Commentary

Are you a venerated scholar in the field of international relations? Do you feel compelled to publish an article about Russia’s war on Ukraine? To bring your decades of experience to bear to help end the suffering? A smart, contrarian piece, perhaps? One which cuts through the utopian misconceptions of the “whatever-it-takes” crowd? A necessary reality-check that both acknowledges the inevitability of a negotiated settlement and reminds the world of your wisdom and indispensability? If that’s you, I have some advice: Close your laptop, go outside, and take a walk. Meditate. Adopt a dog. Volunteer at a food bank. In fact, almost anything that doesn’t involve typing words on a page about Ukraine would be preferable to typing words on a page about Ukraine. Ever since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, we’ve been subject to a merry-go-round of Esteemed Experts calling on the West to force the two sides to the negotiating table. While admired in their fields of study—usually international relations—few of them have any actual expertise on Ukraine or Russia...

“We went and killed everyone. There were women, men, seniors, and children.” These were the words of Azamat Uldarov, an ex-fighter of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group who personally admitted to shooting dead a five or six-year-old girl, speaking to Russian independent outlet Gulagu.net. Uldarov, together with ex-Wagner commander Aleksei Savichev, both described being given and carrying out orders to “clean” entire buildings or areas in Donetsk Oblast of civilians by murdering them all. The confessions came out on the back of a video of Russian troops, later reported as also belonging to Wagner, beheading a Ukrainian prisoner-of-war with a knife. Three days after the Wagner confessions, Russian state-sponsored patriotic singer Shaman released a new music video, entitled “We,” of him walking down Red Square sporting a full black leather outfit, combed blond undercut, and Russian flag armband. “Faith and love is with us, God is with us,” he sings. No, this is not a fever dream, this is fascist Russia in 2023. Back in May last year, American historian Timothy Snyder invigorated the discussion around the fascist label in his New York Times op-ed “We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist.”...

On February 24, 2022, something considered so unlikely in the twenty-first century as to be almost unimaginable happened: A large ­European state mounted a full-scale, full-­spectrum invasion of another large European state. The invaded state posed no threat to the aggressor's security, only to its leader's warped ideology. And in another chilling parallel to the mid-1930s, scripts written in that low decade returned with a vengeance: The aggressor polluted the global information space with a barrage of propaganda and lies, while some in the West, echoing Neville ­Chamberlain, asked why they should be concerned about a "quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing." Now, after a year marked by bestial cruelty on one side and astonishing courage on the other, the Russian war on Ukraine stands before us as a pivotal moment in contemporary history. Grasping what that moment means is essential in devising wise policy that promotes peace, security, and freedom for both the United States and Ukraine; failure to...

In an interview with RBK-Ukraine, the chief of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry’s intelligence said that the current pace of Western weaponry supply does not make him revise his earlier projection – the turning-point battle before the end of this war will take place this spring. “It absolutely does not. Like it or not, we’re approaching a landmark battle in the contemporary history of Ukraine. This is a fact, and everyone understands it. It’s a secret when it will start. But everyone understands we are getting closer to it,” said Gen. Kyrylo Budanov. He agreed that if the future offensive operation fails to succeed sufficiently, the odds are that Ukraine’s partners will urge it to negotiate with Russia. However, he emphasized that the fate of Ukraine is in its hands. “Whoever urges us to do whatever, it’s up to us to decide.” Budanov also said that...

Russia has wielded ethnicity as a weapon repeatedly in its history. The authorities have deliberately employed unlawful occupations, annexations, deportations, filtration, and ethnic dilution through an influx of Russian settlers to control and reshape the Eurasian map in favor of Russian expansionism. Illustratively, the legacy of the Soviet occupation, deportations, and other crimes, as well as massive immigration of ethnic Russians to non-Russian territories during the Soviet period are the primary reason for contemporary inter-ethnic tensions in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, which serve as useful leverage for Moscow when it wants to destabilize the region by reviving the rhetoric of a "common past." Ethnicity or, more specifically, identity is a vague but effective tool for Russian propaganda because it touches upon...

