6 mins read
As British state-controlled news opened its lunchtime broadcast on Valentine’s Day, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet, reported that the Munich Security Conference was facing its ‘biggest crisis’ in its sixty one years.
7 mins read
Europeans are arguing for commitments that they cannot keep and Russia is bound to test, but not all agree anyway.
6 mins read
As a fan of the Ukrainian television series, Servant of the People, I can’t help but be struck by the irony of an actor who played a president transitioning into an actor who became a president. Scripts, however, are one thing. Reality is something completely different. And Volodymyr Zelensky’s last scene, unlike the character of Vasily Goloborodko he played in the series, will not have a happy ending, but rather be the stuff of nightmares.
1 min read
Extraordinary events last week have called into question the future of the post-war Western alliance. With Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern and Patrick Lawrence. Watch the replay.
7 mins read
Washington’s communication channels with Moscow have been flung open, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar, as Rubio’s swiftly arranged meeting with Lavrov on Tuesday makes clear.
2 mins read
Donald Trump and his team enter negotiations with Russia armed with a set of false, misleading assumptions. Donald Trump reportedly continues to believe, as does his team of negotiators, that Russia is suffering economically and militarily and wants to end the war in Ukraine. This is not true, at least as far as the folks in Moscow are concerned. Russia’s objectives are clear — restore normal relations with the United States and obtain an agreement to end the threat that NATO presents to Russia. Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, and others, have been very clear in stating that Russia will not be bamboozled again into accepting a ceasefire with a promise of peace ahead. They made that mistake in halting their offensive operations after the 2015 battle in Debaltsevo as part of the Minsk II agreement.
8 mins read
There will be some hard diplomatic work ahead, but at least the long process of negotiation is finally about to start
5 mins read
Negotiations were first high-level talks on the conflict since early months of Vladimir Putin’s invasion
6 mins read
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Russia and the U.S. agreed Tuesday to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, the two countries’ top diplomats said after talks that reflected an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump.
8 mins read
Excluding Ukraine and Europe from peace talks with Russia, Trump reminds his proxies that Washington runs the war.
8 mins read
There has to be peace in Ukraine. Kiev and its European allies have to be persuaded or pressurised by Trump
11 mins read
The US cutting loose both Kiev and Brussels is the way to end the war, and that’s a good thing
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.
3 mins read
Press release from February 17, 2025
6 mins read
As British state-controlled news opened its lunchtime broadcast on Valentine’s Day, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet, reported that the Munich Security Conference was facing its ‘biggest crisis’ in its sixty one years.
7 mins read
Europeans are arguing for commitments that they cannot keep and Russia is bound to test, but not all agree anyway.
1 min read
Extraordinary events last week have called into question the future of the post-war Western alliance. With Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern and Patrick Lawrence. Watch the replay.
2 mins read
Donald Trump and his team enter negotiations with Russia armed with a set of false, misleading assumptions. Donald Trump reportedly continues to believe, as does his team of negotiators, that Russia is suffering economically and militarily and wants to end the war in Ukraine. This is not true, at least as far as the folks in Moscow are concerned. Russia’s objectives are clear — restore normal relations with the United States and obtain an agreement to end the threat that NATO presents to Russia. Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, and others, have been very clear in stating that Russia will not be bamboozled again into accepting a ceasefire with a promise of peace ahead. They made that mistake in halting their offensive operations after the 2015 battle in Debaltsevo as part of the Minsk II agreement.
1 min read
Glenn Diesen joins the show today to discuss the Russia Ukraine War, how it ends. Where does Russia and Ukraine go from here? We then expand our conversation to discuss Trump and what his presidency means to the world. We discuss the rise of China, the great tech battle between the US and China and the future of our multipolar world.
6 mins read
As a fan of the Ukrainian television series, Servant of the People, I can’t help but be struck by the irony of an actor who played a president transitioning into an actor who became a president. Scripts, however, are one thing. Reality is something completely different. And Volodymyr Zelensky’s last scene, unlike the character of Vasily Goloborodko he played in the series, will not have a happy ending, but rather be the stuff of nightmares.
8 mins read
There will be some hard diplomatic work ahead, but at least the long process of negotiation is finally about to start
5 mins read
Negotiations were first high-level talks on the conflict since early months of Vladimir Putin’s invasion
6 mins read
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Russia and the U.S. agreed Tuesday to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, the two countries’ top diplomats said after talks that reflected an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump.
8 mins read
Excluding Ukraine and Europe from peace talks with Russia, Trump reminds his proxies that Washington runs the war.
8 mins read
There has to be peace in Ukraine. Kiev and its European allies have to be persuaded or pressurised by Trump
4 mins read
Edward Lozansky was a Soviet nuclear physicist who during the height of the Cold War became a dissident.
12 mins read
It was only a few weeks ago that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met to ink the historic Russo-Iranian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The pact itself was a milestone, so much so that commentators around the world are still widely discussing its implications. Perhaps one of the most striking elements of the treaty is the major focus on Eurasia. Although Western analysts tend to focus on Russo-Iranian cooperation in the Middle East, the treaty indicates that Eurasia is of even more immediate geopolitical significance to both Moscow and Tehran. To historians and long-time observers of Iran and Russia, this is hardly a surprise. The Eurasian region – that is, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Caspian Sea – forms an integral part of the common Russo-Iranian neighborhood.
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.
7 mins read
Washington’s communication channels with Moscow have been flung open, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar, as Rubio’s swiftly arranged meeting with Lavrov on Tuesday makes clear.
11 mins read
The US cutting loose both Kiev and Brussels is the way to end the war, and that’s a good thing
8 mins read
Russian leader has sought to cut Ukraine and Europe out of negotiations
7 mins read
Trump’s recent moves, including a conversation with Putin and a demand for Ukrainian mineral rights, are worrisome signs for Zelensky.
4 mins read
‘We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,’ Trump says
4 mins read
The diplomatic tango between Washington and Moscow is underway, but Trump’s promise to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine on Trump’s terms appears more unlikely with each passing day. Prior to the conversation between the two leaders during the last four days, diplomats representing Moscow and Washington in their respective embassies did the detail work of arranging the phone diplomacy. But, according to Borizzkman, there were two, not one, conversations (this is Borizzkman’s concise eight-minute video presenting the latest developments):
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.
