idea we called “already and not yet.” It means that Christ’s death and resurrection changed everything now — already. We can live with eternal hope, and he has established his church on earth. But the “not yet” means the best is yet to come, including Christ’s return and our own resurrection.

You see this in our nation as well. Ann Lee lived in the already and not yet of America. The Shakers did find a place. She did build a community. And in one of the movie’s most powerful moments, she expresses profound gratitude when she hears that Lord Cornwallis had surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown.

In the movie’s telling, her body was ruined by beatings. Her brother was dead at the hands of a mob. And yet she was still grateful. She had already built a community, but now there was also a not yet — a promise of true liberty and security.

Hours after the movie, I finally realized why I had tears in my eyes. In the final scene, you see Lee’s plain wooden casket sitting alone under a painting of a beautiful tree.

In that moment, you could clearly see the gap between American hope and American reality. And I was reminded once again of one of Washington’s favorite Bible verses, Micah 4:4 — “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” In his writings, Washington referred to it almost 50 times.

Washington referred to that verse most famously when writing to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. Assuring them of their liberty in this new nation, he wrote, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

What a beautiful expression of American pluralism and religious tolerance. Our nation is not a place — it never will be a place — where we all agree with one another, much less look like one another, or even come from a common culture. But we can live together as neighbors so long as we recognize one another’s inherent dignity and worth.

I know full well that Washington himself embodied the already and not yet of America. The man who wrote those beautiful words owned slaves — men and women he did not plan to free until after his wife’s death. His virtue was real; so was his sin.

The tree is still alive

And so it is with this nation we love. In 250 years, the already of American liberty has expanded. We are a better and more decent nation than the one Ann Lee encountered. But as we see state brutality and state violence spill out across our streets, we know that we are not yet fulfilling the promise of the declaration.

Ann Lee died in 1784. When she was reportedly reinterred in the 1820s, she was found to have a fractured skull. It’s 2026 now, and we still see beatings in the streets. There are still too many caskets under the tree of liberty. But the tree is still alive, and it continues to grow. May we all sit securely in its shade one day.

David French writes a column for the New York Times.

Related Articles

Elizabeth Shackelford: What history tells us about fighting the repression we are seeing here

Stephen Mihm: ICE enforcement is echoing the Fugitive Slave Act

Commentary: Why Bondi chose a Missouri prosecutor for a Georgia election case

Noah Feldman: ICE isn’t just breaking the law. It’s trying to rewrite it.

David French: This is not a drill