Tag: Russia

Rohini Hensman: The Historical Background to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine / Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War

NB: An excellent and well-researched essay. The clinically neutral experts on mass media and academia might do themselves a favour by reading it. Beneath this essay is a comment I wrote yesterday to an article in Scheerpost by Michael Brenner, an American professor of international relations. Here is a far more humane essay on the… Read More Rohini Hensman: The Historical Background to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine / Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War

Dilip

Rebecca Solnit: It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network / George Monbiot: We must confront Russian propaganda / Moscow police detain children for laying flowers at Ukrainian embassy

NB: The UN General Assembly has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for withdrawal. Putin is a gangster in absolute power, and those Indian commentators who find excuses for this brutal invasion in the name of ‘national interest’ are ethical nihilists. By the way, it was the Soviet Union, not ‘Russia’,  which stood by India’s… Read More Rebecca Solnit: It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network / George Monbiot: We must confront Russian propaganda / Moscow police detain children for laying flowers at Ukrainian embassy

Dilip

Rafael Behr: The age of levity is over. The Russia-Ukraine war will shake politics into a new sobriety / Owen Jones: Putin’s aggression makes clear the case for an anti-war movement

Western conviction that this is not supposed to happen in Europe any more has not stopped it happening. The shock is producing dramatic policy changes across the continent.    The past has invaded the present. Russia’s military aggression has burst over Ukraine like a storm cloud gathered from a different, darker time. It is raining terror… Read More Rafael Behr: The age of levity is over. The Russia-Ukraine war will shake politics into a new sobriety / Owen Jones: Putin’s aggression makes clear the case for an anti-war movement

Dilip

Shyam Saran: Russia’s friends are finding it harder to look the other way / Chinese historians speak out against Russian invasion

Ukraine is enveloped in the inevitable fog of war and it is difficult to assess whether Russian forces are on the threshold of overwhelming the much less capable Ukrainian forces. Vladimir Putin’s calculations – that the shock and awe of the Russian invasion would lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian government and surrender of… Read More Shyam Saran: Russia’s friends are finding it harder to look the other way / Chinese historians speak out against Russian invasion

Dilip

Mukul Kesavan: Ukraine – a conflict between two transnational entities / Vladimir Sorokin: Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power

Vladimir Putin anticipated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by writing screeds about the essential one-ness of Russians and Ukrainians, united as they were, in his view, by a common origin in the medieval principalities of Kievan Rus. Putin insisted that Ukraine had no real tradition of independent statehood and blamed Lenin and the Bolsheviks for inventing… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Ukraine – a conflict between two transnational entities / Vladimir Sorokin: Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power

Dilip

Marina Hyde: Putin’s tale of two cities–London for his oligarchs, Kyiv for his bombs / Oliver Bullough: Butler to the World

This afternoon, when I walk down to the opticians, I will pass some large, unconvincingly spontaneous graffiti that recently appeared on someone else’s wall. It reads: “There is no Russian interference in elections.” (Kids, eh?) Next, I will pass two vast houses that I know to be owned by oligarchs – one of whom is Roman… Read More Marina Hyde: Putin’s tale of two cities–London for his oligarchs, Kyiv for his bombs / Oliver Bullough: Butler to the World

Dilip

Kelly Denton-Borhaug: The True Costs of America’s All-Consuming War-Culture / Chris Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold

The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business,… Read More Kelly Denton-Borhaug: The True Costs of America’s All-Consuming War-Culture / Chris Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold

Dilip

Tory lobbying row over unregulated ‘Westminster Russia Forum’ / Donald Trump can't stop praising Vladimir Putin

Concerns have been raised that unregulated pro-Moscow lobbyists at the heart of Westminster are using their links to Tory MPs to gain influence and respectability. A group formerly known as the Conservative Friends of Russia (CRF) is advertising its first in-person conference for two years next week, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Thursday. Now called the Westminster… Read More Tory lobbying row over unregulated ‘Westminster Russia Forum’ / Donald Trump can't stop praising Vladimir Putin

Dilip

Jonathan Steele: Understanding Putin’s narrative about Ukraine is the master key to this crisis / Oliver Stone: American Exceptionalism Is on Display in Ukraine / Mariia Shynkarenko: Not about NATO

With his incursion into Donetsk and Luhansk, Vladimir Putin has broken international law and destroyed the best negotiating track, the Minsk agreement. That is clear. What is also clear is why he did it. An increasing number of politicians and media analysts claim Putin may be mentally unstable, or that he is isolated in a… Read More Jonathan Steele: Understanding Putin’s narrative about Ukraine is the master key to this crisis / Oliver Stone: American Exceptionalism Is on Display in Ukraine / Mariia Shynkarenko: Not about NATO

Dilip