It’s easy to get down in the weeds of getting Leopard tanks to Ukraine or when the spring offensive will come, but I want to draw back to a bigger picture. Vladimir Putin, or Russia, depending on ho
Vladimir Putin has made clear his ambition to reintegrate Ukraine into a Russian Empire. Russia expanded from the Ukraine-Moscow-Novgorod area across Asia over a period of centuries. By 1721, it was a
Update 10/25/2022: I’ve added an April 20 quote at the suggestion of François Heisbourg and September 30 from Gene Dannen. Thanks to both. As we try to decipher Sergey Shoigu’s phonecalls to the
Motivating a ceasefire is difficult. A warring party who feels they are doing well may want to continue their run, or they may want a ceasefire to consolidate their gains. A losing party may not want
As Russia’s situation deteriorates on the battlefield, concerns grow about the possibility that Vladimir Putin might try to change the situation with a battlefield nuclear weapon. The war is so far
Yesterday Rob wrote a piece that I agree with. We’ve both been cautious about the news coming out of Ukraine because it was hard to verify, but the Ukrainian offensive seemed to be going well an
There are a lot of bad takes coming out on the war. Two documents provide the background necessary to evaluate them. Masha Gessen talks about how authoritarianism works in Russia in this extended inte
This is a guest post by friend of the blog, Jamie Mayerfeld. I’ve been sitting on an unfinished draft piece on the same subject: the remarkably bad DSA IC statement on Ukraine. So when I saw tha