Nataliya Gumenyuk writes: For years I have been reluctant to compare any dictator to Hitler, or any war to the second world war. The comparison, to me, seemed exaggerated, even vulgar. But what other analogy is there? With no reason, in an act of pure madness, an old-fashioned air assault has been inflicted on a neighbouring country. I said that to my Russian colleague, and tried very hard not to show how my voice was trembling. She asked for forgiveness…
Anne Applebaum: Dear God, calamity again! It was so peaceful, so serene; We had just begun to break the chains That bind our folk in slavery When halt! Once again the people’s blood Is streaming … The poem is called “Calamity Again.” The original version was written in Ukrainian, in 1859, and the author, Taras Shevchenko, was not speaking metaphorically when he wrote about slavery. Shevchenko was born into a family of serfs—slaves—on an estate in what is now central…
The Washington Post reports: China on Thursday denied backing Russia’s military assault in Ukraine as it trod a cautious line in response to a conflict that many Chinese analysts just days before were predicting wouldn’t happen. At a regular briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying downplayed the suggestion that Beijing was supporting Moscow behind the scenes. “As for American hints that Russia had China backing it up, I’m sure Russia would be pleased to hear it,” Hua said. “We…
A protest outside the Russian Embassy on Feb. 22, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Chris McGrath/Getty Images By Emily Channell-Justice, Harvard University and Jacob Lassin, Arizona State University As some Western observers have feared, Russian President Vladimir Putin has just proved that his aggression toward Ukraine was never really about NATO. In a speech on Feb. 21, 2022, Putin recognized the occupied territories in Ukraine of Donetsk and Luhansk and moved Russian forces into them. Putin’s speech showed that he has…
The Wall Street Journal reports: The European Union is planning to sanction Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the country’s Internet Research Agency, diplomats said, part of the first wave of measures that governments in Washington, Brussels and London say will be a coordinated package of fuller sanctions should Russia escalate military tensions in Ukraine. The EU sanctions listings, which are set to take force later Wednesday, and separate measures announced by the U.S. and the U.K. on Tuesday came…
By Arik Burakovsky, Tufts University Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine on Feb. 21, 2022. The invasion could lead to the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Western leaders warn. But amid the mounting tensions, public opinion polls in Russia show that support for Putin is rising. The rally ‘round the flag effect of supporting political leadership during an international crisis will likely be short-lived. Historical data shows that diversionary wars — fighting abroad…
Politico reports: While Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine this week stress-tests the Biden administration, it’s also forcing Republicans to confront their own divisions. The GOP is all over the map politically, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw his own boundaries. Former President Donald Trump privately has signaled a split with more isolationist voices from the MAGA wing of the party who have excused Russia’s aggression, who themselves are at odds with more establishment Republicans over how to confront Russian…
The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will support the territorial claims of its proxy states in east Ukraine, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a larger war in the near future in what Joe Biden denounced as an attempt to carve out “a big chunk” of the country. “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries?” Biden said, announcing new sanctions on two Russian banks and sweeping measures to…
The Guardian reports: Biden thought he would be remembered as the pandemic president, but finds himself commanding the arsenal of democracy in what could become the biggest military assault in Europe since the second world war. The crisis escalated on Monday after Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as independent entities, an apparent pretext for invasion. “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged…
Shaun Walker reports: Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion. He was met with silence. A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state television to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right…
Charlie Sykes writes: By now the cast of Putin’s useful idiots is familiar, ranging from Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley to Candace Owens, MTG, and Maria Bartiromo. Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, calls them “the ultimate stooges,” but at least for now, these right wing voices do not speak for most congressional Republicans, who have tended to take a far more hawkish stance. But Putin can be forgiven if he…
Ezra Klein writes: Ninety-five percent of Afghans don’t have enough to eat. Nearly nine million are at risk of starvation. The U.N.’s emergency aid request, at more than $5 billion, is the largest it has ever made for a single country. “The current humanitarian crisis could kill far more Afghans than the past 20 years of war,” David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, wrote recently. And we bear much of the blame. We have turned a crisis into…
Robin Wright writes: In his final State of the Union address, in 1992, President George H. W. Bush sounded almost ecstatic. “The biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: by the grace of God, America won the Cold War.” The ideological struggle between the U.S.-led West and the Soviet-dominated East—which played out in proxy wars around the world over four decades—had not simply ended, the President declared. The U.S. had triumphed….
The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia will extend its military drills with Belarus because of rising violence in Ukraine’s Donbas region, the government in Minsk said, as Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted a new round of talks with Kyiv in the midst of warnings of an imminent Russian invasion. Mr. Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron said after speaking Sunday that they agreed to continue seeking a diplomatic solution. Russia has amassed as many as 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders,…
The New York Times reports: Vladimir Pozner was an English-language Soviet propaganda editor in Moscow in 1962, a job that gave him rare access to American newspapers and magazines. That allowed him to follow the Cuban Missile Crisis outside the Soviet media filter, and sense a world at the brink of war. Mr. Pozner, a longtime Russian television journalist, says he now feels something similar. “The smell of war is very strong,” he said in an interview on Friday, a…
The Observer reports: Secret discussions are under way between western allies over how to arm what they expect to be fierce Ukrainian resistance in the event of a Russian invasion that topples the Kyiv government. Boris Johnson laid bare the case for such a move in a dramatic speech to the Munich security conference where he stated it was in the collective self-interests of the west for any Russian invasion to “fail and be seen to fail”. He said that…