4 mins read
The agreement on British aid to Ukraine signed by Keir Starmer in Kyiv yesterday is good as far as it genuinely goes. It is indeed very important that the West go on supporting Ukraine during the forthcoming peace negotiations, in order to reduce the chance of a Ukrainian collapse and encourage the Russian government to compromise.
4 mins read
The development of a new generation of drones has revolutionized how wars are fought, according to U.S. officials.
14 mins read
The partnership helped Ukraine defend itself and gave the U.S. key intelligence.
4 mins read
The scandal reveals serious weaknesses in Ukraine’s military command
4 mins read
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise – to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.
5 mins read
OFAC has targeted Russia’s major oil companies and insurers as well as over 180 tankers in the shadow fleet. But will it make a difference?
5 mins read
VIENNA, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Eastern European nations confronting a plethora of economic threats fuelled by war on their doorstep may face fresh pressure if peace is reached in Ukraine – from tight labour markets that fuel inflation thanks to an exodus of Ukrainian workers.
6 mins read
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the top U.S. diplomat said it is “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to recover all the land Russia has seized since launching its full-scale invasion nearly three years ago, adding Kyiv will have to make concessions to Moscow to end the fighting.
2 mins read
Trump’s envoy to the conflict, Keith Kellog, has previously said he hopes to have a deal within 100 days
7 mins read
It started out rather differently than we now sometimes imagine it. When Vladimir Putin took over the Russian presidency from Boris Yeltsin 25 years ago, on New Year’s Eve 1999, he was seen as a man with whom Washington could do business.
1 min read
At yesterday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State.
10 mins read
An official inquiry into a notorious 2018 Novichok poisoning case has found the victim briefly emerged from a coma, revealing information which wholly undermined the British government’s narrative. While the medical professional she told was muzzled, mainstream media has ignored the new finding.
6 mins read
On Wednesday, February 14, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that his panel had “made available to all Members of Congress information concerning a serious national security threat.”
13 mins read
I have said in the past that the New World Order’s enduring legacy is contempt for morality and what Immanuel Kant calls practical reason in the comprehensible universe, which was created by what Aristotle calls the Unmoved Mover. We are still working with the same definition in this article here.
4 mins read
Crises, crises everywhere, as far as the eye can see. There’s a border crisis, a fentanyl crisis and a crime crisis. Massive deficit spending is leading to a fiscal crisis. President Biden’s 39% approval rating as he seeks a second term would suggest a leadership crisis.
6 mins read
A mantra endlessly repeated by US officials and military leaders, especially in their testimony before Congress, is that America’s vast network of minor state allies in NATO and around the world provide it with resources and power that Russia and China cannot match. However, this is simply not true. It is a fantasy, unsupported by the factual historical record.
4 mins read
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise – to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.
7 mins read
It started out rather differently than we now sometimes imagine it. When Vladimir Putin took over the Russian presidency from Boris Yeltsin 25 years ago, on New Year’s Eve 1999, he was seen as a man with whom Washington could do business.
10 mins read
An official inquiry into a notorious 2018 Novichok poisoning case has found the victim briefly emerged from a coma, revealing information which wholly undermined the British government’s narrative. While the medical professional she told was muzzled, mainstream media has ignored the new finding.
7 mins read
The international system during the Cold War was organised under extremely zero-sum conditions. There were two centres of power with two incompatible ideologies that relied on continued tensions between two rival military alliances to preserve bloc discipline and security dependence among allies. Without other centres of power or an ideological middle ground, the loss for one was a gain for the other. Yet, faced with the possibility of nuclear war, there were also incentives to reduce the rivalry and overcome the zero-sum bloc politics.
7 mins read
The “Deep State” continues to pressure the new U.S. Administration to “not give in to any of Moscow’s proposals and create from day one of direct negotiations, a position of strength that will eventually force Moscow to compromise and send a clear message to China, Iran and North Korea that the United States is back in strength and glory.”
7 mins read
US President-elect Donald Trump’s statements about acquiring Greenland not exempting economic or military means received critical reactions from Russian officials. They called the development “dramatic” and predict “uncertainty and tension in the region.” Some Russian political commentators celebrated Trump’s statements while others expressed skepticism and noted the potential implications for Russia.
4 mins read
The agreement on British aid to Ukraine signed by Keir Starmer in Kyiv yesterday is good as far as it genuinely goes. It is indeed very important that the West go on supporting Ukraine during the forthcoming peace negotiations, in order to reduce the chance of a Ukrainian collapse and encourage the Russian government to compromise.
4 mins read
The development of a new generation of drones has revolutionized how wars are fought, according to U.S. officials.
14 mins read
The partnership helped Ukraine defend itself and gave the U.S. key intelligence.
4 mins read
The scandal reveals serious weaknesses in Ukraine’s military command
5 mins read
VIENNA, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Eastern European nations confronting a plethora of economic threats fuelled by war on their doorstep may face fresh pressure if peace is reached in Ukraine – from tight labour markets that fuel inflation thanks to an exodus of Ukrainian workers.
6 mins read
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the top U.S. diplomat said it is “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to recover all the land Russia has seized since launching its full-scale invasion nearly three years ago, adding Kyiv will have to make concessions to Moscow to end the fighting.
1 min read
At yesterday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State.
8 mins read
With U.S.-Russian relations at their most strained since the Cold War, reducing the risk of direct military confrontation and stabilizing global security, the United States must balance firm deterrence with strategic diplomacy to turn a bitter rivalry into competitive coexistence.
