5 mins read
Slovakia gives pro-Russian populist nationalism another win
It could join the EU’s awkward squad if Robert Fico forms a government
5 mins read
It could join the EU’s awkward squad if Robert Fico forms a government
7 mins read
In 2007, Putin asked the world, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” He then went on to remind his audience of NATO’s promise not to expand east of Germany toward Russia’s borders.
6 mins read
If you’re Volodymyr Zelenskiy right now you’ll take little solace from Joe Biden’s earnest assurances that the US “will not walk away” from Ukraine.
5 mins read
It should be no surprise that the Canadian parliament was misled into applauding an old Nazi and former member of the Waffen SS Galizien in Ukraine during the second world war. Yaroslav Hunka served in the 14th SS Volunteer Division “Galicia”, which was made up of Ukrainian nationalists. At the end of the war, these “volunteers” who fought with Hitler’s army and collaborated in massacres committed on Ukrainian soil during the Second World War, were not extradited to the Soviet Union but like Hunka were able to emigrate to Canada while many others escaped to the UK and through the Vatican’s “Rat Lines” to South America.
3 mins read
There’s been a lot of debate lately over the US strategy of surrounding nations like Russia and China with war machinery in order to deter them from aggressive actions. Some argue that since powerful nations tend to respond aggressively to the amassing of military threats on their borders, this policy actually provokes the very aggressions its proponents claim it prevents.
8 mins read
For the record, I knew Simon Wiesenthal well, he was an honorary member of the Board of my non-profit Andrei Sakharov Institute, and I am a contributor to his anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Center. Occasionally, I contribute to some other charities, including the Holocaust memorial in DC.
14 mins read
Deliberate provocations of a nuclear rival, coups d’état, colour revolutions, broken promises, broken treaties, escalation of tensions, demonization, invective, double-standards — all this while asserting adherence to international legal norms and playing innocent about our aggressions, our violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, of articles 1(2)[1], 2(3)[2], 2(4)[3] and 39[4] of the UN Charter.
5 mins read
There’s been an astonishingly brazen propaganda push to normalize war profiteering in Ukraine as Kyiv coordinates with the arms industry and western governments to convert the war-ravaged nation into a major domestic weapons manufacturer, thereby turning Ukrainians into proxies of the military industrial complex as well as the Pentagon.
24 mins read
There is no victory in this war. There are only bad and worse outcomes.
7 mins read
The Senate has put forward a proposal for $6 billion in more funding; in the House, McCarthy faces revolt.
4 mins read
While driving down the road today listening to Alexander Mercouris I suddenly realized that the United States and NATO have been pursuing a JENGA strategy against Russia. A lot of leaders in the NATO club are invested heavily in the belief that if enough pressure is applied to Russia then the country, the economy, the military and society will collapse like a JENGA tower. Only one little problem — that strategy has failed; the opposite happened.
4 mins read
It’s funny how much empire apologia in the 2020s consists of westerners saying that governments who aren’t aligned with the United States shouldn’t have the security concerns they have and shouldn’t regard their national interests the way they do.
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.
9 mins read
As world tensions heighten over Ukraine, some fear this crisis might grow into a great geopolitical catastrophe. Certainly it could. But few recognize there is an even greater matter of conflict brewing between the US and Russia. It could quickly outpace the already-dangerous Ukraine war.
5 mins read
At this moment, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock now stands at only 90 seconds before midnight. Thus, as we move closer and closer to a nuclear World War 3, why not identify the major steps that took us to this dangerously slippery road? Who knows, perhaps this exercise could help to bring some perspective to those who are pushing us into oblivion. They have families and children too. Sometimes even the greatest villains have the moment of repentance.
5 mins read
It could join the EU’s awkward squad if Robert Fico forms a government
3 mins read
There’s been a lot of debate lately over the US strategy of surrounding nations like Russia and China with war machinery in order to deter them from aggressive actions. Some argue that since powerful nations tend to respond aggressively to the amassing of military threats on their borders, this policy actually provokes the very aggressions its proponents claim it prevents.
4 mins read
It’s funny how much empire apologia in the 2020s consists of westerners saying that governments who aren’t aligned with the United States shouldn’t have the security concerns they have and shouldn’t regard their national interests the way they do.
5 mins read
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller leave a meeting during the Liberal Cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese
23 mins read
Browder’s critics argue that he didn’t merely profit from Russian oligarchy as it transformed into Putinism; he may even have helped usher that system into existence by pioneering and refining the structures that continue to enable it.
