Andrew Korybko | Had it not been downed over the Belarusian border city of Grodno and instead passed into Poland on the way to the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre like its recovered flight data revealed to be its route, it could have sparked a crisis that ruined the renascent peace talks. | Trump’s Special Envoy for Russia Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom played important roles in negotiating the Gaza peace deal, met with Putin at the Kremlin for five hours on Tuesday. Their trip could have been derailed, however, had a Lithuanian provocation succeeded. A state-of-the-art Western spy drone from there was downed over the western Belarusian border city of Grodno on Sunday, but the recovered flight data indicated that it was supposed to fly as far as western Poland. [...] If Trump is serious about reaching a deal with Putin, then he should publicly declare that the US won’t be dragged into a war with Russia if NATO members launch any sort of “pre-emptive strike” against it in response to suspicious incidents like alleged drone incursions. Not doing so risks emboldening the (British?) orchestrators of this latest provocation into trying again and again until they finally succeed in sparking a crisis which ruins all that he’s trying to achieve and brings the world to the brink of all-out war.

■ An Inside Look at How Five Hours of Russia–US Negotiations Unfolded in the Kremlin (Sputnik)
■ Witkoff and Kushner Hold Five-Hour Meeting With Putin, No Sign of Breakthrough (Antiwar.com)
✅ The Results of the Negotiations in Moscow: What the Parties Are Willing to Concede (Andrey Surzhansky)

Richard Norton-Taylor | Special forces soldier feared the elite regiment would “go down the sewer” unless he blew the whistle | A senior British special forces officer warned that the failure to own up to criminal behaviour in Afghanistan by the SAS – including shooting toddlers in their beds – would allow the regiment to descend into “the sewer” and sink to the level of despotic regimes. Devastating evidence about a cover-up by special forces was released on Monday by an independent judge-led inquiry into repeated allegations of extra-judicial executions by elite British troops. [...] The senior officer, who worked closely with the most senior SAS commanders, raised the alarm about a “cancer” of illegal behaviour within a specific SAS squadron but was constantly rebuffed, transcripts of evidence – released despite objections by the Ministry of Defence – reveal.

Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim | Leaked emails show the details behind talks between Cote d’Ivoire and Israel shepherded by Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein | On September 12, three months later, Epstein met with Ouattara’s niece Nina Keita, whom he had known since at least 2002; as a young fashion model in Jean Luc Brunel’s Karin Models agency, she had traveled on his “Lolita Express” plane between New York and Paris. After Keita’s visit, records show that Epstein went straight to the Regency Hotel in New York for a private meeting with the Israeli defense minister. ● The next month, Epstein flew to Africa. In a note to his assistant, he instructed her to arrange to switch planes in London before flying to Côte d’Ivoire, Angola, and Senegal. There are no flight logs documenting the Africa trip. ● The flurry of visits appeared to pay dividends for Epstein, Barak, and the Israeli government. Two weeks after Epstein’s trip to Africa, the Ivorian Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko was in Tel Aviv to meet with Barak and discuss a bilateral security accord focused on intelligence and cybercrime. ● Barak has previously claimed his “private investments” with Epstein were conducted as a private citizen and unrelated to official Israeli state affairs. The documents released by the House in October, however, suggest that Epstein played the same “fixer” role while Barak was still the sitting Defense Minister of Israel. Barak did not respond to a request for comment.