The administration’s decision to allow strikes on Russian territory brings the U.S. to the brink.

It’s complicated.

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.

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.”

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.

Yeltsin grinned while Clinton cried.

Conservatives plan a Soviet University

Russia’s top envoy to the United States has ended his term, leaving behind an ominous forecast about the risk of deteriorating bilateral ties escalating into a nuclear-armed clash over the ongoing war in Ukraine in an exclusive interview with Newsweek.

A river runs through Russian and, more recently, Ukrainian history. Ironically enough, the Dnieper River that unites Russia and Ukraine in this and other ways – the river rises in the Valdai Hills of Smolensk, Russia and runs through Belarus and Ukraine – is now the focus of the greatest schism in the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Russian forces appear impossible to stop and will arrive at the Dnieper at some point along its snaking length no later than next year, with Russian troops perhaps controlling the river’s and the country’s Left Bank by then. Russia – as well as the West and whatever remains of Ukraine‘s Maidan regime will then face some serious decisions.

In Moscow, a birch tree that’s meant to symbolize U.S.-Russian friendship has several times failed to thrive, as Edward Lozansky recounts. But citizen diplomats keep trying.