Commentary

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...

This investigation was reported and produced by Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Dmitriy Khavin, Christoph Koettl, Haley Willis, Alexander Cardia, Natalie Reneau and Malachy Browne. When videos and photos emerged in April showing bodies of dozens of civilians strewn along a street in Bucha, Ukrainians and the rest of the world voiced horror and outrage. But in Russia, officials had a completely different reaction: denial. President Vladimir V. Putin dismissed the gruesome scene as “a provocation,” and claimed that the Russian Army had nothing to do with it. But an eight-month visual investigation by The New York Times concluded that the perpetrators of the massacre along Yablunska Street were Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment led by Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov...

At our apartment complex there was no electricity, water, heating, Internet, and mobile phone connection for almost 48 hours. Since we don’t use gas and have electric stoves, we couldn’t cook either. Our apartment complex is very “young”—I guess 80 percent of the residents are families with small children and small pets. The kids didn’t have school or training sessions or hobby groups to attend. After I climbed the stairs to the 13th floor for the umpteenth time, my butt was as stiff as a nut, probably a coconut. And you know what? We have adapted. The kids read and do their homework using flashlights. There is a battery-operated garland with lights in lieu of fixtures in the hall. We have candles, dry food that doesn’t spoil, and supplies of fresh water. Grocery stores and cafés functioned with generators, and fed people. No one was closed!..

Russian scorched-earth methods of conducting warfare against and occupation of “enemy” countries are deeply rooted in its history: blanket devastation, wholesale murder of civilians and prisoners of war, torture, rape, kidnapping, mass deportations and ethnic cleansing, plunder, looting, destruction of civilian infrastructure, lying, and spreading disinformation. This seems to point to Russia’s some innate inferiority complex (“catch up to, and overtake” the West), which is compensated by aggression, conquest, brutality, and destruction. Just as critically important is Moscow’s vicious destruction of Ukraine’s ancient national heritage by targeting its historical and cultural monuments, churches, museums, libraries, archival collections, music and art institutions, and centers of learning...

A bizarre factor in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that most Western experts on the Russian military agreed with the Kremlin that Russia had a powerful army which would defeat Ukraine within two or three days. While there has been much analysis, including by this author, of how Russian imperial nationalist stereotypes of Ukrainians made them miscalculate, there has been no investigation of why Western experts exaggerated the strength of the Russian army and underplayed Ukraine militarily and as a resilient society. This article launches an overdue discussion on the latter question, regarding the exaggeration of Russian military power and under-playing of Ukrainian capabilities. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recalled that when the invasion began, ‘most people who called me – well, almost everyone – did not have faith that Ukraine can stand up to this and persevere.’ National Security and Defence Council Secretary Olexiy Danilov remembered the West believed Ukraine...

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin “completed the formal annexation of more than 15% of Ukraine on Wednesday just as Russian forces battled to halt a Ukrainian counter-offensive across swathes of the territories,” Reuters reports. “In the biggest expansion of Russian territory in at least half a century, Putin signed laws admitting the [so-called] Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), the [so-called] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), Kherson Oblast and Zaporizhzhia Oblast into Russia.” After holding its sham referendums in Ukraine’s seized regions on Sep. 23-27, Russia announced the annexations. The ballots, according to Western nations and Kyiv, violated international law and were forced and misrepresentative...