NATO support for a war designed to degrade the Russian military and drive Vladimir Putin from power is not going according to plan. The new sophisticated military hardware won’t help.
The West’s recent approval of more military assistance for Kiev risks nuclear nightmare, fails Ukrainian expectations and rebukes the World War II history enshrined in a prominent Soviet war memorial in Berlin.
In prison death chambers, the state is willing to quite literally reenact a practice from some of the country’s bloodiest history, writes Mark M. Smith.
No regime has an unlimited supply of political legitimacy. Any government, democratic or non-democratic, needs to constantly read public opinion and to try to respond to people’s minimum expectations and demands.
In the mass media you’re not allowed to talk about the U.S.-NATO actions that diplomats, politicians, academics — even the head of the C.I.A. — have long warned would lead to war in Ukraine.
Even neighboring Poland, a staunch ally of Kiev in the ongoing war with Russia, has criticized the Verkhovna Rada’s Jan. 1 celebration of the birthday of Stepan Bandera.
The U.N. treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons bolsters the hope that the nine nuclear powers will grow into pragmatic, if not ethical, adult governments, writes H. Patricia Hynes.