Tag: Ukraine

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

Nesrine Malik: Let the horror in Ukraine open our eyes to the suffering of war around the world

Too many frame the invasion as an attack on ‘civilisation’, uniquely awful because it happened in Europe. That approach demeans us all    Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sharpened two terrifying realisations. The first is that Putin does not function within the realm of the usual finely balanced checks and balances, sticks and carrots,… Read More Nesrine Malik: Let the horror in Ukraine open our eyes to the suffering of war around the world

Dilip

Sergey Faldin: Putin is digging his own grave in Ukraine / Berlin stands up against Putin at huge anti-war rally / Indian Student Killed In Shelling In Kharkiv

The reason you don’t see a revolution happening in Moscow is not that people don’t care about what’s happening in Ukraine. On the contrary, my social media feed is filled with posts from Russians opposing the war. “What happened?” they say. “How did we get to this? This is madness!” People are saying they feel guilty… Read More Sergey Faldin: Putin is digging his own grave in Ukraine / Berlin stands up against Putin at huge anti-war rally / Indian Student Killed In Shelling In Kharkiv

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

Ukraine: India refuses to take a clear position on the Russian invasion / Prominent Russians join protests against Ukraine war amid 1,800 arrests

NB: The article below is provocative. Readers may consider the implications. But two points need to be made about the author’s last few sentences. One, the phrase ‘Putin’s imperial nostalgia’ is misleading unless post-USSR geo-politics are examined carefully. Two, the world’s ‘liberal democracies’ don’t seem very committed to liberal democracy these days, and neither (to… Read More Ukraine: India refuses to take a clear position on the Russian invasion / Prominent Russians join protests against Ukraine war amid 1,800 arrests

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