5 mins read
OFAC has targeted Russia’s major oil companies and insurers as well as over 180 tankers in the shadow fleet. But will it make a difference?
12 mins read
The recent U.S. presidential election illuminates the fragility of American democracy. Decades of political and social polarization have produced a highly unsettled American electorate with a deep distrust in democratic institutions. Political and social divides, compounded by economic inequality and entrenched partisan warfare, have catalyzed the emergence of authoritarian-leaning voters and enabled more extreme ideological factions within both parties, with the Trumpist faction in the Republican Party as the most radicalized one.
3 mins read
A key player in coordinating U.S. military aid and marshaling international support for Ukraine has left the Pentagon just days before DONALD TRUMP takes the White House and puts its own imprint on the war.
12 mins read
There’s an unusual tradition in Florida courts: a judge deciding on a motion will sometimes ask each party to submit their own version of the ruling. Then, the judge will simply sign one. That’s how Judge Robert Pegg’s July ruling against 20 of America’s leading journalists imported the unusual capitalization that is part of the House Style of Trump lawsuits, in this case repeated, deadpan references to the “Russia Collusion Hoax.”
3 mins read
MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Russia’s point man for arms control cautioned Donald Trump’s incoming administration on Friday against resuming nuclear testing, saying Moscow would keep its own options open amid what he said was Washington’s “extremely hostile” stance.
Vladimir Emelyanovich Maximov (Russian: Владимир Емельянович Максимов, born Lev Alexeyevich Samsonov, Лев Алексеевич Самсонов; 27 November 1930, — 26 March 1995) was a Soviet and Russian writer, publicist, essayist and editor, one of the leading figures of the Soviet and post-Soviet dissident movement abroad.
Born in Moscow into a working class family, Lev Samsonov spent an unhappy childhood in and out of orphanages and colonies after his father was prosecuted in 1937 during the anti-Trotskyism purge. He went to Siberia to travel there under an assumed name, Vladimir Maximov (to become later his pen name), spent time in jails and labour camps, then worked as a bricklayer and construction worker. In 1951 he settled in one of the Kuban stanitsas and started to write short stories and poems for local newspapers. His debut book Pokolenye na chasakh (Generation on the Look-out) came out in Cherkessk in 1956.
In 1956 Maximov returned to Moscow and published, among other pieces, the short novel My obzhivayem zemlyu (We Harness the Land, 1961) telling the story of Siberian hobos, courageous, but deeply troubled men, trying to find each their own way of settling down into the unfriendly Soviet reality. It was followed by Zhiv chelovek (Man is Alive). The former caught the attention of Konstantin Paustovsky who included it into his almanac Pages from Tarusa. The latter found its champion in Vsevolod Kochetov who in 1962 published it in Oktyabr, which he was then in charge of. It was met with both public and critical acclaim and was produced in 1965 by the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre. In 1963 Maximov became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers and in the mid-1960s joined the Oktyabr magazine's staff. All the while, though, his literary output was getting harsher, darker and more pessimistic.
Two of Maximov's early 1970s novels, Sem dnei tvorenya (Seven Days of Creation, 1971) and The Quarantin (1973) proved to be the turning point of his career. On the one hand, in retrospect they marked the high point of his creativity. On the other, steeped with the longing for Christian ideals and skeptical as to the viability of the Communist morality, both went against the grain of the norms and the criteria of Socialist realism. They were rejected by all Soviet publishers, came out in Samizdat, were officially banned and got their author into serious trouble. In June 1973 he was expelled from the Writers' Union, and spent several months in a psychiatric ward. In 1974 Maximov left the country to settle in Paris, and in October 1975 was stripped of the Soviet citizenship.
In 1974 Maximov launched the literary, political and religious magazine Kontinent to take up what many saw as the Hertzen-founded tradition of supporting the Russian literature in exile. It became the center point of Russian intellectual life in Western Europe, attracting such diverse authors as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Galich, Viktor Nekrasov, Joseph Brodsky and Andrey Sakharov, the latter describing Maximov as "the man of unwavering honesty." Maximov remained the magazine's editor-in-chief up until 1992, when, during one of his visits to Moscow, he transferred it to Russia and granted all rights to his colleagues in Moscow. He was also the head of the executive committee of the international anti-communist organization Resistance International.
Among Maximov's best-known works written in France were the novels Kovcheg dlya nezvanykh (The Arc for the Uninvited, 1976), telling the story of the Soviet development of the Kuril Islands after the World War II, an autobiographical dilogy Proshchanye iz niotkuda (Farewell from Nowhere, 1974—1982), and Zaglyanut v bezdnu (To Look Into the Abyss, 1986), the latter having as its theme Alexander Kolchak's romantic life. All three, based upon historical documents, portrayed Bolshevism as a doctrine of ruthlessness, amorality and political voluntarism. He authored several plays on the life of Russians in emigration, among them Who's Afraid of Ray Bradbury? (Кто боится Рэя Брэдбери?, 1988), Berlin at the Night's End (Берлин на исходе ночи,1991) and There, Over the River... (Там, за рекой, 1991).
The drastic change in political situation in his homeland and the fall of the Soviet Union left Maximov unimpressed. He switched to criticizing the new Russia's regime and, while still a staunch anti-Communist, started to published his diatribes aimed at Egor Gaidar-led liberal reforms regularly in the Communist Pravda, to great disdain of some of his friends.
