Ukraine is not Vietnam or Afghanistan — Russia is not going to leave what it believes to be a key national interest without a fight.

Russia’s war marks the definitive end of America’s unipolar moment and returns the world to a state best explained by realism.

While claiming to defend democracy, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has outlawed his opposition, ordered his rivals’ arrest, and presided over the disappearance and assassination of dissidents across the country.

There has been much speculation on the still distant but real prospect farther down the line that any Russian failure in the war with Ukraine could provoke a revolt against President Vladimir Putin either ‘from above’ by elements within the state or elite or ‘from below’ in a revolutionary overthrow (even less likely).

Ukrainians are now suffering under an illegal and brutal invasion by Russia. Although Russia certainly did not start the eight-year-long war in Ukraine, Putin did massively expand the war zone and is, therefore, under Nuremberg principles, primarily responsible for the deaths that follow in its wake.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy is an entertainer turned politician famous for television productions such as ‘Kvartal 95’ and ‘Servant of the People’, which also became the name of is real world political party. The problem in making such a transition is that the spheres of entertainment and politics both rely on virtuality.

The eminent scholar on the worsening threat of nuclear warfare, how to end the war in Ukraine, the self-justifying myths propagated by imperial powers, why the Global South finds American moralizing laughable, and more.

Kiev faces a choice: make peace for its people or war for its supposed friends?

Russian soldiers left the town Bucha in Ukraine on March 30. Two days later the Ukrainian Gestapo like SBU and men of the fascist Azov battalion moved in to find and remove ‘traitors’. On April 2/3 video was published that showed freshly killed men laying on the streets of Bucha. Several of them had white arm bands signaling to Russian forces to see them as friendlies.

In his first extended remarks in nearly a month about the conflict in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that peace talks had reached a “dead end” and pledged that Russia’s “military operation will continue until its full completion.”