News Archive

Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian targets have increased in frequency in the week since the U.S. election, killing civilians and destroying another dam. Russian troops continued to make incremental gains toward the city of Pokrovsk. The Russian army is preparing a new offensive, this time using North Korean troops. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Donald Trump on his election but implied that he would have discussions only if the U.S. initiates talks, drops its sanctions, and refuses to offer any further support for Ukraine—accepting, in other words, a Russian victory. Meanwhile, Russian state television welcomed news of the election by gleefully showing nude photographs of Melania Trump on the country’s most-watched channel. How will the...

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has made much of Russian Orthodoxy as a moral paragon, while intentionally omitting in his alternative history that Christianity came to Russia from Kyiv and that the Muscovy Patriarchate was established at gunpoint after the Muscovites kidnapped the Ecumenical Patriarch. An interesting question for the uninformed is whether the Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian Federation or abroad is in essence a religious institution or simply a tool of Russian imperialism. In the United States this matter is quite vague as the Russian Orthodox Church has never registered as a foreign agent with no repercussions from the United States Departments of State or Justice. Similarly, the accommodation or treatment of the Moscow Church by the Catholic Church in...

The briefing from Defence Intelligence was typically understated. “Russian territorial advances in Ukraine have accelerated through 2024,” it said. “This has been underpinned by the Russian leadership’s tolerance for casualties, and Russia’s land forces’ quantitative overmatch relative to the Ukrainian armed forces. The front line is now less stable than at any point since the opening stages of the conflict.” Translated into layman’s terms, Russia is making significant gains and Ukraine is in a weaker position than it has been at any point since the start of the war. The Russian “meat-grinder” — or as officials at the British government agency put it, its “tolerance for casualties” — is having an effect. More than 700,000 Russian personnel have been killed or injured, while 3,500 tanks have been...