3 mins read
In one fell swoop, Trudeau discredited himself as a so-called “champion of human rights”, while Zelensky proved beyond any doubt that an ethnic and practicing Jew can indeed glorify the Nazis’ genocidal allies despite having family who were murdered in the Holocaust.
6 mins read
In April 2019, Ukraine was brimming with optimism as it elected Volodymyr Zelensky, a candidate who promised peace, an end to government corruption, and economic prosperity. Fast forward four years: a civil war within the Donbas region turned into a European war raging on Ukrainian territory, destroying the country’s infrastructure, killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, and creating millions of refugees. Government corruption is an all-time high, and the country is in a state of material poverty.
7 mins read
In 2007, Putin asked the world, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” He then went on to remind his audience of NATO’s promise not to expand east of Germany toward Russia’s borders.
6 mins read
If you’re Volodymyr Zelenskiy right now you’ll take little solace from Joe Biden’s earnest assurances that the US “will not walk away” from Ukraine.
5 mins read
It should be no surprise that the Canadian parliament was misled into applauding an old Nazi and former member of the Waffen SS Galizien in Ukraine during the second world war. Yaroslav Hunka served in the 14th SS Volunteer Division “Galicia”, which was made up of Ukrainian nationalists. At the end of the war, these “volunteers” who fought with Hitler’s army and collaborated in massacres committed on Ukrainian soil during the Second World War, were not extradited to the Soviet Union but like Hunka were able to emigrate to Canada while many others escaped to the UK and through the Vatican’s “Rat Lines” to South America.
8 mins read
For the record, I knew Simon Wiesenthal well, he was an honorary member of the Board of my non-profit Andrei Sakharov Institute, and I am a contributor to his anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Center. Occasionally, I contribute to some other charities, including the Holocaust memorial in DC.
14 mins read
Deliberate provocations of a nuclear rival, coups d’état, colour revolutions, broken promises, broken treaties, escalation of tensions, demonization, invective, double-standards — all this while asserting adherence to international legal norms and playing innocent about our aggressions, our violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, of articles 1(2)[1], 2(3)[2], 2(4)[3] and 39[4] of the UN Charter.
48 mins read
The scholar who famously warned in 2014 that NATO was provoking Russia in Ukraine on the state of the war and the troubles ahead.
7 mins read
Russia and China fully understand they must stick together to fend off Washington, because if one falls the other is on its own
7 mins read
Germany defies US by maintaining constructive engagement with China, which Berlin sees as uniquely placed as peacemaker in Ukraine
8 mins read
Zelensky came to Washington to receive a $45 billion Christmas present, stuffed in a sack of $1.7 trillion in U.S. government spending.
7 mins read
Biden Regime Secretary of State Blinken has blocked negotiations between Russia and Ukraine by declaring it is US policy to drive Russia out of the reincorporated territories, including Crimea.
4 mins read
Ukraine continues to shrilly double-down on its claim that the S-300 missile that killed two Polish citizens earlier this week was a Russian missile fired from Russia. Russian-made it may have been since Ukrainian arsenals have long held Russian-made weaponry from Soviet times.
20 mins read
William Browder claims to be fighting for justice. One of the reasons he’s so successful may be because he’s adept at aligning his story with the devastating image that Russia has been projecting for years. And many media outlets believe him.
5 mins read
With rare exceptions, this headline could be applied to all the mainstream media in the U.S. today. But here I’ll concentrate on only the New York Times and the Washington Post, since these two papers have long been considered America’s journalistic icons, ably representing the professionalism and integrity of their calling, and deserving their places on the Olympic peak.
1 min read
If there was no Russia, you would have to invent it, even just for the US to try to destroy it. There is something deeply rooted in neocons that makes them crave for a good enemy, preferably someone to demonise as a primordial evil that fits into their manichean world view.
7 mins read
Avoiding Nuclear War: As the list of those who take the looming threat of nuclear war seriously keeps growing, let’s try to analyze what brought us to this sad state of affairs.
7 mins read
Any longtime observer of Russian politics would know that the state of play in the Russian-American tango is best assessed from subplots, often obscure and unnoticed, away from its amphitheatre where gladiators cross swords. Therefore, two alleys on Ukraine crisis need to be explored.
7 mins read
As the list of those who take the looming threat of nuclear war seriously keeps growing, let’s try to analyze what brought us to this sad state of affairs.
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.