Commentary

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...

At the end of October, Canadian parliamentarians convened a Standing Committee on Public Safety Security and Defence Committee session to discuss the impact of Russian disinformation on Canada's information landscape. While testimonies on disinformation are not new in the country, this session gained significant attention after former minister and prominent politician from the opposition Conservative Party, Chris Alexander, accused well-known journalist David Pugliese from the Ottawa Citizen of working for Soviet (and potentially subsequently for Russian) intelligence services. Alexander didn't stop at accusations. As evidence, he presented KGB documents that allegedly showed...

It’s felt like a week on the brink. But of what exactly? It ended with warlike noises from Moscow, but every major party to the Ukraine war is now jockeying for advantage, trying to end that conflict on the best terms for itself. “So, that’s what you wanted?” Russia’s former president and a noted hawk, Dmitry Medvedev, posted on social media, with video of Russian missile warheads raining down on a Ukrainian city. “Well, you’ve damn well got it!” This, and a more temperate TV address on Thursday night by Vladimir Putin, sought to drive home a forceful response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets earlier in the week, after President Biden’s agreement to allow the use of western-supplied weapons in that way. In truth, after Putin saw America breach a red line ...

According to Politico, seven NATO member countries remain hesitant to extend a membership invitation to Ukraine. Citing four anonymous U.S. and NATO officials and diplomats, Politico names the United States, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, Hungary, and Slovakia as the primary holdouts. Each of these countries has its own reasons for caution, yet the key to NATO’s decision-making lies in its rule of consensus. While some countries contribute more to NATO’s mission, each member has an equal say in inviting new members. Thus, every objection must be taken into account, regardless of military might or strategic value. The influence of the United States is paramount, yet even it cannot move forward without the cooperation of these smaller nations...

The Federal relations expert Harun (Vadim) Sidorov believes that the BRICS summit held in Kazan is directly related to the decolonization agenda and is “an illustration of the different attitudes of the Kremlin and its opponents towards it.” According to the Idel.Realii columnist, “The Kremlin, which is already facing official accusations of colonialism from the West, is actively trying to shift the blame to the West’s relations with the so-called “global South.” The Russian Foreign Ministry tried to present the adoption of the...

"The New York Times” reported that Russia has been providing small arms to the Houthis. American officials including Secretary Austin during his recent visit to Ukraine indicated that according to American military intelligence Russia is considering providing the Houthis with missiles should the West escalate the war in Ukraine. Apparently, recently released in a prisoner exchange with the West, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is negotiating the sale of advanced missiles. This information was given to the Ukrainians to justify Western reluctance to allow Ukraine's use of Western weapons deeper into Russia. I suppose that any excuse is as...

Moscow seems to have pressed pause on its plans to arm the Houthis with missiles, but the threat of it gives the Kremlin leverage elsewhere in the world. What all this amounts to is what a Leninist maxim calls probing with bayonets. The next line: "If you find mush, you push." Mush was George W. Bush's feeble response to Russia's invasion of Georgia, followed by Barack Obama's equally feeble one to Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014, It was Donald Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO, his attempt (foiled by his own advisers) to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, his pathetic hopes for a deal with the...

Go back to 24 February 2022, the most fateful day in Europe this century: the day when Vladimir Putin sent his armies into Ukraine. The least discussed aspect of the revival of Russian imperialism was the miserable failure of Western intelligence. It wasn't that Western analysts missed the invasion—they didn’t. The Biden administration and its allies did an admirable job. They warned Ukraine and Europe, and pre-empted Russian propaganda efforts to create a false pretext for the invasion. But their success ended there. They vastly overestimated Russia’s military prowess while grossly underestimating Ukraine’s resolve—a misjudgement that persists today, with devastating consequences. Intelligence sources briefed journalists, who then shared these faulty assumptions...