While the torrent of leaks about possible interference by China in Canadian politics seems to have ebbed, the uproar over them continues and the federal government presented a budget this week containing some measures it hopes will deal with such meddling. The budget sets aside 13.5 million Canadian dollars to establish a National Counter-Foreign Interference Office, and it will give the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 50 million dollars to counter harassment of Canadian immigrants by their authoritarian home countries. To educate the public about foreign influence campaigns that target Canada, a group of researchers published a detailed examination of one such campaign this week: a Russian effort to use Twitter to mould Canadian public opinion about its invasion of Ukraine.The research held some surprises for its authors — pro-Russian messages were being promoted not only by far-right groups who openly expressed approval of Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin, but were...

Nearly a year after he invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to achieve any of his major objectives. He has not unified the alleged single Slavic nation, he has not “denazified” or “demilitarized” Ukraine, and he has not stopped NATO expansion. Instead, the Ukrainian military kept Russian troops out of Kyiv, defended Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and launched successful counteroffensives in the fall so that by the end of 2022, it had liberated over 50 percent of the territory previously captured by Russian soldiers that year. In January, Putin removed the general in charge of the war in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, whom he had appointed just a few months earlier. Wartime leaders change their top generals only when they know they are losing. Ukraine is doing so well in part thanks to the unified Western response. Unlike reactions to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 or Ukraine in 2014, the Western pushback against Putin’s latest war has been strong along multiple fronts. NATO enhanced its...

IT IS ALMOST one year since Russian troops invaded Ukraine. In that time thousands of innocent civilians, as well as soldiers from both sides, have been killed. Towns and cities have crumbled under Russian strikes. The devastation has led some to call for Ukraine to sit down with Russia and negotiate peace. Yet the morale of Ukraine’s armed forces is as strong as ever, and its soldiers have defended their homeland more successfully than most thought possible. It would be a huge mistake for the country to enter into peace talks with Russia now. There are many reasons why negotiating with Russia would be foolish. If this war is about more than just Ukraine, and instead about the preservation of the international rules-based order and the prevention of Russian aggression against Europe, then it should be unacceptable for Russia to be rewarded for its invasion. Yet any peace deal which granted it territory would do just that. And talks have been tried before. The Minsk agreements, signed after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, led to a frozen conflict which Vladimir Putin thawed at a ...

A recent attempt by the West to “confine” to Ukraine the current Russian aggression came with a missile strike (15 November 2022). NATO’s official assessment of this “incident” was: “Missile landing [in Poland] was not a ‘deliberate’ Russian attack.” It is, however, realistic to share the unembellished position that Moscow, during this massive missile attack on Ukraine, also delivered a “fishing” strike on Poland to probe NATO’s reaction and readiness to implement its “sacrosanct” Article 5 about defending “every inch” of NATO’s territory against any aggressor. It would be Russia in this case. Another plausible reason for this “incident” was a Russian attempt to provoke a quarrel between Poland and Ukraine. So much for a “lesson learned” by the West again. In view of this, Ukraine would be...

Ukrainian bravery and sacrifice, aided by significant support from NATO and European Union member states, helped stave off an early Ukrainian defeat. However, it is now critical to redouble allied efforts in order to help Ukraine evict the Russians and create the conditions for sustainable peace. This includes the delivery of weapons that allies have been reluctant to give to Ukrainians, but, more importantly, NATO should intensify its efforts and take an active role in the defense of Ukraine in response to Russia’s illegal war. Fortunately, the West already has the means and structure through NATO to plan, coordinate and execute this enhanced support to bring about an end to the war. NATO allies can do this through a carefully telegraphed set of escalatory steps in direct support of Ukraine that go well beyond the support given to date. This includes the...