8 mins read
One Day, Ukrainians Might Hate America
There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.
8 mins read
There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.
5 mins read
Syria has fallen. It is now highly likely that the country will fall apart. Outside and inside actors will try to capture and/or control as many parts of the cadaver as each of them can. Years of chaos and strife will follow from that.
6 mins read
Ian Proud was a member of His Britannic Majesty’s Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019.
3 mins read
The ‘Kellogg Plan’ looks totally unacceptable to Moscow in its leaked form, but it’s still good to talk
6 mins read
Once the Warsaw Pact closed shop there was no good or honest reason for keeping NATO going. The threat that NATO was created to deter disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed. The European Union’s influence on the new post-Cold War order has been by trade, investment, diplomacy and political intimacy, the hallmarks of a successful union that has mastered the art of expansion and influence by clever use of the carrot, whilst America has led its quest for influence by application of the doctrine of overriding military strength. Now we see its military lead in Ukraine while leading the EU into an entanglement that most European don’t want.
5 mins read
The ongoing crises in the world threaten global catastrophe, and at the Verona Eurasian Economic Forum everyone agreed that diplomacy, not military reinforcement, is needed to prevent the worst-case scenario.
5 mins read
Two steps forward, one step back on negotiations, while Biden plows more weapons into Ukraine
6 mins read
As Russia gains ground on the battlefield in high-attrition combat, Zelensky is facing increased pressure to deploy younger people to the front lines.
6 mins read
On the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Roman Solomonyuk shocked his family when he volunteered to fight. But over two-and-a-half years later, he’s joined the growing number of Ukrainian soldiers who’ve called it quits.
4 mins read
The list of Trump’s team members is long, so let’s concentrate on a short list of “troika” candidates who deal with foreign affairs and national security, starting with secretary of state Marco Rubio.
1 min read
Nixon’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Reagan’s ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock debated the future of NATO and Russia during the Budapest Summit on Dec. 5, 1994. Robert MacNeil moderated the discussion.
3 mins read
The threat of a nuclear war between the US and Russia is real—on this point, there is rare bipartisan agreement in Congress.
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.
10 mins read
Three years before it intervened in Syria, Russia feared an Islamist takeover in Damascus would lead to widespread chaos in the region, like a new Afghanistan in the Levant, reported Joe Lauria in 2012.
5 mins read
Syria has fallen. It is now highly likely that the country will fall apart. Outside and inside actors will try to capture and/or control as many parts of the cadaver as each of them can. Years of chaos and strife will follow from that.
3 mins read
The ‘Kellogg Plan’ looks totally unacceptable to Moscow in its leaked form, but it’s still good to talk
6 mins read
Once the Warsaw Pact closed shop there was no good or honest reason for keeping NATO going. The threat that NATO was created to deter disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed. The European Union’s influence on the new post-Cold War order has been by trade, investment, diplomacy and political intimacy, the hallmarks of a successful union that has mastered the art of expansion and influence by clever use of the carrot, whilst America has led its quest for influence by application of the doctrine of overriding military strength. Now we see its military lead in Ukraine while leading the EU into an entanglement that most European don’t want.
5 mins read
The ongoing crises in the world threaten global catastrophe, and at the Verona Eurasian Economic Forum everyone agreed that diplomacy, not military reinforcement, is needed to prevent the worst-case scenario.
1 min read
Nixon’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Reagan’s ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock debated the future of NATO and Russia during the Budapest Summit on Dec. 5, 1994. Robert MacNeil moderated the discussion.
8 mins read
There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.
6 mins read
Ian Proud was a member of His Britannic Majesty’s Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019.
5 mins read
Two steps forward, one step back on negotiations, while Biden plows more weapons into Ukraine
6 mins read
As Russia gains ground on the battlefield in high-attrition combat, Zelensky is facing increased pressure to deploy younger people to the front lines.
6 mins read
On the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Roman Solomonyuk shocked his family when he volunteered to fight. But over two-and-a-half years later, he’s joined the growing number of Ukrainian soldiers who’ve called it quits.
4 mins read
The list of Trump’s team members is long, so let’s concentrate on a short list of “troika” candidates who deal with foreign affairs and national security, starting with secretary of state Marco Rubio.
10 mins read
The administration’s decision to allow strikes on Russian territory brings the U.S. to the brink.
5 mins read
It’s complicated.
5 mins read
The Russian establishment profoundly distrusts Donald Trump. Though usually forgotten in the West, it was his administration — not Barack Obama’s or Joe Biden’s – which began the supply of weapons to Ukraine in 2017. Trump also allowed US intelligence to build up the presence in Ukraine that played an important role in preventing Russian victory in the first months of 2022. In fact, apart from some complimentary remarks about Vladimir Putin, the US President-elect has done little to improve relations with Russia.
8 mins read
Russians close to the Kremlin voiced optimism that Donald J. Trump could help end the war in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. Vladimir V. Putin said Mr. Trump’s remarks on ending the war “deserve attention.”
5 mins read
I will try not to repeat the well-known demonstrations – wilfully ignored in certain official circles – that the tragic conflict between Ukraine and Russia was completely avoidable had the Western Alliance not fostered and organized a coalition of revisionist militant forces within Ukraine and in Eastern Europe committed to an openly anti-Russian agenda. So many scholarly and talented experts and public figures have argued that thesis, from John Mearsheimer to Sahra Wagenknecht and from Emmanuel Todd to Robert F Kennedy Jr., but by looking at European history, we can notice precedents that show a geopolitical pattern into which the current protracted war finds its place.
7 mins read
Yeltsin grinned while Clinton cried.
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.