Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that should Russian-US and Russian-NATO negotiations fail to address Moscow’s concerns, Russia would undertake a ‘military-technical’ response to what it perceives as the growing threat to stability in Ukraine and along its border and its ally Belarus’s border with NATO. Leaving aside the difficulty of getting inside Putin’s head, it is extremely difficult to understand what Putin has in mind by this term. One can guess that it means a non-kinetic, that is non-combat military response of putting military pieces in a more forward position. There also are less traditionally, more hybrid warfare responses available as well as political options. What are some of the possible options that the Russian General Staff, Defense Ministry, and Security Council are likely to propose?

We’ll never agree with the Russian leader on principles, but we might be able to negotiate a better security structure for Europe.

It seems the administration just wants to soothe (and bluster) but take no concrete actions over Ukraine. It won’t work this time.

Take heart, most of you who fear war rather than profit from it. You would not know it amid the gloom and doom about “another Russian invasion” of Ukraine, but diplomacy – not war – is about to break out this month.

To seize the opportunity to avert a third world war with Russia and China, Biden should negotiate a comprehensive security agreement with Russia by building upon what Putin has outlined, while also taking decisive action to shore up America’s defenses against existential attack by U.S. adversaries.

As the Russian president’s year-end presser helped underscore, Europe will increasingly understand itself as the western end of Eurasia rather than the eastern shore of the Atlantic.

Pity the political scientist studying Russia. How does one analyze such a highly personalistic regime, in which key decisions are made behind closed doors and democratic elements have been squeezed out over the past decade? How should one assess the politics of a country that is a geopolitical outlier: the largest territory in the world, with borders from Norway to North Korea, and that has played a decisive role in every major European war of the last 200 years?

In the past couple of days, my peers in the community of Russia analysts have addressed the question of “what if” – what is it that Russia can and may do if the negotiations with the United States over its draft Treaties on security in Europe fail within the very short time period the Russians have set, apparently one month. Parenthetically, I am amused that spokesmen for the U.S. State Department say that they may enter into talks with the Russians some time in January. It seems they did not catch the short timeline the Russians have set or mistakenly believe it was a bluff.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and I have something in common. My big brother, Joe-Ray, died during the World War II. Unlike Putin’s big brother, though, mine was done in by meningitis – not by the Germans.

While much of the world wonders when Russia will invade Ukraine, the US Senate’s number 2 ranking member on the Armed Forces committee has added something new: When will the US invade Russia?